by Martin Clark
“No chance that’ll ever fly. None. This is a gross shakedown.”
“We’ll see.” Lisa paused. “But you may be correct about venue as to Alton’s parents. I think I might concede that. We may just go ahead and agree to your motion. We’ll move the case to Rehoboth. I’m sure it would serve as a great topic while their friends are watching sailboats and playing croquet and swigging their gin. Might even make the local newspapers.”
It took longer than she expected, but seven months later Lisa received a check for $155,000 and a final divorce decree. Sitting in Lisa’s office, Meg cried and dabbed her eyes with a knot of tissue from her purse. She paid Lisa for ninety-three billable hours, a total of $11,625.00, and reimbursed Stone and Stone for $1,097.96 in expenses. The balance was hers. As Meg’s father put it, Lisa Stone had miraculously gotten blood from a turnip, had somehow figured a way to extract a tidy payoff from a penniless loser.
Living at her parents’ home in the same bedroom she’d forever abandoned to attend college, the Prince and Bon Jovi posters still thumbtacked to the wall, her high school trophies and awards still crowning her dresser, Meg had accepted the first job she could find after fleeing Northern Virginia. A week after returning to Henry County, she took work selling construction equipment for Ingersoll Rand, drove her Honda Civic to Greensboro at 4:30 a.m., then climbed into a company dual-axle with a utility trailer and hauled and hawked Bobcats, hammers and attachments across three states, her region’s only woman rep, wading into construction sites in heels and skirts and quickly learning the ropes and impressing her buyers, hopping behind the controls of her machines if need be, her girl’s shoes on the pedals, her skirt adjusted, undeniably high on her thigh, but every man watching understood the bargain was for the equipment and nothing else—“Meg’s legs” were her giveaway, her promotion, her gimmick. She occasionally slept in her truck, and she burned through boxes of blue and black shoes from Payless and Walmart, but she enjoyed the hours traveling alone in the big cab, she was honest with her clients, and soon she was banking sizable commissions and winning bonus contests, earning more than any other employee in the East. The cash from Alton’s family was a big boost as well.
Years later, she’d emerged from another chrysalis and was M. J. Gold, and before forty she was rich, rich, rich, damn rich, rich enough to be as erratic as she chose to be, she was fond of saying, the owner of beaucoup construction equipment franchises, a shopping center, apartment complexes and nine radio stations. By now, her story had been honed and amended to do her success justice, and it was gospel that M. J. Gold once shot a man in Northern Virginia over a contract dispute and then forced him to urinate in his own cocky fedora, and everybody knew she’d earned her first wad of cash by bearding a tough-as-nails waste disposal family from the Northeast.
Her attorney, Lisa Stone, as much as confirmed the accuracy of Miss Gold’s colorful business history when she cryptically told a reporter from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that “M. J. Gold has never been formally arrested for shooting a business associate, and standing up to shady operators who think they can steamroll you because you are a small-town woman is simply an admirable and commonsense choice.” M. J. Gold became a minor celebrity, and Alton Gold wilted into an obscure, mutating memory for his former wife: First he was Fool’s Gold, then Mr. Pyrite, then simply the Craps Pirate.
Despite their minor age difference, Lisa and M.J. became friends, close, dear, lip-gloss-sharing, spa-tripping, pot-sneaking, martinis-at-lunch friends, tight as kin. They occasionally traveled together, talked and texted and e-mailed and saw each other frequently, especially when M.J. was passing through to visit her parents. She now lived in Raleigh but had bought a small farm outside of Stuart, just up the road from Martinsville, so she could be near her folks and enjoy a respite from the city and her work’s grueling pace.
She’d never remarried. She adored men, though, no mistaking her tastes there, but her courtships were invariably her own stylized, checklist productions. Her “beaus” were attractive, athletic, attentive, well mannered and poor enough to be beholden to her. They were always younger, though never too much so, no more than six years her junior—that was a Gold rule. Six years was believable and not altogether obvious; past that, she had once noted to Lisa, making her point with a cigarette vised between her second and third fingers, her elbow planted on a restaurant table, the Marlboro Ultra Light level with her ear, smoke ribboning toward the ceiling, and you come off as fucking Cher. Or frightful Norma Desmond. A joke. Snickers when you leave the Caribbean front desk for your suite. Even worse, if you reach beyond a decade’s difference, probably the best you’ll do is Larry Fortensky or some wet-behind-the-ears backup dancer.
