On the drive to Nick & Toni’s Restaurant, Hadley gave her usual instructions on how not to use the gear paddles behind the steering wheel. My eyes sparkled with glee. I was even delighted to circle the parking lot for five minutes so that we could get the closest possible parking space to the door of the restaurant. Hopefully, she would also ask several times if I had locked the car, when she had seen the lights flash and heard the double chirp.

These rituals of marriage that you learn to accept if you wish the relationship to thrive, I’ve since realized in extremis, are indicators of an uncommon intimacy. Their purpose? The transfiguration of unarticulated fear into shared moments of trust.

When we got to the restaurant, the maître d’ was new and didn’t know us by sight. We were shown to our table as though we’d never been there before, as though it were our first time. The erasure had already begun.

There was a small vase with sprigs of purple heather in the center of our table. The linens were starched and pressed. A woman in black clogs and a charcoal apron appeared holding menus. When she announced the special entrée that evening as local duck, I felt a kick under the table.

“I was actually thinking lobster,” my wife said, “with a glass of champagne.”

We didn’t always have money. When we left England, it was with Oxfam suitcases and just enough in traveler’s checks to rent an apartment for three months on Ludlow Street. Hadley was still writing her thesis and I worked in a bar pretending to be Jack Kerouac. I would bring home leftover Salisbury steak and tater tots in a Styrofoam container. I saved my tips to pay for her tennis club, as there were some luxuries I wouldn’t let go.

Around this time, I sold my first short story to the Bulgarian Review.

Without consulting Hadley, I cashed the small check and went to a racetrack just north of the city. Foolish, I know, but I was young and empowered by the fact that I would soon be a published author. Other publications would follow, big national magazines scoured by literary agents for fresh blood. But there’s something hallowed about a writer’s first acceptance letter⁠—even when it comes from Bulgaria, which most people don’t know is the original home of the Thracians.

The only experience I had with gambling was from reading Charles Bukowski. For better or worse, I bet my entire earnings on A Very Freaky Chicken in race four.