“How considerably?”

“He’s sixty-eight. She’s thirty-one.”

“Aha,” I said.

“ ‘Aha’?”

“I’m jumping to a conclusion,” I said.

“Sadly, the conclusion is correct. She had an affair.”

“ Lot of that going around,” I said.

“You disapprove?” Elizabeth said.

“I guess it’s probably better if people can be faithful to each other,” I said.

“She’s not a bad woman,” Elizabeth said.

“Affairs aren’t usually about good and bad,” I said.

“What do you think they’re about?”

“Need,” I said.

Elizabeth sat back a little in her chair.

“You’re not what I expected,” she said.

“Hell,” I said. “I’m not what I expected. What would you like me to do?”

“I’m sorry. I guess I’m still testing you.”

“Maybe you could test my ability to listen to what you want,” I said.

She smiled at me.

“Yes,” she said. “In brief, the man she had the affair with took her for some money and ditched her.”

“How much?” I said.

“Actually, just enough to hurt her feelings. Restaurants, hotels, car rentals, a small gift now and then.”

“And?” I said.

“That was it,” Elizabeth said, “for a while. Then one day she saw him, in a restaurant, with a woman whom she knew casually.”

“Nest prospecting,” I said.

“Apparently,” Elizabeth said. “Anyway, she talked to the woman the next day to tell her a little about her experience with this guy…”

“Whose name is?” I said.

“Gary Eisenhower,” Elizabeth said.

“Gary Eisenhower?” I said.

Elizabeth shrugged.

“That’s what he tells them,” she said.

“Them?”

“The two women talked, and then they networked, and one thing led to another, and in ways too boring to detail here, they discovered that he had exploited four of them, often simultaneously, over the past ten years.”

“Have you met this guy?”

“No.”