The key was where his sister-in-law said it would be: on the bottom rail of the fence directly across the patio from the front door. He found it quickly with the flashlight app on his phone and let himself in.
A light was on over the kitchen table. A bottle of Japanese whiskey and a short tumbler stood in the pool of light with a note. "Make yourself at home. I have a doctor's appointment early in the morning."
He sat down, poured himself a couple of fingers of whiskey, and sighed. It had been a long day of meetings, then a delayed flight. It was close to midnight by the time he got in. Luckily, he could sleep in before starting a round of meetings again the next day in San Francisco.
But it was nice to be here for the night instead of a sterile corporate hotel. Tamara kept a cozy cottage on the side of Bernal Hill. The downtown skyline and the lights on the Bay Bridge sparkled in the distance.
He sipped and sighed. He opened his laptop and then closed it. There was nothing that couldn't wait until tomorrow. He took another sip of whiskey and felt the muscles in his back relax. He rolled his head to loosen his neck and shoulders. Tamara's place was an eclectic hodgepodge of San Francisco aesthetics, modern photography on the walls, a mixture of Mission and Craftsman furniture, clean lines but not sterile, made casual by bits and pieces of ethnic art picked up on her travels around the world.
It was perhaps a bit over calculated in its casualness, he thought, or maybe just truly authentic. With Tamara it was sometimes hard to tell. Was she ironic or sincere? Or both at the same time? It was easy to see why people found her hard to read. She presented an openness and maintained a distance that could be interpreted in many ways.
Her family thought she was a lesbian, and she had lots of girlfriends. He and Megyn had been to many of her parties here. But it was never clear if one of them was a lover, and Tamara never declared herself. She let people guess. She never had a boyfriend either, at least that they knew, although there were many that would have tried, he was sure.
And now she was going to have a child. She had told the family over the holidays, when it was, in fact, too obvious to ignore. She was happily on her way to being a single mom, she declared, after carefully researching a sperm donor, who would remain anonymous. And that was that.
He was taking another sip of whiskey when he heard a rustling coming from her bedroom, and then shuffling feet, and the skitter of claws on the wood parquet floor. Negrita was first to appear, eagerly nuzzling his outstretched hand. Tamara was close behind.
"Hello," she said, wiping sleep from her eyes. "How was your flight?"
"Too long, and mostly on the ground," he said. "How are you?"
"Good, good," she replied. "Aside from occasional nausea and insane cravings for ice cream and pickles."
She bent over to open the freezer and he admired her from behind as her nightie rose up over her ass. She looked just like her twin sister from every angle, except she was pregnant. And her rounded belly and breasts were clearly getting bigger, casting her body in a very different light.
"What are you looking at?" she said as she turned around with pint of ice cream in her hand.
"My wife's nice ass," he said. "But the rest of the package has changed."
"Yeah," she laughed ruefully. "No shit. Getting knocked up will do that to you. Maybe she was right."
Megyn had decided not to have kids when she was in college — had her tubes clamped shut with titanium. It was the only sane environmental choice, she said. Plus, she didn't think she could be a good mom, on her high-powered academic career path, although she adored other people's kids, and was great with them.
He loved her for all of that. And it had sure made for a lot of great, worry-free sex over many years. But still, he wondered, especially now, watching Tamara stretch to get a bowl down from the shelf, her belly peeking out from the opening in the front of her nightie.
She dug a spoon out of a drawer and sat down next to him in the dining nook. She put a hand on her belly and winced. "Ohh!"
"What's wrong?" he asked.
"Nothing. Just kicking. He gets active around midnight, wakes me up, for a little ice cream. Do you want to feel?"
She let the front of her nightie fall open. He leaned over and touched the side of her taught, smooth skin.
"Wow!" he exclaimed, as he felt a sharp thump, and then another, as if a drummer were playing the inside of a drum.
"That feels good," she said, as he moved her hand over her belly waiting for another kick.
