The Ditto List Read online

  “Something like that.”

  “How much?”

  “A thousand would be fine.”

  “And where would that put us?”

  D.T. didn’t have to think; the figure was stamped on the fore edge of his mind. “Seventeen-five,” he said “I’ve got it all down in my ledger.”

  “How CPAish of you. Shall I mail it?”

  “I’ll pick it up tonight around six,” D.T. said quickly. “Just leave it with Mirabelle, why don’t you? Then I won’t have to bother you.”

  “Oh, you don’t bother me, D.T. Not any more. In fact, I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  “Me, either.”

  “I wasn’t speaking in the financial sense, D.T.”

  “Me, either.”

  “Liar,” she charged, then paused that pause and D.T. steeled himself. “You know, D.T.,” she went on softly, “I told you the day we divorced that we could still have sex whenever you wanted. Do you remember?”

  “Sure.”

  “So how come we haven’t? Just out of curiosity.”

  “I don’t know,” D.T. mumbled. “Maybe because there are only about three things I do regularly that keep me above the creatures that live in the slime and I think that’s one of them.”

  “What are the other two?”

  “The Friday Fiasco and there used to be something else but now I can’t remember what it is. I guess there are only two.”

  Michele laughed. “Well, I’ll forgive you for not treating me like a call girl, D.T. But I won’t forgive you if you start treating me like a branch bank.”

  “No danger of that, Michele. I hardly ever have dreams about branch banks.”

  “Do you really dream about me, D.T.?”

  “Sure.”

  “What do we do?”

  “Things.”

  “Old things or new things?”

  “Both.”

  “How exciting. Will you tell me about them some night? In all their throbbing details?”

  “Sure.”

  “When?”

  “Soon.”

  Michele paused. When she spoke her words were round as plums. “You don’t have to be afraid of me any more. You know that, don’t you, D.T.?”

  “I know that the same way I know I can’t get VD off a toilet seat, Michele.”

  She laughed again. “You’re not all bad, D.T. Not all bad at all. Maybe I’ll see you this evening. George isn’t picking me up till eight.”

  “Maybe so,” D.T. said, immediately planning how to get hold of the check without encountering her. Michele on the phone was one thing; Michele in her sixteen-room mansion dressed for dinner at a restaurant that didn’t open for lunch or bother to list its prices was something else again.

  “Are you still seeing Barbara, by the way?” Michele asked as he was about to say good-bye.

  “Yep.”

  “She’s good for you, you know.”

  “So she tells me.”

  “Do you want some advice?”

  “No,” D.T. said quickly. “I’ll pick up Heather at ten tomorrow. Dress her for the out-of-doors.”

  “Oh?”

  “Zoo.”

  “God, D.T. Do you know how many times she’s been to that pitiful zoo? The monkeys think she’s a cousin from L.A. Give her a break.”

  “The museum of natural history?”

  “That’s just a zoo that died, D.T.”

  “Planetarium?”

  “Last month, with the enrichment class.”

  “Aquarium?”

  “You know she hates fish. Alive or cooked.”

  “Art museum?”

  “At her age?”

  “Why not? Indoor dress. Ten sharp. Take it easy, Michele.”

  “Easy’s the only way it comes when you drive a Rolls, D.T.”

  Michele’s trouble was that she believed it. D.T.’s trouble was that it seemed to be true.

  Bobby E. Lee stuck his head in the door. “A Lucinda Finders is here. Better get the tissues out.” The door closed without further explanation.

  D.T. looked at his watch and decided to hurry the day to its conclusion. After putting Mareth Stone’s papers in his Out Box, he went to fetch a client that Bobby E. Lee had only to lay eyes on to know was swaddled in a story that would in a very short time erupt in tears on the other side of D.T.’s battered desk.

  She was young, too young to be married or divorced, too young to be seeing a lawyer for any reason. She was also pregnant, and too young to be that, as well. Beneath a hood of blonde curls she looked at him bravely, with a sunny, shadeless face that not many years ago would have sucked many a boy into puberty before his time and would now cause many a man to assume she had been created solely for his pleasure.

