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“That was my first kiss.” He has a funny expression. “It was in the kitchen. We were washing dishes, and then you kissed me. I don’t know the date. It could have happened an hour ago; maybe our other selves have just left the house.”

Sometimes our other selves seem like ghosts to me. The G&T has left me limp, and now that I am over my fright I feel floaty, detached. “And have I already kissed you for the first time?” I ask.

“No. Not yet.”

“So we could choose . . . ?” My heart starts to race.

Oliver finishes his drink and sets the glass carefully on the floor. He says, “You can choose. You can put it off, for a while. But you have to decide. I won’t let you slide into this and be unhappy with me later. I’ve been uncomfortable with my conscience for a while now, ever since I met Zach.”

“What do you mean? Have you met Zach?”

“Yes. I see him around, sometimes.” Oliver isn’t looking at me.

“Intentionally? Does he know . . . ?” I sit up. When my feet touch the floor I flinch.

“Yes, intentionally. I don’t think he has any idea. We sit around in bars talking about nothing much.”

I feel dizzy. “But that makes it worse. Doesn’t it? It’s bad enough that I’ve betrayed him—will betray him—but it seemed more bearable when it was just me, when you were a stranger to him—oh, god. Why are you doing this? Hanging out with him?”

“You asked me to—you were very urgent about it.”

“Oh. Fuck. Did I?”

Oliver gets up, circles the room twice, then sits down next to me. “Alba. It’s difficult. Every time I see him, I think of you with him. And I find him—he’s very—confusing.” Oliver sits slump shouldered, his face turned away from me. I put my hand on his cheek, and he is hot with emotion—embarrassment, desire? “There is something about knowing he’s yours that’s painful and also—alluring.”

“Oh.” I realize that I am jealous. I have taken Oliver’s devotion for granted; he has never mentioned anyone else, and I don’t like it that the person he’s problematically attracted to is Zach. But I am transparent to Oliver. He watches me struggle. I notice that he isn’t wearing his wedding ring. He doesn’t, when we aren’t both married, because I’ve asked him not to, but perversely I wish he were wearing it now.

Oliver says, “You don’t like it.”

“No,” I say. I feel small. But I do mind. I wonder what my future self knows that made it essential to bring Zach and Oliver together? I want to protect them both, but from what? Me?

“Why? I’m certainly not going to touch him, and he doesn’t notice—you know that women and men flirt with him all the time and it’s just the air he breathes, he probably only notices when someone doesn’t want to sleep with him.”

“I know. Argh. My older self—what exactly did I ask you to do? Are you supposed to be befriending Zach, spying on him—what?” I can’t keep the worry out of my voice.

Oliver stands up and collects his glass from the floor. “Do you want another one of these?” I nod and he heads for the kitchen. I hear the soothing sounds of a fresh tray of ice being cracked, the unscrewing of the gin bottle top, the hiss of tonic water into glasses. Oliver returns and places the drink in my hand. He sits next to me, no closer, no farther away than he was a few minutes ago, but he seems to have retreated from me, and when he speaks he sounds resigned to being misunderstood. “Alba. When I was twenty-seven, I’d achieved a sort of calm within myself about our situation: I knew you had Zach, you love Zach, you’re not going to leave Zach, and I had found ways to be okay about that, I’d stopped feeling unworthy and depressed most of the time. So then I encountered an older version of you, and you were full of warnings and instructions. Some of it had to do with Isadora Hardwick—” I gasp audibly “—and some was to do with your music and this house, but the main task you assigned me was to meet Zach, ingratiate myself with him, become as intimate as possible without revealing anything much about how we all stand in relation to each other, and to do this so that later it might seem to be quite accidental. That is, you don’t want Zach to know that I know who he is, or that you are married to both of us. That’s what you asked me to do.”

“Jeez. But—why?”

Oliver presses his fingertips to his eyes as though they hurt. “I have no bloody idea. You said it was life or death, so . . .”

“Huh. Whose life or death? Did I say?”

“His. And mine.”

“Oh,” I say.

He turns to look at me. “You promised that it would all be all right eventually. I’m not sure I trust you on that, but I don’t have much choice, do I?”

“I’m sorry. It sounds horrible.” It is my turn to avoid looking at him.

“It isn’t, strangely enough. It is not a hardship to hang out with your beautiful, kind husband. My difficulty is to avoid slipping up and telling him anything about my real life, with you. I’m a spy.”

“We’re both spies. I’m a spy in my own life. So many secrets.”

“Yes,” Oliver says, simply.

“What did I say to you about Isadora Hardwick?”