That week was the best sex I ever had in my life: Celia knocking on the door to Lynn’s room during afternoon-nap time, me beneath the blanket, Lynn saying, “I’ll be right out, Mom, I’m getting dressed,” Celia saying, “Where’s Jack, honey?” and really not knowing where I was! See? That’s why I love the Midwest. Such a dreamy lack of a clue. That’s what happens in the Ohio River valley, even to a transplanted Mexican with citizenship. I’m from New York, where dead people are not that dumb. These folks are idiots. I mean innocent. Other friends of their family would come by, I’d run down to the basement to bring up extra chairs, and I’d feel it dribbling in my pants. Once the first one was out of the way, we did it every time Phil and Celia turned their backs. Every time they went to the food store. They had to go back to the food store so many times because we were eating everything in the refrigerator and losing weight at the same time. Their whole house must still smell from our spooge. I picture that dumpy suburban street—the snow melting in rivers of mud everywhere, her dad walking around in that fisherman hat, the smell of new wall-to-wall carpet everywhere in their house—and I get an exciting feeling inside. It’s like the first time we did it all over again.

LYNN HOLDS THE chicken’s weight in one hand and rubs a stick of butter around it with the other, like a deodorant stick, almost. She sprinkles it with lime, rubbing gently with her other hand around its back and rump. It makes me squeamish sitting there, like it might get up all of a sudden and tap my shoulder, but Lynn’s got a pretty sure grip on it. She grabs it by the cavity, sticks it on its back in the pan, and throws in a bunch of herb leaves and pine nuts. Then she cuts up an onion and an orange with the skin still on.

My office mate Amy told me, after she had her baby, how similar an uncooked chicken felt in her hands to the body of her daughter. She said how she held it, rubbing olive oil on it, under the wings, around the thighs, with soft loose pink skin, the small, protective rib cage. It was the same weight and size as her baby. She said even the elbows had a similar feel in her wet hands. She said it was too funny, so she loaded her camera, naked Elizabeth lying next to the chicken on Amy’s leather coat, and all the groceries piled up around them. She stood on a chair and got the two birds on film.