Instead of being right around the corner where I could keep a close and constant eye on her if I needed to, Adrienne was now much further away. Upon reflection, though, I began to realize that there were distinct benefits to Adrienne’s change of address: because she would be living in a house and not an apartment building, my surveillance could be far more precise. Her windows were street-level, her car would be parked in front of the house; with a quick glance, I could keep extraordinarily accurate tabs on her comings and goings.

Not to mention the fact that she could now indeed take the dog off our hands—have full custody of Lucy, in fact, we all agreed—until the wedding was over.

And so, committed to this new glasnost, this new attitude of live and let live, on the day of Adrienne’s arrival I brought over two bags of (human) food from Dean & DeLuca and dropped them off at her house. Then I returned with two forty-pound bags of dog food and Donald to unload it.

Several days later, I helped her unpack her books (for starters: those infamous boxes of Russian novels that had spent so much time in Donald’s closet) and shelve them, after which Donald helped rearrange furniture.

I also shared with her the names of doctors, dentists, cleaning people, car mechanics; told her where the best bakeries were (there weren’t any, really, for humans, although there was an exceptional one for dogs in downtown Bethesda); where the best coffee shops were (there weren’t any, really), while Donald took her on a tour of his gym.

The following week, I organized and picked up the tab for a welcome-to-Washington lunch with Fran and Gayle.

The week after that, we had Adrienne and Terrance (they were, it seemed, seeing each other) over for brunch, to officially celebrate her move.

Going through the motions of each of these helpful, friendly, neighborly, social occasions, I was surprised by how easy it was to pretend to embrace Adrienne instead of fighting her. Surprised by how easy it was to pretend not to be threatened. And surprised by how fulfilling it was. I’d given the Evil Twins their walking papers. I was being thoroughly modern. Incredibly French, if you will.

Donald, however, didn’t seem to be faring quite as well. Whenever the three of us were together, I noticed more and more that he got a little green around the gills (“Oops! Sorry I dropped that”), tentative (“Can I just . . . ? Would you mind if I . . . ?”), overly agreeable (“Sure. Fine. Whatever. I don’t care”).