  Her blue eyes skipped quickly over D.T.’s face, to see if it was going to be as bad as she feared. “Hi,” she said simply, and stood and walked toward him on triangles of wood that made her thighs seem hydraulically propelled. D.T. bet himself she had first had sex when she was fifteen, and had no idea then or now that there were people in the world who thought it wicked to partake at such an age.

  He took her hand and bowed. The girl inhaled with surprise, as though she had feared herself untouchable. She had somehow outgrown her skin and her clothes as well, her blouse so taut across her breasts and belly he feared its buttons would soon be missiles. D.T. had an urge to laugh, mostly because he sensed there would be nothing else to laugh about till she left his office.

  As he released her hand he noticed her little finger was bent unnaturally, twisted, then frozen in an arc. When she saw him notice it she rubbed the finger on her stomach, then hid it behind her back. D.T. glanced at Bobby E. Lee, who shook his head out of what D.T. guessed was pity.

  “Come in and sit down.” D.T. said. “Can we get you some coffee?” When she passed him he saw that her flesh was as white and flawless as her slacks, which were tight enough to line her crevasses.

  “No, thanks,” she said when she was seated.

  “A Coke?”

  “No. Really. I’m fine.” Her twang was of the type that came often out of D.T.’s radio, accompanied by steel guitars and backup singers and words of rue or longing.

  D.T.’s stomach began to burn. He looked in the wide drawer of his desk for a mint but found only the number 999. He pushed the little metal counter to 1,000, which confirmed his sense that the girl was somehow special, a carrier of curse or blessing. “What’s your name again?” he began, with something leaden in his heart.

  “Lucinda Finders.”

  “Where you from?”

  “The valley. Reedville.”

  “What do your parents do?”

  “Farm. Onions, mostly. Some beets.”

  “But you live in the city now?”

  She nodded. “Come after high school with my girlfriend Ruth. Went to beauty school for a while but it didn’t take.”

  “Why not?”

  “Them chemicals they use made me swell up.”

  The words reminded her of her current condition. She looked at her stomach and didn’t seem happy with what she saw. He expected her to reach for the tissues but instead she reached in her purse for a pack of gum. As she unwrapped a stick of Spearmint her crooked finger curled away from the foil in a silly parody of elegance. D.T. asked her how old she was.

  She got the gum chewed to where she wanted it. “You got a bathroom? I’m sorry, but I got to pee every two minutes since this baby come along.” Her statement was simple fact, uncomplicated by embarrassment.

  He smiled and pointed toward the door across the room. She left him and closed the door behind her. He heard musical, flutish sounds, then the rush of water. When she came back her hair was combed.

  “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-one.”

  “You look younger.”

  “Everyone says that. Don’t know why, unless it’s ’cause I stay out of the sun.”

  D.T. took a breath and held it, reluctant, gripped
by his frequent feeling that his job had become uncouth. He exhaled a breeze that caused the curls that framed her face to flap. “Well? What seems to be your problem, young lady?”

  “I need me a divorce.” Her lips tightened down on the words, providing them with splints.

  “How long have you been married?”

  “Eight months and three days.’

  “Not long.”

  “Long enough, I guess.” She tried and failed to become flip. “There ain’t a waiting period, is there?”

  D.T. shook his head. “Are you sure about this or are you just thinking about it.”

  “I’m sure,” she said, sounding surer than D.T. had ever been of anything.

  “What’s your husband’s name?”

  “Del. Delbert Wesley Finders.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “Home, I guess. We got a trailer in a park out on Simpson Boulevard.”

  “Where are you staying?”

  “My sister’s place.”

  “You want to go back to the trailer?”

  “The trailer’s Del’s.”

  “Not necessarily. We can probably order him to vacate if you want to.”

  She shook her head. “Marilyn’s is okay. For now.”

  “Is it in the city?”

  “On Sixty-fifth Street. Out by the Century Mall.” She told him the number.

