Barb, he's got to grow up sometime."
"Jesus Christ, Philip. I'm not an idiot. Of course he's got to grow up." Barbara de Wynter sat at her vanity, scrubbing away the day's makeup with a moist wipe. Tossing the used towelette into a nearby garbage bin, she scowled at her reflection. Twenty-two years of parenthood had taken their toll, no matter how good the material she'd started with had been. She smoothed out the crow's feet around her eyes with irritated fingers, and made a face. "But that doesn't mean he has to get *married*. He's not even finished college yet."
"Barb, he says he loves her." Phillip closed his book, and laid it on the nightstand on his side of the bed. "What am I supposed to do? Snap my fingers and magically change his feelings?
His wife snapped her hair back into a loose bun atop her head. Leaning close to the mirror, she inspected her scalp. The grey in her roots was beginning to show; it'd soon be time to visit the salon again to get her honeyed blonde back.
"You're a lawyer, aren't you?" She pushed her chair back from the vanity and stood up. Phillip eyed his wife in her floor-length silk nightie as it skimmed over the slight pooch in her belly and the distended droop of her breasts. "Convince him."
"Convince me," he said with a leer, and pulled back the bedcovers, revealing the stiff tent in his pajamas.
"Don't be gross, Philip." Barbara closed her dressing gown and tied it. "We're talking about his *future*. He'll marry this wo-, this *girl*, and at best, he'll be divorced by 25, or at worst, he'll be trapped with her for the rest of his life after she tricks him into knocking her up.