The Ditto List Read online

  She frowned and grew angry again. “Will I be asked this in court? Somehow I doubt it.”

  “I doubt it, too. So why did you?”

  “Do you really want to know, or are you just playing with me?”

  “I want to know. I only play with women after hours,” he added, hoping to keep her mad.

  She thrust her jaw as though it were a cudgel. “Chas was the first man who made love to me. I believed what my mother told me—that sex without marriage was a sin. I wanted the sex so I took the marriage. Neither one of them turned out to be as good as I thought.”

  “So it was convention and nothing more, is that what you’re saying?”

  She paused long enough to recall an emotion that had blazed its brightest fifteen years before. “Oh, Chas is not an ogre. He’s charming, or he was. For some reason he decided he wanted me so he did what he thought it would take to get me—flowers, poetry, picnics, presents. And I bought it all. I truly loved him, in the beginning.”

  “And last night, when you were making what you thought was love, as I believe you put it? Did you feel the same way?”

  She shook her head.

  “Why not?”

  She gathered herself for an answer that would have meaning. “I’m not sure I can tell you what happened,” she began. “I just know that a few years ago life began to be very hard for me. The things I had enjoyed for ten years didn’t seem to be enough any longer.”

  “Things like what?”

  “Mothering. Cooking. Playing bridge, playing golf, playing house … playing. It was as though I’d been given a blood transfusion; my personality changed completely.” She paused and sighed, weary. “But then I suppose you’ve heard all this before. I mean, if I know anything at all about myself it’s that I’m not unique.”

  “My memory’s so bad it doesn’t matter whether I’ve heard it before or not. Go on.”

  “Well, while I struggled to find out how to deal with those new feelings, Chas was no help at all. Which wasn’t surprising, I guess. I mean, this is a man whose idea of communication is to leave me a list of things that need to be done that day. This is a man whose idea of sentiment is a box of Bavarian mints on our anniversary. Every anniversary.” She shook her head. “I didn’t expect him to give me meaning, but I didn’t expect him to get in the way when I went after it myself. But Chas took it as an insult that I wanted to do something besides make him happy. Whenever I talked with him about what was going on inside my head he just made fun of me. Called me a libber and all that. Made jokes to his buddies. I see now that he was a little bit scared of what was going on, and I know I was. There certainly weren’t any easy answers, I don’t mean that, but I think he could have tried, you know. Worked with me. Talked to me. Listened. I don’t know.… Last night, when he climbed onto me, I saw such contempt in his eyes.”

  She began to almost cry, then forced herself to stop. “When I began to really look at him I realized that since the day we married Chas hadn’t learned one single thing that wasn’t connected directly and solely with his precious business. I mean, in the beginning I was his project, so he made me happy, but then I wasn’t a project any longer, money was, and so all his attention went to that. I realized Chas had absolutely no concern for other people, that he felt the world owed him both wealth and a clear conscience, and he was enraged at whatever he thought was an obstacle to either, whether the income tax or a disgruntled client or a wife who wanted him to contribute to charity or teach their children the Golden Rule or discuss the meaning of life. Do you need more, Mr. Jones?” She raised her chin defiantly. Her breaths came in gasps.

  “That’s fine for now,” D.T. said, ever so calmly. “At some point we may want to add more, shall we say, unsavory aspects of his character to that list. Now tell me about your affair.”

  “What affair?”

  “Come now, Mrs. Stone. I’ve been in this business since the Kennedy administration. Women who’ve slept around give off signals.”

  “What signals?”

  He shook his head. “Trade secret. So tell me about it.”

  She fidgeted uneasily. “Will this come out at trial?”

  “Right now you’re in a better position to judge that than I. Who’s the lucky man?”

  She paused, then blinked, then lowered her head and yielded. “A friend’s husband.”

  “How long ago?”

  “A year plus a little.”

  “How many times?”

  “Twice, if you mean sex. A dozen times, if you mean talk.”

  “Does your husband know?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I … no. I suppose not, given this morning.”

  “Would your paramour have any reason to side with your husband in your case? To testify against you?”

  “No.… I don’t know. He never had anything good to say about Chas, but then why would he, in the circumstances?”

  “Would he lie for you in court, if you asked him to?”

  “Yes. I think so. But I never would.”

  D.T. closed his eyes against her innocence. “Do you plan to marry him?”

  “No.”

  “Does his wife know about the two of you?”

  “I’m not sure. She seems …”

  “Then she knows. How does she feel about your husband?”

  “She hates his guts. I think.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she isn’t cute or rich and Chas absolutely ignores women who aren’t cute or rich.” She looked down at herself. From her expression she saw nothing cute there, either. She looked up at him. “Can I go now? I just hate being here. I hate it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s so common. Every woman I know is divorced. I was so determined it wasn’t going to happen to me. But apparently I’m about to join the pack.” She laughed. “Do you suppose it’s anything like Brownies?”

  D.T. shrugged. “I don’t know about Brownies, but it’s not the worst pack in the world to be in. I mean, some women watch Donahue every morning and others drink whiskey.”

  Mareth Stone only closed her eyes. “I do both,” she said. “What does that make me?”

