“Right, but that’s because ‘sex’ isn’t really a count noun and so it sounds unnatural to pluralize it.”
“A count noun?” Suz asks. “Huh?”
“I just mean we don’t say ‘We had two sexes,’” Phoebe clarifies. “We say ‘We had sex twice.’”
“Speak for yourself,” Jim says. “I had two sexes last night.”
Everybody laughs, except Marla, who looks half-irritated, half-impressed. “Did you study languages or something?” she asks.
“In college,” Phoebe says. “I thought I wanted to be a philologist.”
“But you’re not currently a philologist,” Marla says.
“No. But I also know that language is determined naturally by the people who speak it,” Phoebe adds, for Marla’s benefit. “That’s how we wind up with different languages. People in different regions make it their own. So, in theory, you can pronounce the drink however you want and ten years from now, it’ll be correct.”
“So it sounds like you’re saying there’s no right answer?” Gary asks.
“Spoken like a true English professor,” Phoebe says.
Everybody laughs.
“Well, now that we know the drink’s entire etymology, can we just drink one already?” Nat asks.
Suz pours everyone drinks, and it feels like the party has really begun. But Marla leans back against the boat, turns on her phone, and looks horrified.
“Oh, God,” Marla says.
Has she seen the sexts from Robert?
Phoebe waits for Marla to explain, but nobody from the group asks her to. Gary and Jim talk to Gary’s father. Juice quietly holds her dead virtual dog and looks out at the water. And Lila, Nat, and Suz seem set on ignoring Marla now. They are deep in giggly conversation about their past, the stolen church wine, the things they used to confess to priests, how attracted Suz used to be to Jesus, that time Nat told Father Leon she was gay—and it’s a place where the rest of them can’t go. Especially not Marla.
“Everything okay?” Phoebe finally asks her.
“I just realized my car registration is expired,” Marla says.
Phoebe wonders if she’s lying, but then Marla pulls out her wallet, starts typing things furiously into her phone. This is too much for Gary to ignore.
“Are you really reregistering your car while we’re sailing?” Gary asks.
“It’s a literal crime to drive an unregistered car,” Marla says.
“But you’re not driving a car right now. Do it when we get back on shore.”
“I’m a lawyer, Gary. I need to stay on the right side of the law. And I’m getting shockingly amazing service here in the middle of the sea.”
Gary looks down at his Vacation in a Cup. So does Phoebe. When she peeks, she meets Gary’s eyes. Gary raises his eyebrows and then they both smile. A big release that makes Phoebe feel giddy. Phoebe can’t help it—Marla is too much. But Phoebe doesn’t want to laugh at another woman for being too much, not even Marla. So she takes a big sip and she will admit: the drink is so fucking good. Because it’s so fucking terrible. Like Kraft mac & cheese. Like a Dunkin’ donut. The kinds of things Phoebe could never properly enjoy before, because she was too worried about her body, about sugar levels, about fructose. Even when she was drunk, she would binge by eating a bowl of flax berry cereal that would always make her shit at eight in the morning, give or take a few minutes.
“What’s actually in this drink?” Phoebe asks. She sits back against the side of the boat and the wind picks up her hair. “It’s so good.”
“A vacation,” Gary says.
“Right,” Phoebe says. “But what kind of vacation? Like a beachfront condo in St. Thomas?”
Gary takes another sip as if he’s a sommelier. “I’m getting more, RV visiting Civil War battlefields in the South for three days.”
Phoebe takes another sip. “Really? I don’t taste any battlefields.”
“No?” Gary says. “You clearly don’t have a complex palate. Or a father who once dragged you to all the Civil War battlefields as a child.”
She laughs. He laughs. Jim just watches them talk as if the conversation is too weird to join.
“No, he was more of the we-already-live-in-a-tiny-fishing-cabin-on-a-river-so-we-don’t-ever-have-to-go-on-vacation kind of a father,” Phoebe clarifies.
“Oh, I didn’t know about that father,” Gary says.
There are some people in this world who remind you of exactly how you like to speak. She hasn’t met a person like this in a long time, not since she met her husband, which was why it was so painful when she started to forget how to speak to her husband. When she looked at him, she was too often reminded of what not to say, what never to mention, like ovulation, or depression, or anything that might carry a hint of sadness. Perhaps that’s why she didn’t tell him that Harry died. She didn’t want to give him any more proof of her unlovability, of her failure. Perhaps that’s why she just put a blanket over Harry and ran away, too.
“That father is out there,” Phoebe says. “Well, not technically anymore. He’s dead.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Gary says. “So you’re a real orphan now.”
She blushes. The conversation.
“And surprise, surprise, being an orphan doesn’t feel like I imagined,” Phoebe says.
“The perks are even better than you thought?” Gary asks.
“What the hell are you guys talking about?” Jim asks.
