Neighborly(43)

“That’s the key,” Yolanda says. “We’re open here. And there are no divorces. Families stay together.”

I glance at Tennyson. She’s on her second marriage, right? But maybe her first marriage didn’t have the spreadsheet.

“Families are stronger because they’re headed by two people who know they’re not just stuck with each other, you know?” Raquel’s eyes are bright, even in the dim. “We all want to go home to our husbands.”

She really means what she’s saying, but a part of me just can’t imagine wanting to go home to someone who looks at me the way Bart was looking at her that day at the block party. Like he wanted to rip her limb from limb. Or was that just the intensity of his sexual desire? Because he’d just been with, say, Tennyson, and now he was hot for Raquel?

It doesn’t compute, and yet, these are smart women. Vital, interesting women. And they’re telling me that this works. They want me to be a part of their community. I mean, really a part of their community. I’d wondered if I’d be accepted; now it’s much more than that. I’m actually desired.

Or Doug is.

“This probably sounds kind of insane, right?” June says. “Every one of us thought so, once upon a time. But it actually works.”

If it works so well, what happened to her husband?

“We’ve never asked someone to join this fast,” Raquel says. “Usually, it takes a while of getting to know someone. But with you, it was unanimous after the last girls’ night. We were like, ‘Why wait?’”

I’m slightly flattered, warped as this whole scenario is.

“There’s something about you,” Yolanda says. “We all felt it. It’s like, we knew we could trust you.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way.” Raquel goes to push her glasses up her nose and then realizes she’s not wearing them. “But you’ve got this kind of awkwardness, like you’re wrestling with yourself. You’re all earnest and hopeful, but it’s like you know better than that; you don’t want to get crushed. And I don’t know, we just all really responded to that and wanted you around.”

“Because it’s not just about sex,” Gina says. Then she laughs self-deprecatingly. I didn’t know she had self-deprecation in her. “I mean, obviously, with me, it’s not about sex. We’re really good friends. We lean on each other. We can share anything.”

It seems like Gina has been doing the hardest sell. Maybe she’s the mastermind behind the spreadsheet. Her marriage needed an arrangement, and she’s the definition of an overachiever. She found Oliver a neighborhood full of women to do what she doesn’t want to.

Tennyson returns with two drinks in her hands and plants one in front of Raquel. Then, feeling no need to catch up on the conversation, she says, “Affairs are rampant. It’s not sleeping with other people that kills marriages. It’s the secrecy. Secret fantasies and longings. Self-denial. And eventually, betrayal. It doesn’t need to be that way.”

“It’s an experiment,” Andie says. “You can try it, and if you don’t like it, you just forget all about it.”

I study her, trying to gauge what she has and hasn’t done, and whether what’s done can really be undone. If Doug has sex with one of these women, I’ll always know that. If I have sex with one of their men, I’d always know that, and so would they.

Is that part of the allure? How incestuous it all is? That they’re all bonded by intrigue and drama?

“You have a favorite meal, right?” Gina looks at me, and I nod. “You don’t want to eat it every day for the rest of your life. You want to switch it up. Your taste buds want a different experience, and everyone gets that. Well, sexual appetites are the same way. Why do we accept our appetites around food but not sex? No one insists on gastronomic monogamy. On gastronogamy.” She and the others laugh.

“Let’s go around the table,” June says, “and everyone can say the biggest advantage to the spreadsheet.”

“You don’t have to stifle your true nature,” Tennyson says immediately. “I want a life partner, but I still like variety. Vic is great in bed, but he can’t be every man, you know?”

“You don’t have to wonder if the grass is greener,” Andie says. Does she mean that she was with someone else, and it made her realize her own grass was just fine? That she and Nolan tried and then decided to opt out? I’m assuming she’s not part of the spreadsheet now or she would be a girls’ night regular.

“Well, you know my grass isn’t greener,” Raquel quips, and everyone laughs. I assume she means her actual brown grass and not Bart.

“It’s affair prevention,” Yolanda says quietly. “He’ll have his experiences, but he’ll never leave.”

“You have someone else to do the dirty work,” Gina says. “You know, to have the sex you don’t feel like having. It takes the pressure off.”

“Sometimes you’re more sexually compatible with someone other than your husband,” June says.

“It’s always good to get some new inspiration,” Raquel says.

It occurs to me how incredibly confident they all are (with the exception of maybe Yolanda). Are they that way because of—what should I call it—swinging? Swapping? Orgies? Polyamory?