Side By Side

"Do you have a point there, Nathan, or are you simply restating the obvious?" Nikki asked, somewhat sorry for the snarkish nature of her tone.

"Yes, I do!" Nathan said, nodding in agreement with himself but not yet able to express his idea. "I will marry you and that will be that!" Nathan forced the words from his mouth while staring at the floor."

"Who?" all three women demanded. "Who are you going to marry, Nathan?" Jane's cloud was about to bring forth lightning.

"Nikki, of course!"

Nikki, Jane and June all began talking at once; Nathan backed off instinctively, sensing very dangerous waters ahead. But after another hour of often derisive and nearly hostile discussion, it was agreed that that made no sense from a romantic point of view, but was the only plausible solution under the circumstances. It sucked, but it was what it was and the four agreed to deal with it on those terms.

Invitations were sent out, caterers, a band, and a hall were hired, and Nikki and Nathan were married, holding hands with Jane and June; all of them standing in a circle. It was a great party. Jane and June had insisted that their parents fly in from the East, although it was unclear why they would want to attend two strangers' wedding. They didn't ask, so they weren't told. All they knew is that it was extremely important to their daughters for them to be there, so they happily obliged.

Jane and June rented out their Calabasas home and moved in with Nathan. The three of them got along quite well. Jane took to her new role of wife easily, but June insisted, for medical reasons, that she would continue to take birth control pills. Nobody in the medical community had ventured a guess as to what a pregnancy might do to Jane and June's body and the twins had discontinued any interest in medical investigations many years before.

Nikki remained in her Culver City home and still dated June during the week. Sometimes she would spend the night and carpool over Sepulveda pass to work with the twins in the morning. Nathan and Nikki continued to visit the Club three days a week and had developed their squash talents sufficiently to move up two levels in class. They often teamed up for doubles games and won about half the time.

A few months later, the Club announced that it had arranged to participate in a three-day, three-county, inter-club competition in Santa Barbara, and asked Nikki and Nathan to play in one singles flight each and a doubles match over the long weekend. They were thrilled to be invited to play. Jane was placed in charge of making the hotel and restaurant reservations for the family. The hotel would not permit two couples to share a room, but when Jane told the sales clerk that she and her sister were one person, the clerk, presuming schizophrenia rather than conjoined twins, placed the reservation, without further comment. Nikki and Nathan had their best squash racquets re-strung and double-tuned. They practiced extra hours to hone their skills in eager anticipation of the Santa Barbara tournament.

The day before the four were to drive to Santa Barbara, June became ill with a head cold. Usually, when one of the twins became ill, it was only a matter of hours before the other did as well.

"We will cancel out, then," Nathan said, failing to adequately conceal his disappointment.

"No, no, no, no!" sniffled June, "Please don't change the program on my account!"

"Mia Farrow inRosemary's Baby!" Nathan shouted out, quiz show fashion.

"What?" the others asked.

"Never mind," Nathan pouted.

Ignoring Nathan, Jane added, "I'll take care of June; you guys go have fun and WIN!! Bring us back a trophy, okay?" Jane's head cold was only six hours behind June's so the two of them stayed in bed, drinking hot tea and polishing off a large box of Kleenex.

The room in Santa Barbara was very fancy and romantic. Jane had really outdone herself. There was a fireplace, an oversize sunken tub, and if one stood on tip toes, one could almost see the ocean. Excited by the tournament, due to start the following morning, Nikki and Nathan turned in early, curling up on the far sides of the king size bed, facing away from each other.

The next morning, Nikki was up first. She did her morning exercises, showered, blew-dried her hair and put on her makeup. She went to the lobby and brought back a tray covered with fruit, biscuits, and other treats from the complimentary buffet.

"Wake up, sleepy head!" I brought you your breakfast.

"What time is it, Nikki?"

"Time to get up. C'mon, let's get going!"

Each did fairly well in their singles matches, and made it as far as the quarterfinals in their respective flights. They were delighted with their success and celebrated that evening with a fine seafood dinner and two bottles of wine. Their doubles competition was not until Monday morning, so they could afford to cut lose and enjoy themselves Saturday night.

