The Stud Book by Monica Drake

umbrellas.
    He wasn’t afraid to ask a stranger for directions, either, going against gender statistics. Sometimes he even sat down to pee, which was fine!
    Sarah said, “Virgin screwdriver for me.”
    Nyla poured while she narrated, “Regional, organic sparkling wine, raised on an eco-vineyard in Yamhill, with no sulfites added.” Yamhill was a sleepy town in the low, folding hills of Willamette Valley.
    Nyla was in the process of starting up a tiny eco-friendly store called LifeCycles, devoted to simple and transitory pleasures. When she found extra money she spent it on food and wine, the Portland way: Even when the economy tanked, when nobody bought what the news referred to as “durable goods” and the regional Goodwill stores had the highest sales rate in the nation, when renters made up the biggest demographic and everybody rode bikes because their old cars broke down, even then Portlanders blew through cash on microbrews. They’d pay for wine, grass-fed cattle, and Pacific coast sushi. They spent big on tattoos—that most durable of durable goods.
    The baby screamed.
    This is where Ben, if it were still the 1950s, would’ve said, “Great set of lungs on that kid!” clapped the new father on the back, and shared a cigar. Instead he sipped his mimosa. He asked, “Where’s Humble?”
    Georgie fluttered a hand in a half circle then above her head. “Organizing the attic.” The baby kept up its wail.
    “One way to use paternity leave,” Dulcet said, and picked at the tray of tiny deli sandwiches. They were baby-sized sandwiches, scaled in a cute size to honor the infant.
    As though newborns even noticed lunch meat.
    And as though those small pink slices of soft meat inside the bread weren’t eerily akin to the soft vulnerability of baby flesh. Sarah, nervous and half-queasy, saw the sandwiches as foreign, a strange behavioral ritual of a deli-worshipping tribe.
    But they also looked kind of good.
    Arena sat on a window seat and pulled her knees to her chest, shrinking away from the baby’s screams.
    Nyla said, “The beauty of bringing a baby into the world these days is, in part, that it automatically turns the new parents into environmentalists. You can’t have a baby and not care about the planet, right? It’s that awareness of future generations.”
    Dulcet ate maraschino cherries out of an open jar on the table. She flicked juice off her long fingers. “Then who shops at Walmart?”
    Nyla ignored her. “Giving birth to a child gives birth to the parents. They’re new people. It’s like crossing an invisible border.”
    Sarah’s stomach hurt, she wanted so badly across that border. She was an illegal immigrant peering into the land of maternity, deported three times already.
    Dulcet said, “And the rest of us?”
    Nyla said, “You don’t appreciate everything your mom does until you have a child of your own. Then you know.”
    “What if she didn’t do much?” Georgie asked. “Just checked out early.”
    Nyla reached to adjust one of Georgie’s tiny flower earrings, turning it right-side up. She said, “I could lend you my postpartum kickboxing cardio DVD if you want,
Blast the Flab
. I use it all the time.”
    Georgie winced.
    Sarah spoke up. “That’s postpartum. It’s normal.”
    “Normal fat,” Georgie said, and patted her stomach. The baby in her arms was making a quieter howl now, more like a song off-key.
    Sarah moved in close and reached her arms out. She said, “You look fantas—”
    Georgie unsnapped one of the pearl buttons on her Western shirt. There was a flash of brown nipple. It was a nursing shirt. The pocket was a trapdoor.
    Sarah’s words broke at a splash across her cheek.
    Georgie said, “Oh, jeez.”
    Dulcet gave a wheeze that passed for a laugh, palmed one of her own flat breasts, and said, “Fucking God. It’d be almost worth being preggers just for the boob juice act.”
    Over Bella’s wail, Georgie half-shouted, “I don’t have any diseases. They