There’s an elephant in the living room. Invisible to all except Sandy and Jill, a big old pachyderm is standing on the golden oak floor.

It’s a lonely cow elephant. She’s been awaiting acknowledgment for twenty slow years. She made a hairline crack in the foundation when she first stepped into the room, and though she hasn’t moved since then the crack slowly (undramatically) grew.

Lately Sandy has begun to talk to Chris about it. She did so partly in an attempt to defuse the weird sexual tension in their ambiguous friendship; she figured talking about her sex life could demystify the energy between them. But mostly she talked to Chris because the elephant began to shift her weight from leg to ponderous leg, enlarging the crack and demanding attention. Some sort of collapse seemed imminent, and Jill wasn’t talking.

“The story goes back twenty years,” Sandy explained in the lab one afternoon. Their work at UC is in vibration engineering, and they were reviewing the results of safety helmet tests. Reading strain gauges that were affixed to tiny human skulls that came from India, from small doomed adults.

She walked to the stainless steel counter and poured mugs of coffee. “Jill and I were in our late 20s and we failed at sharing a lover. Well, not quite,” she smiled the words, “but that was a grabber topic sentence, wasn’t it?”

Chris looked sideways at her and then back at the lab bench. They were trying to duplicate the results of one experiment, and attaching the tiny oblong gauges to the skulls was a delicate procedure. “I’m listening.”

Sandy continued. “Remember: it was that brief period of time between the advent of the pill and the outbreak of AIDS; at least on this coast, free sex wasn’t just a motto.

“Jill was married and divorced already, but I was still with my first husband. She had a lot of lovers, mostly married men, and I was stuck with boring old Jeff. Adam was eighteen months old and I felt trapped and bleak. I stepped out.” She delivered the coffee and spoke while Chris sipped. “Trouble was: I picked an ex of Jill’s to step out with.

“I thought I cleared it with both of them before I started.” She watched Chris attach the last strain gauge, strap the helmet onto the skull, and move to the gun that would send the shock at that puny cranium. “I remember she told me Rick and she were done before I met him. And I asked her that night, and she reassured me they were over.

“It was all confusing and kind of silly. There could be nothing significant about a relationship with Rick; he was married and insincere and lots of fun. I guess I justified my own involvement with him by saying that I really needed it right then, and that it leveled the playing field with both of us being married and parents and all. Seems a little facile, now.” Sandy smiled, slightly but sheepishly, into her coffee.

Chris checked the aim on the long shock gun.

“So anyway, Rick and I had an affair. It lasted almost two years. Jill acted pissed about it in the beginning, and disinterested in it as it continued, but I didn’t stop. I guess I was too needy, too enamored, too selfish throughout. I guess.” Sandy turned to the counter behind her and edged her hip up on a stool while setting her coffee mug aside. Chris pulled the gun lever, there was a percussive pop, and the helmet moved. Sandy got off the stool and both walked toward the skull.

“He lost interest after a couple of years. I was devastated. Bereft and lonely. I couldn’t talk about my loss with Jill, and my husband certainly didn’t want to hear about it. I normally ventilate all over the place and there was nowhere to go with this. It hurt a lot.

“And now,” Sandy concluded, as they reached the skull and Chris began to remove the helmet, “now twenty years later Rick has come back into my life, on a much less passionate basis, and the trouble with Jill is happening again. She doesn’t want to see us together. She doesn’t want to hear about him from me. After all this time. I don’t get it.”

“And no one should get this helmet either,” Chris said. “Look at that,” pointing to a visible crack in the skull. “This is a lousy helmet.”

Sandy had to agree.