“Should we get this?” his wife asked him. It was a box, a box for holding photos or papers or something. “I like the pattern on it.”

He didn’t want the box. He didn’t want anything.

NAPLES FLORIDA BY ALISON CHRISTY 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 06

He got the call on Thursday and booked a flight to Florida.

“It’s a bad market,” the realtor said. “No one’s buying houses.”

“Someone’s buying houses,” his wife said. “Rich people.”

“Rich people aren’t buying this house.”

The house was too small, for one thing, and it had a seventies feel, even though his mother had bought it in

1991. One of the windows was cracked and the ceilings were low; the wallpaper was yellowed from his mother’s cigarettes and the kitchen countertops were laminate, made to look like wood.

“We could keep it,” he said to his wife. He was joking. “We could move to Florida.”

His wife rolled her eyes.

“Somebody’s buying houses,” she said.

Naples, Florida was like Naples, Italy, except that instead of piazzas and castles there were strip malls, and instead of ancient buildings there were palm trees and pale beaches, and instead of young Italians there were old Ameri…