He might deny it out right. Or he might say, “Yeah, sometimes I go to Boca. Not that it’s any of your fucking business.”

Then what? She’d have to get mad or pout or act hurt.

So Karen didn’t say a word about the real estate woman. Instead, she drove her matching white Caddy Seville up to Boca one Friday afternoon, to the big pink condominium that looked like a Venetian palace.

She located Frank’s white Seville in the dim parking area beneath the building, on the ocean side, backed it out of the numbered space with the spare set of keys she’d brought, left Frank’s car sitting in the aisle, got into her own car again and drove her white Seville into the side of his white Seville three times, smashing in both doors and the front fender of Frank’s car, destroying her own car’s grille and headlamps and drove back to Lauderdale. When Frank came home he looked from one matching Seville to the other. Karen waited, but he didn’t say a word about the cars. The next day he had them towed away and new matching gray ones delivered.

Weeks later, in the living room, she said, “I’m getting tired of tennis.” And said to the dog, sniffing around her feet, “Gretchen, leave, will you? Get out of here.”

“Play golf,” Frank said. He patted his leg and the gray and white schnauzer jumped up on his lap.

“I don’t care for golf.”

“Join some ladies’ group.” Gently stroking the schnauzer.

“I’ve done ladies’ groups.”

“Take up fishing, I’ll get you a boat.”

“Do you know what I do?” Karen said. “I exist. I sit in the sun. I try to think up work for Marta and for when the gardener comes-” She paused a moment. “When we got married-I mean at our wedding reception, you know what my mother said to me?”

“What?”

“She said, ‘I hope you realize he’s Italian.’ She didn’t know anything else, just your name.”