My name is Eric Drummond Smith and I am the husband of a very famous woman. Her name is. . . no, no, I don't believe I will tell you her name, not her full name, anyway. . . but her middle name is Jennifer, and I suppose that'll be enough for you. Regardless, she is very famous. She grew up in Southern California, the daughter of parents who spent their whole lives trying to be as famous as her, only to give up in their forties and concentrate on having a family. They had one daughter, however, and decided that would be enough of a family experience for them. Her father became an acting coach, her mother a violin teacher, and together they molded her into the perfect Hollywood machine, a human being capable of entertaining in every conceivable manner. And you know what? She hated it. Hated every single bit of it, the lifestyle, the shallowness, the utterly Machiavellian nature of it. Its not that she didn't like drama or dancing or music, simply that she didn't like doing it for success, rather than for the joy of it. And so instead of studying acting at UCal Berkeley, she took a full scholarship at the University of Wisconsin where she got a double major in biology and chemistry, entirely intent on becoming a biochemist. I still ask her questions about either whenever I get the chance, not because I don't know the answers, but because I love the way her perfect hazel eyes light up as her soft pink lips (my God, how I love those lips) mouth words like "paleobotany" or "electron valence."

So, one day this girl, this incredible girl, this perfect creature, she was looking at graduate schools, and one of those schools happened to be the University of Virginia, where I was working on my doctorate in geophysics. I was invited to a party for prospective science grads, and met her there. A strong-looking fellow with a Georgian accent was hitting on her, bragging about his football glories at some college in Iowa that no one east of the Mississippi had ever heard of, and there she stood, looking bored. Then it happened, the perfect coincidence, the kind of thing that only happens in movies made before 1970: I tripped and fell on a table. The table was covered with food and drinks, and I was doused, head to toe, in ranch dressing and cheese puffs and cheap beer.

Now, here is where the movie part comes in: a girl, a beautiful girl from California, comes over to help me up, laughing and saying, "dammit Eric, you idiot!" It was not the woman, however, not the woman with perfect hazel eyes. But it was the girl she was staying with.

"Dammit!" I said as I wiped some sort of casserole off my crotch, "now I have to go back to my dorm and friggin' change! Dammit! And this is a new shirt!" And so my friend, named Noha (who was in the biomedical engineering program at Virginia), she says to me, "well, did you drive?"

"Hell no. . .I rode the bus." How the hell, I thought to myself, did I get carrots down my shirt?

Still laughing, Noha wiped some unidentifiable vegetable from my shoulder, and offered me a ride. The girl staying with her, well, she didn't want to be left there, knowing no one, for fear of that strong-looking fellow with a Georgian accent, who apparently had left her with a less than sparkling opinion of Southern men. "Pushy bastard," I heard her mutter after he'd shoved his phone number into her hand and forced her to hug him.

Well, we went back to my dorm and the whole way Noha related stories about my inherent lack of coordination to this girl (sitting behind me, quietly laughing). Oh, she heard stories about the time I broke my leg dancing. And how could this girl, this total stranger live a day longer without knowing that my first day in my program I walked into the meeting and promptly tripped, knocking the chair flat on his back, then tried to cover it up by talking with a really deep voice (an episode that smacks of a Three Stooges movie). And as we walked up the hard cement steps of my dormitory, well, Noha recounted how I twisted my ankle on a first date with a girl long admired from afar, forcing her to wait for me in the hospital waiting room for six hours. I knew that I never had a chance with this girl, this perfect woman, not now, not after my acrobatics (both past and present). But as I unlocked the door to my room and turned to let Noha and those hazel eyes in, well, she looks at me with the slightest smile and says, and man, I swear this is true, "well, I know a lot of women that would hold onto the first guy they met that could take that kind of abuse and still smile. A lot of women." And let me tell you, her eyes, dammit, they were dancing! Dancing I say! I couldn't stop staring at her, not until Noha hit me on the back of the head and in her most endearing (this part is sarcasm) voice said, "well dammit Eric, are you going to open the door or not?"

Needless to say, I opened the door, we went in, I went into my bedroom and cleaned up (spraying on extra cologne to try to overpower the odor of that damned ranch dressing), throwing on a blue plaid shirt and my emergency khakis (always keep a spare pair of well-ironed khakis around my friend, and you will find yourself prepared for almost any possible event). I walked out, and there they were, sitting on my cheap blue vinyl couch, laughing about something or the other. Noha stood up, straightening her pants. "Mr. Smith," she said, "are you finally ready?" she said, her tone full of mock criticism.

"Yes Mr. Smith," said the girl with beautiful eyes, "are you quite ready?" It was then that I noticed her soft pink lips and wished for the first time that I was Humphrey Bogart tough, ready to push aside her soft brown hair, taking her in my arms, taking those lips, taking her. But I didn't, instead opting to go with the ladies to a local bar for a couple of drinks and a little more peace than could be found at that party with the strong-looking fellow and his alcoholic friends. We spent the night talking and laughing and in the end I fought the urge to invite that perfect woman over to my dormitory, instead exchanging e-mail addresses and receiving a kiss on the cheek (I can still feel that kiss, if I try) for my chivalry.

Later, the night I asked her to marry me, Jennifer asked me why I exercised such restraint, and I lied artfully, composing some powerful diatribe in favor of chivalry, than admitted it was just because I was shy after she shaded her eyes and pulled her head back to look at me closer. Dammit. I'd finally found someone I couldn't lie too other than my mother. But I am getting ahead of myself.

