The Ditto List Read online

  After half his drink was downed D.T. began to wonder about Lucinda Finders. She gave off the stench of victims, of those too perfect in ignorance and allure to survive in a world that feasted on such traits. A lot of Lucindas found their way to him somehow, women fated for disaster despite their precautions and often their predictions. Some seemed actually to seek it out, to thirst for pain, to change only its source, never its frequency. For others, like Lucinda, misery seemed merely unavoidable, the fate of one designed and built as a receptacle for cruelty. Perhaps such women existed as a reminder to the rest of us that we can never be sure things are truly all right, never be sure that we are, at long last, safe. He didn’t know about that, but he did know he would have to be careful with Lucinda, would have to beware both her body and her lot.

  Then there was Mareth Stone, determined to treat divorce as she would treat a root canal, just another irritant to endure without affect. But she was of the old school, by her own admission, a woman who would need to believe herself an unmatched mother. Because she was human, there would have accumulated mounds of evidence to the contrary, incidents of rage and hurt and sloth that would suggest she was not perfect at all, but rather was unfit to continue doing the only thing she had done with pride for years. She did not seem like one who would bear up well under the attack that her husband and his lawyer could mount. That was Bobby E. Lee’s prediction, at least, and Bobby E. Lee was seldom wrong about human inclination.

  As the moon arrived early in the sky and was made fuzzy by the smog, D.T. began to look for leverage in what Mareth Stone had told him, something to trade in return for the kids when the bargaining began. The only thing he could come up with was money, the standard sacrifice of alimony, support, or property in return for exclusive custody of the children. But he sensed that in this case money would not be enough. He would need an edge, a smudge on dear old Chas. He made a note to see Mareth Stone again, and soon.

  Rita Holloway. Vivacious. Bewitching. A surrogate for an angel if he could believe her. Nothing good lay down that road either, at the very least a vat of wasted time and money. He regretted even agreeing to see Esther Preston, regretted even more what candor would require of him when he did—telling her he was powerless to help, that life was not fair to anyone he knew except perhaps Michele, that she should try to make the best of what she had. As if she hadn’t made better of it already than he ever could were their burdens reversed. Caked with soot and sweat, D.T. finished off his drink and dreams.

  The mail was feeble, as usual. Slick magazines full of untrustworthy diatribes; a solicitation from yet another political action committee, this one bewailing the Klan; a report from Oxfam America on the starving children who were so ubiquitous as to suggest they were a hobby of the Lord’s; a bumper sticker that read, in ashen script, Roses are red, violets are blue, After the bomb, They’ll be dead, too. And a bill from the phone company with an accompanying flier proclaiming lower rates to Mexico and Brazil.

  D.T. tried and failed to think of someone he knew in either country. He thought maybe one of Michele’s old boyfriends had come from Rio, the slick-haired one who’d shown up at midnight one evening in a chauffeur-driven Bentley and tried to persuade Michele to go off with him to Nepal. Michele had given him a brandy and declined. But that was it. D.T. had never been to either place. His vacations, such as they were, consisted of a week in Arizona during the last days of the Cactus League season, with a stop at the Grand Canyon along the way to buy beaded moccasins for Heather, then a second quick trip to the southwest for the big meeting at Ruidoso Downs, where he would inevitably lose twice his foresworn limit. The more he thought, in fact, the more he realized he hadn’t reached out and touched someone except to put the touch on someone for as long as he could remember. He went to his bedroom and took a shower, changed into Levi’s and loafers, went to the kitchen and poured a second drink, considered and rejected the pile of dirty dishes in the sink, then returned to the deck.

  The humid air still broiled the city. What wind there was seemed to have an alkaline origin. The apartment below was being readied for a party to which he hadn’t been invited. Somewhere a basketball bounced interminably. The summer status was firmly quo. His phone rang to confirm it.

  Except for Barbara and Michele, all the likely callers were present or former clients, all fine and pathetic women possessed of needs he would be incapable of gratifying given the day and the hour and the wellspring of their problems. As always, he would recommend perserverence or counsel forbearance, and hang up hoping catastrophe would not result from what he did or didn’t say.

