The Fish and the Bird

Part One:

Fire and Rain

This wasn’t an affair. Or at least, this wasn’t what I ever imagined an affair would have felt like. There were no steamy dangerously-timed trysts in secret cafes, no excursions to far-off towns where nobody knew our secrets, no invented girls-only getaways to cover up nights of passion in exotic hotel rooms. I’ve never seen an exotic hotel room in my life. We were calm and rational. We were measured, we were disciplined, we enriched each other, we laughed. We hid in quiet corners together and talked about books, our families, and pie.

When a woman has an affair in movies, there is always this problem. You can almost see it like it’s a tangible thing. You point your finger and say, There. She just needs to fix that thing, that’s all. And she’ll be fine. They’ll all be fine. Like she needed to scratch an itch. Something was wrong, so she’d screw it out—with another man. She was bored, or neglected, or abused, or unhappy.

I swear I wasn’t unhappy. Nobody would have ever said that I was unhappy.

But one thing was certain, this wasn’t an affair because we weren’t sleeping together. That much was simple, at least. Whether either of us wanted to was beside the point. I wanted all kinds of things, but I was always very clear about my fantasy and my reality. In reality, I had been married to my high school sweetheart for ten years, and we had two kids together. And in reality, I could tell myself anything and believe it. The Oakland County libraries were bigger and had a better selection of books. There was no Trader Joe’s out in the dusty farming town where I lived. I told myself whatever I wanted and that was how, twice a week, I paid a convenient visit to the university where Corbin Green taught freshman history.

I walked through campus in a daydream, carrying books in one arm and Hunter on the opposite hip. He pointed at a fountain we passed, reaching out for it so far and so hard that it pulled me off my center of gravity. He babbled, Mama, wawa! Mama, wawa!

I wasn’t too old yet, not so out of place here at all except for the baby on my hip and the diaper bag slung over my shoulder instead of a backpack. Though I didn’t doubt some of these girls were mothers, too. There were grad students here my age, having scholarly discussions on benches under the trees, sipping coffee, talking intensely to each other. I might have been one of them in another life.

Mama! Wawa, wawa!

I don’t know, buddy. I fished my phone out of my pocket and checked the time. Corbin’s class let out at one, and it usually took him fifteen minutes to finish up with his students and make it over to his office. It took me thirty-five minutes to drive back home, and Felicity got off the bus at a quarter to three. We would have about twenty minutes. It was all we ever had together. We met twice a week here on campus and once a week after yoga. I couldn’t possibly justify meeting him any more than that, although he would sometimes come into the shop for pie and sit there with a slice while I rang up customers or wiped the counters. It was the length of time it took to eat pie, to stretch after yoga, to drop off a book, or to have a conversation. Twenty minutes. Our whole friendship was built twenty minutes at a time.

Okay. Not too long, though, I told Hunter. I knelt down beside the fountain with him, and I handed him pennies to throw. His fat little arms rounded a short arc and plunked down, his whole hand splashing into the water with the penny. Splash, splash. I’d smell like chlorine, but that was no better or worse than any of the other things I usually smelled like: mashed peas, baby powder, my shampoo still, I hoped. I didn’t worry much about how I smelled or looked when I went to see Corbin anymore. He’d seen me much worse than this after yoga class, with wet circles under my arms and down my back, hair matted to my forehead, skin glazed with sweat, and our limbs worked warm and pliant. He would sometimes reach out to brush a damp strand of hair that was stuck to my forehead with no more contact than a breeze might have on my skin. At least now I had my hair brushed, a clean shirt—glancing down, yes, still clean, and in a flattering color too, peach—and my favorite jeans that I could finally fit into again. Thank you, yoga.

Splash, splash, splash, and I caught an eyeful of chlorine. That’s enough, I said, pulling his arms out of the water and wiping them dry with my sleeve.

Wawaaaa, he cried, a painful ballad to the fountain he’d been tragically forced to leave behind.

Waaaa, I cried along with him. He stopped crying and turned to me, a strange and careful suspicion in his eyes. He cried again and I mimicked again, and then it became a game. He stopped and chuckled. We carried on as we walked across campus, crying and laughing, until there was more laughing than crying, until there was no crying at all.

How easy it was to be thirteen months old. How quickly the most devastating loss could be forgotten in the space of a fun new game.

