Secret Recipe

I was standing in the kitchen of a friend's sublet apartment, attending a small book party. I was talking with my friend T, the guest of honor's wife.

T is one of the best people I know. She never seems shaken by anything, she is always positive, she is the only person on the planet who can wear a white tube top and look elegant while doing so instead of skanky, and she is beautiful. She has the kind of beauty that used to be found on tropical islands when they were colonial sugar strongholds. T is tan and blonde. She is also very, very fertile.

"Do you want my secret recipe?" She asked me. We were catching up, and between all the work news (all I have to talk about is work, imaginary baby, though I also talk a lot about your dog) I had mentioned that it was now two years into my halfhearted attempts to conjure you.

"Please!" I said. "Heck. Why not?"

She looked left. She looked right.

"Are you sure?" she whispered.

Were we being spied upon? We weren't. "Yes." I said, wondering if my friend was luring me into some kind of Faustian bargain that, because of her innate goodness (lies all this time?) I would never see coming. "Tell me."

"I can't," she said. "I'll write it down."

I blinked. "Okay," I said.

Before she left, she hunted down a pen and the back of an envelope. I looked over her shoulder with interest. "It took me six months," she said. "Which I realize is nothing! But nothing happened until I did this."

Here's what she wrote.

1. Vitamin D
2. Preseed
3. Fertility 5

"I had a Vitamin D deficiency," she explained. "But you can take supplements."

"Um," I said. "What does this mean?" I pointed to #3.

"Five pounds. You have to gain a little weight."

"Ah ha!" I crowed. You, imaginary baby, have been privy to this semester's pimiento cheese gain, so I'm all set there, I'm pretty sure. "I've done that. I'm squishy."

"K, come on," she said. "You look amazing."

By the way, imaginary baby, if you wind up existing, and you wind up being female, you should know this how women talk to each other. One self-deprecates, and one effusively praises. It takes practice, but you'll figure it out.

"Okay," I said. "And what's this mean?" I pointed to #2.

Poor T's face turned a delicate, ladylike shade of violet, and she waved her hands and said "Look it up on the internet." Then she hugged me goodbye, and we promised to see much more of each other this summer, and she whispered that she hoped I would have good news soon.

#2, if you care to know, is a brand of lube available at your finer local drugstores. I learned this by asking the internet, where the answer was provided on a series of bulletin boards in which people - women, I assume - use a complex rubric to discuss with strangers their marriages, their hormone levels, and how many miscarriages they've had.

I'm not so sure about #2. But I will admit to popping a Vitamin D supplement this morning.

You never know.