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, 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.”
“Hey,” protested Marshall.
“You have to admit,” I said, “you’ve let things slide on that front. A rich, good-looking guy like you should have been married and divorced three different times by now.”
“Granted.”
“So back to the conversation," I said. "You think that we should take turns with Jacine?”
“Yeah. It makes sense. We are all busy people, and none of us has had the time to commit to a single relationship. Maybe part-time would work? Think of it as serial monogamybut without messy divorces. We just set our schedules to rotate who is in town when.”
“Except, I’m always in town,” said Marshall.
“Not to be indelicate, old man,” said Kane. “But you do work like a demon. I’ve called you what—three times in the last week at eleven at night and you are in your office. What kind of life is that for Jacine?”
“Maybe it’d change if I had someone to come home to.”
“That sounds like a river in Egypt to me,” said Holmes.
“What?”
