Like I didn't have anything better to do with the weekend than attend the wedding of some second-cousin I'd never met. Like I'm an adult and I should be the one to decide how I spend my time. Like there's another person on the planet more persuasive and sure of said powers than my mother.

"What?!" I tried to conjure up a suitable sense of slight. "Mom! Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is Friday evening. And you're talking early Saturday afternoon? As in manana? Like, what?" I counted quickly, "eighteen hours from now?" Outrage! I implored myself, gotta make the emotion huge or you'll never get off the hook. "Hold on a minute while I go check my mailbox--I don't believe I've received the invitation yet."

"That's probably because he didn't know your address."

"And why should he? I doubt he knows my name. And why should he? I doubt he knows I exist. And why should he? This is the first I've heard of him!"

"Well... " she faltered. Had her there! That's one of Mom's good points. She's never been one to obviate the truth.

"Did you like buy a couple tickets from the scalpers? Or did someone up and die so there's suddenly a vacancy?" I paused, considering. "Okay, so what sort of shindig is the reception going to be. Detail my reward, please."

"Actually... " she started.

Bad beginning there, particularly combined with the hesitation. "Actually what?"

"Well, you know how it is with catered affairs... "

Just enough to understand that there wasn't a place at a table with my name on it. That I was supposed to give up a weekend without even the temptation of free food and an open bar. The whole deal sunk in like a lead weight dropped from on-high.

"Ah-h-h, so that's it, eh? His side of the aisle is looking a bit sparse, is it? Someone's calling in some markers on you, huh? That Tony, he's such a loser we won't waste a meal on him, but still, he'll make for good pew filler. Hey Mom, I've got better ways to waste my weekend. How about you pick on Janine this time, okay?"

"Her flight arrives at 7:47 tomorrow morning," she informed me.

"Good. Then the vacancy's been filled. So why are you calling me?"

"Tony, this is your mother talking to you. Do it for her."

Aiee! not the third-person! I had two options. Give in, or spend another two hours on the phone and then give in.

"Okay Mom, I'm packing right now."

"Don't be absurd! You're talking to me on the phone."

"Got me. Okay, I'm hanging up now to go pack my bag."

"And you'll stay through to Sunday, right? so we can have a big family Sunday dinner together the way we used to, right? since Janine doesn't fly out until 7:47 Sunday evening which should give us plenty of time, right? so I'll fix all your favorite things, right? and it'll be just like old times, right?..."

"Sorry Mom, I can't hear you. I'm not talking to you on the phone, I'm packing my things."

What a great excuse to get off the line! Or rather, it was great to have an excuse to get off the line. The excuse itself, well, no, it wasn't so great.

The receiver clattered set back in its cradle as I turned to sit down. I was half-dead from a long day at work, from a long week of work. I was hungry, but I'd been too tired to do anything about it. Other than to abort Plan A by moving the fresh boneless chicken breast up to the chiller tray first thing upon getting home. I was going to make love to that meat with vine- ripened tomatoes, fresh basil and oregano, many cloves of garlic, stirring it all together with a generous portion of expensive virgin olive oil... but some other night. And now Plan B had fallen through--crack a beer and call up a pizza.

The hour and a half drive down could wait until morning, but the race was on. I didn't trust myself to get up early enough to beat out Janine; nor did I trust her enough to not wind up on an earlier flight.

Twenty minutes later I was out in the car with my bag and a decent enough suit hanging on the hook of the passenger side. I was munching a little something, but nothing to ruin my appetite. Halfway down the highway was Plan C: a truckstop diner that was well-worth the heart attack.

I made great time. I was back at the house of my childhood in not much more than two hours. A few steps inside the door and Mom was swooning in my arms like a long lost lover. I shared a manly handshake with Dad.

When I returned from taking my things into the guestroom, it was to meet a reproachful look from Mom.

"Tony, that is your sister's room."

Some things never change.

"Sure Mom, once upon a time."

She refused to turn off the look.

"Come on! First come, first served. Sure it's Janine's old room, but it is my old bed. All the furniture is, or was, mine. Possessions being nine-tenths of the law and all, therefore... "

I had Mom by the nape of a garbled truth.