Corbin’s office was a closet. That’s what they do to us adjuncts, he told me, put us under the staircases and in the attics. It was true. The ceiling slid low above his desk where a stairwell was built above. Corbin couldn’t even stand up straight in that spot. His office door was open halfway. There was a girl across from him at the desk, mousy and glancing down at her papers. She had a crush on him, I could tell. I knew exactly what it was like to have a crush on him. It was almost a comfort to have Hunter here, babbling and drooling. Maybe I might not have trusted myself otherwise.

The girl moved to gather her things when she saw me. No, it’s okay, don’t hurry, I said from the hallway, noting a flash of a smile cross Corbin’s face to find me there. That was the first thing I noticed about him when we met, that kind of restrained smile that almost happened but didn’t. That, and the tiny cleft in his chin, the sculpted lithe body you’d expect to find on a thirty-year-old man who worked part-time in a yoga studio, and a long ponytail of golden-brown hair suggesting bad pickup lines, acoustic guitar ballads, and surf boards. What took longer to learn was that he didn’t play guitar, and that he never used pickup lines on women, and that there was so much more about him that I would never get to learn twenty minutes at a time.

Corbin spoke with his student some more about the Ming Dynasty of China. He was teaching one more class here, and another at a different college, along with a couples’ massage class at The Lotus, scraping together whatever work he could. Whatever they’d let him teach, he’d teach it. I’ll bring Matt in, I teased him once about the couples’ massage. He went red, but graciously said, You should.

I should have, maybe, but I wouldn’t. To have the two of them in the same room was a situation that theoretically should have been perfectly safe, but it just felt so explosive.

I put Hunter down in the hallway outside Corbin’s door. Hunter loved to walk now. He thought he was so good at it. He bobbled off down the empty hallway, but not too far, stopping to make sure that I was still there before turning and cooing a musical laugh.

The nervous girl left Corbin’s office then and muttered, Sorry, as she passed, a shade of intense guilt on her cheeks. And then it occurred to me that she probably thought I was his wife.

Hunter, I called. He turned to glance at me once and then continued down the hall. His bubbly glee echoed off the old stone walls. I ran over to collect him.

The floor of Corbin’s office was hard and usually unswept, so Corbin laid out a blanket he kept there. It must have been for Hunter specifically because Corbin was not the type to get cold. I put Hunter down and took some toys out of the diaper bag for him. Hunter shook a soft tasseled rag doll, making tiny bells chime in the silence.

With Hunter out of my hands, and because we were alone, I reached out to Corbin first—he always waited for me to reach out first—and folded my arms around him. We said the usual pleasantries as we embraced each other, Hi, how are you? How was your morning? Oh, you smell so nice. I put my face to his shoulder, his clean-shaven cheek brushing against mine for a moment. His aftershave was a woody scent and something else on him reminded me of a citrus grove, along with the faint dusty smell of old paper books and fresh air. We hugged shortly enough to be friendly, but long enough to take a deep breath of him. Inhale. And, just as quickly, we let go.

Are you thirsty?

You don’t have to bother, I said.

I don’t mind at all. He had a little tea cart in the corner with an electric kettle and bottles of spring water. I was a boring tea drinker—regular black tea, sugar and cream—but he had so many other kinds, green tea, white tea, jasmine tea, orange petal tea. He made us two cups.

The room had only one old window that looked rusted shut. I leaned against the desk and slid my butt onto it to sit. He leaned back in his chair, almost as if keeping his distance from me, his shirt pulling taut against his tense muscular frame. Looking at him was an indulgent form of torture. His students must have been crazy for him. He looked exactly like the kind of guy who picked up women at yoga and said ‘namaste’ in conversation. And he was, in fact, that kind of guy. He was idealistic, stubborn, detached, blunt, and naive. He was not boyfriend material and certainly not stepfather material. He didn’t make promises and he didn’t believe in love. He was a lovely distraction. He was great to talk to and beautiful to look at, so what more could possibly come of it?

Nothing. The impossibility of it all was a beautiful safety net.

That girl has a crush on you, I teased.

His smile was unsure and unpracticed, the most curious thing. He needed to be made to smile more. She’s young. She probably has a crush on everyone. Don’t you remember what it’s like to be eighteen?

