“Toss me that butter.” Emily doesn’t know why she says that, but then I realize it’s to get the butter away from Carmen, anyway away. She looks at me-and-me for a second with a slightly puzzled expression; then she smiles widely and underhands the box. The package stays together even though it’s open, even though it lands in Emily’s grabbing fingers with an authoritative mass. It’s probably traveling at six or so feet per second when it stops. I note how heavy a pound seems, accelerating across the kitchen like that.

“Let’s just take coffee upstairs,” Emily says while setting the butter on the counter. “I need to talk to you.”

“We can talk here, while I…”

“No. I want to be in my study. Come on.” Carmen was a tagalong little sister and she still has the habit of obeying. She pushes herself to a stand and follows.

When Emily is seated at her desk and Carmen has taken the rocking chair, I sip my coffee and report. “I’m going to break up with Jack.”

“Again?”

“For good.” Pause. “I mean that both ways.”

Carmen puts her coffee mug on the Masonite pull-out shelf that extends, gangplank-like, above the left bank of desk drawers. She sits forward on the chair so her feet can rest on the floor, and she considers her big sister with her big blue eyes. “Tell me about it,” she says.

“He’s suffocating me.

“He wants to spend every night and weekend day together. He wants us to want to do all the same things. He likes to talk about how “we” feel about things. I can’t tell you how much it bothers me when I hear him describing what he calls our opinion about something to some friend. Ga-a-a-h.

“He’s too much work. Oh, he’s nice enough, but he’s a bore, and that makes it an effort to be with him without insulting him. Somebody said a bore is someone who deprives you of solitude without providing the benefit of companionship. That’s Jack.

“And I don’t want the sex any more. I don’t know, but it’s like we don’t fit. No, not that way, silly,” sardonically grinning; “I mean we can’t seem to cuddle for long on any type of bed, without his arm or leg going numb. And we’re always getting my hair caught beneath my back: you know?”

“Hold on a minute.” Carmen sips her coffee. “Am I hearing you right? You’re complaining about, what? sexual ergonomics? Then how about the height difference? You and Jack are like me and Wayne that way: kiss or fuck? We sure can’t do both at the same time.” It’s true. Wayne is a foot taller than Carmen. At six foot three, Jack is almost that much longer than I.

“There you go! You’re hitting it on the head. I need a lover who’s more my size. Who can wrap his body around me instead of trying to enclose my soul. And little guys have bigger dicks. Apparently, anyway…” Starting to giggle as she shifts from this speech to her coffee, I drink too quickly and fuzz my tongue. “O-o-o-h…”

“What were you doing up here when I arrived?” Carmen is gazing at my blank computer screen as she asks.

“Dancing. Listen…” Emily pushes play and within seconds the tiny Bose speakers are sending thick ska/soca/reggae rhythms into the small room. “Nice huh?”

“Who are they? I could get into this.” Carmen taps her toes on the floor for a few phrases and then pushes her palms against the arms of the rocking chair and rises. She begins to sway, standing, to the music.

I join her. By the end of the first number Carmen and Emily are moving around the room, keeping time, getting into it. Another minute passes and Emily unzips her robe and shrugs out of it.

Carmen takes her cue. As she warms to her dance she sheds her garments one by one, less practiced than her sister. Shoes are easy; she steps out of loose loafers. She has to stop dancing to get her sweatpants over her ankles and feet. She pulls off her big tunic and her underwear with more grace.

Her body is big. Her elbows jiggle and her knees have bags of flesh that tend to move perpendicularly to the motion of her legs. Her thighs are everywhere pocked and everywhere wobbling. Her breasts are each larger than her face and their movements are pendulous; her back is now an undulating cascade of gill-like folds.

Emily’s body moves to the music while her eyes are transfixed by the sight of my baby sister dancing in the breaking light. The sun overcomes the coastal fog, sending its midmorning stream obliquely through the study’s southern windows, gilding the drapery of Carmen’s abundance. She is utterly strangely beautiful.

Carmen doesn’t notice any of this because her eyes have closed. She is deeply into dancing. The idea is about to occur to her to take up dance on a regular basis. But for right now, she’s just dancing.

Emily dances, too, while I think. I-and-I and Carmen refract the daylight with our moving bodies, dancing naked for all we’re worth.