  D.T. knew the area. It was a sad sheet of lower-class whites with no jobs, no money, and no sense of anything except that they were sinking out of sight of anyone but the government. More of his 999 clients than he could count lived out there. “What happened between you and Delbert?”

  “You mean why do I want the divorce?”

  D.T. nodded and waited. He wished he was somewhere in public, where private woe would not be uttered. He decided not to see any more clients on Fridays. Not on top of the Fiasco.

  Lucinda didn’t answer for a moment. D.T. sensed she was reviewing the entire eight months and three days of her marriage, weighing its merit, deciding once again whether it was right to be where she was, do what she was doing, say what she was about to say. “Del beats up on me sometimes,” she murmured finally.

  “More than once?”

  She nodded.

  “Why?”

  She shrugged. “He gets drunk. And imagines things.”

  “Things like what?”

  “Oh, that I talked to a guy at a party too long. Or let someone look down my dress. Stuff like that.” She twisted with embarrassment. Guys must have been looking down her dresses for years, but it was not a thing she would have talked about or even thought was vile.

  “Did Delbert do that to your finger?”

  She held it up. “This? I guess. Yeah.”

  “How long ago?”

  “Day after we got married.”

  “Why?”

  “He claimed I danced too close with his brother at the reception.” Her grin made the maiming seem a silly bit of mischief.

  “Have you talked with anyone about all of this, Lucinda?” D.T. asked.

  “Just my sister.”

  “She told you to leave him?”

  “She told me not to marry him in the first place.”

  She said it as a joke, and D.T. smiled stupidly, to accommodate her. She had already joined that half of all women who will be assaulted by their mates, but perhaps she was one of the lucky ones, who would escape before it could get far worse. “Have you talked to anyone else? A doctor? The police? Anyone?”

  She shook her head.

  “Has Delbert ever been in trouble with the law?”

  She frowned, quickly angry. “How’d you know that? Has he talked to you, or what?”

  D.T. shook his head. “I’ve never laid eyes on Delbert, Lucinda. If we’re lucky I won’t have to. It’s just that most men who drink a lot sooner or later get in trouble with the law. What did Delbert do?”

  “Beat a guy up.”

  “Bad?”

  “Hit him with a pool cue and cracked his skull. Del got two years’ probation.”

  “He still on probation?”

  She nodded.

  “He got a job?”

  “A welder, when he works.”

  “Pretty good money in that.”

  “I guess. Del has trouble staying on with anybody steady.”

  “He do anything else? Hobbies? Other jobs?”

  “He fishes some. Hunts. Fixes cars. Draws some pictures, too. Of cars, mostly. And me, before I got like this.”

  “How about you, Lucinda? You have a job?”

  “Waitress, is all.”

  “Where?”

  “Pancake House.”

  D.T. fought an impulse to ask her to leave, to walk peaceably and quietly out of his life, to spare him. Instead he zeroed in. “Is Delbert upset that you left him, Lucinda?”

  “I hope to shout.”

  “What’d he say when you told him?”

  “Well, for one thing he said if I don’t come home he’ll kill me.” She arched her back and thrust her lip the way her pregnancy had thrust her breasts and dared him to doubt her. D.T. didn’t doubt one word.

  “Do you believe him?” D.T. asked.

  “I believe he’ll try.”

  “You don’t seem very frightened.”

  She shook her head. “I can handle Del. I mean, I can’t keep him from beating on me if he’s a mind to, I guess, but I can talk him out of murdering me, I think. Anyhow, it’s not what he’ll do to me that’s worrisome.” Her eyes lowered again.

  “Then what?” D.T. resisted his desire to take her hand again, for fear she would misinterpret him. She was not a girl for whom holding hands would mean anything but a prelude to unwanted sex.

  “It’s the baby,” she said softly. “I’m afraid for my baby. I’m afraid it might be dead.”

  “What did he do?”

  “When I told him I was moving out, he punched me in the belly. Said I might go but I couldn’t take his kid with me. It hurt real bad for a while. I threw up and stuff.”

  “What did the doctor say?”

