“I did have an affair with Gary Eisenhower,” she said. “I don’t deny it. But it was not because Jim and I don’t love each other.”

“What was it because?” I said.

She blushed slowly but pervasively. It was kind of interesting watching the blush spread slowly over her face and down her neck, and onto the small expanse of chest that her white shirt collar exposed. She looked as if she might be blushing to her ankles.

“I’m oversexed,” she said.

“Doesn’t make you a bad person,” I said.

“It does,” she said. “I keep promising myself it will never happen again. But it does. I can’t seem to stop myself.”

“So Gary Eisenhower isn’t the first,” I said.

“God, no,” she said. “I once had sex with a man who came to plow the driveway. I’m… This is so embarrassing… I’m insatiable.”

“And your husband’s not enough,” I said.

“We have a good sex life. I’m just… I’ve fought it since junior high school. I am some sort of nymphomaniac.”

I nodded.

“I think ‘nymphomania’ is sort of an unfashionable term these days,” I said.

“Whatever,” she said, her face still bright red under her makeup. “I’m addicted to sex. It is a shameful thing, and it has made my life very difficult.”

“Ever talk to anyone about it?” I said.

“I talked once with the minister at our church, before I got married.”

“And?”

“We prayed together,” she said.

“At least he didn’t ask you out,” I said.

“Excuse me?”

I shook my head.

“My mouth sometimes operates independent of my brain,” I said.

She smiled brightly.

“For a little while after we prayed together, it seemed almost as if it had worked…”

“But?” I said.

She shook her head.

“It didn’t,” she said.

Her blush had faded. She seemed now to be having an easy conversation with a casual acquaintance about a perfectly pleasant subject. No wonder the praying had worked for a while.