“Not to be rude, but how old were you when you met? We have a big age gap, too, and people ask me all the time. I don’t mean to be offensive.” Lawrence didn’t actually know if he meant to be offensive or not, but he was curious. He hated when people asked him the same question—young men phrased it in such a way that meant they thought Charlie was old, and old men phrased it in such a way that meant that they thought that Lawrence was nothing more than a blow-up toy, available for sex at all hours, in any orifice. It was nothing like either of those things. Lawrence never thought about the ten years between them except when they were playing Trivial Pursuit and Charles suddenly knew which actors were on which television shows, and who had been whose vice president. In their practical, daily life, the age difference mattered as much as who finished the toilet paper and needed to remember to replace it with a fresh roll, which is to say, if it ever mattered, it was only for a split second, and then it was forgotten. They had worried about Charles’s age, for the birth mothers, and now that they’d made it past the first round, Lawrence hoped that it wouldn’t be the thing standing in their way. They could change apartments, or neighborhoods, lots of things, but they couldn’t change that.

“Well, I’m forty now, so I guess I was thirty-four? Maybe thirty-three? I can’t remember what month he joined the gym.”

“And were you pretty serious right away?”

“I guess.” Carmen closed her legs. She reached up and pulled the elastic out of her ponytail, shaking her hair loose. It hung in awkward damp curls around her shoulders, kinking out at funny angles where the rubber band had held it in place. “We try to keep it casual, but with respect, you know?”

Lawrence didn’t, and shook his head.

“I mean, we’re exclusive, but for the first few years, it was more like, we’ll see. Now we’re really solid, though.”

“I gotcha.” It sounded like bullshit, like the sort of thing men with several second-string girlfriends might say. Lawrence had a dozen friends of just that description, men who refused to commit, because what was the point? But his friends were older, and only a handful of them were interested in having children. Life would be so much more interesting if one could ask all the questions one wanted to and expect honest answers. Lawrence just smiled with his lips closed.

Carmen pushed herself up to stand. It was still light, but the needles on the pine trees had started to shift from glittery to dark, which meant that the sun was saying farewell for the day. “What about you? When did you guys decide to get married? I mean, when did you know you were ready?”

“When we could.” Lawrence would have had a thousand weddings to Charles. They’d had a party each time a law passed, and one with their parents at City Hall, followed by a giant party at a restaurant in SoHo where Charles had drawn murals on the walls, so they were all surrounding themselves, smiling in two places at once, Lawrence and Charles and even Franny. That was one thing Lawrence hadn’t known when he was young, when he had fantasies about his Dream Wedding, back a hundred years ago when he’d stolen all of his sister’s Ken dolls and laid them on top of each other on his bunk bed, way up there where no one would see. Lawrence didn’t know then, and wouldn’t know for decades, that marriage meant sealing your fate with so many other people—the in-laws and the grandfathered-in friends of the bosom, the squealing children who would grow into adults who required wedding gifts of their own.

“That sounds nice,” Carmen said. She wasn’t really listening anymore, but instead halfway into her own Dream Wedding. It would be a small affair, maybe on the beach, with a reception inside afterward. All of her Cubano relatives would want a band, and so they would have one, the men in their guayaberas, the women with flowers behind their ears. Even though Carmen herself didn’t eat sugar, her mother would insist on a cake—tres leches—and everyone would have a piece. Bobby would pretend to shove it into her face, but instead feed her the tiniest bite, knowing full well that each swallow meant fifty more jumping jacks the next day. But on their wedding day, she would eat a whole piece and not care, she’d be that happy. Together, she and Bobby could be a training team, maybe someday leave Total Body Power and start their own gym. Carmen had already started thinking about names.

Clive. Clifton. Clarence. Lawrence had always imagined the baby being a boy, maybe because they were both men, maybe because he wanted a girl so badly that it felt like bad luck to even daydream about the possibility. Alphonse wasn’t right, but they could change it. C names felt natural, and slightly old-fashioned in a way that he liked. For a girl, he liked something more whimsical: Luella, Birdie, or maybe even something cinematic: Scarlett. A couple they knew had recently been chosen by a birth mother and were now delirious from lack of sleep, happy as clams. That was all Lawrence wanted—the chance to stare through bleary, four a.m. eyes at a slumbering Charles, wishing that he’d wake up and feed the baby. He could smell the sour spit-up, the foulness of the soiled diapers. He wanted it all.

Sometimes it was pleasant to sit in silence with a near stranger, both of you lost in your own thoughts. Once the pressure to speak was gone, the quiet could hover for hours, covering you in a sort of gossamer cloak, like two people staring out a moving train’s window. Both Lawrence and Carmen found that they liked each other far more than they imagined they might, and they quite happily sat together without speaking until the sunset was complete.

Franny was in bed with an ice pack on her head, where a large goose egg had already formed. Antoni had driven her home himself, a ride that she dearly wished she remembered for more than just her own throbbing skull. Antoni tried to explain to Charles, who answered the door, what had happened, but there wasn’t much to say. She had hit herself in the head with the butt of her tennis racquet and briefly knocked herself unconscious. She would be fine, Antoni was sure, though he admitted that he hadn’t seen it before, not such a direct hit on one’s own scalp. Antoni had been very sweet about the whole thing—when Antoni had his sunglasses and baseball hat off, Charles could see what had made Franny’s heart go aflutter. He was still gorgeous, and spoke so quickly with his beautiful mouth, Charles almost didn’t even care what he was saying, just so long as he kept talking. She had a strong swing, Antoni said, and smiled. They would reschedule, if she wished, and he would call to check on her. Antoni wrote down the name of his personal doctor for Charles and then left, getting into a waiting car driven by one of his employees, who had followed them up the mountain.

They’d cooked and eaten dinner without her—Charles delivered a plate to her bedside and returned when Franny had taken a few bites. Carmen was eager to help with the dishes, even more so in Franny’s absence, but Jim shooed her away from the sink. He pushed his sleeves up to his elbows and turned on the faucet. “You go on,” he said. “I’ll do it.” Jim spoke with authority, and Carmen backed away, hands raised.

“You wash, I’ll dry,” Charles said, setting out a dish towel on the countertop. Bobby had vanished into his bedroom, and Sylvia was sitting at the dining room table, hypnotized by her laptop. The house was as quiet as ever, though outside the wind was picking up, and occasionally branches tapped against the windows.

Jim dampened the sponge and dove in. They worked silently for a few minutes, an assembly line of two. At the table, Sylvia gave a loud snort and then a louder laugh. Both Jim and Charles turned to her for an explanation, but her eyes stayed glued to the screen.