Being perennially two years older than me, Janine had long swooped home to gather up all the furniture from her old room by the time I'd finished college. My initial apartment as a freshly degreed guy was the typical futon-on-the-floor share. The brief time my clothes didn't spend either on my body or on the floor, they lodged in a line of stolen milkcrates.

At the first indication that we'd both flapped our wings enough to be considered gone from the nest for good, Mom had staked her turf, setting up a personal room for sewing and crafts and privacy and such. My old room was the slightly nicer of the two. Dad got the chore of shifting the furniture.

I slept in late the next morning--as late as my body wanted. The bedside clock said it was not quite nine-thirty. Surely the time was wrong. I felt so refreshed it seemed impossible that the entire morning hadn't been lost to slumber. I smirked at the clock--didn't get to beebeebeebeep at me, didja, ya bastard!

Not that Mom hadn't tried to ordain otherwise the night before.

"Don't forget to set the alarm for seven."

"Why?"

"To go out and pick up Janine at the airport."

"No one said anything to me about me being the one to pick her up." I decided to appeal to her frugal side. "That's a twenty-dollar fare, and I'll want the cash upfront."

"Tony! You know I don't carry that sort of money around. I don't have nearly that amount in my purse."

That was Mom--pretending twenty bucks was still a princely sum. Money was just about the only subject where she was willing to play semantic games to obfuscate the truth. She probably didn't have but five dollars in her purse; maybe seven if you dug around in the bottom for all the spilled change. But she had easily several thousand dollars hidden around the house. Slipped into old books, stuck under the shelf paper in the back of drawers. The brick in the toilet tank not only conserved water, it also concealed a ziplock bag with--last time I counted--$260. "Okay. You say don't have the money in your purse, but you do have the car in your garage."

She shifted tactics immediately. "But surely you'll want to go to the airport with us."

"Don't think so."

"Then, then, seven-thirty, so you'll be up and decent by the time we get Janine back to the house."

"Janine can wait to see me when I choose to drag my sorry self out of bed." I was adamant: the rest of my Saturday could be ruined, but I would not be waking up to an alarm.

Janine was the first thing I saw coming out of the bedroom. That familiar head of dark hair--a little longer than I remembered and rather frazzled. It had that slept-on-wet look; that or she'd done a dog and hung her head out the window for the entire flight. She was wearing the exact same worn grey sweatshirt as the last time I'd seen her, or else she had a closetful of the damn things.

She was sitting at the table in the open area of the kitchen, head drooped in a posture I knew to avoid. There was a coffee mug and a plate of toast on the table before her. She seemed to be studying the two items.

"It's like at a wedding reception: you drink the toast!"

Janine turned and glowered at me. "What are you doing sleeping in my room?"

"Great to see you, too. Perky as ever in the morning, I see."

"My room!"

"But my bed. And really Janine, I've already had this exact conversation with Mom. Save your breath; go ask her how the discussion turns out."

As if on cue, Mom swept into the kitchen. "Oh, but Tony, she flew all the way here just to be with us today."

My only hope was a full-bore offensive. "Yea, and I drove all the way here et cetera. And I daresay I spent more time on the road than she did in the air. What sort of sick conspiracy is this anyway? Huh?"

Mom started to blanche while Janine blackened all the more. Ah, I was on the right track! I continued fulminating, "Like all this at-the- last-minute bull. Interesting how Janine has time to go out and book her reservations before I get the call. That the only flight you could get? So you don't call me until last night, figuring... wrongly! You know Tony, he won't bother to drive down until the morning... Guess you don't know Tony, either one of you. Well, I've got a good idea. Is this better? You can have the damn room, Janine."

I turned back to the room like an angry cat, leaving a tail of words flicking behind me. "I'll leave my suit on the hook--you can stuff it with straw."

