Now, I enjoy bananas foster. If you say to me, “Derek, do you enjoy bananas foster?” I say, “Yes, I do enjoy bananas foster.” And I might be curious as to whether or not you enjoy bananas foster, in which case I would ask you, “Do you like bananas foster?” And then you would, presumably, offer an opinion on bananas foster.

But I’m at dinner with A.J., and she’s looking over the desert menu. She wrinkles her face up in a kind of grimace, and asks me, “Der, how do you feel about bananas foster?”

I say, “I enjoy bananas foster.”

And then she says nothing. She doesn’t follow up at all. She holds the menu higher over her face so I can’t see her. And now I’m just staring at the logo on the back of the menu, because I don’t have a desert menu. I told the waiter that I was “not interested in desert.”

On some level, when you ask a question like that, aren’t you asking it because you yourself have an opinion on the subject? Like, if I say, “How do you feel about Andre Iguodala?” I’m probably asking you because I really want to say something about Andre Iguodala. In fact, I feel strongly that, although he’s a nice player, he’s grossly overpaid and is, at best, a number three scoring option on a good team.

A.J. is always telling me to “reciprocate.” She watches a basketball game. I should watch America’s Next Top Bathroom Remodeler. She cooks. I should do the dishes, or cook the next time. She buys me old records she thinks I might like. I should surprise her with the occasional “thoughtful gift.”

I am against the whole idea of acting like yourself in public, but I find myself slapping the menu out of A.J.’s hand. “How do you feel about bananas foster?” I ask her. “Don’t you want to tell me?”

“It’s been a while since I’ve had it,” she says, as she reaches toward the floor to retrieve the menu. “I just like the way it sounds.”

“But that doesn’t make sense,” I tell her, “Why would you ask my preference, if you don’t want to put forth your—”

“Derek, Jesus. Not everything has to be systematic. Can’t I just say something?”

I consider this question for too long because she answers it herself. “Yes,” she tells me, “Yes, I can just say something. I can just ask an innocuous question.”

I consider the idea of “innocuous questions.” Though I don’t like to admit it, there certainly must be such a thing as an “innocuous question.” And if there can be innocuous questions, there can also be innocuous conversations, about, say, bananas foster and the conventions of polite conversation.

I see that A.J. is extraordinarily angry, and I mean “extraordinary” in its literal sense: she is angrier than she ordinarily is. She’s perched at the very edge of her chair, and she’s coiled and ready to release, like a compressed spring. And I see that, although there can be innocuous conversations, this has not been one. I can see it on A.J.’s face, and I can feel it in my heart, or in my soul, or wherever one feels things that one cannot physically feel.