A Song in the Daylight

“Yes, for the good of her, too, Ezra,” said Evelyn. “Larissa and I were discussing this just the other day, right, Larissa?”

“Right, Ev.”

“Women are saved through childbirth,” said Evelyn, smiling, with Larissa blinklessly nodding.

“Exactly,” said Ezra. “But you know why they can be saved? Because someone else hunts and gathers. Someone has to get up each morning, slog to work, deal with people he doesn’t like, do crap things, answer to crap bosses, make boring phone calls, attend numbing meetings. Right, Jared?”

“I know you love to mock what I do, Professor,” said Jared, “but I run the finances of a company that has global assets totaling $485 billion.” Malcolm whistled. Evelyn looked at him impressed. Maggie glared at Ezra with a “pwned!” expression. Bo glared at her Jonny as if to say, why can’t you get a damned job, even as a dishwasher? Only Larissa was playing with the umbrella in her Sangria and didn’t look up. “We have thirty-five thousand employees,” continued Jared. “That’s a lot of men and women I pay who hunt and gather for their families. I’m not even talking about all the money instruments we offer so an English teacher like you can put Dylan through college. That’s got to be worth something, isn’t it, Ezra?”

“It is,” Ezra assented. “Because of that, your wife is home. Larissa bakes, which smells good and tastes delicious. She takes care of your offspring, most of whom I assume you love because they do not bang the drums at two in the morning. Larissa, tell us—to take care of things you love, is there slog in that?”

“There is no slog, Ezra,” agreed Larissa, drink thoroughly stirred.

“But, Ezra,” said Maggie, “you were just arguing that the woman is a more pathetic creature than man because she lives to serve other people. Yet you paint man as also serving, except serving those he doesn’t love. So who’s got the better life?”

“Without a doubt, the woman,” said Ezra, and they all laughed. Voices calmed down, emotions ran slower, Jared poured more red wine, the music overhead switched to reggae jazz, quite the combo. When Jared glanced at Larissa sitting on his right, the smile was frozen on her porcelain face, her white teeth as if in a lion’s grimace, her made-up eyes glazed by—drink? And then she spoke in a non-sequitur. She said: “We can do it on a sunny floor … Roll on our backs screaming with mirth, glad in the guilt of our madness