"They're upstairs," Willa reported glumly, ladling up a mug of apple cider from the stove.
"Having sex in my bathroom."
Lance raised his eyebrows, but didn't look away from the screen of his laptop. "Really?" he said
around a carrot stick. "The white bathroom, or the pink one?"
"Pink."
"Ah," Lance said vaguely, and Willa reached over and pulled the modem cord out of the phone
jack.
"Nobody fucking cares about the stock market tonight, okay, Lance? Please, help me out here.
The party hasn't even started yet, and it's all...like this."
Obligingly, Lance closed up the computer. "What did you expect, baby?" he said, reaching out to
stroke her hair fondly. "They haven't seen each other in weeks. It's Brit and Justin."
"Yeah, in my bathroom. I mean, it's not like they don't both have fucking mansions a ten-
minute drive from here. This is my house. This is my Christmas party, and it's supposed to be
intimate and traditional and fucking sweet, and Pam and Kid Rock up there are spoiling my
fucking holiday spirit."
Lance chuckled. "Face it, honey, so many pop stars have gotten it on in your house that you
might as well walk around here with a smoking jacket and a cigarette holder."
Willa attacked his hair with both hands, mussing it as badly as she could, given the amount of hair
gel Lance liked to use. He chuckled, and tried to ward her off. "Would you wear bunny ears? A
little cotton tail? Serve drinks on a little tray and get naked in the hot tub? Would you, Lance?"
"I'd get naked in the hot tub."
"Would you, Lance? Would you make that sacrifice to turn my party into a success?"
"Wills, for you, I'd even have sex with Justin in the pink bathroom."
"You probably already have." The thought soured her mood again immediately. It was the
indignity of the location, really; that was what bugged her, Willa was positive. As if she didn't
have two guest bedrooms, three if you counted the one that only her mother ever stayed in. It
had to be the bathroom, where people could just innocently walk in at any moment? Now she
was stuck with that image forever: all that lightly tanned skin, Justin's body moving smoothly and
unhurriedly back and forth, his face lowered over Britney's neck. Her hips rising up to press flat
against his, and her eyes shut in an expression that suggested martyrdom, endurance, even though
she was sighing luxuriantly, murmuring baby, yes.
The oven timer pinged, and Lance pushed past her, a little more roughly than Willa thought he
needed to. "Go ahead and say that really loud," he advised dryly. "I'd really like for that to be
as well-known as possible."
"Lance, everybody already knows."
"They do not."
"No, they really do." She'd just assumed that Lance knew that everybody else knew. "You and
Justin? Known. Well-known. Widely known, even."
"They really know?" Even with the oven mitts on, he pulled out the cookie sheet and dropped it
on top of the stove as quickly as possible, and shook his hands out afterwards. "Who knows?"
"Everybody. JC knows."
He thought about that for a second and then said, "Oh."
"Christina knows."
"Christina knows? Are you kidding me? How did that happen?"
The very question seemed weird to Willa. "She...knows. She usually just knows stuff. I don't
know how. I didn't tell her, if that's what you're trying to suggest."
"I'm not accusing anybody, I'm just...not happy about that."
"Why not?"
"Why not? Because Christina doesn't like Justin, and she's not real crazy about me, and she
really, really hates things that make Britney sad, which makes her sort of a ticking time bomb?"
"Lance, if she didn't really hate things that make Britney sad, she would've said something to her
already. She hasn't. She's not going to. Are there raisins in those? I don't like raisins, you
know that."
"I didn't know that."
"I've never liked raisins."
"That doesn't mean I know about it. I'm going to do peanut butter ones next, if that's okay with
you, milady."
"You know, you can move out anytime," she said pleasantly.
"But then you'd have to find an agent you trust, and a cook, and a boyfriend who doesn't
embarrass you at parties and won't want you to sleep with him. Plus, a lot of guys wouldn't wear
the cottontail."
"A lot of guys don't have your ass, Bass."
"And yet, a lot of guys actually do." He said it just a little bitterly, and Willa rubbed his back.
She thought about asking if Justin was really that good in bed, that he not only had Britney,
who didn't know how unreliable he really was, twisted around his finger, but also Lance and JC,
who knew beyond a doubt. On the other hand, maybe it wasn't about Justin and his amazing
traveling cock at all; maybe it was just about the fact that Lance had been living with her for more
than a year now, and there hadn't been any more decent men in his life than there had been in
hers.
She raised her mostly empty mug in his direction. "Happy holidays to the men we can't have and
shouldn't even want," she said gently.
A smile flickered across Lance's face. "At least you're in love with yours. That makes it -- well,
lame, but kind of noble. Better than just not wanting your perfectly sweet friend's boyfriend to
stop cheating on her."
"You know, I think that's the nicest thing anybody's ever said about my relationship with Nicky.
Thanks, love."
As if he wanted to make up for having said something that resembled encouragement on the Nick
front, Lance said, "Maybe you should get laid in the occasional guest bathroom yourself. It might
not be great for the soul, but it's a boost to the mood."
"I'll flip you for JC."
"I'm your friend, not a saint. Find your own meaningless yet beautifully convenient backup
affair."
"Fine, I guess I'm stuck with Christina, then."
Lance snorted as he pulled wineglasses out of a high cabinet and lined them up on the counter.