  Mareth Stone spoke rapidly, panting like a puppy. “You were right. He took all the money, Mr. Jones. Everything.”

  “Even the balance in your individual account?”

  “No. There’s still that.”

  D.T. gave thanks for the soundness of Bobby E. Lee’s salary payment. “I thought he might pull something like that. Tell me exactly what you found.”

  He made notes on the back of an envelope as she spoke. “He didn’t get the children, did he?” he asked when she had finished.

  “No, thank God. They’re here with me.”

  She was close to tears, more from the betrayal than the embezzlement. “It’s still not impossible that he’ll make a try for them. So, like I said before, take whatever precautions you can.”

  “Okay.” Her voice was the size of pearls in oysters.

  “And remember what I told you in the office. On Monday go down and change your individual account to another bank. Take everything of value out of your house that he hasn’t gotten to—jewels, cash, securities, whatever—and put them in a new safe deposit box. Make a list of all the property you and your husband own, including what he’s already taken—antiques, works of art, gold coins, insurance policies, anything. Try to put a value on each one, how much you bought it for and what it’s worth now. On another sheet start listing your expenses. Rent, utilities, food, clothes, laundry, medicine. Everything you spend each month, entertainment and recreation included. Make a separate list for before and after the divorce. Also list any unusual expenditures you and your husband had. If you went to the Bahamas every winter, list it. If you got a new Cadillac every spring, list it. Also list all the debts you know about. Understand?”

  “Yes, but what good will it do?”

  “As you observed, we’re going to war, Mrs. Stone, and in war you learn as much about the battlefield as you can. So call me Monday and tell me how you’re coming.”

  “I’m nervous, Mr. Jones. The only other time I felt like this was rush week.”

  “This will make rush week feel like a Tupperware party. We’re talking nitty-gritty here, Mrs. Stone. And I do mean money. Men like your husband don’t yield their money peaceably, which means among other things if there’s anything about your moral standards I should know, put it on the list as well. You’re not a call girl on the side, I trust.”

  “Don’t be silly.”

  “You’d be surprised,” D.T. said, then decided not to go into it. “On Monday I’ll go in for an order that will get you temporary support and I’ll also try to prevent your husband from touching the marital assets while the case is pending, but I’m afraid it’ll be too late. When they spring a surprise like this they’ve had prior advice and made protective moves ahead of time. Half the assets have probably been transferred to the Bahamas by now, but we’ll do what we can.”

  “What else should I do? I mean …”

  “Just leave it to me, Mrs. Stone. Relax. See friends. Explain things to the kids. Talk it over with your parents, let them know you may need financial assistance for a while. If anything strange happens, call me right away. We’ll try to end it all as soon as possible. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “That’s the spirit. Remember, you can call me any time, day or night. I mean any time. I’m usually up and about at three in the morning anyway, so don’t be afraid you’ll wake me. Some of my best advice has been given
at three a.m.” And some of the worst, he thought but didn’t say. “Do you need back the money you gave me?”

  “No.”

  “Do you want the number of a divorced women’s support group? Or a psychiatrist?”

  “No. I’m fine. I just want to get this over with. How soon can we go to court?”

  “Months from now. Sooner, if it’s a real custody battle, since they have preference. Don’t underestimate the fight we’ve got on our hands, Mrs. Stone. Just by being in court you’re tainted, at least in most judges’ eyes. Plus your husband has a good lawyer. So don’t think it’ll be easy. It’ll be the hardest thing you’ve ever done.”

  She didn’t say anything for so long he thought she’d hung up. “I’m better than my husband at almost everything, Mr. Jones,” she said at last. “Chess. Tennis. You name it. For fifteen years I’ve always let him win. Every time. But not now. Not this time.” She hung up before he could praise her.

