They laugh.
“That’s what she wanted,” Nat says. “An athletic nurse. Someone who can both be sporty and save lives.”
“What about you, Lila?” Nat asks.
“From the groom,” the waiter says, and interrupts with a bottle of wine that Gary had handpicked and delivered for Lila’s party. They all clap as the old man pours the wine into the glasses.
“Gary is so sweet,” Suz says. “Marc would never do that.”
“So?” Nat asks Lila. “What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever done?”
“I really don’t feel comfortable saying with Marla here.”
“Is it really that weird?” Nat asks.
“I’m not surprised,” Suz says. “All doctors are weird in bed.”
“All doctors are not weird in bed,” Lila says. “You can’t just say things like that.”
“Trust me, I slept with a lot of doctors during med school,” Suz says. “And they were all so bored of bodies, they always needed something extra.”
“Gary is so not like that,” Lila says.
“Then what is he like?” Suz asks.
“Just share with us,” Nat says. “We’re just trying to know you better. That’s all.”
“Okay, well,” Lila says, seemingly touched. “Gary’s just really sweet. The last time we had sex, Gary stopped halfway through to tell me that I looked so beautiful in the sunlight, I was like a Vermeer painting.”
The table is silenced.
“That’s not weird,” Nat says.
“That’s like, really beautiful,” Suz says.
“It would seriously take Robert two decades of therapy to ever say something like that,” Marla says.
“Well, I told you, we don’t do anything weird!” Lila says.
“It’s not even close to weird.”
“Why does our sex have to be weird? It’s not like it’s more special the weirder it is. Can’t I just have beautiful sex and be happy about it?”
“I don’t know,” Nat says. “Can you be happy about it?”
“What is that supposed to mean?” Lila asks.
“You just don’t sound that happy about your beautiful sex,” Nat says.
Lila looks at Phoebe like she’s sending Phoebe a private message. Asking her with her eyes to end this conversation.
“Oh, I forgot!” Phoebe says.
Phoebe pulls out the pack of penis straws and puts them in the wineglasses. But the glasses are too short, the straws too long, the dicks too heavy. They look perpetually at risk of falling out of the glasses. They look wrong, too neon and vulgar for this quiet rustic tavern. The waiter eyes them suspiciously when he clears the plates, but Lila looks pleased by them. Pleased that sex is just a stupid joke again among friends. She leans in and takes a sip from the dick.
“It’s a real bachelorette party now,” Lila says.
But Marla reminds them that Gary bought this Bordeaux. Went to an actual award-winning vineyard to research it and pick it out.
“I refuse to suck a fifty-year-old bottle of Bordeaux through a neon-green dick,” Marla says. “This wine is meant to be savored.”
“Suck it slowly then,” Nat says, and everyone laughs.
“What would you think of men who drank beer out of plastic vaginas?” Marla asks.
“Can we not talk about sex?” Lila asks, as she takes a big sip from the tiny dick. “It’s so … historic here. I feel we should be talking about like … something meaningful.”
“Okay, like what?” Suz asks.
“Like Cubism,” Lila says.
“You want to talk about Cubism?” Nat asks.
“What is Cubism?” Suz asks.
“It’s honestly not all that interesting,” Phoebe says.
“Oh good, of course Phoebe knows. Say something about Cubism,” the bride demands.