"Now why do I feel like you'd end up with more than you bargained for in that deal?"
"She's kinda intense."
"She's somebody's PhD dissertation. She's got every issue -- "
" -- of volumes one through twelve," Willa finished. "Quit stealing my jokes."
"Was that one yours? I thought it was a Justin thing."
"Justin steals a lot of his jokes. I think he may actually have a writer on staff. Like the Tonight
Show. No, no champagne. I told you, I'm not drinking."
He cocked his head slightly. "But I didn't believe you."
"Hear me now and believe me later, Bass; I don't drink anymore."
"Next come the AA meetings."
"I'm not an alcoholic."
"I know. Which makes it a little weird that you're quitting. That's usually the kind of thing that,
you know, alcoholics do."
"Buddhists do it to."
"Muslims, too, but you're not Muslim or Buddhist. Or Mormon -- they don't drink either, do
they? But who cares, because you're not one of them, either. You haven't been talking to the
Jehovah's Witnesses, have you? I warned you about letting them in the house."
"Fuck me, you try to improve yourself around here and get nothing but shit."
"Because you're making us look bad. Have a fucking glass of champagne; it's Christmas."
"Happy birthday, Jesus. Let's all get utterly trashed and try to lure the wrong people into the hot
tub."
"Now you're getting the hang of international celebrity."
"I'm never having another party for you people again."
He was riveted to the fresh cookies piled high on the serving tray, moving one and then another in
some arcane engineering scheme, trying to perfect the architecture of the display. Her very own
Martha. "Don't be sulky about it, Wills. Look, if you want JC tonight, you can have him. You
probably need the orgasm worse than I do."
"I kind of want to hug you, and yet I kind of want to beat the shit out of you."
"It sounded better in my head."
"Well, you can ease up on the magnanimity."
"I want you to use 'magnanimity' in a song. I really think I could fall in love with a woman who
could find a rhyme for 'magnanimity.'"
Willa pretended he hadn't interrupted her with that. "Because I don't think I want to sleep with
JC anymore."
"Are you entering a convent or what? You can't give up everything at once."
"I'm being serious. The thing about JC is, he's the most beautiful thing in the world -- he's like,
like the Audrey Hepburn of boys. He's just fucking pretty. But in bed? I don't know. We just
don't quite fit together. Spiritually, I mean."
Lance rolled his eyes. "I sure can't see why. You guys are so much alike. 'We just don't vibe,
man -- not spiritually.'"
"Oh, fuck you. Did I mention that I'm being serious?"
"You're being too serious. Of course JC's not your -- your soulmate or whatever. That's the
whole point of a meaningless backup affair. You have a soulmate. He drinks too much and you
have this funny little tendency to slap each other around and it's all very deep, in an inane, junior
high sort of way. JC is the slightly less satisfying man who respects you and has devoted his
whole adult life to nurturing your career and is always there when you're lonely and depressed."
"I think I might sort of love him too much for that now. I think we may be past that."
Lance thought about that while he sipped his champagne. "This sounds like a girl thing to me."
"Integrity? It's possible."
"I was thinking more like the part where you masochistically stop letting yourself be with the men
who actually care about you and contribute positively to your life."
"Sleep with JC because it's good for me. Like eating three servings of leafy green vegetables a
day."
"JC is definitely the leafy green vegetable of the great sexual buffet table of life. Healthy, and best
in combination with something a little more flavorful."
"That makes Justin -- Thousand Island dressing?"
"Don't abuse the metaphor, Grasshopper."
"Just for one night, I wish there was no sexual buffet table. I just want to sing some carols, eat
some caramel corn, open each other's presents, and be a fucking family like we're supposed to be.
Three girls, three boys. They do it every week on Friends. Why can't we manage it once a
year, angst-free?"
"Our writers suck."
"I'm just so tired, Lance."
He put one arm around her waist and stuck half a cookie in her mouth with his other hand.
"Sweetie, you're the only one who's angsting. If you want to relax and have fun tonight, just do
it. We are a family; just enjoy the party, and pick up tomorrow where you left off worrying about
our incestuous tendencies."
"Denial doesn't help anything. I hate raisins, too, did you know that?"
"I disagree. I think sometimes denial clears a little space for you to remember why we're your
friends to start with. It's not always about the big solutions. Watching A Charlie Brown
Christmas doesn't create world peace, either, but you're not going to be a worse person for
taking an hour and a half once a year to watch it. You might even feel better."
"I could actually really go for a drink."
"I want to help you better yourself."
"No, really. I'm having an intuitive experience. This is how I see the evening playing out: Britney
and Justin will be sociable for about an hour, then they'll go out and fuck in the hot tub and forget
all about us. You and JC will make us watch something dumb on television that's supposed to be
a cult classic of some kind, and then you'll go to the kitchen for more crab dip, JC will make a
pass at you, and he'll spend the night; we'll never get our crab dip. Christina and I will curl up on
the couch under the quilt and bitch about all four of you while we watch infomercials, finish all the
booze left lying around the room, and then fall asleep."
"Now how is that not an intimate family Christmas?"
Willa reached for the tray of cookies and cracked a raisin-less chunk off the edge of one. "That's
actually a pretty fair question."