This got a laugh from Gerhart, Churan, and Chen. Everyone else was horrified.
“As soon as Betty allowed Steve to enter her,” continued Greg, “she broke the terms of her pair bond. A condom, when used properly, is 96% effective. Four out of hundred times Betty allowed Steve to penetrate her, the condom would have failed and pregnancy would have resulted. If she somehow managed to use birth control effectively to avoid the logical consequences of sex, the risk was still there. She wantonly put Andy’s exclusive right to a genetic legacy at risk.”
Greg marveled at himself as he said it. He’d been magnificent so far. At this point, he’d argued so effectively, no one dared oppose him. All he needed now was a good segue into his final topic.
Emile gave it to him when he shouted across the table.
“This is, how you say, total bullshit!” Emile suddenly said in his heavy French accent. It was the first time he’d spoken in Greg’s direction all evening.
Emile was an impressive figure. He was ridiculously good looking with a chiseled granite chin, finely coiffed salt and pepper hair, and manufactured fingernails. As a young man, he had been a professional tennis player and he maintained his fit and athletic physique. He also had the finely bred manners and smug superiority of the French upper class.
Emile was also very tall. “193 centimeters!” Greg’s wife Quiara had once gushed at him, as if the metric system meant anything to the daughter of a machinist from Pensacola, Florida.
Emile’s figure was especially impressive when he was angry. He had been pissed from the time they sat down to dinner because Greg pulled Quiara away from the seat Emile saved her next to him and sat her next to himself at the far end of the table.
“How so?” Greg asked Emile.
“Saying that a man is unfaithful because of how he spends his money instead of where he places his cock is absurd! Ridicule!” screamed Emile.
The entire table flinched. Not so much at his language, but at his vehemence. His tone was dripping with anger and hatred. Heads swung back and forth looking at Emile and Greg to figure out what was going on between the two.
“Oh?” replied Greg. “Hypothetical: a married man purchases a hundred thousand dollar sedan to impress the married women he was trying to seduce. At the same time, that man’s wife does not have a working car and she was struggling to get her kids to school every day. You wouldn’t consider that infidelity, even though he isn’t providing her the resources and cooperative support she needs to raise her kids?”
Greg knew that Emile bought an S-class Mercedes last year because Quiara had described it rhapsodically after she was first invited to ride in it. Greg also knew that his wife had been secretly driving to Elodie’s house each morning, driving her and Elodie’s kids to school, and then driving Elodie and herself to work. This added nearly forty minutes onto Quiara’s commute every morning. She did it to support her friend, just as Kailey had been driving Elodie and her kids home every day.