“I’m kidding. She doesn’t even live here,” he said pulling out my chair for me.

Four.

“She lives in New York.”

Five.

“That’s far enough away.”

I sat. “Far enough away for what?”

He thought a second. “For there to be a healthy distance.”

“Distance is relative.”

An understatement.

Mars wouldn’t be far enough away for a French-sounding overly friendly ex-fiancée to live.

We looked at each other across the table; said nothing. He seemed agitated suddenly, as if he were suffering from a momentary wave of extreme discomfort, and pushed his chair back an inch or two from the table to try to give himself more legroom. His face contorted itself and he shook his head.

“May I speak frankly?” he said.

Hadn’t he asked me this on the plane, too?

“Of course,” I said.

“I feel like we’ve gotten off to a bad start again. Like the first time. I don’t know why or how this keeps happening, but I wish we could just forget about her and get to know each other.”

Six.

I nodded. If nothing else, I admired his directness. And his articulateness. This obsession of his with truth and frankness was really starting to grow on me.

“I mean, that’s why we’re here, isn’t it?” he continued. “Because we met, and we liked each other, and we want to get to know each other.”

“You’re right.”

He paused, his eyes holding my gaze to assess my level of sarcasm (little to nil) and to gauge the likelihood of a barbed comeback (ditto). When he felt certain enough that it was safe for him to proceed, he pushed himself and his chair back to the table and extended his hand.

“I’m Donald,” he said.

“I’m Elise,” I said.

And we shook.

And I promised myself, then and there, to stop counting for the rest of the day.

Human beings are liars. Who, contrary to popular belief, lie more to themselves than they do to other people.

Or am I just talking about myself?

I may have said I stopped counting Donald’s references to Adrienne that day—that one, brief, impossibly magical afternoon when I was, miraculously and inexplicably, temporarily devoid of all cynicism, doubt, pessimism, and negativity (what Donald refers to with equal parts affection and annoyance as my “Quartet of Jewish Gloom and Doom”)—those few hours when I managed to suspend my disbelief (he was too tall; I was too hard; we were both too neurotic; life was, in the end, only misery and suffering) long enough to feel that I, too, might someday find a future with someone and be happy.

But, if I may speak frankly, I never did stop.

Not then (he made several—four, to be exact—more references to her before we parted company on the Mall).

And not now (if pushed to hazard a guess, I’d say we’re somewhere in the mid- to upper-twenty-thousand range).

But who’s counting?

I was.

Constantly.

Day in and day out.

The more our wedding day approached; the more time elapsed between their relationship (his and hers) and our relationship (his and mine); the more I felt that someone (Adrienne) was in the room with us (Donald and me).