When they got back to the room, the telephone's red message light was flashing. Nikki cleared the message – it was Jane and June, sounding very stuffy-nosed, asking how the competition went. While Nathan was taking his shower, Nikki called back and told them that it went well, explained the quarterfinal finish and said that they had decided not to call earlier since they figured the twins were sleeping which, it turns out, they were.

"Well, good luck!" June said excitedly.

"... with the doubles match on Monday...," Jane added, unsure what her sister had meant by that comment.

"Oh, yeah!" Nikki giggled and growled, hanging up the phone.

Although Nathan and Nikki were full of food and drink, Nathan nevertheless made a bag of microwave popcorn and punched in a late night movie on the television. Nikki took a tiny bag from her coin purse and emptied a quantity of white powder onto her travel mirror. She began chopping the powder with her room key card.

"What the fuck is that?" Nathan tried to sound indignant, but as no stranger to recreational drugs himself, his indignation rang hollow.

Nikki meticulously chopped and shaped out four lines of powder; two thin, two thick. "You do the thick lines."

Nathan continued to nibble on popcorn and watch the movie.

"Hurry up, Nathan, do the lines," Nathan recognized that tone in Nikki's voice. She tended to get bitchy and butch when she was horny.

"I thought you were a health freak."

"I am. Now do the freaking lines!"

"Fine." Nathan picked up the cut soda straw and handily snorted one thick line into each nostril. He handed the mirror, powder and straw ensemble back to Nikki who did the same and then started chopping away on a new set.

"Hold on there, Wonder Woman," Nathan began. "I'm good here. No more for me, please..."

"Fuck you. These are for later anyway. Take off your robe, Nathan."

"You know, Nikki, maybe this wasn't such a good idea, our coming up here together, I mean without the girls."

"I agree," Nikki laughed, starting to tug on Nathan's robe belt.

"So then, what's the deal here?

"The deal, Nathan, is that you are going to fuck me. Here, now."

"I don't..."

"Shut up!" Nikki snorted another two lines and held the set out for Nathan, who was naked and aroused, but was hiding under the covers, only his eyes and forehead peeking out.

"I thought you said these were for later."

"It is later."

"No, I meant...."

Nikki began playfully slapping Nathan's face -- gently, comically. "We are married, you know."

"Right. Purely a marriage of convenience."

"Well it's convenient right now for you to fuck me; convenient as hell as a matter of fact."

Nathan laughed held Nikki's wrists to stop the playful face slaps. Then he moved her wrists out to the sides, drawing her face onto his.

Nikki rode Nathan wildly, climaxing loudly and repeatedly. So much so, in fact, that her activities elicited wall-bangs from both adjoining rooms and a floor stomp from the upstairs guests.

Once Nathan finally climaxed, Nikki did a handstand at the head of the bed, her heals tapping gently on the wall, a wide grin on her face.

Monday's tournament did not go as well as Saturday's. They were eliminated in the first round, said their farewells to the other players, went back to the room, made love again, showered, and drove back to Los Angeles.

Jane and June were not yet over their head colds. Nathan and Nikki slept in the guest bedroom for several nights, both to avoid contracting the twins' cold and to afford the girls better and sounder sleep. They made love quietly but repeatedly.

Several weeks later, Nikki informed Jane and June that she had missed two periods. The twins took the news in stride, and the three of them drove to the drug store and bought four different brands of pregnancy tests. The first three showed positive.

Once the fourth test results was examined, Jane finally mustered up the nerve to ask Nikki if she knew who the father was. Nikki just stared at her.

"What do you mean do I know?" Nikki snarled, "Of course I know; what kind of girl do you think I am anyway?"

"Gay?" Jane offered, starting to get pissed off at Nikki's rudeness.

"Ask your sister," Nikki said, wandering off to the kitchen to fix herself a snack.

"What does she mean, June? Ask you? You know who the father is?"

