The First Husband

“She gets to know two pieces of information. The best thing. And the worst. The rest? People think it makes them closer to know everything, but I’m not sure it’s fair.”

I poured myself a topper, trying to figure that out. “To the person you used to be with?”

“To everyone. It’s like living in the past, and not even in an accurate version of it. We only really remember things for five years. After that, what we remember, what’s actually etched in our brain, is our memory of the thing, not the thing itself. And five years after that, what’s left is our memory of the memory. You follow me?”

“Enough so that I’m getting a little depressed,” I said.

He smiled, and it occurred to me—it was one objectively true thing—that smile could bring you down to your knees.

“Okay, so I’ll bite,” I said. “Tell me about the tattoo girlfriend. Tell me the best thing and the worst thing.”

“Well, the best thing about Gia is . . .”

I smiled. “I like the name Gia,” I said.

“Me too,” he said. Then he nodded, as if he were thinking about it, thinking that was true. “The best thing about Gia was probably the tattoo.”

“What was the worst thing?”

He picked up his glass of bourbon, held it to his lips for a minute.

“Same answer,” he said.

Somehow, we ended up in the kitchen.

This part surprised me, almost more than anything that happened later. We ended up in the kitchen, a little after 3:00 A.M., cooking a vat of scrambled eggs. Or, more accurately, Griffin was cooking the eggs in a very large French skillet. Meanwhile, I was sitting cross-legged on the countertop, next to the stove, facing him. Like it was something we knew how to do. Five hours ago, I hadn’t known him. I remember thinking that as I watched him cooking the eggs. I remember thinking that, and thinking that didn’t seem possible.

“You’re doing those eggs a lot like my mother used to,” I said, watching him add in milk. Watching the way he stirred.

“These are my specialty,” he said.

I shrugged. “My mom wasn’t a very good cook.”

“Ha-ha,” he said.

He reached into a small refrigerator near the stove and took out some cracked lobster claws, a beautiful block of Gruyère.

“Okay, she didn’t use those things,” I said.

“Wait until you taste the final product,” Griffin said.

He took off his chef’s jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt in a jokey fashion, as though he was really getting down to business. But then something fell out of his jeans pocket: a small red asthma bronchodilator. He bent down to pick it up off the floor, put it back in.

I pointed at the floor, at the spot where the inhaler had fallen. “You have asthma?”

He nodded. “Since I was a kid,” he said.

“Any big problems?”

He shook his head. “Not since I was a kid.”

“My second stepfather’s son has asthma. When he’d come to visit, he’d always carry around a blue bronchodilator. I’d steal it and pretend it was mine. I kind of thought it was cool. To suck the air in . . .”

I made a gesture with my hands, which knocked me a bit off balance—and was my first clue as to how much the bourbon had started affecting me.

“You need a hand?” he asked.

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