I met Lorraine at a party some years after the memory of Stan and Andrea's weird wedding was nothing more than a dark blot on my mental landscape. Possessed of middling Mediterranean good looks and an average body, she nonetheless stood out from the bunched partygoers for the sheer amount of fun she was having. More so, since no one else -- including me -- seemed to be having a very good time.

But Lorraine, seated on the floor by the CD player, bobbed her head in blissful rhythm to the music, pausing only to sip her tall drink with evident satisfaction, and never failed to give a bright big "Hi!" to anyone who happened to glance her way. Most of the people singled out returned only a desultory grunt, the affair having reached such a desperate sump of surly unease.

I made my way across the room to this bubbly woman whose name I did not yet know, and dropped down beside her. Instantly, I felt immensely happy. I recall wondering, Was this love at first sight?

"Hi! My name's Lorraine!"

"Mitch." We shook hands. "Where can I get a glass of whatever you're drinking?"

"What do you mean?"

"You seem the be the only person here enjoying yourself. It must be the booze."

"Silly! It's only ginger ale. Here, taste."

I did, conscious of the intimacy of the shared drink.

"Anyway, I never touch alcohol."

"What's your secret then?"

Lorraine shrugged, and I thought it the most charming shrug I had ever seen. Her gesture seemed to light up the room.

"Oh, I don't know. It's just a talent, the right mix of brain chemicals. I just seem to enjoy myself wherever I go."

"Life's too short, right?"

"Something like that."

"Think you could enjoy yourself if you left here with me?"

"Sure! I had you spotted first, though."

We grabbed our coats, and stepped out of the apartment. Behind me, I could hear a surge of ecstasy. I could almost feel a wavefront of relief, as if a thousand fat matrons had discarded their whalebone corsets simultaneously.

Eight months later, Lorraine and I were married. Relations never went bad between us. We were always happy at home, when only the two of us were present. Contentment was the rule, for over a year of unruffled domesticity.

But during that same year; I began to lose all my friends. One by one, they fell away from the tree of my life like dessicated autumn leaves. Invitations to dinners, movies, sporting events, parties -- they all died. One-on-one, my buddies still seemed amiable and unchanged, joshing, confiding, treating me as they always had. But about half a year into my marriage, they all simply stopped inviting Lorraine and me as a couple anywhere. Conversations at work actually became quite awkward.

A co-worker would ask, "Hey, folks -- anyone want to catch that concert on Friday with me?"

"Lorraine and I'd love to!"

"On second thought, I don't think I can make it myself."

Affairs finally reached the point where I approached Stan on the subject one day after work at our favorite bar.

"Stan, I have to know. What does everyone have against me and Lorraine? We're pariahs! I feel like a goddamn leper. Did we do something so hideous that we've fallen into some kind of social black hole?"

Stan studied the depths of his beer as if the Delphic Oracle hid at the bottom of the glass. "No, Mitch, it's nothing specific I can point a finger at. It's just, it's just--" He looked up and caught my gaze. "It's just that Lorraine's such a bringdown."

Out: of all the accusations anyone could have leveled against my wife, this was the single one I was completely unprepared for. The charge made no sense at all, given Lorraine's zesty sociability.

"Hello? Are we talking about the same person here? Lorraine's the life of any get-together! When everyone else is wearing a long face, she's got a thousand-watt smile shining. She talks to anyone, acquaintance or stranger. I always feel like a million bucks when I'm with her, and you should too."

"But nobody else does, Mitch. It's just a fact. No one wanted to admit it at first, but the pattern eventually became too obvious to ignore. Whenever Lorraine shows up, the good times fall to ashes. She's some kind of -- I don't know -- some kind of jinx. It's like she's got an invisible albatross tied around her neck -- just like that guy at my wedding."

Mention of this ancient incident snapped a trap in my brain. "You mean that happy stranger we could never identify? I don't see the connection--"

But I did. Painful as the revelation was, I could no longer deny it. If I were to believe my friend -- and the suppressed evidence of many memories -- then both Lorraine and that uninvited guest served as some kind of happiness sink, sucking all the ambient joy into themselves. I was immune only because I resided somehow in the sphere of her influence.

Stunned, I stood up from my stool and started to leave.

"Mitch, don't go. You're not hurt, are you?"

I was very hurt, in some deep way I couldn't quite identify. Until this moment I had believed I loved Lorraine deeply. But now I began to fear that what I had identified as love was only some kind of shared spillage from her unnatural ration of happiness.

Bereft of friends, Lorraine and I took to spending a lot of our recreational time in public places: restaurants, coffee-houses and bars. And in these venues I witnessed with growing mute and stifled horror the exact phenomenon that Stan had described.

Whenever Lorraine and I entered a place, the level of joy dropped like a shotgun-blasted duck. It never happened to me alone, either, only when we were together. So it had to be Lorraine who was cursed.

Within me every day from this point two feelings warred: grief and remorse at these impossible disruptions, and a unending surfeit of unwarranted happiness.

And of course, I never said a word about any of this to Lorraine.

How could I? She was always so happy. It would have been a crime against nature to shatter that placid lake of tranquility.

From the first day of our marriage, Lorraine had insisted on having one night out alone every week. I couldn't object, since I reserved the same right for myself -- even moreso as our social status deteriorated, and I sought lone relief. Lorraine never really got too specific about these solo excursions of hers. I was led, I now realize, to make vague, unconfirmed assumptions about old girlfriends, hospital visits, spinster aunts, bowling leagues, health club appointments -- whatever plausible reason might suit me. Still, how could I possibly protest? Lorraine always returned home at a reasonable hour, fresh as a corsage, no trace of carnal infidelity about her. Her affectionate attitude toward me and her desire for lovemaking remained unaltered. Curiously though, her homecoming after a night out never brought with it the same degree of happiness I felt when, say, I re-encountered her after a day at the office.

I don't quite remember now exactly when I resolved to follow her on one of her nights out. I suspect I reached that dire decision spontaneously. We emptied a Starbucks one night in a quarter of an hour flat. But once the notion had taken root, it soon flowered into action.