And then another photo of just Adrienne and Donald, later that same day: same bathing suits (hers: a chocolate brown bikini); same hair (hers: just below the shoulders, dark, wavy; kept back by a thick, brightly colored, retro-striped headband); different pose (theirs: Donald hugging her—huge smile, tan skin, long long legs—from behind).

Night after night I would return to those two photographs, staring at them in the minimal light of Donald’s study, pondering the meaning and significance of each and every detail and nuance of Adrienne’s apparent appearance (an example: Her hair seemed longer than mine. Was it really longer, or did it just look longer in the picture? Did Donald prefer women with longer hair? If so, did that mean I should grow mine out an inch or two? Or leave it the way it was as a test to see if he would love me no matter what? Another: Her legs were definitely longer than mine. Like, easily, twice as long. Should I just kill myself now? Or wait? Did that mean she and Donald had better sex than he and I did? Or was it just “different”? Could the length of them possibly have been too cumbersome; gotten in the way of things?). I realize now that I barely gave Donald a second glance; just a cursory enough look to notice that his skin was smooth and tan; that his hair was shorter (he was, after all, still working on Wall Street at the time); and that he looked thin. And happy.

Very happy.

And why wouldn’t he be?

He was engaged to a long-haired long-legged goddess with whom he undoubtedly had fabulous sex and they were at the beach together, writhing around in the sand and posing for the camera.

Let’s just say that by the following week, looking for relics of his past life with Adrienne had become my sport and my pastime; a slightly compulsive though innocent (remember: I was still just curious then) habit I couldn’t quite kick.

And in the beginning, when he and I were getting to know each other and everything between us was new and uncertain; when gathering information on Adrienne was simply a way for me to feel as if I had some control over all that was new and uncertain—over Donald, over the fear that our relationship, like every other one I’d ever had, wouldn’t work out—I didn’t think I had to kick it. My doubts were, I knew, in this early stage, self-generated. Donald seemed to have no secrets, and nothing to hide when it came to Adrienne.

His desk, his thoughts, his life, were an open book.

6

But back to the beginning.

Donald and I fell in love shortly after that shuttle flight, shortly after the coffee date at the National Gallery, shortly after we’d slept together for the first time, three dinner dates later.

I never usually waited that long—three dates (four dates, total, if you counted the coffee date, which we didn’t, since we both felt it was, technically, more exploratory than infatuatory)—to sleep with someone, and I felt heady from the sense of self-discipline and self-control that prolonging the inevitable was giving me.