“Kane, you there?”
“Yeah.”
“So I’ve been thinking.”
“That’s a danger sign,” quipped Kane. It was a good thing his house was a good three miles from mine because I could do something against the contract if I spied his wisecracking grin.
“Shut up, Kane,” said Holmes. “Look, the one thing we can all agree on is that we want the same woman.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Sucks for us.”
“I’ve been reading that in Tibet there is like this shortage of women—”
“So, sucks for them.”
“Shut up and listen, because I don’t like this any better than you do, but it might be the only solution to our problem.”
“Okay, I'mlistening. You listening Kane, Marshall?”
Marshall's eyes glittered in the lights that lit my veranda. He nodded.
“Yeah,” said Kane.
“So what they do is that brothers share a wife.”
“Share?”
“Yeah, like polygamy.”
“It’s called polyandry,” said Marshall, “when there are several men and one woman.”
“Yeah,” said Holmes. “Polyandry.”
“Wait,” said Kane. “You want to sister-wife this situation?” His voice was incredulous, and I didn’t blame him. For one thing, I had no clue what he was talking about.
“Sister-wife?” I said.
“It’s a reality show on television. There is one man who has four wives.”
“They can’t all be his legal wives.”
“No,” said Marshall. “Only one is. But they had wedding ceremonies and call the relationships spiritual unions.”
“You seem to know a lot about this, Marshall.”
“I’ve had some time on my hands.”
That was the problem we all had, which led to Jack Daniels and impossible conversations.
“And what?” I said. “He has sex with all of them?”
“He must,” said Kane. “They have eighteen kids between all of them.”
“He,” said Marshall. “Divides his time equally between them. They have four different houses on the same street, and he goes to a different house each night.”
“That’s just fucking educational. But I don’t see how that helps us.”
“Don’t you?” said Holmes. “Think about it. All of us are on the road half the year, and Mr. Attorney hasn’t poked his head out of his office in so long that he barely knows what a woman is.”
