The monthly potluck.

Go around the room, Hank said, tell us a story of 1. how you met, and/or 2. something in history relating to your family.

I suddenly realized I never did know how a particular set of dear friends had found each other. I think they were living about two hours apart when they did.

She turned that part of the answer over to him, and what he said was, There was this conference. The usual tech stuff; she was representing her company, I, mine: and it suddenly came to me that in all the places in all of the universe to come it would never bring the two of us to the same place at the same time again. Ever. This was it.

Unless.

And he realized, having chatted with her awhile, how much he wanted it to.

Forty-two years. They are each other’s life, the universe, and everything.