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coffee left?” he asked while walking in. Responding to our curious grins, he said with a shrug, “Just running late today. Didn’t even have time to work out.”
    As he approached the kitchen table, I noticed that he hadn’t even had time to shave that morning, leaving him with an ungroomed look that was not his style at all. What’s more, he wore the same rusty tweed jacket I’d seen the day before, and the pleats of his gray flannel slacks had lost their sharp creases. It was enough to make me think he hadn’t gone home overnight. Clearly, though, nothing was wrong—there was an uncharacteristic bounce to his step as he pulled out a chair and sat next to me. He grabbed the empty cup that had been set for him across the table and repeated the question, “Any coffee left?” Big smile.
    I wanted to ask, Where were you last night? You and Carrol Cantrell…? But I didn’t feel I should confront him, and besides, it was none of my business. “You’re in luck,” I told him, hefting the pot and pouring. “We were about to toss it.”
    Neil circled back to the table, reading my mind. Prepared for a delicious story, he perched on his chair and leaned forward on his elbows, waiting.
    If Pierce knew what we were thinking, he didn’t let on. “Thad was chipper this morning,” he told us. “He seems to be adjusting to…everything.”
    By “everything,” Pierce was referring not only to Thad’s loss of his mother, but to his new life with two gay dads. I told Pierce, “We’re all learning to deal with it. Even though Thad resented my very existence at first, he quickly concluded that life with Uncle Mark and Uncle Neil would be vastly preferable to life with that addled ‘feminazi.’” I laughed in spite of the bitter encounters I’d had with Miriam Westerman—that harridan, that shrew, that burned-out hippie—founder of the local (and only) chapter of the Feminist Society for the New Age of Cosmological Holism, or FSNACH, known as Fem-Snach among its detractors, which certainly included the three of us in the kitchen that morning.
    “Miriam never stood a chance,” Pierce assured me. With one hand, he lifted his coffee and slurped; with the other, he dismissed Miriam’s failed efforts to convince the courts to grant her custody of Thad.
    In the early days of the Society, Thad’s unmarried mother, Suzanne Quatrain, had been a sympathizer with Miriam’s militant feminist movement. When Suzanne gave birth, Miriam claimed the baby as a communal child of the Society, naming him Ariel. That was all too much for Suzanne, and she broke from the movement, raising Thad on her own—there was certainly no financial burden, as she became principal heir to the huge printing company Quatro Press. Then, when Suzanne died last year, Miriam renewed her efforts to get control of Thad, claiming I was unfit to raise him. But sanity reigned.
    “Watch your step,” Neil warned me, joking. “Ms. Fem-Snach is still pissed.”
    “So am I,” I reminded him. Rising from the table, I asked Pierce, “Can I get you a doughnut or something?” He nodded, so I crossed to the counter and searched a cupboard or two for some pastry that Neil had put away.
    “Fortunately,” said Pierce, picking up the conversation, “Miriam has her hands full right now with the opening of her new school—I’m amazed she ever got it off the ground. She’s way too busy to dwell on past battles, let alone lost ones.”
    “Don’t forget”—I turned to him—“she hasn’t been too busy to dwell on her old antiporn battle. She just might throw a wrench into your reelection.”
    Before Pierce could respond, Neil asked, “What’s up with that?” His tone was vexed. “Most feminists are liberal to the core. What’s her beef?”
    Pierce drummed his fingers, grinning. “Miriam contends that pornography is ‘violence against women.’ End of argument.”
    “Unfortunately,” I added, “she managed to recruit Harley Kaiser, our esteemed