Well, that girl with the perfect eyes (I still didn't think of her as Jennifer), she and I exchanged e-mails for a few months, then came the summer, and I was off to the field. I found out from Noha that she had decided not to go to Virginia, and frankly I figured I'd never see her again. You see, I had gotten my MA in geophysics at Virginia, but Ohio State offered me a full ride if I'd go there for my PhD, and well, you can't pass that up, can you? So I pulled up stakes and moved north that fall, having completely lost touch with that incredible girl. And then one day (I guess you could say this part is also the sort of thing that you only see in pre-1970s movies too) I was in a Chinese restaurant, eating a huge plate of chicken lo mein, reading The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka (not the sort of book to be reading when you're eating Chinese food, really, but I was doing it and there is no changing the fact now) when I heard a familiar voice say, "well, of all the losers to meet on a Friday night." I turned around and saw her, that girl with the perfect eyes, smiling a huge smile (a little toothier than I remembered, but lovely nonetheless), wearing a maroon sundress, her date trying to smile behind her. I laughed and felt my blood rush to my head, felt myself blush, felt myself throw down my napkin and grab her, not even saying anything. I felt her body beneath the sundress, felt the heat of it, the smoothness of her skin against my rough chin. It was wonderful.

In a few moments I found out that she was at OSU doing independent research while she thought about where she wanted to go for her PhD. Her date was pulled away to a table across the room by a short Chinese woman named Jinwa (an angel, I used to give her twice the tip of any other waitress there), looking perplexed and a bit put out (his name was Greg, I think, and he still hates me) and I asked Jennifer if he was her boyfriend. "No!" she blurted out too fast, and I knew she was embarrassed at her anxiousness to prove her availability.

"Well, then," I said, trying to sound deft and suave, "why don't you let him feel important and buy you dinner, then dump him like a bad habit and meet me somewhere for a few drinks?" I smiled like the Joker and prayed to God like the world was ending.

"Eric, don't you think that would be a pretty horrible thing for me to do?" she said, looking completely astonished. I had blown it. Screwed up. I felt horrible, and wondered what chicken lo mein looks like when its been chewed up, partially digested, mixed with two Chinese beers, and then is returned to the plate on which it was served. I looked at her and felt myself turn pale. Then she smiled, "Dammit, don't cry you dork. Hell yes I'll ditch him. He keeps putting his sweaty hands on my back and calling me little pet names, like we've been dating for a year. Schmuck." Inside my head the Ode to Joy was playing loudly and proudly as hundreds of flags emblazoned with my own face were raised over every home and public building in these United States of America. I gave her my cell phone number and we parted company for three hours.

When I met her that night she was wearing a gray silk shawl over that maroon sundress and her perfume had been refreshed, a perfume that reminded me of clean laundry. I never told her that, and I remain convinced that was the proper course of action. We talked and drank for maybe six hours that night, till the bar closed and the two of us were shooed out by pushy barkeeps and bright light. We were both drunk and punchy, so we caught a taxi back to her place, where we attempted to watch some movie or the other on TV. Instead she fell asleep in my arms and I forced myself to stay awake all night, watching her breathe, listening to her heart beat in the quiet of her apartment. It was the happiest I had ever been.

Over the next year we soon became a couple, and rarely was one of our names mentioned without the other's. That spring Jennifer decided to take a course in drama, just for fun, you know, and she aced it. And that is when she found her place in the world. She stayed at OSU for a terminal degree alright, but it was not a doctorate in biochemistry. Instead she studied drama, getting her MFA the same year I got my PhD. Three weeks before graduation, maybe two and a half years after that night in a Chinese restaurant with Greg and Jinwa, well, I took Jennifer back there, and had a huge ten-course meal served, complete with wine and beer and baijiu liquor. And then, to top the evening off, I handed her an annotated copy of The Metamorphosis. She laughed at it and called me weird, but when she flipped through the paper, a little ring fell out, right into her wine. She spilled the wine all over the table getting it out, then wiped it off over and over with her napkin. She was crying, and the soft red light from the lanterns that hung above us gleamed in her eyes and her tears, and if I hadn't been so in love with her already, I would have fallen for her right then.

"Jennifer, I, I . . . would you . . ." I never finished the sentence. She leaned over the table, pressing her body right into a plate of oranges that had been brought for dessert, and kissed me, kissed me with those perfect lips.

Later we would be married in the biggest wedding I'd ever been to. Her mother cried and hugged me far too often to be normal, and her father threatened me right after the ceremony, then called me son. My dad gave a toast that probably made everyone in attendance blush, my brother danced with every woman there. My fraternity brothers, madmen from an older day, sang and raised the bar tab to record heights, and Jennifer, well, Jennifer was perfect, beautiful. And that night, when we left for the hotel, she was wearing a maroon sundress and a gray shawl, smiling a very toothy smile, smelling like clean laundry.

A year later Jennifer found herself starring in her first movie and won, get this, an Oscar. She asked me that night what I thought about it, and I said, "well, hell, its incredible. Utterly incredible. . . but I like your legs better." It was a corny thing to say, I know, but it did the trick (significantly better than the other humerous retort I had been thinking of, namely "well, its okay, but ain't that a lot of work for a paperweight?"), and she kissed me hard, laughing as she did, biting my lip just a little, just enough to let me know she was for real.