Oh, do I ever. I wanted to pretend that I was eighteen and he was my professor. But he wasn’t my professor because I never wanted one until now. Now I wanted one. Had I gone to college at eighteen, it would have been a disaster. I would have been in short skirts, red lipstick, and tight shirts, and then what would my life look like? Not like this, I could tell you that much. And I quite liked my life. I was happy enough. It was a good thing I never went to college. Do the girls ever do this, come in here and sit here on your desk? I wasn’t wearing red lipstick—I had on no makeup at all—but I flashed him a sly, sideways smile and tossed my hair lightly. I didn’t understand the assignment, Professor. Maybe you could demonstrate it for me?

He laughed out loud, short, like a gasp, looking at me with equal parts intrigue and frustration. No, that doesn’t really happen. He re-situated himself in his chair. Or at least, not like that. He raised his eyebrows, almost imperceptibly, gulped hard, cleared his throat, and picked up a stack of papers to shuffle around. Corbin wasn’t the type of man to roll his eyes, but he got the point across just fine. I wasn’t being fair. We had a certain set of unspoken rules, but sometimes I forgot them. Sometimes I wanted to forget them because flirting with this man filled my greedy heart with so much life. But we were friends. And friends didn’t dick tease each other, because that wasn’t nice. So I slid off the desk and took the large armchair beside it, folding my legs underneath me. We sipped our tea and sat quietly and comfortably, watching Hunter play. Hunter held up a yellow car at us. Vroooom.

This was supposed to fade. That was what Charlotte told me. It was just a crush, it would pass, but that was long since passed now. The nervous, giddy bubble of seeing him again was replaced with a quiet joy. I looked forward to him. I took him in our measured doses like a special treat. I hadn’t expected that my feelings for him would settle into my pores and skin, into my bones, my toes, the folds of my brain, nestling himself in the deep pockets of my heart where he buzzed quietly and constantly, filling me. Charlotte said that I would forget him, but that couldn’t have been further from the truth. It was different than the way I loved my husband, Matt. That was also comfortable, but in a different way, in a dedicated and simple way. It wasn’t a love that filled my bones, but a love that had become the ground underneath me: steady, reliable, doing its duty.

Hunter babbled on the floor. He drooled a bit on Corbin’s blanket, so I took him up onto my lap and he drooled on my arm instead, his third and fourth teeth cutting through his gums and making a fountain of his poor little mouth. Corbin handed us a tissue. Hunter laughed at him. Corbin poked at his nose lightly, barely a touch. I didn’t assume that he disliked children, but he was nervous of them—or maybe he was just nervous of my husband’s child. But Hunter was just a baby. What harm was it if he met my children since we were just friends?

But I knew there was a reason that Corbin hadn’t met my daughter yet, or more precisely, there was a reason that she hadn’t met him. Because Felicity was six, she was smart, and she would cut straight through whatever bullshit lie I tried to tell her about how he was just another one of my ordinary friends.

I shifted Hunter to one knee and reached down into my bag for a book. This reminded me of you, so I had to bring it. It’s Li Po. There’s a poem in here called, ‘Alone and Drinking Under the Moon.’ Corbin was already amused, but I was quite serious about this. I cleared my throat and prepared to read. Corbin listened while Hunter squirmed to get down. I missed him being a newborn, when the novelty of my voice, whatever it was I was saying, was enough to entrance him. I could read him poetry or biographies or sections of the Wikipedia. Now he just wanted his car back, so I let him go.

When I finished, Corbin looked mystified. That reminds you of me? So you think I’m a drunk?

No, I said, laughing. I knew he hardly drank at all. A wandering spirit, I meant. I can imagine there have been times when you were comfortably acquainted with only your shadow and the moon.

It’s lovely, he said about the poem, while looking at me.

I slid the book across the table. You should read some of them. The book was well loved, maybe older than I was. It had been my mother’s once, and now the hard fabric cover unraveled at its edges. The pages themselves had heart. I mean, they’re mostly about being drunk. But they’re beautiful.

I’m not a poet, he said. If you wanted to discuss them, I would hate to disappoint you.

You don’t have to be a poet.

Which is your favorite?

The River Merchant’s Wife.

I want to hear it.

Hear it, he said, not read it. He slid the book back across the table to me. So I read it to him. I could have probably recited it by heart for as many times as I’d read this poem, but I needed the text this time because the way he watched made me nervous. I finished the poem and gave him the book again, which he kept this time. The way he looked at me sometimes was with so much surprise, arrested bliss. Like this poem, these words, this voice, wasn’t his to listen to. But because it was offered, he would take it anyway.

