A soft knock on my office door broke my concentration. I knew it wasn't my wife, Carrie — she often burst into my office hoping to catch me at something shameful — and no one else would interrupt my work for anything less than a fire. That certainty caused the hairs on my arms to dance and my stomach to fall into my lap. For three months, a tenuous ceasefire had been in effect as my wife and I had moved into separate bedrooms and isolated areas of our large house. Except for the kitchen, our demilitarized zone, every room was off-limits to one of us. As I verified a complex algorithm that predicted debilitating diseases for people with certain DNA signatures, I didn't want to lose my train of thought, so I scribbled a note to mark my place in the long list of calculations before saying, "Yes?"

The door cracked open only far enough for me to see panic in the eyes of our maid, Rosa.

"Mr. Randle, a gentleman is here to see you." Without waiting for a response, she withdrew and pulled the door shut.

Loud enough to be heard through the door, I said, "Who is it, Rosa?"

She didn't answer, so I had no choice but to trot after her. From my third-floor perch, I scurried down the back staircase to the second-floor gallery and down the ceremonial staircase to the ground floor. Carrie stood beside the staircase, in front of the formal dining room, flanked by Rosa and our yardman, Larry. They were lined up like "See no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil" until Carrie inched back and behind her two protectors, like a quarterback retreating into the pocket formed by burly linemen.

I looked at them with a question on my face, and they stared back. As always, my wife appeared to be a store mannequin in the department where they sell male attractions — buffed and polished, garnished with jewels, adorned in linen and silk. At five-foot-two, Carrie reached only to my shoulders, and in contrast to my lean, long-limbed torso, she was an eye-catching confluence of tanned, sweeping curves. Trying not to leer at her oversized bosom was like trying not to gawk at a car crash. Short blonde hair in the spiky style favored by sexually liberated women, sapphire-blue eyes beaming like expressionless gems on a ragdoll's face, acrylic fingernails done in the trendy French style, and toenails painted a purplish color completed the picture of a forty-four-year-old woman who actively sought the attention of men of all ages.

Today a yellow stone the size of a man's thumb hung from a platinum chain and rested on two inches of her exposed cleavage. Dangling earrings matched the necklace. A diamond-studded anklet encircled one sharply contoured ankle, and rings decorated one thumb and one index finger, but no wedding rings were in evidence.

I paused and shot the three another quizzical look. In return, I got nervous stares, so I headed to the front double doors that stood wide open. A slight black man I didn't recognize fidgeted on my porch. He hadn't been invited in, and he looked too nervous to have accepted. My heart rate changed from a lope to a sprint; everyone was nervous that something bad was about to happen. When I reached the porch, I saw that the visitor had parked his car facing the street on the circular drive, blocking Carrie's red Jaguar convertible on the carriage porch. Carrie reserved that spot for her car because it afforded weather-protected access to the private spaces of the house. Guests used the front double doors that led through the foyer to the formal dining and living rooms. Rosa and I used the garage entrance. This guest had left his engine running and the driver's door open, ready for a getaway, like a bank robber.

I said, "Can I help you?"

"Are you John R. Marks?"

That confused me for a moment. Then I realized he was referring to me. "Yes, I am."

As soon as I identified myself, the nervous young man thrust a thick envelope at me and I reflexively accepted it.

"You've been served, Mr. Marks."

The process server whirled around, trotted down the steps, and jumped into his car. Without a wave goodbye, he stepped on the gas and accelerated down the driveway.

It was not likely that my neighbors had served me some benign summons. It was not likely that I had been served with a business-related lawsuit at my home. There was only one possibility, and it had me swinging between anger and shock.

The three of them were behind me, waiting for a reaction, so I tore the envelope open with my back to them and read the top page of the document.

IN THE CIRCUIT COURT OF CORTES COUNTY, FLORIDA Carrie T. Marks, Plaintiff v. John R. Marks, Defendant SUMMONS

An italicized paragraph of pretentious eighteenth-century legalese demanded that I file a response to this complaint with the clerk of court within thirty days or face a summary judgment in the case. Below the legalese a number of notarized signatures — Carrie's, the circuit court clerk's, and that of Carrie's attorney, a woman named Roberta de Castro with an address in Largo — made the document official. I wasn't accustomed to seeing my name written as "John R. Marks." As a youngster, people had called me "Jack" and my mother had called me "Jackie." Still did on the rare occasions we saw one another. When I enrolled at Georgia Tech, I became J. Randle Marks, person of importance, and I asked people to call me "Randle," my mother's maiden name.

I flipped to the second page and found an oversized bold-type banner:

PETITION FOR DISSOLUTION OF MARRIAGE

Twenty pages of text followed the banner, but I didn't bother to read them. I spun on my heel and charged toward Carrie and her bodyguards. When I was within ten feet of her, I tossed the document at her like I was throwing a Frisbee to a dog. She sidestepped the missile and it came apart, a big chunk flying under the formal dining table, two pages separating and twirling to the floor like elm tree seedpods falling in the springtime.

"You've quit on us! You should be ashamed of yourself," I said as I turned toward the staircase.

Carrie cowered behind Larry and said, "Randle, you have to read this. You can't stay here."

"Don't worry about that. I don't want to be here."

Seeing an opportunity to earn his keep, Larry said, "We don't want any trouble."

I leaned over the bannister and said, "Who's 'we,' punk? You're not involved in this. In fact, you're trespassing, so get out of my house."

Carrie said, "I have possession of the house, Randle. You're the one who has to pack up and leave."

"Keep him on the ground floor where he belongs," I shot back. "If he puts one foot on the stairs, I'll call the cops."

"When are you leaving?"

"I'm going to make some calls. I'll leave when I'm ready."

I continued up the stairs to the second floor and heard Carrie say, "I'll call my lawyer!"

As I walked across the gallery past guestrooms, I shouted, "Call the TV news for all I care."

At the end of the hallway, I climbed the narrow set of stairs to the third-floor attic, my private portion of the residence. In one half of the attic I had stored my life before Carrie — all the paintings Carrie wouldn't hang on her walls, all the framed pictures she wouldn't display, all the trophies and masculine trappings for which there wasn't appropriate space in "her" house. The other half was an enclosed home office, my refuge.

The office measured twenty feet by...