It’s rare when dessert calls for an executive decision. Carlo stood, picked up my plate and his, and headed inside the house. When I walked into the kitchen the garbage disposal was running, but it sounded like it was losing the race. I flicked off the switch and carefully extracted the meringue from the disposal. Carlo held open the lid of the garbage bin where he had thrown the other.

“Is that a hint I should give up cooking?”

“No, I’m trying to show you different people are gifted at different things. And that you should stop trying to bake things.”

My mouth going, as usual, to a point from which there would be no return, I asked, “Well, then, what am I good for?”

Carlo stood there, processing, possibly wondering how we got from a bad dessert to an existential dilemma.

“See, there’s an example,” I said. “I impulsively open my mouth and things spill out, but you, you think it all through before answering the question ‘how are you.’ For me most of life is like, like the garbage disposal switch. On. Off. Alive. Dead. Good. Bad. I like action movies and you like art films.”

“I actually enjoyed Guardians of the Galaxy.”

“You’re a man of deep faith and I’m an atheist.”

“I acknowledge if there is a God, She’s got a lot of explaining to do.”

“You’re a Democrat and I’m a Republican.”

Now he paused. And leaned back against the kitchen counter. He said, “You’re a Republican?”

“Aargh!” I said.

“Seriously. Who did you vote for in the midterms?”

I slammed the top of the garbage bin down on the travesty that had been the meringue shells. “How the fuck did we end up together? And why do I feel like you’re committing adultery?” I asked, feeling grief in my voice, and mentally kicking myself for talking like every woman in every romantic comedy I’d ever endured.

Carlo looked at me longer than anyone normally does in a conversation, before saying, “Adultery?”

“You said you didn’t want to be disloyal to Jane. Is that how I make you feel?”

Again he paused longer than normal people do, at least the ones in my family when there’s an argument in process. This was possibly why Carlo and I never argued—it took too long and we’d both get bored. Then he frowned, and stared, and processed some more, and finally said, “I think we may have a misperception,” as if he were disagreeing with an academic colleague over some complex point. But then he bent down and swept me into his arms, so unexpectedly I couldn’t think about resisting.

“Your back,” I warned, relishing the thought of him hurting himself.

“You’re not that heavy,” he said.

“I’m small, but I’m dense,” I said.