I said nothing. The enormity of what I’d just done— suggesting I spend the day with my fiancé’s ex because of my deep-rooted, deeply perverse insecurity—was starting to sink in. I was both petrified and excited: I would finally get to see Adrienne for myself. On my turf; on my terms.

Maybe I’d end up liking her, and she’d end up liking me, and we’d end up being friends.

My mind wandered; glided into a fantasy-sequence-dream-montage: Adrienne and me shopping; meeting for drinks; squaring off in a heated intellectual debate at our weekly book club meeting.

Was I crazy?

“You get to see exactly what you’re up against,” Gayle continued, with her slightly imperious British accent. “What your competition is.”

As usual, in her zeal to reassure, she had made it worse— infinitely worse—something I always forgot when I went to Gayle to feel better. “You’re supposed to say that I’m not up against her and that she’s not my competition, because I’m the one Donald’s marrying and she isn’t.”

“Yes of course,” she said. “What I meant was—you see, what I was trying to say was—sometimes we imagine all sorts of things which, in reality, simply don’t exist.”

“Like thick lips? Big boobs?” And those other willowy intoxicating exotic features?

“Exactly.”

“Gayle. I’ve seen pictures. And believe me, those lips and that bustline weren’t mere figments of my overactive imagination. They exist.”

“Those pictures you saw were taken years ago, weren’t they?”

“Yes.”

“By now she’s probably an old hag. Fat and saggy with all sorts of stray hairs and protuberances.”

“I doubt it.”

“At the very best, she’s probably completely average and you’ve just blown her up in your mind.”

Maybe. But if I had inflated her (and I truly didn’t believe that I had) Donald had certainly provided the air pump and hose. Now there was a Macy’s-parade-sized Adrienne-float bobbing around in my head.

“Look. Listen.” she said. She always started her important sentences with either “look” or “listen.” “We’ll take her to lunch. And you’ll get to see for yourself who she is and what she’s all about. Then you can put your insecurities to rest and concentrate on what’s really important.”

“And what’s that?”

“Me!”

We both laughed. Her insistence on inserting herself into my life was one of our favorite jokes.

“No, seriously,” she said. “Donald and your wedding. That’s what you must focus on. Not this stupid has-been.”

She was right, of course. Feeling slightly buoyed by the idea of her support, I whispered, baby-like:

“So you’ll come with me?”

“Of course I’m coming!” she said, suddenly breathless, excited. “I’m dying to meet this mythical legendary infamous Adrienne!”

It was after ten when I hung up with Gayle and realized that Donald hadn’t come upstairs yet. Creeping toward the stairwell in my stocking feet, making sure to avoid the two floorboards nearest the bathroom (they creaked loudly, I’d learned from my late-night snooping), I craned my neck to listen for sounds coming from below, but all I could hear was an oddly persistent whooshing sound. Making my way down the stairs as slowly and as silently as I could, I craned my neck further and found finally the source of that sound: Donald at the kitchen table, shirtless, stripped down to his striped boxers, flipping through pages and pages of recipes.