There was no point in collecting my toiletries. Nor did I repack the clothes I'd already taken out. It was showtime in the old home; it frightened me how adept I'd become in manipulating my role over the years. I just grabbed the bag and stormed from the room. Sure enough, I didn't get halfway to the front door before the two of them were hanging on me, Janine babbling supplications, the tears of Mom's apologies soaking my collar.

Through it all Dad remained oblivious in the livingroom, hearing not a word of us. I'd warned him time and again that just because the volume knob on the t.v. would turn that high didn't mean it was healthy for the speaker. But did he ever listen to me? Of course not. He couldn't. The t.v. made a mute of me.

He was, actually, the reason the dramatics had reached such high pitch. If Janine could have gotten here and sacked out for an hour, she would have been fine. But there he sat planted in front of the tube. He was the primary reason I'd been so adamant in getting the guest room myself.

This hadn't been such a problem before the trickle-down of technology. But these days they subscribed to both cable and satellite. They received every t.v. signal in the world. Which seemed pretty excessive to me since Mom was never a fan of the magic window and Dad rarely strayed from his one love. He was hooked on some 24-hour Gardening Channel beamed out of Kazakstan.

That was no real surprise; Dad had always had a fanatical interest in gardening. He had a huge library of books on the subject, shelved according to the Library of Congress cataloging system. As well he had a stack of watercolor tablets he'd filled over the years with various designs for the yard. The grounds of the house had been imagined as a small-share farm, specializing in tubers; returned to tall-grass prairie glory of the pre-settlement era; arranged as a formal English garden.... But the truly weird thing was that Dad never stepped out the front door except to get in the car. The closest his hands had ever come to actual gardening was plowing his fingers through the furrow of his billfold when it came time to pay off the neighbor kid for mowing the lawn.

We made it to the church on time, all thanks to me. Dad wisely decided to get ready first, the head of the house having first crack at the hot water. While he was off in their room, I turned off the t.v. and switched the batteries in the remote for a pair from the utility drawer in the kitchen. That was where Mom kept her hoard of batteries that still have a little life left in them. It wasn't hard to find a set that had a Use By date going back to the days of my tenancy.

Being at the bottom of the showering hierarchy, I decided to skip it and just suit up. I came across Dad in the livingroom, poking at the front of the set. I swear there were tears in his eyes. "Say Tony, um, the remote's broken. How do you turn it on from here?"

"You can't turn on the t.v. by turning on the t.v.--they don't make them that way anymore Dad. You'll have to use your back-up remote. You do have one don't you? Where is it?"

"My what?! Oh. My back-up remote. Eh, it's not worth the bother," he bluffed. "There's probably nothing on anyway."

"Really?" I needled him a little more. "I thought I saw some mention of a really interesting special on the vestigial landscaping at Angkor Wat."

He hesitated. "Naw, we gotta get to that church. Let me go hurry up the girls."

I had been shitting him unmercifully, creating the show off the top of my head. So it was my turn to stand in disbelief as he left the room, "But you're right, Tony. That was a damn good segment--they showed it last week as well. Gave me some really great ideas for the side yard."

What can you say about weddings? The bride's draped in enough material for three dresses, so is it any wonder she keeps tripping and stumbling? The way the groom looks, when you shake his hand in the receiving line it's like you should slip him a buck for doing such a swell job of parking your car. The priest is a cartoon, bumbling and burping, stumbling about his stage, misreading his cue cards.

He kept wandering off to the wings--where there was apparently some sort of kitchenette-- while forgetting he was wired for sound. We all listened to the clunking of bottles and rattling of glasses. He'd come back, continue the ceremony for a bit, then disappear again. When it came time for the couple to share a few sips of wine, there wasn't but half a glass left in the bottle. It was a pouty priest blessing that proceeding, practically glaring at them for downing their share.

For all the pomp and finery, the high-minded vows, the commitments to cherish and all that yadda yadda yadda. But at the core of it all, the ceremony was the preface to sanctioned sex. This fancy room full of people gathered to witness the fact that someone was gonna get some tonight. You could see all the old men shifting in their seats, stirred by the memories of their wedding nights, their wives mortified, or delighted, by the sight. The best man and the maid of honor looked rather broom-closet rumpled. Even the young flower girl was casting around some saucy glances.