"Christ almighty, Jane; sometimes you are so dumb. Isn't it obvious? It's Nathan!" June chirped merrily.

"What?"

"You heard me. Or are you deaf and dumb today?"

"Nathan? But..." Jane stopped herself. "But he and I are in love. Why would he do that to me?"

"Looks like he did it to Nikki, not you."

"Why are you so callus about all this? You sure don't look surprised."

"Life has many twists and turns, y'know..."

"You put her up to this, didn't you? This was all your idea, wasn't it?"

"Yup! And since you are all into 'family values', now you are going to have a family to value."

"Why didn't we discuss this? Why didn't you..."

"Because I knew that eventually something would go wrong and we would get pregnant. I couldn't risk that happening. Don't you see, Jane? It's a good thing; please don't be pissed off at me. I did it for us."

"Oh please! Don't tell me that!"

"No, really. You will be the mom. Nikki doesn't give a crap about babies. You and I will..."

"All these years, we always discussed stuff; we never took action that would..."

"Give me a break, Jane. Just shut your mouth and think it through. You'll see it's the best deal all around, best for all of us!" June leaned back and twisted her head around to kiss her sister's cheek. "Let's not make Nikki feel bad about this. It's my fault. If you want to hate someone, hate me, not her."

"Oh! So now you decide to become noble. Great! Nathan is the love of my life and you have him fucking your girlfriend – for my benefit, right? Does that make any sense, June? Nikki's having someone else's baby!"

"Are you retarded or what, Jane? She's not bloody likely to have YOUR baby! You... we... don't have the right equipment for that."

"I can understand her betrayal of me, June, but not yours. Not you, June." Jane started sobbing; June picked up the TV Guide and began looking at the evening's line up of television shows.

"Wait! Hold on right there, Jane!" June put down the TV Guide, her irritation starting to rise. "Exactly how do you figure that? How did Nikki betray you? She's MY girlfriend, not yours."

"Yeah, that's true, but she knows how I feel about Nathan." Jane's sobbing had quieted down to a pathetic whimper.

"Whenever you're about done, can we invite Nikki back into the room? I'm sure she feels awful!"

"She feels awful? She feels..."

"Oh, cut it out!"

Jane had come to grips with the situation but didn't want to let everyone off the hook that easily. She wanted to save some of her quieting rage for Nathan when he came home from work. Nathan had worked late that evening and by the time he got back home, the three girls were fast asleep, their arms and legs all entwined.

The family platooned Nikki's pregnancy, the twins joining her in the exercise classes, while Nathan was her Lamaze coach. All were present in the delivery room when Nikki birthed a healthy baby boy.

The following Christmas, the family pushed the baby stroller through the Northridge Mall and waited patiently in the Santa Claus line. The teenage flattened-affect Santa-helper, whose job it was to sell wallet photos, key chains, place mats, tee shirts and dozens of other items featuring Santa and the kids visiting him, eyed Jane and June suspiciously. "Y'all aren't from around here, are you?"

"No," Jane verified, sternly meeting the helper's vacant stare with her own parody of the same, "We're from Venus. He's from Mars," Jane added, pointing at Nathan.

"No shit. Really?" The helper quickly withdrew a slender purple cell phone from her back pocket and began texting frantically.

"So... do we get to see Santa or what?" Nathan asked the top of the helper's head.

"Oh, yeah, sure. Do you have, you know, Santa where y'all are from? I mean like the Santa thing, not like, you know, Santa Santa."

"Not yet..." Nathan smiled, looking at the name on the helper's badge, ".... Muffin. That's why we're here! We journeyed millions of miles through the vacuum of space to come to the Northridge Mall and visit Santa. "

"No shit!" Muffin's eyes were wide and darting about with enthusiasm before returning to her wild texting. "Pardon my French, I mean," she mumbled under her breath. Santa grunted displeasure that the line had stopped and signaled Muffin to return to her sales pitch.

"So then; great! Whose the mommy?"

"Don't ask," the family said in unison as the baby started to cry.