“Is unforgiveness the religion you wish your wife to teach, Mr. Stone?”
Stone had no answer and D.T. had had enough. He pushed back his chair. “I think that about wraps it up. Any questions, Dick?”
“None at all.”
“Then the deposition is concluded. Off the record, Phyllis,” he said, and all of them exhaled as if on cue. “I’d like a transcript as soon as possible,” D.T. said as Phyllis collapsed her equipment.
“Wednesday?”
“Fine.”
“Anything else?” D.T. looked briefly at each of them. They all shook their heads.
Phyllis packed up and left, her final act an admiring glance at Stone. A few seconds later Stone departed after telling D.T. he was pleased to meet him, that he knew D.T. was only doing his job, that he didn’t take his questions personally, that he only hoped D.T. would keep the best interests of the children in mind when he was advising his client. D.T. managed to keep his hands off Chas Stone’s neck, made do with a silent vow to smash the bastard when they got to court.
“How about that drink?” Dick Gardner asked.
THIRTEEN
“I told you it would be ugly.”
Dick Gardner’s eyes oscillated easily in their sockets, taking in the bar, taking in the patrons, taking in Russ, who had just told his latest Polish joke and gone off to get their drinks. Clearly Gardner’s lawyer’s mind raced even in the Walrus, where the provocative was as avoided as bright light.
“The kid stuff is never pretty,” D.T. said. “Lucky for me Stone’s a bastard.”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to. Till after he pays your bill.”
They flashed brief grins, then leaned back to allow Russ to deliver the libations. After he left they raised their glasses.
“Here’s to Holmes.”
“Here’s to Brandeis.”
“Here’s to sin.”
“Here’s to vice.”
They took deep drinks and tabled their glasses in unison. “Got any hot ones in the fire, D.T.?” Gardner asked him.
He thought of Lucinda Finders. Of Esther Preston. Of the Friday Fiasco. “Nope. How about you?”
“Couple of criminal things. Rape defense: defendant’s fifteen, victim’s sixty-seven. Coke bust: two kilos inside some tennis balls. Embezzlement. A sexual harrassment. And the usual two thousand or so drunk drivers, bless their souls.”
D.T. shook his head. “How the hell can you represent those creeps?”
Gardner smiled easily. “Everyone’s entitled to a competent defense, D.T., as all lawyers say and a handful even believe. And you should talk. How can you represent ball-busters like Mareth Stone? She fucked over her husband worse than a mugger, and now she wants half his dough as a reward for making the guy’s life miserable.”
“It’s not even close to being the same. Mareth Stone was unhappy. The marriage wasn’t working and Stone wouldn’t give her the time of day. It’s not her fault she hit the booze and fooled around; your guy drove her to it.”
“Hey. My rapist grew up in twelve different foster homes. You think he can help anything? So don’t give me that deterministic crap. Not about broads like Mareth Stone. She sandbagged him, D.T. She went into the marriage playing by one set of rules, then changed them in midstream and got pushed out of shape when Stone didn’t go along with the new little game she invented. Why the hell should he? He wanted a wife and mother and she knew it from day one. It’s not his fault the bitch decided those jobs weren’t good enough any more. She wouldn’t even do his fucking laundry, did you know that?”
Gardner paused for breath. D.T. frowned, started to reply, then held his tongue because what either of them thought about it didn’t make any difference and because he never won arguments with Dick Gardner, only bets.
“You ever think about fighting for custody of Heather?” Gardner asked after a minute.
D.T. shook his head. “Michele could offer her about ten million advantages,” he said, “each of them with ‘Federal Reserve Note’ engraved on the top.”
“Money can backfire, though. I’ve seen a lot of fucked-up rich kids.”
“Yeah, but Michele’s different.”
“How?”
He thought about it. “She doesn’t think her money makes her better than other people. She’s damn glad she’s rich, don’t get me wrong, but she’d be just as happy if everyone else had as much as she does. Most rich folks wish the rest of us were even poorer, so they could feel all the more exalted.”
Gardner smiled and loosened his tie. “Michele sounds like quite a lady.”
“She is.”
“Maybe you should have kept her.”
“It wasn’t entirely my decision.”
“Bet you miss the kid.”
“Sure I do. But what the hell. It all goes away after a few belts. Or a few more than a few.” D.T. drained his glass and tried to clear his mind of Heather.
“So why don’t you petition for amended custody? Have her live with you every other year or something.”