Ten days after her trip to Lettie’s trailer, Lisa drove to Winston-Salem and met M.J. at the bar of a restaurant called Bleu. They sat at a table against a wall and ordered pomegranate mojitos and an appetizer sampler. M.J. showed Lisa a new jeweled watch she’d purchased on a trip to Miami and invited her to the Raleigh coliseum for the Royal Lipizzaner Stallions show. M.J. was the queen of offbeat entertainment: She’d load up her boyfriend and bottles of champagne into a limo and off she’d go to see Holiday on Ice, where—suitably buzzed—she’d cheer every salchow and triple lutz. She was a devotee of Yanni, cruise-ship magic shows, the professional bowling tour, ventriloquists, every Vegas permutation of Cirque du Soleil, and Riverdance as well as its many frenetic spawn.
“Thanks,” Lisa laughed. “But no thanks.”
“Suit yourself. It’s a fun evening. Beautiful horses.”
Lisa took hold of her fork and pushed a shrimp tail across a small plate. She rested the fork on the rim of the plate, sipped her drink. She slid a bright blue napkin over a dot of spilled sauce. “Listen,” she said, “I want to ask you a question. Ask your opinion.”
“Sure,” M.J. said.
“In strict confidence. No exceptions.” She lowered her head. “This is serious.”
“Absolutely,” M.J. replied.
“Your blood oath?”
“Yes. Of course. Tell me.”
“Well, it involves Joe. And my marriage. I haven’t gone too far yet, but…” She trailed off. “I need some advice. And…” She checked to see if anyone was close by. “I might, maybe, be thinking about…sort of seeing another guy. Not leaving Joe or—”
M.J. interrupted, waving her hand, and she was suddenly, visibly different, the dancing show horses and country-girl indulgences chased from her demeanor. “Wait a minute,” she said, still agitated. “Here’s my advice before I even hear the rest of this craziness. Joe Stone is a gem. You’re lucky. I’d tell you otherwise, right? I’m your best friend. Don’t trifle with your marriage. Don’t risk it. Heck, if you’re tired of Joe, maybe we can agree on a swap. I’d even break my rules.” M.J. smiled with half her mouth, turning up a corner. “Easy decision for me already. I’d trade all the bimboys and all the sex and all the—” She caught herself. “Not to say you’re in a deficit. With sex, I mean.”
Even if she’d made up her mind—and she definitely hadn’t—there was no way Lisa would have sex with Brett Brooks so soon and rashly swap her birthright for a bowl of porridge and a few downtown martinis on the sly, but she nevertheless set to preparing for this absolute impossibility, got ready in fine style, starting with a week-early hair appointment, a spa facial and a manicure from the masked, yipyapping Koreans at the mall and finishing with a trip to Winston-Salem for new crimson underwear that matched and was patterned for show and low-slung tease, not comfort or eight-hour slogs at a law office. She loved the extravagant prelude to her pretend first date, had a ball splurging on hair and nails and clean, scrubbed, treated skin, the reclamation nearly bone deep. She also bought new shoes, a pair with a higher heel than her normal.
A week after Dr. Corbett’s deposition and the evening at Metro! Brett—as promised—had sent her a short e-mail, confirming the details of the seminar. She’d replied the same day. When she arrived in Roanoke for the
program, lawyers were milling around, drinking coffee and nibbling free bakery pastry, everyone talkative. Brett wasn’t there, and he didn’t appear until fifteen minutes into the first lecture. She’d tried to keep an empty seat beside her, but another Martinsville lawyer had spotted her and taken the chair, pleased to see a colleague from home. He immediately smothered her with a dry narrative about a land dispute he was handling, warring hillbillies squabbling over a worthless acre of Henry County dirt.