  “I ain’t seen a doctor.”

  “Why not?”

  “My sister’s against ’em. Says God’s will is what it comes down to, doctor or no. She’s got this new religion since she left home.”

  “You have to see a doctor, Lucinda. Right away. There’s a free clinic not too far from your sister’s place, or I can give you a name. He might come by your sister’s house if you can’t get to his office.”

  She shook her head. “Not the clinic. The doctor, maybe. I can probably sneak away, maybe later, when Marilyn goes to church. Who is he?”

  D.T. gave her the name and address of his doctor. “Have you ever heard of a place called the Spousal Abuse Victims’ Environment? SAVE, it’s called.”

  “No.”

  “They help women who’ve been beaten by their husbands. Talk to them. Get them medical treatment. Find them a place to stay, sometimes. I think you should go down there.”

  “I don’t take welfare, Mr. Jones.”

  “Christ. This isn’t welfare. Farmers got crop supports, lawyers got professional incorporations, doctors got Medicare, this is just something for you. Go there. Let them help you.” D.T. realized his words were shrieks. Taking it personally. He watched her shake her curls.

  “I think not. Thanks all the same.” She had become prim, a woman from another age, with principles to match.

  “Please? It’s free. It won’t cost anything.”

  “No. I can’t. I couldn’t never go back to Reedville if I did something like that and my daddy found out. Now, I come here for a divorce. Can you get me one or not?”

  “I can,” D.T. said slowly. “I can do that. God help me, I can do that just fine.” D.T. pulled some papers toward him. “First, we have to decide how much property there is, so we can list it on the …”

  She stopped him with the crooked finger and the hand it sprang from. “I don’t want no property. Just a divorc
e, like I been saying. Del don’t have no property anyway, not that’s paid for, except maybe his tools.”

  “We could claim half their value, Lucinda. What kind of tools are they?”

  “No. Now, this girl at the Pancake House told me she heard you were pretty good at this divorce business, but if you keep on I’m going to have to go look up someone else. Not be rude or nothing, but …”

  “Okay. No property. But on Monday I’m going to get a restraining order that will direct Delbert to stay the hell away from you. In the meantime, I think you should go somewhere he won’t think to look if he decides to try to see you again.”

  “I’ll be fine at Marilyn’s, Mr. Jones. Don’t worry.”

  “I do worry though, Lucinda. I worry about a lot of things, and drunks like Delbert who like to beat women are one of the things I worry about most. Please go somewhere else. The cops aren’t much help in cases like this, you know. They only show up after the damage has been done and unless there’s a restraining order in effect they don’t do much but tell everyone to calm down. And I can’t get an order before Monday. You’re on your own over the weekend.”

  “I’ll be fine. Really. Though I appreciate the worry.” Her fingers wriggled among themselves like worms, the littlest of them stiff and dead.

  D.T. leaned forward and drew her eyes to his. “If you see Delbert around your sister’s place you let me know, Lucinda. After Monday there’ll be a restraining order filed, prohibiting him from threatening or assaulting you, or even coming around your sister’s place. If he does, he’s committed a misdemeanor and the cops will arrest him.”

  She smiled. “And let him out an hour later.”

  “Probably. But whatever happens, don’t let him in your sister’s house. Not unless someone else is there. Someone who can handle Delbert.”

  “Aren’t many who can handle Del, Mr. Jones. Seen plenty who tried and wished they hadn’t. Del loves to fight.” She smiled proudly, to D.T.’s disbelief.

  “You know, Lucinda, by assaulting his wife Delbert has committed a felony, and undoubtedly violated his probation, too. You can send him to jail if you want. Might make life a lot easier.”

  She stood halfway out of her chair. “I don’t want that. Don’t you do anything like that, Mr. Jones. I mean it. I married Del knowing he was mean when he drank, and I tried to change him and couldn’t, and so it’s my fault as much as his it’s come to this. Plus if you knew what I had to put up with back home before Del took me off you’d know what I owe him. I just want it so me and the baby are free of him, and that’s all.”