An interesting turn of events was that this guy I didn't know was marrying a woman I did know. I'd grown up around Judy, though I hadn't seen her since she was sent off to some private high-school. Her parents were loaded. It surprised me that they'd used this lush of a local priest instead of hiring some Archbishop. They were never ones to exactly flaunt their wealth, but they did have the tendency to use it to buy what they wanted, without worrying about how small it might make others feel.

And there she stood, the blushing bride. The night would hardly be a novelty for her. You could go by rumor or the demeanor she'd been projecting for years; either point of departure had her giving it away since she was fifteen. Of course there's the old saw about why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free--my cousin was proving the joke she made of that joke. Judy was a Grade-A dispenser. My sources had always indicated that after a taste or two you wanted to buy the cow because you didn't want to share the milk. The groom was unique only in that his was the first proposal she'd ever accepted.

Judy had lived up to the promise she had as a girl--as a woman, she was cute in a not particularly distinguishable fashion. But all brides are beautiful. Especially one with a million bucks stuffed up her bustle.

After the ceremony we all just sort of stood around. Buckets of rice were at the ready, but the limo to whisk away the besotted couple hadn't shown up. There would be the usual boastful driving around, then the forty-five minute trip to the reception site, which would leave them plenty of time for a quick fuck and a long shower--or a long fuck and a quick shower: groom's prerogativebefore dinner. The reception, I'd overheard, was at a resort lodge on a lake about fifty miles from town. The bride's parents had rented out the whole damn place for overnight. Not just dinner and drinks, I was losing out on a luxury suite as well!

I maintained a safe distance from Janine, not wanting to be associated with her. Judy spent the whole time glaring at her. It wasn't that Janine was consciously trying to upstage the bride. But she was wearing a very pretty little dress that showed off exactly how pretty the dresser was. It was a purple and blue floral print sundress that set off her curly dark tresses. The fabric was thin, cotton, cut well above the knee with a big scoop down the back. Strategically placed darts and pleats made for a very pleasing fit.

I hadn't really forgotten what a stunning body Janine had, but it had been years since I'd seen it displayed to such full advantage. I'm sure she looked sharp in her professional and personal lives, but since college the times we met back at the old home, she was always in her sloppys. Baggy jeans, roomy sweaters.

Here she was, striding with a purposeful gait, or standing with canted hip, turning quite a few eyes, including those of the man-of-the-hour.

This I knew because I wound up standing next to him while we all waited.

Janine walked briskly past us, the purse on her shoulder swinging so hard the strap broke. She bent to pick it up, and at that very moment I heard all the air gasp out of the groom.

"My god," he groaned, "who is that fox?"

With the ring not ten minutes on his finger!

"That's my sister," I replied.

"Oh," he tried to back peddle, "I mean, who is she?"

I forced a guffaw. "We're your family, ya big lunk."

"Huh." No doubt sorry that he'd married outside the circle.

"We're your long-lost cousins. Your mother's aunt was our grandmother, or something like that. Funny how it took your wedding for us all to meet."

"So... does your sister, like, live in town?"

"Naw, not anymore. Though she is still available."

"Uh, really?"

As long as I had the stiletto in his side, I decided to twist and turn it. The fucking asshole! "Yea. We're like second-cousins or something. So she would've been fair game for you. Though say, I never met you before, but turns out I was kids with the bride. Whoa, talk about money. Your wife can go out and buy tits just like those. And even so, what she lacks in physical attributes, I understand she makes up for in enthusiasm."

Fortunately the limo arrived so he was swept away to the rain of rice before he could think to turn around and punch me.

I come from a family of nappers. This goes back generations. It's a genetic habit. We're famous for the midafternoon snooze. Any excuse will do. Have a bit of lunch, nothing heavy on the agenda, Well, think I'll have me a little laydown. After a wedding, shedding the formal clothes, and suffering through a late lunch brought home in greasy sacks, the only wonder was that any of us made it to our respective beds.

