Especially I’m not gonna look dumb, like have people point to me and say, ‘Yeah, that’s the guy, his wife’s ballin’ the tennis pro, the dumb fuck’s paying the bill,’ anything like that. No-you get bored and a little irritable, okay, use your head, work it out some way. But don’t ever lie to me, all right? Or threaten me, like you’re gonna pay me back for something. I know all about paying back. I could write a book about paying back then look at it and realize I left a few things out.”

“My mother was right,” Karen said. “You can do anything you want, but I can’t.”

“Your mother- You’re a big girl,” Frank said, “you were a big girl, what?, forty years old when we got married. You should know a few things by forty years old, uh, what it’s gonna be like married to a half-Italian with varied and different business interests. You know what it’s like? In the Bible. You got this house, eight hundred grand-sightseers come by the Intercoastal in the boats, look at it, ‘Jesus Christ, imagine living in a place like that.’ You got the apartment in Boca on the ocean. You got clothes, anything you want to buy. Servants, cars, clubs-”

“Go on,” Karen said. “I have a dog-”

“Place in the Keys. Friends-”

“Your friends.”

“I’m saying it’s like in the Bible, you got anything you want to make you happy. Except there’s one thing you’re not allowed to do, and it’s not even unreasonable, it’s the natural law.”

“What is?”

“A wife’s faithful to her husband, subject to him. It’s in the Bible.”

“If I don’t tell you what I’m doing, I’m being unfaithful?”

“What do you want to argue for? Haven’t I been good to you? Jesus Christ, look around here, this place. The paintings, the furniture-”

“Your first wife’s antiques.”

“I don’t get it. Five years, you don’t say a word-”

“Five and a half,” Karen said.