Then Hunter had a piece of fluff headed for his mouth. I sprung up from the chair and across the room in a single bound. I was Superman in a cape—all moms are when their kid is about to eat dirt—bending on one leg, cup of tea in hand, not a drop spilled.

I sat back down.

You move like a dancer sometimes, Corbin said. Even before the yoga, I always thought that.

I laughed. Thanks? Well, I’m not one.

It stopped me cold.

Oh, I said, staring at him. That was wrong. I had been one. I had been a dancer. I must have looked so shocked and confused because he looked so sorry, like he’d just said something that he shouldn’t have. It wasn’t that he shouldn’t have said it, but that I didn’t know how he could have known. It was like he’d peeked into my head somehow, deeper than I could myself—which was not exactly surprising, I could hardly remember what I had for breakfast sometimes—and saw all of my childhood memories and the secrets they contained. One memory, me as a dancing child. What sorcery was this? We laughed and I pointed my finger at him, accusingly, and told him, I was one, a dancer, a really long time ago. Over twenty years ago, three sessions when I was six and seven, and I’d almost completely forgotten it. Except for these vague memories now, pink shoes and tights, little girls gathered on wooden floors, little girls multiplied by mirrors until we were a tiny army of pink. Now there was no room for form or grace in my life. Did Matt even know this about me? This vignette from my days as a suburban daughter of a zoologist and a business mogul, a flash of old film, someone else’s story. I’d been a little ballerina once. We did the Nutcracker, I mused. I was a Sugar Plum Fairy.

He smiled, shrugging. Like I said, you just have good balance. That’s all. Do you dance anymore? Would you try it again?

The eagerness on his face suggested that he wanted to see me try it right here, right now, in his office. I shook my head. I’m not that daring, I said. I think I’d crack my head open.

I think you might surprise yourself, he said.

I wiped a pool of baby slobber off my arm without looking away from him, because sometimes I couldn’t look away from him. He didn’t just see me—my flesh, my curves and skin, my smile—he saw all of that and something else, too. Recognition. He was under no illusions. He wasn’t simply charmed. He saw that I was a living, breathing body with faults and flaws and neuroses all my own, but he also saw more. He saw something that hadn’t been seen by anyone in a very long time, maybe ever, maybe even by myself, that tiny spark of existence that made me, specifically, not in general.

Sometimes my heart swelled with the immense impossibility of it all. Feelings were so fickle. What was the point of them?

The time. Twenty minutes had passed. I had to go.

Thank you, I said to him. He bowed his head lightly to me. I wasn’t always sure what I meant by it. Thank you. Thank you for the conversation? For the books? For his time? For not telling me that this was too much trouble? For not being annoyed that there was nowhere for this to go? He could have told me that this wasn’t worth it, but he didn’t. Just as easily, I could have told him that it was all too dangerous, but I didn’t. And I knew he was grateful, too.

At night, I was home from work in time to tuck the kids into bed. After they’d settled down and called for their last goodnight kiss, I sat beside my husband and we had our time, he and I. Matt was a good man, and anyone would have called me lucky for the life I had. He had long lanky limbs and an adorable farmer’s tan—on an actual farmer. Go figure. He wore straw hats and white linen shirts that he left half unbuttoned when it was hot. He had kind, soft eyes, and gentle, work-worn hands. My husband was a good, attractive man, and I was a lucky woman.

And yet we sat next to each other in the evenings with as much affection and fondness as siblings.

I’d never been with anyone else. He was my first, my only. I was sixteen our first time, he was nineteen. He was an orphan already, and he took me back to the big, empty farmhouse that he’d inherited. I told my parents that we were going somewhere else—a theme park, a restaurant, a movie, anywhere—and we ran through the house, stark naked, chasing each other from one room to the next, making love with the windows wide open and the breeze coming in to kiss our sweaty love-slick skin. It was like we were part of the whole universe and the whole universe was part of us. Or maybe that was just what it felt like for everyone as a teenager. Where does that feeling go?

I talked for a bit. During the commercial breaks, he turned to watch my lips move. Not disinterested, but somehow vacant. At some inconsequential point, I gave up. It was okay, I’d run out of things to say anyway. I wouldn’t turn it into a fight—I didn’t want to fight with him. It was just hard, living with another human being for ten years. But we were kind to each other. We were friends. We were tired, but no more tired than anyone else. Our spark had cooled, maybe, but no more than the average couple after ten years of marriage. Or that was what I figured.

