I swallowed. She’d just confirmed my darkest suspicions.

“Now, that said,” she continued, “it’s lucky Donald doesn’t go in for that kind of thing.”

“What kind of thing? Flirting?” Because there had been plenty of that already. I thought about the last twenty minutes in the foyer.

“No. That low-cut aggressively sexual way of dressing. I mean, the minute he saw that tonight he was probably completely turned off. Am I right?”

My heart sank, though I was momentarily reassured by the correctness of Gayle’s observations, for it was true that Donald didn’t go for that way of dressing. If only Adrienne was still dressed the way she had been earlier today, we would have a slightly different situation on our hands. “She changed her clothes,” I said glumly.

“No!”

“Oh yes.”

“To what?”

I described her new, more somber outfit. “Jesus, Gayle. It’s like Dr. Jekyll and—”

“Mrs. Hyde. Or rather, Miss Hyde who hopes to become Mrs. Hyde.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Thanks for further underscoring that fact. If I didn’t already feel completely despondent about the situation, I do now.”

“Look. Listen.” Her long, delicate neck tightened as she searched for a way to spin something positive out of my troublesome circumstances. But just as she started to open her mouth, the doorbell rang.

“Who’s that?” she asked.

“It’s Terrance. He’s a friend of Donald’s. From school. I met him once and he’s cute. He teaches history and coaches girls’ soccer and basketball. I thought it would be a good idea to invite him—you know, like a fix-up. So Adrienne would have someone to date when she moves down here. So she’d have someone else to focus on besides Donald.”

“A discreet sort of off-loading! What a brilliant plan!” Gayle nodded at me as if we were in a James Bond movie.

“It’s not a brilliant plan. It’s just a plan. A desperate plan, even. Anything to contain the potential threat that . . . that person’s moving here poses for me—for us!”

I moved toward the front of the house and opened the door. The answer to my prayers—Terrance Cafferty, tall, lean, sandy-haired, innocent—stood there in his tweed jacket and Oxford cloth shirt, looking very, well, potential. Though I’d only met him twice before (once at a school cocktail party fund-raiser; another time at a home basketball game with Donald), I threw my arms around him, thanked him too profusely for coming, and grabbed the bottle of wine he had so politely brought along. Then I took his hand and led him into the kitchen.

Introducing him to Gayle, I offered, then poured, him a drink. Orange juice is what he asked for: a bad sign, I thought, given the probability of Adrienne’s extremely sophisticated palate for wine (she wouldn’t give a non–vin drinker the heure du jour, I assumed). He was thirsty, he said, after coaching that afternoon’s Saturday game. They’d lost, which was another concern: Adrienne, I was certain, only liked winners. After I extracted a promise from him that he would absolutely have a glass of something— “anything alcoholic”—later at dinner, I pointed at the screen door to the backyard.