  D.T. took a deep breath and looked at the woman for whom life was about to become a brawl. “Where are your children, Mrs. Stone?”

  “In school. Why?”

  “Which school?”

  “Country Day. Why?” Worry polished her forehead.

  D.T. pushed his telephone toward her. “Call them. Make sure your children are still there.”

  “What are you saying? Do you think Chas has done something? He wouldn’t.”

  D.T. held up a hand. “I have no idea whether he would or wouldn’t, I just know that divorce can get to be the stinkingest, slimiest thing you can imagine, and it can get there fast. I know that men whose wives have cooked their food and washed their socks and licked their cocks for twenty years will suddenly try to cut them off without a penny and see to it they spend the rest of their lives in a welfare line. And I know that a hundred thousand fathers kidnap their kids every year and a hundred thousand mothers spend the rest of their days looking for them. Or vice versa. Call the school.”

  She looked at him oddly. “You take all this personally, don’t you?”

  He met her eyes. “Do I?”

  “I think so. I’m surprised.”

  “So am I. Call the school.”

  D.T. waited while she placed the call and enjoyed her relief when she learned that the children were there. D.T. whispered to her to instruct the school to keep them inside until she picked them up, which she did. When she hung up she looked at him fearfully. “Is there a place you can take them for a while?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. My parents aren’t good with them, not at all. My friends seem at odds with their own so much, I don’t know. I’ll have to think.”

  “After you pick them up you should go to your bank and take all the money out of all the accounts you can lay
your hands on. I mean all. Plus you should empty all the safe deposit boxes and get a new one in a different bank and put the stuff in it. Okay?”

  “But is that fair? I mean …”

  “In this business fair is first, Mrs. Stone. Besides, my guess is you’re going to discover your husband has beat you to it and the accounts will be empty. So be prepared.”

  She lowered her head. “It’s like preparing for war, isn’t it, Mr. Jones?”

  “That’s exactly what it’s like, Mrs. Stone. And your husband is already marching through Poland so we’ve got to get busy.”

  “I didn’t think it would be like this, somehow,” she said quietly. “Not us.”

  D.T. nodded. “The whole world thinks it’s an exception. I felt the same way when I was drafted. It lasted till I got shot. There’s one more thing.”

  “What?”

  “Call a locksmith and change the locks on your house. Then search it for any kind of business papers you can find. Deeds, stock certificates, anything having to do with property. Eventually I’ll want to know everything you own, you and your husband I mean, so start getting together anything that will help. Do you have a stock broker or does your husband handle it?”

  “My husband.”

  “Do you own any real property besides your home?”

  “A cabin at the lake.”

  “Call your realtor and tell him your husband is not authorized to act for you in any way. How many cars do you have?”

  “Three.”

  “Take the one you’re driving and park it in a long-term garage. Take a cab home and use the second one. I assume your husband drives the third.”

  “Yes.”

  “How much do you need a month, Mrs. Stone? To support you in the manner to which you’ve become accustomed?”

  She folded her hands and closed her eyes for a long time. “I’ve never really thought about it. The money was just there. For whatever I wanted.”

  “Three thousand? Four? Ten?”

  “Three, I should think.”

  “We’ll go for five. Has your husband ever hit you? Slapped you around?”

  “No. What do you think he is?”

  “A man who didn’t have the guts to warn you he was about to break your life in half. Do you sniff coke, Mrs. Stone?”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “Why not? It’s evidently replaced milk as the world’s most perfect food.”

  “No. Nothing like that.”

  “Well, we all have sins, Mrs. Stone. What are yours?”

  She laughed uneasily. “This is sort of like church, isn’t it?”

  “This is nothing like church. How about it?”

  “You first.”

  “Me? I bet sports with money I don’t have. I lie to my clients when they need it and sometimes when they don’t. I cheat on my girlfriend almost as much as she cheats on me. Let’s get back to you.”

  “Well, I cheat, too, as I said. I spend lots of money on worthless trinkets to punish Chas for neglecting me. I drink too much sometimes, and am honest when I shouldn’t be except when I pretend to like people I can’t stand. Does all that mean I won’t win my case?” She was almost giddy, momentarily forgetting what losing her case would mean.

  “Hell, lady. In this office that makes you a saint. Now, how do you feel about your husband right this minute?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I mean if he comes around next week and talks nice, brings you a box of mints, apologizes for taking all the money, and offers to stick his cock in you again, what are you going to do? Think about it.”

  It took her three seconds. “I’m going to cut the crooked son of a bitch off and fry it up for breakfast.”

  D.T. clapped his hands. “Hot damn, Mrs. Stone. I think we’re about to have some fun. Here. Sign these forms.”

  “But they’re blank.”

  “Not for long.”

  “Is that legal?”

  “Don’t worry about it.” He gave her his pen.

  After scratching out her name, Mareth Stone stood up and shouldered her purse and looked at him. “Do whatever has to be done, Mr. Jones.”

  “Lucky for you that’s my Golden Rule, Mrs. Stone,” he said, and then leaned back in his chair. “Right about here I usually tell my clients to relax, to leave it all to me, that everything will be all right. But I don’t think I’m going to tell you that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’m afraid you might believe me.”

