I told him we were friends.

The way I heard it, you took care of her.

Jane was having problems.

And you solved them.

I said I had tried to help.

You’re very helpful, aren’t you?

Framed photographs showed Jack Shott in football gear; his number, 55, indicating that he had probably been a linebacker.

And I guess you were helping when she went nuts? What’d you do, pal, hold her clothes?

I told him I didn’t have anything to say about that. It was between Jane and me.

Between Jane and you? Is that right? I mean, there’s something between my wife and this guy who comes to my wedding? And to my house? And now he tells me how he doesn’t want to talk about it?

One of the photographs showed Jack Shott holding a championship trophy in a way that suggested he wasn’t about to relinquish it any time soon. If you’ll excuse me, I said, trying to push past him.

Jack Shott kept me there. What you did wasn’t very helpful, was it? He shoved me backwards with his forearms until I was in the doorway of his bedroom. This guy comes to my house on my wedding day and tells me how he lets my wife go nuts in some crap bar and is fucking any fuck-head that asks and I’m supposed to just thank him for it? Is that what you expect from me?

A friend offered again to chauffeur them in his own car, but Jack Shott said no. Jane would drive. It was time she learned to take responsibility.

His bride acknowledged this necessity with a kind of bemused capitulation, not worried about it particularly, not intimidated or disappointed, and not even surprised at her defeat so much as acknowledging the unexpected manner of its arrival. It’s not uncommon for a faculty adviser to become emotionally attached to an attractive grad student, finding in her innocence and enthusiasm a source of rejuvenation for dreams of his own that had long since been smothered within the bureaucratic coils of academia. Jane positioned herself against the flanks of the silver Jaguar with the ephemerality of a car-show model, sylphlike, alluring, her silk bridal sheath shimmering in the starlight with the same lifeless sheen as the car’s body. Her bare arm traced the long, aggressive snout of the Jaguar with a gesture that was both graceful and mocking, and her contempt for the aerodynamic excesses that the car’s designers had sculpted reminded me of how she had stood in my office doorway once her degree had been awarded and said that if I intended to fuck her, there was now no reason not to get it started. You told me afterwards I had looked like a carp in the live tank at a Chinese restaurant watching diners arrive. And of course we were able to laugh about it later. But, still, wasn’t that love, Jane? Wouldn’t you use the word?

And you had seemed hollowed-out on your wedding day, Jane, a slender and coolly efficient bride effacing herself, refusing the hypocrisy of a wedding veil and wearing no jewelry, not even earrings, as if trusting in the nakedness of your small face, your throat exposed helplessly as you came forward alone up the center aisle of the church, carrying only single, self-conscious calla lily, the bride who was being given away by no one, unwilling to compromise even that much although of course just before the ceremony you had called me over and asked mischievously if I had hoped to occupy the role of proud father and deliver you myself? That was cruel, Jane, and undeserved. But you were as alone at your wedding as you were at the ensuing dinner party, and I watched as you moved from group to group, evading those who tried to detain you, the faint white scars hatching the insides of your forearms visible to anyone who knew to look for them as you pulled away, drifting out toward the periphery of each moment of celebration, as always obedient to the centrifugal forces that impelled you.

Jane held her ironic pre-departure pose, staring at Sunny and me, at the way we were standing together. She seemed smaller at that moment, paler, less substantial, her breasts undeveloped, her hips narrow, shoulders weak and arms too thin, her flat belly that of a bride who would never be exposed to the risk of impregnation. There’s no clutch, right? she said. I don’t know how you shift the gears.