That card had cleared everything for eleven years: the boat trailer, the second bathroom, four days in Reno his wife still believes were a conference. On a Saturday at the hardware store he bought $61.40 of nothing much, caulk and a hose fitting and batteries, and the terminal went red, and the cashier read the word off the screen out loud.

He tapped it again, then once more, then a fourth time while the man behind him shifted his weight and looked at the ceiling. He said something about a scratched chip. He left the basket at the register and sat in the parking lot with the engine off, doing arithmetic whose answer he already had, deciding which account his wife could be told about.