Edith is well into her fifties when she discovers her husband’s decades-long prostitute habit. The lurid nature of it all bothers her, but what really kicks her in the gut is the cost. “I don’t want to sound mercenary,” she tells me, “but twenty years of paid sex—that’s the price of a mortgage!” As she sits at home in their small, rented one-bedroom poring over the credit card bills, those tens of thousands of dollars hurt much more than the sex they paid for.
