He said, “I’m in a little real estate, too.”

She said, looking at the decor, the Sotheby estate-sale furnishings and Italian marble, “You could charge admission.”

He said, “If you’re not comfortable I’ll sell it.” But did not mention it again until May, five and a half years later.

She remembered another girl by the name of Hill, Virginia Hill, on television during the Kefauver investigations, the girl in the wide-brimmed hat and sunglasses who was the girl friend of a gangster. Karen had watched her, fascinated, wondering what it would be like.

That was part of it. Finding out. To walk with Frank DiCilia, aware of it; to enter La Gorce, Palm Bay, Joe Sonken’s place in Hollywood and feel eyes on her. Playing a role and enjoying it. It was real.

Julie was married to a film stuntman. She was working and couldn’t come to the wedding, but wrote a long letter of love and congratulations that ended with, “I knew you had it in you somewhere, you devil. Wow! My Mom!”

Karen’s mother, only nine years older than Frank, came to the wedding, drank champagne and said, very seriously, “But he’s Italian, isn’t he?” Her mother went home, and Karen went home three years later for her mother’s funeral.

What was going on? Everybody dying. The first Frank and her father, then her mother and the second Frank. Feeling close to so many people for years and then feeling alone, the survivor. Losing touch with old friends in Detroit. Living a different life. Having no one to talk to with any degree of intimacy. Anxious to meet people, have at least one close friend. Preferably a man.

She became more aware of the retired older people in Florida. More women than men in the high-rises that lined the beaches north and south of Lauderdale. Women driving alone in four-door sedans. Women having dinner with other women. Karen was forty-four. She said, I don’t look like those women.