It was one of those bad naps: I slipped in a little too deep and slept a little too long. I awoke with a rough start and in such a daze I would have been at a loss to supply my name. Why was I lying there fully dressed? In my own bed, but in my sister's room?!! I lay there like that for a long time, slowly acclimating.

Slamming doors--that's what'd made me stir. The bedroom door, the bathroom door, the front door, the car doors, the garage door. The distinctive whine of the engine in Dad's car. Off to the gala they went. See you in the morning, you conniving bastards!

After about twenty minutes I forced myself to get up. It was awfully quiet in the house. I had the sudden realization that Janine had gotten to go with them. And if they thought I was going to stick around... to hell with them!

I was going to stick around for a little while yet; needed some time to extract my revenge. I wasn't quite sure what to do about Janine-- maybe see if she had a pair of blue jeans packed in her stuff... get a brush and bleach and paint Kick My Ass on the backside. It'd take me a good boring twenty minutes to find all of Mom's cash in the old set of encyclopedias. I needed some immediate satisfaction. There was a selection of screwdrivers in the utility drawer. I was going to fuck with the old man's pride and joy. Give him 500 variations on the Snow Channel.

My hand was on the doorknob when I heard a noise. The knob made its usual squeak, but it was another noise that stopped me in my tracks. It sounded as if some small furry mammal was in the livingroom. Cautiously I peered around the jamb.

Janine was home, lying belly down on the small sofa adjacent to the door. Apparently the small furry mammal had gotten inside her pants and lodged between her legs. She'd gotten her pants down, and was trying to pull it off, but the animal was eating her fingers.

Even as I was thinking all this I was understanding exactly what I was seeing. I... I didn't know what to do. Fortunately Janine had her face buried in the cushions, because I was frozen to the spot. I stood there watching. I'd never seen a woman masturbate, not in earnest, alone, purely for her own satisfaction. She plumped her butt up in the air; I could see she had both hands down there, fingers flying in blind fury. The air was thick with the smell of her cunt.

Then came the first great groans of orgasm. I slipped away under the cover of her cries. Walking silently down the hall, I felt like I had a mammal trapped in my pants. One with a particularly hard and hairless tail.

Time for a shower, I decided. A very cold shower. That might make things better.

I took a long time drying and dressing, deliberating as I sat on the edge of the bed in the contested room. It was hard to say what exactly I was trying to settle. And that very fact was what eventually cleared all the confusion from my mind. Okay, so I'd seen a lovely lady, butt- naked, proving the adage that two hands are better than one. Sure, it'd been my own sister engaged in self-satisfaction. And I had watched her. And found the experience intensely erotic. But Janine didn't know any of this. So why get all bent out of shape? Shift myself back into Normal Tony mode.

I stood up and shuffled into the kitchen, then started poking through the cupboards. I went about the business quietly, though not exaggeratedly so. Just the normal small noises of a person who is normally not very loud. The house was otherwise as silent as before; I assumed Janine was still in on the sofa. My guess was that she had slipped back into sleep before I'd made it into the shower. The cabinet doors squeaked open and clacked shut. I gave the silverware drawer an extra little rattle. The sounds issuing from the kitchen would announce that Tony was up from his nap.

I made and ate a quick sandwich out of questionable items in the fridge. If it didn't kill me, it should hold me until I decided whether or not to deal with doing something about dinner. I was still at the table when Janine emerged from the livingroom. She looked so sleep sodden I didn't think she even noticed me. Her movements were those of the undead--my sister the zombie went into the bathroom. I heard the shower start.

I went into the livingroom and sank down on the sofa nearest the door. Too lazy to cross the room to the big couch or any of the comfy chairs. I thought about t.v., but it was so far away. The remote was nowhere nearby. Besides, the batteries were back in the kitchen. There were books on shelves off in the distance, but they were fixtures as familiar as the furniture, though even less to my tastes. Gardening tomes and tons of paperbacks that weren't selling as best as they had in previous years. I picked up some of the magazines fanned across the top of the coffee table. The usual assortment of shit that one might subscribe to in hopes of increasing the odds of winning the $10,000,000 sweepstakes.

