An hour after Rita left, Alice was climbing the walls. Here she was, all alone in this big, rich house, and for the first time since she'd been married to the reverend, she realized she was bored to death. Ordinarily she would have been content to lie out on the back patio and sunbathe, or to tune in her soap operas, or to call some of her other very rich friends on the telephone and gossip for hours. Today none of those things appealed to her. In fact, today her usual activities seemed down right boring and stupid.

She checked the calendar and saw that her husband wouldn't return from his current business trip for over a week. And then he'd be home only three days before flying off on another of his fund-raising missions. He preferred to call his trips evangelical crusades, but they were really nothing mote than money crusades, fund raisers calculated to bring in millions of dollars more every year. The more money the reverend brought in, the more obsessed he became with bringing in even more. When he was home, he hardly spoke to Alice, and when he did speak he was thinking about his latest financial figures. Even when he fucked her, which was about once a month if she was lucky, she could tell his mind was elsewhere, preoccupied with money and business.

Alice wandered around the house, up and down the stairs, wandered into the back yard to look at the flower beds, thought about taking a dip in the pool but decided the water was too cool today. She went to the kitchen and looked into her well-stocked refrigerator, thought about eating but realized she wasn't hungry.