bulging biceps and V-shaped torsos, they would have been the gods of the gay scene if they had sharedtheir brother’s sexual orientation.
Ben stood with his buff brothers, looking unamused at their high jinks. He was the only male atthe party drinking Diet Coke instead of beer.
Johnny and Wayne had five kids between them —scrawny, unruly boys between the ages of fourand ten. Mimi sat on a beach towel, playing with her nesting cups and occasionally looking up at her newcousins’ antics with the critical gaze of an anthropologist.
“You come on over here, Lily,” Sheila, Wayne’s wife, said. “Me and Tracee wanna give you acrash course on how to handle a McGilly man.”
Lily managed a smile, knocked back some beer, and sat down at the redwood picnic table acrossfrom the other McGilly wives. Lily could tell she was going to have a hard time telling Sheila and Traceeapart. They both had dark tanning-bed tans and peroxided blond hair. Their aerobicized bodies didn’tpooch or dimple in their bathing suits, and diamond rings and pendants glittered against their brown skin.
They were the kind of girls who had made Lily’s life hell in high school.
“So...” Sheila purred, “how did you meet Ben?”
“Through a mutual friend.” It was true. Dez had been dating Ben at the time he and Charlottestarted collaborating on papers. To celebrate the publication of Dez and Charlotte’s first paper, the four ofthem had met for dinner at an Indian restaurant one night. Lily could have gone into detail about her andBen’s first meeting, but she figured the best policy here was not to lie unless it was absolutely necessaryand to never give any more information than the bare minimum. “We were friends for a long time beforewe got…involved.”
“Is that a fact?” Tracee laughed. “I had Johnny engaged to me before he knew what hit him. Andof course, we had John Junior seven months after the wedding, so I don’t guess I can say much aboutyour little un over there being born outta wedlock. Me and Johnny just got in under the wire ourselves.”
Lily smiled politely and took a big swig of beer.
“So, Lily, let’s see your ring,” Sheila said.
Lily looked down at her hands — so different from Sheila’s and Tracee’s well-manicured, gold-encrusted ones. Lily had artist’s hands — long, callused fingers with nubby nails and ink stains that neverquite washed away. “My ring?”
“You know,” Sheila enunciated as though she were talking to a particularly slow-witted child,
“your diamond. That Ben bought you.”
“Oh,” Lily said, “we haven’t bought a ring yet.”