Elmore Leonard: Gold Coast

“I don’t get it. Five years, you don’t say a word-”

“Five and a half,” Karen said.

“Okay, there’s some very rare, valuable pieces here. I happen to like this kind of stuff,” Frank said. “But anything you don’t like, sell it. Redecorate the whole place if you want.”

“Keep me busy.”

“What’s the matter with you?”

Saying she was bored and irritable-while he went off to visit his girl friend in Boca, a real estate woman. Five and a half years of playing the good wife and now having the Bible thrown at her.

Karen made a mistake then, but was too angry to realize it at the time.

She gave Frank an ultimatum. She said, “No more double standard. If it’s all right for you to fool around, it’s all right for me to fool around. I may not want to, but I’ll do it, buddy, as a matter of principle and you can see how you like it.”

Frank seemed tired. He shook his head and said, “Karen, Karen, Karen-” and began stroking the dog again.

She did have misgivings later, twinges in her stomach whenever she thought about it and realized she had actually threatened him to his face. If that wasn’t being a big girl, what was? She was relieved he never brought it up and would reassure herself with thoughts like, Of course not. Frank knew she’d never have an affair. Frank knew she had simply overstated, that was all, to make a point.

She would replay the scene in her mind and revise it as she went along, keeping her voice in control, maintaining poise. Relying more on innuendo than outright threat. Hinting that she might fool around rather than throwing it in his face. She would recall later that the scene, the argument, had taken place May 10. A date to remember.

On December 2, the same year, Frank was admitted to Holy Cross Hospital with an oxygen mask pressed to his face, a rescue-unit fireman pounding on his chest. He died that afternoon in the Intensive Care Unit at age sixty-one.

Karen couldn’t believe it. Forty-four years old and widowed for the second time, having outlived two Franks, one an automotive engineer, the other with “varied and different business interests.” Aware of herself and feeling-how? analyzing it-feeling relief after the funeral and the mile-long procession with police escort to Memorial Gardens. Feeling-afraid to admit it at first-great. Free. More than that, excited. No more wondering after five years if she’d made a terrible mistake. Off the hook and looking forward to a new life.

Then discovering within the next few months that Frank DiCilia had as tight a hold on her dead as he did when he was alive.

She would look back. How did I get here? Trying to see a pattern, a motive.

Restless?

Karen Hill. A nice girl. Polite, obedient, a practicing Catholic. B-student through Dominican High and the University of Michigan, arts major. Accepted popular ideas about happiness along with a list of shoulds and shouldn’ts.

But, looking back, did she?

Yes, pretty much. Meet a nice guy with a future and get married, raise a family. The nice guy was Frank Stohler, Michigan ’52. Neck a lot but don’t go to bed with him until married: June, 1954, at St. Paul’s On-the-Lake. Reception, Grosse Pointe Yacht Club. Finally to bed with big, considerate Frank Stohler who never made a sound or said a word making love. Rhythm method, no Pill yet. A daughter, Julie, born September, 1956.

The period with the first Frank was a lump of time. What did they do? Lived in two houses. Joined Lochmoor, the Detroit Athletic Club. Spent an annual business weekend at the Greenbriar. Went to Chrysler Corporation new-model show, SAE conventions. Restless. Was this her role? Played tennis, racquetball, paddleball, a little bridge, argued with Julie. Worried about her. Went to the theater or a dinner party every weekend. Refused to let Julie go to Los Angeles to study drama. She went anyway and was now appearing almost daily in As the World Turns and was good in a young bitchy part. What else?

Death. Her father and the first Frank within ten months of each other; both cardiac patients a short time and then gone. A little over two hundred thousand dollars in life insurance and Chrysler Corporation stock. Restless. A chance to do something else, be someone else. Sold the house in Grosse Pointe and moved to Lauderdale. Why? Why not? Got a job in real estate. Boring. Quit. And was introduced to Frank DiCilia at the Palm Bay Club.

The real and authentic Frank DiCilia out of Detroit newspaper stories about grand jury indictments and Organized Crime Strike-force Investigations, linked to perjury trials, the Teamsters, Hoffa’s disappearance.

The widow and the widower, both eligible, both eyeing each other, but for different reasons.

She said to herself, This isn’t you at all. Is it? Fascinated by the man and all the things he must know but never talked about. She liked his hands, even the diamond on the little finger. She liked his hair, still dark and thick, parted on the right side. She liked the dreamy expression in his eyes and the way he looked at her-Frank DiCilia looking at her -and she liked to look back at him calmly to show she wasn’t afraid. Not feeling restless anymore. She could not imagine the first wispy-haired Frank with the second dark Frank. Engineers said they were engineers and drew cross-section pictures on paper napkins of how things worked. Frank and his associates never said what they were or wrote anything down. She asked Frank DiCilia directly, “What do you do?”

He said, “I’m retired.”

She said, “From what?”

He said, “Industrial laundry business.”

She said, “Are you in the Mafia?”

He said, “That’s in the movies.”

She visited his home in the Harbor Beach section of Lauderdale-her present address, 1 Isla Bahía-and said, “The laundry business must’ve been pretty good.”

He said, “I’m in a little real estate, too.”

She said, looking at the decor, the Sotheby estate-sale furnishings and Italian marble, “You could charge admission.”

He said, “If you’re not comfortable I’ll sell it.” But did not mention it again until May, five and a half years later.

She remembered another girl by the name of Hill, Virginia Hill, on television during the Kefauver investigations, the girl in the wide-brimmed hat and sunglasses who was the girl friend of a gangster. Karen had watched her, fascinated, wondering what it would be like.

That was part of it. Finding out. To walk with Frank DiCilia, aware of it; to enter La Gorce, Palm Bay, Joe Sonken’s place in Hollywood and feel eyes on her. Playing a role and enjoying it. It was real.

Julie was married to a film stuntman. She was working and couldn’t come to the wedding, but wrote a long letter of love and congratulations that ended with, “I knew you had it in you somewhere, you devil. Wow! My Mom!”

Karen’s mother, only nine years older than Frank, came to the wedding, drank champagne and said, very seriously, “But he’s Italian, isn’t he?” Her mother went home, and Karen went home three years later for her mother’s funeral.

What was going on? Everybody dying. The first Frank and her father, then her mother and the second Frank. Feeling close to so many people for years and then feeling alone, the survivor. Losing touch with old friends in Detroit. Living a different life. Having no one to talk to with any degree of intimacy. Anxious to meet people, have at least one close friend. Preferably a man.

She became more aware of the retired older people in Florida. More women than men in the high-rises that lined the beaches north and south of Lauderdale. Women driving alone in four-door sedans. Women having dinner with other women. Karen was forty-four. She said, I don’t look like those women.