Death. Her father and the first Frank within ten months of each other; both cardiac patients a short time and then gone. A little over two hundred thousand dollars in life insurance and Chrysler Corporation stock. Restless. A chance to do something else, be someone else. Sold the house in Grosse Pointe and moved to Lauderdale. Why? Why not? Got a job in real estate. Boring. Quit. And was introduced to Frank DiCilia at the Palm Bay Club.

The real and authentic Frank DiCilia out of Detroit newspaper stories about grand jury indictments and Organized Crime Strike-force Investigations, linked to perjury trials, the Teamsters, Hoffa’s disappearance.

The widow and the widower, both eligible, both eyeing each other, but for different reasons.

She said to herself, This isn’t you at all. Is it? Fascinated by the man and all the things he must know but never talked about. She liked his hands, even the diamond on the little finger. She liked his hair, still dark and thick, parted on the right side. She liked the dreamy expression in his eyes and the way he looked at her-Frank DiCilia looking at her-and she liked to look back at him calmly to show she wasn’t afraid. Not feeling restless anymore. She could not imagine the first wispy-haired Frank with the second dark Frank. Engineers said they were engineers and drew cross-section pictures on paper napkins of how things worked. Frank and his associates never said what they were or wrote anything down. She asked Frank DiCilia directly, “What do you do?”

He said, “I’m retired.”

She said, “From what?”

He said, “Industrial laundry business.”

She said, “Are you in the Mafia?”

He said, “That’s in the movies.”

She visited his home in the Harbor Beach section of Lauderdale-her present address, 1 Isla Bahía-and said, “The laundry business must’ve been pretty good.”