  On the way back to his drink D.T. flicked on the radio and caught the last eight bars of Barbara Mandrell’s latest. He tried to read the week’s Time magazine but the words passed his eyes like a string of stock cars in a tight draft at Darlington. The moon ascended. The twilight deepened, pink to purple. The purple came from the cloud released by a Mexican volcano. He’d read about it. He read about a lot of things. Too damned many things. Bliss keeps company only with the ignorant, as the moralists and their lawyers were the first to recognize.

  The tepid air finally began to cool. Mosquitos buzzed his face. The people down below activated their electrostatic bug zapper. ZZZZT … ZZZZZT. Altering the ecological balance for the benefit of cocktail guests. D.T. slapped at something that was sucking blood from his hand, doing a bit of altering himself, and went back inside the apartment.

  He turned off the radio and turned on the TV. News. Tom Brokaw, talking about death. Five straight stories about death—wars, wrecks, typhoons, murders. D.T. had almost died once. Allergic reaction. Breathing difficulty, raging pulse, dizzy spell. Quite a scene. Embarrassing to all concerned. Now he was determined to die conveniently. In bed, preferably, or perhaps while strolling in front of a funeral parlor with a pillow under his arm. The strange thing about it was that he hadn’t cared. People always asked him how it felt, and while he always lied and said he was desperately frightened, the truth was that his primary emotion was that he didn’t give a damn what happened as long as something happened pretty quick. That had been while he was still married to Michele. His guess was that he would care even less if he were imperiled again today. God forbid. But then that was the problem with God. He didn’t forbid nearly enough.

  Roger Mudd was talking about a political scandal involving drugs. D.T. was totally uninterested in drugs, as he was in anything that didn’t require skill or intelligence to accomplish. He turned off the television and called his girlfriend Barbara.

  “Well,” she said. Aggressively neutral. Like India and Dan Rather.

  “Well, what?”

  “What’s the program?”

  “I don’t know,” D.T. admitted. “What do you want to do?”

  “Oh, no you don’t, D.T. I picked last time. The sailboat. It’s not my fault you barfed.”

  “There’s a good movie at the Ritz.”

  “War movies are boring.”

  “Mose Allison’s in town.”

  “I’m not in the mood for blues, particularly white male blues.”

  “We could drive up to the lake and rent a cabin and lie around in the sun and smell each other’s sweat.”

  “The last time we did that we lay in bed reading Dashiell Hammett novels and you talked like Humphrey Bogart for a week.”

  “I can’t go to the lake anyway,” D.T. remembered. “I have Heather tomorrow.”

  “Want me along?”

  “I don’t think so. Whenever she sees you she asks me if we’re married yet.” D.T. could have bit his tongue.

  “And what do you tell her at such times?” Barbara’s words weighed tons.

  “I tell her, no. We aren’t.”

  “Do you say why?”

  “No.”

  “I thought not,” Barbara said, then scared him with a silence. “Bernie Kaplan invited me to go wine tasting tomorrow,” she went on finally, her words flat enough to skate on.

  “Are you going?”

  “It depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On what we do tonight.”

  “Oh. Well. Dinner, for sure.”

  “Where?”

  “Wherever you want.”

  “No, D.T.”

  “Chinese?”

  “No.”

  “Mexican?”

  “No.”

  “Burger King?”

  “Jesus, D.T.”

  “I just wanted to see if there was a pattern there. Apparently not.”

  “Don’t start with me, D.T.”

  “Italian? We’ll eat Italian. Linguini, fettuccine, Lamborghini.”

  “What’s Lamborghini?”

  “A car.”

  “Italian is fine, D.T. What then?”

  “After dinner, you mean?”

  “Yes.”

  “After dinner. Well, dancing. How about dancing? That place with the big bands. Swing. How about that? ‘One O’Clock Jump.’ ‘Stompin’ at the Savoy.’”

  “Very good. Then what?”

  “Then … back here? I’ll make Bananas Foster? Or strawberry daiquiries? Or hot buttered rum? Depending on the temperature?”

  “Can we sleep naked on the deck?”

