Evita Levine stood in front of her dressing mirror with her nightdress hanging open. She was not unhappy with what she saw. On the lee side of forty, she remained an exceptionally attractive woman. There was not yet a line on her exquisite face, and her wide-set olive eyes shone as vibrant as ever. Her body, once lithe and thin, had come full in recent years, but she’d adapted well, learning to present her new curves to considerable advantage. Perhaps to prove the point, she had recently begun a running count of sidewalk stares and unsolicited smiles. Had she been of a more empirical nature, Evita would have foreseen that she kept no baseline survey against which to compare her tally. All the same, her analysis did uncover one unexpected new truth—the men who noticed her nowadays were of greater maturity themselves, and this she took as a positive. Like fine wine to a connoisseur’s palate, she had bettered with age.

A shuffling in the hallway outside the room, most likely her husband, caused her to close the folds of her nightdress. She registered the familiar squeak of the back door swinging open, and amid the midday Tel Aviv traffic Evita heard a hard clatter as he emptied the kitchen garbage into a can outside. It was the most initiative he’d shown in a month.

She went to her closet and dragged a long index finger across her options. There was the new set of black undergarments, but that would require stockings and heels. Or she could take a more virginal approach, a white slip under her beige satin dress, perhaps with the new pearls, the ones she kept hidden in the toe of an old tennis shoe. She sighed, knowing what he would want, and reached for the black stockings.