She and Brett met at the ten o’clock break, and he casually stretched an arm around her so they were touching at the hip, his trunk twisted slightly away from her, and he gave her the kind of brief, social hug that a garrulous character like Brett Brooks would give any woman he’d met at least once.
“I can’t believe you didn’t save me a seat,” he said, pretending to be upset.
“You were late.” She smiled.
“Damn. You look like a million bucks.” He was facing her now. “Glad you could come.”
“Thanks. I appreciate your telling me about this. I’ll almost satisfy my CLE hours for the year.”
“Sure. My pleasure.” He laid his hand in the center of her back and left it there, his palm and fingers pressed into her so she could feel the push, the directness, and he slipped closer, just for an instant. “Maybe we’ll be able to visit when this is over. See what the afternoon brings.” He kept his eyes on her point-blank as he took his hand away. “Last time was fun. Hope we can get together again.”
Somewhere, she realized, every flirt and two-step has to either stall or grab traction and bull ahead, to cross its own particular Rubicon, because you can only dally and dip and dance and double-entendre for so long, and now Brett was blunt and clear. This was his offer, a plain overture to fuck and fool around and live louche and veer down a route with corrupt sex and catch-as-catch-can trysts and a do-not-disturb placard hung from a hotel door handle while the two of them were twisting free of their clothes—pants kicked off here, a skirt tossed there—and she was jazzed by the temptation, wired, excited by the prospect of what was at stake, tiptoeing toward lovely vice and happy as much as anything to be, well, so happy.
“Yeah.” She paused, and without meaning to she recalled stealing a bottle of sweet grape wine from the grocery store when she was seventeen and drinking it in a friend’s basement, screwing off the metal cap and pouring her virgin taste of alcohol into a paper cup with foldout cardboard handles, the purple almost over the brim. She quickly ran through the memory, and she shifted so she rubbed against Brett’s shoulder. She was wearing perfume. Two buttons from the top, there was a small gap in her blouse. “Last time was fun. I’m betting today will be even better.”
After the seminar ended, they drove separately and met in the Hotel Roanoke’s Pine Room and sat side by side at a square table underneath a framed photograph of a locomotive. A bearded man was nursing a dark beer at the bar and another couple was eating sandwiches and gabbing up a storm near the middle of the room. It was closing in on four-thirty and cold outside, the January day already dimming, shades of common gray curtaining off bright blue and white. Brett ordered a scotch but wasn’t fussy about it, asking for “whatever’s good and single malt.” Lisa picked a merlot from a list the waitress brought.
More people came to the bar, the speaker music changed to rhythm and blues and the waitress announced a dollar-draft special. Lisa and Brett drank and chatted and told stories and laughed and shared a bowl of pretzels, then left their heavy coats across a chair and carried their second round into the adjacent room and played pool at a table with red felt and woven leather pockets. During the first game, Lisa leaned over to reach the cue ball and take the measure of a difficult shot, and Brett let her see him staring at her, her hair pitched forward and almost touching the felt, the stick slowly sawing through a finger bridge as she tried to solve the angle. Her thigh was mashed against the table. Chandelier light bounced off a thick silver bracelet. She flicked her eyes away from the game and toward him and then missed the shot by a fraction, almost sank it. “Nice,” he said. He grinned. “Good try, I mean.”
The last rack they played nine-ball, and despite having lost all the games before, Lisa wagered dinner.
“And drinks,” Brett added. “The whole package.”
“Absolutely.”
He broke and never allowed her a turn, finished matters on his fourth shot, running in the winner with a long combination. He stayed bent over and peered up at her as the balls kissed, was studying her, not the pocket, when the nine fell and clicked against the other ball already there. His expression let on that he realized his no-look trick was cheesy, a flash of courtship swagger and preening tail feathers, and she laughed at how he was showing off for her. A younger man wearing a sweater and slouching against the bar’s broad doorway complimented Brett’s skill.
“I’ll call a cab,” Brett said. “So we can ride together and not worry about how much we drink.”
“Meet you in the lobby. I need to find the restroom.”