How did dinner go?

Fine, he said. Mostly. He likes it when you do it. You do it better. He doesn’t like it when I do it.

He’ll like it with you just fine. You just have to make it fun. Babies can sense these things.

"The bottles were easier.

I laughed. Well, of course they were. But you’re not going to feed him bottles when he’s twelve, are you?

He looked at me then. Twelve? Are we still going to be doing this when he’s twelve?

Oh, I said. What do you mean? Did he think I wouldn’t want to keep working? This wasn’t just some short term thing. Our pie shop was doing so well, and I loved it there. Matt was always a little annoyed on the nights I worked. I knew that being away couldn’t help matters, but what was I supposed to do? Was I working because my marriage was in trouble? Or was my marriage in trouble because I was working? Or was I just working because I wanted to earn some money and do something that I could call my own? Is it so wrong to take a few hours for myself?

You’d have a lot more hours to yourself if you weren’t working. You don’t need a job.

But I like having a job.

We’re hardly all together except a couple nights a week. This isn’t the idea I had in mind for my family. Don’t I give you enough? Don’t I give you everything you need? I never denied you anything.

No, you didn’t, I said. But this wasn’t about the money. I’m sorry. I’ll see what I can do. I smiled, coming up with an idea. The perfect solution. If you let me put Hunter in preschool, I could work days and we’d have the evenings together again. All evening, every night, like it used to be. Wouldn’t you like that? I touched his shoulder, kneading him, prodding him like a cat. He felt as hard and immovable as stone.

We never put Felicity in preschool. Do we need that?

It’ll be good for him, I said. We can afford it. I know a good place, that Pentecostal church near the expressway.

Pentecostal? He looked at me, questioning. I’d never known him to have any problems with the Pentecostals. His eyes called me lazy. His eyes said that I wasn’t holding up my end of the bargain. I thought you liked to stay home with them.

I did, when it was most important. I’ve been home with Hunter for over a year.

A year isn’t that long. You stayed with Felicity for at least three years. You said you wanted the same for Hunter.

I changed my mind.

Seems kind of selfish to change your mind now, don’t you think? He looked at me like he expected an answer. It made me feel selfish. He’s just so little. He needs his mother.

I shrugged. It’s only a few hours a day. And they won’t even take him until he’s two. I’ve read that it’s good for them. I’ve read that it’s what they’re doing so differently in China that makes them all so advanced.

We’re not Chinese. And there wasn’t any such thing as preschool when we were kids and we all turned out fine.

I went to preschool. They called it day care back then and I turned out fine.

He half looked at me without turning his head, like that fact was up for debate. He didn’t like it when I was right, but eventually he gave way. A reluctant acceptance. Fine, he said. Put Hunter in preschool. If it’ll make you happy, do it.

I think it would make us all happy. Hunter, too. Felicity is too old for him. He’ll get to play with more kids his own age.

I smiled, pleased with my resolution. He turned back to the television. He flipped through the channels, fishing programs, survival programs, scenery porn about Alaska and Greenland and Antarctica. If he wasn’t tied to this farm, you might imagine that he wanted to move us all to an igloo somewhere. Yet he never wanted to travel in person. All that expense, the challenge, the risk. The television programs were easier.

He watched me from the corner of his eye, probably wishing that I would do something.

Why don’t you go paint your toenails?

Paint my toenails?

Sure, I thought you might like to.

When did I ever paint my toenails?

That’s why I thought you might like to. Because you never do. Don’t you think you’d like to?

I shook my head. I didn’t want to paint my toenails. And I didn’t need him to entertain me, either. I didn’t mind that he watched his Alaska show. I wasn’t fidgeting. I had no complaints. Sometimes I just liked to sit and decompress. I was still covered in flour and pie filling and too tired to take a shower. But Matt was not a man of idle thoughts. He didn’t like inaction. Even watching TV was doing something, and he didn’t understand doing nothing. He waved a hand at me. Whatever you want then, Leila. Go do whatever it is you do.

Whatever it is I do.

