He was a senior vice president for USBank in the Carolinas and routinely was required to travel to Charlotte. This he rather much enjoyed, for it was good to get away from wife and teenaged children whenever one could, and only his colleagues in their lofty offices understood his pressures. Only comrades understood the fear lurking in every banker’s heart that one day Cahoon, who tolerated nothing, would inform hard workers like Mauney that they were out of favor with the crown. Mauney dropped his tennis bag in his recently remodeled kitchen and opened the door of the refrigerator, ready for another Amstel Light.

“Honey?” he called out, popping off the cap.

“Yes, dear.” She briskly walked in. “How was tennis?”

“We won.”

“Good for you!” She beamed.

“Withers must have double-faulted twenty times.” He swallowed. “Foot-faulted like hell, too, but we didn’t call those. What’d you guys eat?” He barely looked at Polly Mauney, his wife of twenty-two years.

“Spaghetti Bolognese, salad, seven grain bread.” She went through his tennis bag, fishing out cold sweat-soaked, smelly shorts, shirt, socks, and jock strap, as she always had and would.

“Got any pasta left?”

“Plenty. I’d be delighted to fix you a plate, dear.”

“Maybe later.” He fell into stretches. “I’m really getting tight. You don’t think it’s arthritis, do you?”

“Of course not. Would you like me to rub you down, sweetheart?” she said.

While he was drifting during his massage, she would bring up what her plastic surgeon had said when she had inquired about a laser treatment to get rid of fine lines on her face and a copper laser treatment to eliminate the brown spot on her chin. Polly Mauney had been filled with terror when her plastic surgeon had made it clear that no light source could substitute for a scalpel. That was how bad she had gotten.

“Mrs. Mauney,” her plastic surgeon had told her. “I don’t think you’re going to be happy with the results. The lines most troublesome are too deep.”

He traced them on her face so gently. She relaxed, held hostage by tenderness. Mrs. Mauney was addicted to going to the doctor. She liked being touched, looked at, analyzed, scrutinized, and checked on after surgery or changes in her medication.

“Well,” Mrs. Mauney had told her plastic surgeon, “if that’s what you recommend. And I suppose I am to assume you are referring to a face lift.”

“Yes. And the eyes.” He held up a mirror to show her.

The tissue above and below her eyes was beginning to droop and puff. This was irreversible. No amount of cold water splashes, cucumbers, or cutting down on alcohol or salt would make a significant difference, she was informed.

“What about my breasts?” she then had inquired.

Her plastic surgeon stepped back to look. “What does your husband think?” he asked her.

“I think he’d like them bigger.”

Her doctor laughed. Why didn’t she state the obvious? Unless a man was a pedophile or gay, he liked them bigger. His gay female patients felt the same way. They were just better sports about it, or pretended to be, if the one they loved didn’t have much to offer.