  “Well, it’s kind of dirty. The deck, I mean …”

  “Can we?”

  “Sure.”

  “I mean really naked, D.T.”

  “Sure. No problem.”

  “Shall I bring my oil?”

  “Why not? Oil. Great.”

  “Lemon or cherry?”

  “Whatever you want.”

  “Lemon or cherry?”

  “Lemon.”

  “See you soon,” Barbara said.

  When he hung up he was semi-aroused, as he frequently became during one of their spats. In Barbara’s view, physical activity was infallible pharmacopeia, a certain cure for everything from corns to cancer, and sex was the most effective medication on that sweaty shelf. Thus the best way to reconcile after an argument was to engage in a particularly lusty evening, with each of them giving and taking more than they had previously dared. So he always knew what to expect, was uncertain only of what he could deliver. Barbara was a Toscanini of the bedroom. She knew and was proud of it, having reached that distinction through a combination of theoretical research and hands-on experimentation. She exulted in aids and devices, would try anything once and most anything twice to be sure they’d done it right the first time, even things that came through the mail from places in Denmark or New Jersey. One thing she wouldn’t do was absorb pain, an inhibition which sometimes bothered her but bothered D.T. not at all, since her stance allowed him to thankfully mimic it. Also, she wouldn’t fellate him. Not because she found it vile, or because she had never previously performed the act, but because sometime after her marriage and before her first date with D.T. she had decided oral sex was a symbolic deed, the chief metaphor of woman’s place in an oppressive world, and thus his every entreaty along those lines had been rejected. This one bothered D.T. quite a bit.

  For his part, D.T. felt vaguely immoral in any position other than the missionary and during any act that wasn’t at least theoretically procreative. He didn’t know why, and he didn’t really care, since he was able to suppress those inhibitions almost at will, with the aid of a little booze or a period of abstinence in excess of a week. Deep down, he recognized that he had never enjoyed sex quite as much as he had in the days when copping a feel in the drive-in was the highest achievement of his art, and the pimply prying faces in the vehicles that surrounded his gave even rudimentary fumblings an air of daring he had never been able to duplicate, not even the time he and Ba
rbara had made love in a pup tent at noon in June at a reserved campsite in the middle of Yosemite National Park.

  Much of the time D.T. did not have to move a muscle during their reconciliatory trysts. Indeed, the crucial muscle had always moved itself, thank the Lord, as if it were Barbara’s puppet and not his own appendage. Thereafter, he had simply to hang onto his erection for as long as possible, by thinking of people and places without the slightest erotic content—Des Moines, say, or Meryl Streep. Sex, too, was rather like a war. The Crimean came to mind.

  Despite the fever of making up, their penchant for reaching a disputatious stage two minutes into their every conversation convinced D.T. that he and Barbara would eventually devour what was good in their relationship and leave only the bad, eating the heart and leaving the choke. In his office, D.T. encountered many a couple in a similar set, men and women who defined their relationship solely by the degree of their anger, for whom only argument ignited conversation, only violence begot sex. Still, if he and Barbara were in fact doomed, they would both survive the crash. Barbara could survive anything short of happiness, and D.T., well, he spent so much time lying to his clients he knew exactly how to counsel himself.

  He went outside and swept the deck, then tugged the mattress off the spare bed and wrestled it to the space he’d cleaned, then draped the rail with sheets to shield the mattress as best he could, though he knew of no specific eyes to shield it from. It might be like the drive-in, he realized. His cock swelled slightly in his pants and he adjusted it for comfort. Then he went inside and used television to calm him down.

  Friday night. Washington Week. Second-guessing the politicians. Wall Street Week. Games for the rich, the only losers the amateurs putting up the money for the pros to play with. Then the network garbage. The Dukes of Hazard. Dallas. Falcon Crest. The decline of civilization as reflected in its amusements. The Greeks got Lysistrata and Agamemnon. We get J.R. and Luke Duke.

  The phone rang again. How he hated the pit it dug in him. “Mr. Jones?”