There was a party in the Dark Harbor penthouse. Such a glamorous party. The men wore black tie. The women wore sleek black. They looked like me, only better, smoother, thinner. These were people in charge of their futures. They didn’t have my half-life as the soon-to-be-shed wife. They were more alive than I would ever be.

I sighed and turned away from my beautiful neighbors. I drifted back into our bedroom like a lost soul, crawled in next to my unloving husband, and fell into a fitful sleep.

Eric woke me up at five-thirty when he left for the hospital.

“Good-bye,” I said.

His only answer was a slammed door.

That night, while getting ready for bed, I looked in my dressing room mirror and panicked. I’d always had a cute figure, but now it had thickened. I had love handles. Where did those come from? I swear I didn’t have them two days ago. I burst into tears. I couldn’t help it.

I ran into the bathroom to stifle the sobs I knew would irritate Eric. But it was too late. “Now what?” he snarled. “I can’t take these mood swings. Get hormone replacement therapy or something.”

He was definitely getting something. I’d found the Viagra bottle in his drawer when I put away his socks. It was half empty. He wasn’t popping those pills for me. We hadn’t made love in months.

No pill would cure my problem. Not unless I took a whole bunch at once and drifted into the long sleep. That prospect was looking more attractive every day. Didn’t someone say, “The idea is to die young as late as possible”? Time was running out for me.

I spent another restless night, haunting the balcony like a ghost, watching another party across the way at Dark Harbour. Once again, I drifted off to sleep as Eric was getting ready for work.

Tuesday was a brilliant, sunlit day. Even I couldn’t feel gloomy. I was living in paradise. I put on my new Escada outfit—tight black jeans and a white jacket so soft, it was pettable. I smiled into the mirror. I looked good, thanks to top-notch tailoring and a body shaper that nearly strangled my middle.

I didn’t care. It nipped in my waist, lifted my behind, and thrust out my boobs. I sashayed out to the condo garage like a model on a catwalk. A sexy, young model.

I had a charity lunch at the Aldritch Hotel. I was eating—or rather, not eating—lunch to support the Drexal School. I didn’t have any children, but everyone in our circle supported the Drex. As a Drexal Angel, I paid one hundred dollars for a limp chicken Caesar salad and stale rolls.

My silver Jaguar roared up under the hotel portico. A hunky valet raced out to take my keys. The muscular valet ogled my long legs and sensational spike heels, and I felt that little frisson a woman gets when a handsome man thinks she’s hot.

Then his eyes reached my face and I saw his disappointment. The valet didn’t bother to hide it. I was old.

I handed him my keys. The valet tore off my ticket without another glance at me. I felt like he’d ripped my heart in half. I used to be a beauty. Heads would turn when I strutted into a room. Now if anyone stared at me, it was because I had a soup stain on my suit or toilet paper stuck on my shoe. I was becoming invisible.

I caught a glimpse of myself in the hotel’s automatic doors. Who was I kidding in my overpriced, overdressed outfit? I was losing my looks—and my husband.

I stopped in the ladies room to check my makeup. My lipstick had a nasty habit of creeping into the cracks at the lip line. I used my liner pencil, then stopped in a stall, grateful it had a floor-to-ceiling louvered door. I needed extra privacy to wriggle out of the body shaper.

I heard the restroom door open. Two women were talking. One sounded like my best friend, Margaret. The other was my neighbor, Patricia. I’d known them for years. I nearly called out, but they were deep in conversation and I didn’t want to interrupt.

“…such a cliché,” Margaret said, in her rich-girl drawl.

“I can’t believe it,” Patricia said. Her voice was a New York honk. “Eric is boinking his secretary?”

Eric. My husband, Eric? Panic squeezed me tighter than any body shaper. There were lots of Erics.

“Office manager,” Margaret said. “But it’s the same thing. She’s twenty-five, blond, and desperate to catch a doctor. It looks like Eric will let himself get caught.”

“Can you blame him?” Patricia honked. “Katherine’s let herself go.”

Katherine. No, there weren’t many Erics with Katherines. I felt sick. I sat down on the toilet seat and listened.

“She won’t even get an eye job,” Patricia said. “And her own husband is a plastic surgeon. How rejecting is that? Eric did my eyes. Then he did the rest of me.” Her words filled the room. I couldn’t escape them.

“You slept with him?” Margaret sounded mildly shocked.

“Everyone does,” Patricia said.

I could almost hear her shrug. I wanted to rush out and strangle her. I wanted to blacken her stretched eyelids. But I was half-dressed, and my jiggly middle would prove she was right.

“It’s part of the package,” Patricia said. “My skin never looked better than when I was getting Dr. Eric’s special injections.”

“You’re awful,” Margaret said. Then my best friend laughed.

“It’s part of my charm,” Patricia said. “But someone better clue in Katherine, so she can line up a good divorce lawyer before it’s too late.”

“It’s already too late,” Margaret said. “Eric’s already seen the best lawyer in Lauderdale, Jack Kellern.”

“And you didn’t tell Katherine that Eric hired Jack the Ripper?”

“How could I? He’s my husband.”

And you, Margaret, are my best friend. Or rather, you were. Margaret had also had her eyes done by Jack. Did she get the full package, too?

I waited until my faithless friends shut the restroom door. I rocked back and forth on the toilet in stunned misery. It was one thing to suspect your husband was playing around. It was another to learn of his betrayal—and your best friend’s. I was a joke, a laughingstock. I had even less time than I thought.

I pulled my clothes together, pasted on a smile, and found my table. A waitress set my salad in front of me. I studied the woman. She was about my age, with a weary face, limp brown hair, and thick, sensible shoes. This time next year, would I be serving salads to the ladies who lunched?

Only if I were lucky. I didn’t even have the skills to be a waitress. I picked at my salad but couldn’t eat a bite. No one noticed. Well-bred women didn’t have appetites.

A polite clink of silverware on glasses signaled that the headmaster was at the podium. He was a lean man with a good suit and a sycophantic smile.

“You’ve heard that Drexal has one of the finest academic records…” he began. My thoughts soon drifted away.

Menopause had killed my marriage, but it had been dying for a long time. I knew exactly when it had received the fatal wound: the day my husband asked to cut on me.

I was thirty-five, but looked ten years younger. Eric was itching to get out his scalpel and work on my face.

“Just let me do your eyes,” he said, “and take a few tucks. If you start early, you’ll look younger longer.”

“I look fine,” I said.

“You don’t trust me,” he said.

“Of course I do,” I said. “You’re the most successful plastic surgeon in Broward County.”

But not the most skilled. Eric was right. I didn’t trust him. He’d never killed anyone, unlike some Florida face sculptors. But I saw his work everywhere. I could recognize his patients: Caucasian women of a certain age with the telltale Chinese eyes and stretched skin.

Eric gave them face-lifts when no other doctor would. He’d give them as many as seven or eight, until their skin was so tight they could bikini wax their upper lip.

I pleaded fear of anesthesia. I invented an aunt who died from minor surgery when I was a child. But Eric knew the truth: I was afraid to let him touch me. I was his in every way, except one. I would not surrender to his knife.