Mostly I sat there and thought. I could just jump in my car and be home in time to crack that beer and order up a pizza. Turn off the ringer for a couple days to avoid the heat. I felt so edgy. Saturday night! Hey, I should be out having tons of fun with my girlfriend. The problem there being I hadn't had one in so long I was losing track of how many months. But that didn't really seem to define the vagary of my immediate problem. All my attempts to broaden my social circle hadn't brought about any new prospects. That wasn't it. Go to church, Mom kept nagging me, you'll meet lots of nice girls there. Well I went to church this very afternoon. Sure, the bride was pretty cute, but I sort of sensed she was already spoken for.

My discomfort was somehow more specific than that. It had to do with the room itself. Then, of course, I realized that I did happen to be sitting exactly where Janine had been lying. Napping. Sort of napping. Doing what she'd been doing. What I'd watched her doing. Were the cushions still warm?

That was too much. There was the weirdness of having glimpsed my sister masturbating, bringing up the vestigial memories of a couple bumpy years when I'd hit puberty. Mostly though it was how emblematic the sight had been. The statistical departures from the norm aside, it was a big world out there, half of it being women desiring men, the other half the men quite eager to oblige. It was simple math. Whereas it felt like I was the lone variable that just didn't quite fit into the equation.

I really needed to get up, grab my stack of magazines, and get over to the long couch. Turn on the big screen anesthesia. I was shuffling my feet getting ready to stand when Janine swung into the room and plopped down beside me.

She was so fresh from the shower she reeked of steamy water. The scent of special soap. Her hair hung limp and dark, wet with the fragrance of flowers and herbs. I did happen to be sitting in her room, which perhaps explained why she was wearing, barely, nothing but a towel.

But then, that was her style. I mean, she was following female style. It was a curiousity to me, this business of women stepping out of the shower and waltzing around in nothing but a towel. The greatest mystery, however, was how they managed to keep the towel from just falling off. What happened to gravity? Whip it around, a quick little knot tucked between their breasts. Even the anatomy wasn't that vital. I remembered Janine joining the post-shower parade long before she even had tits.

Even more distinct was the memory of the one time I decided to try the towel trick. My audience was the entire family, plus a friend of Janine's I was more than a little crushed on who was over that evening for a slumber party. The towel stayed up just long enough for me to make my grand entrance into the open area of the kitchen. One moment I was opening the fridge, the next I was racing to my room, trying desperately to flee faster than the speed of sound. The speed of light would have been better, but even so I couldn't outrun the shrieks and streams of giggles. I reached my room and didn't come out until late the following afternoon.

"What about that priest," I began, overwhelmed by thoughts of towels and trying not to show it. By thoughts of bodies under towels and praying not to show it.

"Really! Was he from Central Casting or what? That red and that bulbous--he had to be wearing a rubber nose."

"So, you get all that holiness washed off you?"

Janine snorted. "Yea, though I had to use a brillo and Comet."

I gave an exaggerated sniff. "That stuff comes in apricot-scent these days?"

She leaned over fast and started to give me a big shove but immediately stopped, clutching at her chest. Had to retie the towel. She did it artfully, casually, with just one hand, while I pretended not to notice.

That settled, she asked, "You thinking about dinner anytime soon?"

"Probably in a bit. But before I spend any money on something to eat, I want to wait and see if I die first from that sandwich I made."

"I noticed you eating that. Man, you didn't use that honey-roasted ham, did you?"

"Yep."

"God, Tony! That was old the last time I was here."

"Wasn't green yet. All those nitrates and nitrites, not to mention the sodium--it's a wonder the sandwich didn't squeal when I cut it in half."

"It's a wonder you aren't squealing, and in need of being cut in half. So, you feel like doing anything special?"

She settled back against the sofa, but the towel didn't quite follow her movement. The damp or the nap of the fabric held it like velcro against the cushions. Janine wriggled and tugged upward to re-cover the inch or so of cleavage.

"Sure," my voice cracked as I glanced around the room. "Let's hunt around and find one of Mom's credit cards and go out to Monzoni's."