“She’s on my level, unlike you — you were always just a burden.” I looked at Brielle, and I recognized her, because she was in fact a junior sales associate at a firm my equity group had audited a few months earlier, and there was nothing prominent about her family or her means.

“Jonathan,” I said, “if you’re going to parade a wealthy new girlfriend around town to wound me, you might at least confirm first that she’s actually wealthy.” Brielle went scarlet.

And when the check came, Jonathan reached for a supplementary card linked to a joint account — an account I had closed the morning after the wedding — and the terminal declined it, and declined it again, and Brielle gathered her coat and walked out into the night without a word.

I did not smile.