There are thingspeople do when they are first in love: they surprise each other with trips to Paris; they make reservations at impossibly expensive restaurants; they have conversations about former lovers while they eat. All of these things can happen after years of marriage as well, but the chances are infinitely smaller.

Karl and I had been together a little more than a year. He arranged the trip, and I made the reservations for a very late lunch. I can’t remember how it all got started, but as we sat in Taillevent, at such a beautiful table right in the center of the room, the conversation somehow turned to Mark. My relationship with Mark had been an amicable one that had come to a mostly amicable end. Karl asked if we fought a lot. Or maybe I asked Karl if he fought with his ex-wife, and so in return he asked me about Mark.

The waiter came and handed me a wine list the size of a tombstone. I turned the pages for a moment, the way I might have turned the pages of a calculus exam, with some interest and not a single spark of comprehension. “White,” I said, and Karl, who doesn’t drink, just shook his head.

“The worst fight we ever had wasn’t exactly a fight,” I said. “We were playing a word game. When he told me about it, I said I wanted to play, but then I couldn’t figure out the answer, and he wouldn’t stop. He just kept playing it and playing it and, I don’t know —”