  “But I’m fine. Really.”

  “That’s what I mean. You don’t even know what’s happened to you yet. Some time or other you’re going to crash. It may be tonight, it may be a year from tonight. You’ll feel alone, cheated, wronged, guilty, worthless, and ashamed, and you’ll be a little bit right about all of it, but it won’t help. You’ll be very depressed, so depressed you can’t move, can’t get dressed in the morning, can’t eat, nothing. One of my clients stayed in bed for twelve days. Pissed and shit and everything, right there on the old Posturepedic. Luckily they found her before …”

  “I won’t do anything like that. Good Lord. I …”

  “Let me finish. When it happens, friends can be a help. So can family. So can I, a little, and I know some people who can help you a lot more. Counselors. Support groups. Shrinks. You can call me any time. Here’s my card. Put it by the phone. Call me day or night. I mean it. Okay?”

  “Okay. But I don’t do things like that, Mr. Jones. I really don’t.”

  She was so convincing he knew better than to believe her.

  THREE

  Mareth Stone left the office just as Bobby E. Lee returned from lunch. Their eyes absorbed each other, their lips, similar shades of umber, smiled. After she had gone, D.T. returned to his office, took Mrs. Stone’s check from his desk and endorsed it, then took it out to Bobby E. Lee. “Deposit this in the office account and draw one payable to yourself in the same amount. How will that leave us?”

  “You’re still a thousand light.”

  “She’s a paying customer, Bobby, and she looks to be in need of some heroics. We should be square in a month.”

  Bobby E. Lee looked through the glass door thoughtfully. “Figured she was,” he said, and stuffed the check into the single pocket of his skin-tight shirt. “But be careful, Mr. J. When things tighten up, that kind throws in the towel.”

  D.T. started to object, then stopped. Bobby was too often right about the nuance of personality. His sense of which clients had firmly decided to divorce and which were only window-shopping was unerring, as was his sense of which of them needed tact and which a rather brutal shove. D.T. often wondered what he would do without Bobby E. Lee. The answer was always distressing.

  D.T. went back to his office and reviewed the monthly statements once again, reducing three more of them in light of the affluence of his most recent client. The statements ready for the mail, he changed the cassette in his deck and let his blood squirt to the beat of Doug Kershaw while he noted on his calendar the day that morning’s interlocutory decrees would become final. On that date, six months hence, Bobby E. Lee would send each participant in the Friday Fiasco a single red rose along with a certified copy of the final judgment of dissolution. Half the time the envelope and the flower were returned. Addressee unknown. No forwarding address. Starting over elsewhere.

  D.T.’s phone rang. When he picked it up he was greeted warmly by his only ex-wife. “Jazzercise?” D.T. said after she had said his name.

  “Keeps me trim, darling. I had to do something since I stopped having sex on a regular basis.”

  “Oh? Religious reasons?”

  “More aesthetic, I would say. Middle-aged bodies are so untidy. Present company excepted, of course. I always liked your body, D.T. It was your mind I couldn’t handle.” Her laugh reminded him of engines.

  They had been married over six years of wrangles, jousts, and contests, during which D.T. had failed to adjust to her money and she had failed to adju
st to his misanthropy. Now they had been divorced over three years of weekly phone calls. Over that time, talking to Michele about subjects they had been too insecure to discuss while wed had been D.T.’s close-to-favorite moments and, he hoped and suspected, his ex-wife’s as well.

  “So how are you, D.T.?” Michele asked as she always did.

  “Good-to-better, Michele. How about you?”

  “My yeast infection cleared up so I’m fine and dandy and looking for love.”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  “How was the Friday Fiasco?” she asked.

  “About average.”

  “That bad?”

  “Afraid so.”

  “Why do you keep on, D.T.? I know you’ve had offers from other firms. Landon Towers was telling me the other night that he’s been trying to get you to go in with him for over a year. They must have thirty lawyers now.”

  “Forty-five.”

  “Which means someone else could take care of your damsels in distress and you could do something dignified, to say nothing of remunerative.”

  “Landon Towers wants me to do bankruptcy work. Ever spend an hour in bankruptcy court, Michele? Compared to it, Queen for a Day was a noble enterprise. Besides, the Friday Fiasco’s as close as I’ll ever come to participating in the forgiveness of sins.” He shifted gears and hoped she would follow, stifling her instinct to reform him. “You still getting married?”

  “I suppose so. Are you still going to give me away? You’re the only one there is, you know.”

  “I’m perfectly happy to give you away, Michele. Just not to George.”

  “Yes, well, we’ve been through that, haven’t we?”

  “Yes, we have.”

  George was, among other things such as the owner of a wholesale fabric business, about to become an exemplar of D.T.’s Second Principle of Modern Matrimony, the one which states that in a modern woman’s second marriage, the husband has the backbone of a grape. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your call, D.T.?” Michele asked sweetly. “Thursday night poker leave you short again?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact.”

  “A nonpositive cash flow over the near term, was, I believe, the way you put it last time.”