She peed and washed her hands and dried them on a small cloth towel she tossed in a wicker basket. She wet another towel and rubbed a blue pool-chalk wisp from her sleeve. Still at the sink, she phoned her house and left Joe a message that the seminar had ended and she was going shopping downtown, then to the mall, where she’d probably grab a food-court meal. For him, there was baked chicken to warm and a salad she’d made that morning. She was lying about her plans, but it was a faint lie without any serious impact or consequences, a dry-run untruth, a practice deception, a little baby distortion that would for certain prove to be meaningless.
It was Wednesday, so Joe was at the gym, lifting weights and exercising. Strong and fit, he could bench-press three hundred pounds multiple times and do a hundred sit-ups in under three minutes. Comically though, he began every session with toe touches and oafish jumping jacks, like he was a sixth-grade PE student from 1953, and he simply couldn’t remember to bring white athletic socks and often worked out in tennis shoes and his dress socks—blue or black, whatever he’d put on for the office. Occasionally, he skipped the socks altogether and popped off the spastic jumping jacks with reddish, elastic imprints ringing his calves. She still found this hopeless quirk endearing, and she’d usually grin and wisecrack and needle him if he wore his colored socks and old Nikes home from the gym.
She tasted the wine in her mouth, but there wasn’t very much saliva along with the merlot, and the bathroom seemed hot, the heat stagnant and sweetened by chemical scents. The alcohol and anticipation pinched her stomach. She wasn’t about to focus on the mirror and mire down in her own thoughts and reflection, had no interest in taking the clichéd inventory where she’d stare at her failings and dither and fret and face a whorish adulterer taunting her from the glass. As she was heading for the door, she did sneak a sidelong glance, couldn’t help peeking, and watched herself until the mirror ended and the tile started and her image disappeared.
They both got full-tilt drunk at a pricey steak house, ordering a bottle of champagne and then another, and never made it to an entrée, just picked appetizer plates on a whim and didn’t finish any of them. Brett emptied the second bottle into their glasses, dunked it upside down in its silver pail, told her there were several bands nearby and asked her if she wanted to hear some music.
“Talking seriously about music,” she said, her words lush, fulsome, lavish, “with a single man out on the town”—she lifted the last of the champagne but didn’t raise it to her mouth—“is pretty much a first cousin to discussing sex, don’t you think?”
Brett smiled, his expression happy and cockeyed. “I like that. Probably true. Kind of like sex’s envoy or placeholder. Special trade representative or some such.”
“Ambassador at large, maybe.”
He stretched his neck forward, rested his elbow on the table, set his hand underneath his chin. “So what do you like?”
“I like it all, except, well, I don’t care for…well, I really can�
��t stand rap, and I hate to say this, living here in this part of the world, but I’m not a fan of the high mountain sound either, you know, hardscrabble bluegrass, Ralph Stanley and all the primitive wailing. Nothing personal, it’s just not for me. Truth be told, Joe’s more into music than I am. Well, more into it kind of clinically, dissecting it, studying it, cutting it to shreds.” She swallowed champagne until none was left. “I’m about tipsy,” she declared. “Wow. I usually don’t drink this much. But, yeah, right, let’s do go somewhere else. I don’t care. You choose. No need to waste this hard-earned buzz.”
“Great. I agree.” He moved his hand, changed his posture and folded his arms across his chest. “There’s a good jazz band in town. I’ve heard them a couple times.”
“Oh damn, we don’t have a car. How long will the cab take?”
Brett winked at her. “I had him wait. He’s here.”
“Clever. Nice. I like that. Big spender.” She touched her ear, worried she’d lost an earring. She felt it still there. “So you like listenin’ to jazz? Listening. I forget the ends of my words if I’m too liquored.”
“I really like Dave Brubeck. Beats rap and banjo hoedowns, right?”
Lisa insisted that she honor their wager, but Brett asked the server for their check, and while they were waiting for the bill, Lisa’s cell phone went off with “Hey Joe,” and even though she knew the ring tone was her husband’s, she fished and fumbled through her purse and found the phone and saw his name in stark black letters against a luminous background.
