The Anthony-Lopez Show

Example: Lopez may not literally wear los pantalones in the relationship -- on this day, she's glammed up in a black belted scoop-neck dress over black leggings with gray suede boots that climb to just below her knees -- but she's still the boss. We know this because Anthony has told us as much. Twice.

We've been talking about "El Cantante," which opened to mixed reviews and middling box-office figures in August. The gritty movie was made by Lopez's New Yorican Productions, which means she was her husband's boss on the project.

"When isn't she the boss?" Anthony says.

Lopez (giggling): "I think one of the reasons Marc and I do work so well together and we're able to do so many things together -- "

Anthony: "-- is that I know she's always the boss!"

He howls. Lopez plows ahead.

"It's that we look up to each other. We admire each other and have a mutual respect for each other as artists."

She Jingles, He Rattles

Lopez gesticulates when she speaks, punctuating certain words with the crash of the bangles that go sliding up and down her left forearm. Her Bronx accent has been scrubbed away for the most part, though it bubbles to the surface in her more excitable moments -- and when she's referring to Anthony as "papi," as she sometimes does.

She sits upright, legs crossed; very poised. She's decorated with lots of sparkly things: spangly interlocked hoop earrings; a jewel-studded newsboy cap; major rocks on both hands. Her cheeks are rosy, her skin buttery smooth, her smile bright and bleached. She almost looks like an animatronic wax statue version of herself. So strangely perfect.

Anthony is wholly human, full of nervous energy -- fidgeting with his boots, bouncing his legs, swatting away gnats. He's guzzling coffee (Lopez is waiting for decaf, thank you), and his posture shifts every time you look at him. He's slumped in the chair, he's at the edge of his seat, he's leaning into Lopez. He looks like a scruffier Steve Buscemi, so twitchy and flyweight-slight in his loose-fitting jeans and long-sleeved charcoal-gray shirt. He's wearing multiple crosses on his necklaces -- and a "JENNIFER" tattoo on his right wrist.

"That's huge, right?" he says of the permanent tribute. "Tell her!"

She already knows. Lopez quickly points out the tiny tattoo under Anthony's wedding band, too -- the one that says "JLM," for Jennifer Lynn Mu¿iz, a combination of Lopez's first and middle names and Anthony's surname. (He was named Marco Antonio Mu¿iz, after a Mexican balladeer; the younger Marco Antonio Mu¿iz shortened his name to Marc Anthony to avoid confusion at the outset of his own career.)