I went to start a bath. He probably thought that painting my toenails would have been more productive. I picked out a book I intended to read, but instead I sat in the water and sniffed the pie filling caked in my hair. I thought of how the cream lodged into the corner of Corbin’s lips when he ate. Lemon raspberry, tart and smooth. I imagined dipping my tongue into that crevice to taste it, then quickly denied that thought. Stopped it cold. It was too much. I also craved the feel of touch on my skin, soapy hands running over my body, and then stopped that, too. I should save that for Matt, later, in bed, when he would finally decide to get some attention from me. Because he would, I knew. He didn’t neglect me. He fulfilled his duties. And I didn’t want to tell him I was tired all the time. I didn’t want to be that kind of wife.

My best friend, Charlotte, had always been the more fashionable and fussy of the two of us. I’d be a terrible person to say that I doubted her capacities when I heard she was going to have twins. I didn’t doubt her—it was more like I worried for her. She preferred her life exactly the way she wanted it. I knew she had no idea how much her life was about to change. Like those large, dangly earrings she liked to wear. I hated to tell her, when she was ten weeks along and so full of impending glee, Do you realize the babies will rip those suckers right out of your earlobes? Like little girl brawlers at an after-school fight, pulling hair, drawing blood. Charlotte was scandalized by the idea of it. But they’re going to be so, so sweet, I added.

She knew now. The babies were six weeks old and Charlotte didn’t dare wear earrings. She was learning fast. The three of us—Charlotte, her mother Audrey, and me—had somehow managed to keep the pie shop from falling into complete disrepair in that time. Charlotte needed more help than I could give her, though.

I was home one afternoon when Charlotte burst across the street from her house to mine. I hired a girl. Well, she’s with them right now, this is sort of a test. She’s almost hired. As long as she keeps them alive for the next fifteen minutes, she’s hired. Charlotte held up a baby monitor in her hand.

I laughed. Does she know she’s being spied on?

Oh, I hope this works out. She looks normal. She looks good. I’m gonna go crazy. I’m so tired. I’m so, so tired. Paul’s gained twenty pounds and I haven’t curled my hair in weeks. Is this how it starts?

How what starts? What do you mean?

Charlotte looked embarrassed. But she also looked like she said what she meant, what she’d been thinking all along, and she wasn’t taking it back. She shrugged. You know, the point at which you decide you need ‘a Corbin’ in your life? Maybe I could pick up a teenage landscaper or that roofing guy that did the house across the street last month, you remember the one with that ass? Charlotte grabbed two handfuls of imaginary ass and waggled her eyebrows at me.

It was supposed to be funny. She was trying to make it funny. I wasn’t laughing. Charlotte and Paul were actually precious together, and this was not the same. No, I said. I never decided on ‘a Corbin.’ You took me out for yoga and he just kind of smashed into my life.

Did anyone really want their whole life to fall apart?

Charlotte knew—Charlotte knew right away. She was there the first time I met him, and she saw it with her own eyes. I know, I know, you’re not doing anything. But, I don’t know… I shouldn’t have brought you there.

You homewrecker, I teased.

You’re just bored, Charlotte said.

I don’t have time to be bored. I wish I was bored.

This is our fault then. You shouldn’t work so much. You should be home with your family more.

Why does everybody always say that? You’re not staying home with yours. You just hired a nanny.

Charlotte shut up. We’ll take the kids this weekend.

I wouldn’t wish that many children all at once on anyone.

You guys need to go out on a date. For a few hours. We can handle it. Charlotte went quiet, but she was still looking at me, brimming with a juicy secret.

Say it.

I know why you like working so much, Charlotte said with a smug grin. My mom told me about the handsome professor who comes in for pie at night. She thinks he’s very charming. She thinks he has a crush on you.

What did you say?

I didn’t say anything. But isn’t that a bit bold? I mean, the shop is a mile away from your house.

How is it bold at all? He’s just someone who likes pie. He’s just a customer. We barely even talk when he’s there.

Who is he even, though? Charlotte looked at me curiously. She knew Corbin before I did—she knew of him, from parties and that circle of girlfriends she went to college with—but she looked at me now like she’d never bothered to wonder about Corbin as an actual human being before this very minute. Does he even have a family?

Of course. A mom and a dad. They sound awesome.

He’s like, a manwhore, though. He’s had sex with so many women. Maybe hundreds.

I laughed. Who told you that?

Amelia.

It’s not true, I said.

How many then?

Well, I haven’t exactly asked him, but not a hundred. He has a girlfriend, I think. Or he did. He told me stories about all kinds of women, all of whom he remembered by name. It couldn’t have been hundreds.

Isn’t he like, completely broke?

"Who cares? He’s my friend. He’s not applying for a bank