Sometimes, guys just have no clue at all.

It was rather sweet, really. Adorably naïve, even. Our relationship had “just happened” in much the same way as the Treaty of Versailles had just happened, after months of plotting, scheming, maneuvering, and significant reversals.

Like I said, rather sweet really.

“So, Martin,” I asked, in the overly loud voice you use when asking friends’ children about school, “how is work going?”

“Not bad,” he said. It might have been the most positive statement I had ever heard him make.

“What is it exactly that you do?” I urged, leaning slightly forward in my chair and trying to feign an expression of interest in the hopes that it would inspire Serena to do the same. It inspired Serena to undertake a careful inspection of her arugula. “I’m not sure Colin’s ever told me.”

He told me. As my eyes glazed over, I wondered if that had really been quite the right technique. Asking an accountant to explain — in depth — what he does for a living isn’t the sort of move calculated to cause the impressionable to swoon. Not the right kind of swoon, at any rate. The arugula was far more interesting.

But perhaps Serena didn’t think so. As I snuck a peek at her averted face, her eyes suddenly lit up like the Fourth of July. A becoming hint of color bloomed in her cheeks and the hollows under her eyes didn’t seem quite so pronounced as usual.

I’d never seen anyone react that way to accounting principles before, but, hey, if it worked for Serena . . .

It wasn’t the accounting. Half-rising from her chair, Serena angled her wrist in a tentative wave. Martin petered to a belated stop. Scraping my chair around, I saw Colin’s friend Nick loping his way towards us.

“Hello, all,” said Nick, dragging up a chair from another table and plunking himself unceremoniously down into it. “How goes it?”