Winnie knew her friends, and they weren’t as nice as they pretended to be. Nigel had been taken on as a sort of pet to the group: the kid with the single mom who grew up eating Hungry-Man dinners and went to community college. They fed him pieces of their intellect and humored his lower-middle-class mentality with stories of their own artistic and ostentatious upbringings. Nigel always acted like this was a real treat, but after they were gone, he and Winnie would laugh about all the obnoxious things her friends had said. It became part of their marriage, what made them a team: “We’re laughing because you’re all the same.” Nigel had stolen the line from Kurt Cobain, but that made it even better to Winnie.

Don’s dad owned racehorses and Malay’s mother had been an international supermodel in the eighties. When Malay saw Nigel, she spread her arms wide and he stepped into her hug without reluctance. Winnie watched in amusement as her husband became entangled in Malay’s scarves, his watch snagging a piece of the silk. Don stepped in to help.

“Just another man trying to snag my wife away from me!” Don winked conspiratorially at Winnie, who smiled weakly in return. He was dressed in a brown leather jacket and skintight black jeans. It might have worked if his body weren’t shaped like a rectangle. Once Don had them free, Nigel offered to take his jacket.

“It’s part of my outfit,” he said, placing an offended hand over the right pocket of said jacket. Winnie smothered a giggle and tried to catch Nigel’s eye. But he wasn’t looking at her, he was too distracted to care about their friends’ idiosyncrasies.

“Still driving that Subaru, I see.” Don smirked over his little round glasses.

“It won’t die.” Nigel shrugged. This was part of the routine, the talk of the neonish green station wagon, which all of Winnie’s friends detested. Nigel and Winnie had this argument frequently.

“I happen to like the alien shit color of my car. What I don’t like is defending it to these buffoons every time they come over,” Nigel always said.

Sam came barreling down the stairs in a flurry of awkward arms and legs, and Nigel veered for the kitchen. Despite his earlier good mood, he didn’t want to be here, and Winnie was starting to realize that she agreed with him. The doorbell rang. She knew it would be either the Parklands or the Fromlics, and when she swung open the door, she was right on both accounts. The four of them, having arrived at the same time, stepped inside, complaining about the weather and lack of parking in tandem: Desiree and Uri, Vicky and Mack—Winnie had been roommates with Desiree as well as Vicky in college, and their husbands were mostly boring additions Winnie chose not to know well.