“Pfft. It’s a cow name.”

“Not kind, Angie. Not kind.” Maura swung her left leg up, crooked it, swung it farther out to the left, and then cinched it up into her waist, then down to an L shape behind her wrist. And then she breathed in and slumped over from the waist. “Pigeon pose,” she muttered. “Breathe.” And then, on an out breath, she said, “What’s the penis joke?”

“Oh, an oldie but a goody. Haven’t you heard the one about the man with five penii?”

“Penii?”

“It’s the plural, Maura.”

“It certainly is not. And I wish I’d met him.”

“You’re ruining the —”

“Sorry, go on.”

“Well, his pants fit like a glove.”

“That’s very clever.”

“It only really works if you visualize it.” And here both women took a moment to do just that.

Then Maura unhinged on an intake of breath and pressed back into downward dog, in preparation for pigeon pose on the other side. Breathing in-out, in-out, she reconfigured and slumped over again. This was a release posture, and she liked to take full advantage of that. “Effie told us about these gargoyles on ancient Irish churches called sheela-na-gigs. Squatting women figures basically holding their vaginal lips open. I looked it up.”

“What?”

“On churches! I know!”

Angie started tapping a pencil on the coffee table — a habit since she had quit smoking a few years before. She had quit most everything a few years before, actually: her husband, her job, her family, smoking, and doing anything that didn’t interest her. For a time, it had left her with very little. “Fertility goddesses, you think?”

“I resist that line of thinking. Why does every seductive image of a woman older than 500 years have to be attributed to some bloody earth goddess? Surely there was sexual pleasure back then, too.”

“I never thought of that.”

“We just want to clean up the past. Sanitize it, so we can feel warm and fuzzy.”

“So, what are they?”

“They are wide-open yayas! Don’t you see?”

“No.” She really didn’t.

“Yin energy! The womb as church. And vice versa.” Angie hated it that Maura pronounced this “vicie versa,” but she didn’t interrupt. Maura was saying, “Enter here all who dare. Fair warning!” And then Maura unfurled herself and lay back to catch her breath. “Let’s drink something, shall we?”