When I looked up again, Adrienne’s eyes seemed to have softened. Head tilted, she regarded me and smiled. She knew, implicitly, that I was nervous and unbearably uncomfortable in her presence, and while one part of her positively thrived on that perfect morsel of knowledge and was empowered by it, another part pitied me for it. I didn’t know which part was worse.

“And I really appreciate your taking so much time for me. I know how busy you must be planning your wedding.” She glanced at the menu, set it aside, then looked around the dining room, which she seemed to find decidedly uninteresting. “I keep meaning to ask you—where’s it going to be?”

“Dumbarton House. In Georgetown.”

Her face lit up. “How lovely. The gardens are exquisite.”

“Spectacular,” Gayle, the new Queen of Hyperbole, chimed in.

“Kay”—Adrienne regarded us both solemnly, to clarify and to respectfully acknowledge her subject’s recent death—“Kay Graham, of the Washington Post, used to take me there when I was little and we’d come to visit. She lived right around the corner. My father and Ben”—she stopped again to clarify—“Ben Bradlee — went to college together.” She shrugged as if to communicate humility. “Actually, he’s my godfather.”

I blinked madly; sat dumbfounded; tried desperately, and failed miserably, to think of a comeback.

“Gayle here knows Frank Perdue,” I offered sarcastically. “In fact, she wrote a whole book about him.” I elbowed her gently and smiled, trying to encourage her to participate in the shameless name-dropping that Adrienne had started. But Gayle was too star-struck to pick up on my less-than-subtle hints.

“God, I’ve always thought Ben Bradlee was one of the sexiest men in the whole world.”

Adrienne’s eyes widened. “Do you know him?”

“Well, I met him several times, when I used to contribute pieces to the Post.”

“Really! What kinds of pieces did you do?”

“Food pieces, mostly. I love food, you see.”

Boy, did she ever.

“So does he!” Adrienne marveled.

“Yes! And it seemed every time I was there to turn my copy in—this was before computers and faxes and email, remember, so one had to deliver things by hand—he would ask me about what I’d written: the dish, the preparation, the ingredients, special techniques and equipment. Asian food was just coming into vogue then and everyone was stir-frying like crazy!”

Knowing nobody from the Post and hating to cook, I sat quietly, glanced around the restaurant until the conversation swung around to a topic I might be able to participate in.

“So Donald tells me you’re in graduate school,” Adrienne said, turning back to me. “For . . . ?”

“A master’s.”

“In . . . ?”

“Education.”

“At . . . ?”

“Georgetown.”

“Right,” she said, as if vaguely remembering the specifics of my humble aspirations. “You hope to teach someday?”

I nodded, then winced. The way she said “teach” sounded as if she was articulating my hope to someday be able to walk and talk at the same time.