D.T. shook his head. “I’m old-fashioned, Dick. I think kids need mommies more than daddys, especially little girl kids. I think it’s biological and I think it’s a shame the law doesn’t see it that way any more.”
Gardner shrugged. “One thing’s for sure. Kids got a lot of pressure on them these days. Used to be, us middle-class jerks proved what big-shots we were with houses and cars and clothes and like that. Now, hell, it’s all the kids. Gourmet babies, computer camps, cello lessons. You been to a playground lately? The goddamned blacks are the only ones let their kids be kids any more.”
“Yeah, well, that’s one thing about divorce; it keeps you from fucking up your own kid’s life.”
“I guess that’s one way to look at it.”
“Yeah. I just wish when I looked at it that way it didn’t look back.”
Both men smiled. D.T. signalled Russ for a second round.
Dick Gardner spoke after a long moment of melancholy. “Be nice to have a kid. Something that made it all worth it, you know? For me it’s just the trials. Getting some asshole up there on the stand, showing him up for what he is, seeing that look in his eyes when he knows he’s whipped. Sure, half my clients are scum—hell, the corporate guys are worse than the hoods. But it’s the challenge, you know? Break open the lie, watch it crack and crumble till there’s nothing left but truth. And not just any truth. My truth. A gunfighter, is all I am. High Noon, baby. God help me if the world runs out of felons.”
D.T. nodded, then scraped the condensation off his glass and wished it was as easy to clear his conscience. Somewhere by the bar a bottle broke and a man laughed.
“Speaking of changes in the law,” Gardner said abruptly. “I’m in charge of the continuing education program next month. Recent Trends in Domestic Practice. Want to serve on it, D.T.? Might lure some referrals your way.”
D.T. shook his head. “I haven’t been keeping up on current trends, Dick. Maybe because so many of them are lousy.”
“Come on, D.T. It’s mostly beginners at those things. Just out of law school, trying to build a practice. They could learn a lot from you.”
“Hell, Dick, I can’t keep my letterhead in print, that’s how successful I am at this business. I’m in hock to my secretary, for God’s sake. The best advice I could give them is to go into something respectable. Like worm farming.”
Dick Gardner laughed, apparently assuming D.T. had joked. “How about premarital agreements? Drafting problems and so on?”
D.T. shook his head. “Don’t use them. They’re a mistake unless both spouses are independently wealthy to begin with, and my clients don’t begin that way. Plus, the women always get fucked. If the guy gets rich she doesn’t get enough, and if he doesn’t he ends up breaching the deal and she has to sue him. We both know who wins when that happens. All us Juris Doctors.”
Dick Gardner shook his head. “You’re a cheery soul today. What’s wro
ng, your love life turn stale?”
“Lately stale and fresh taste a lot alike.”
“You still seeing that, what’s her name?”
“Barbara.”
“The jock. Yeah. Hell of a physical specimen, as I recall. Must be like the Olympics every night. The thrill of victory.”
“The agony of defeat.”
Gardner laughed. “What’s the matter, the old hose won’t stiffen up for you any more?”
D.T. shrugged. “The sex is okay. For me, at least. And I like Barbara. A lot. But it’s over. We both know it, too. I guess we’re each waiting for the other to blow the whistle.”
“If the sex is good then what’s the problem?”
“We’re in violation of the Fourth Principle of Modern Matrimony.”
“Which is?”
“Opposites attract. But not long enough to make plans.”
“Opposite how?”
D.T. drank his drink with urgency. For the first time in years he was about to talk to another man about a woman.
“The main thing is, Barbara’s a participant and I’m an observer. She sees plots and conspiracies all over the place, but basically she’s an optimist. I empathize and sympathize and romanticize and all that, but basically I’m a pessimist. I think my useful life ended about five years ago, that I’m just waiting my turn to die. Barbara, on the other hand, thinks every day it’s getting better and better. She’s got answers; all I’ve got are questions. Plus, there’s the little things.”
“Like what?”
“Oh, like she’s absolutely convinced that running umpteen miles a day will make you live longer and that living longer’s good. That all would be right with the world if women were exactly the same as men. That groups of women sitting around using words like relating and sharing and feeling and stroking are engaged in something more meaningful than a discussion of the nickel defense or the 24-second shot clock.”
“And you’re not sure of any of that, right?”
“Right.”
“Hell, D.T. Welcome to the end of the century. It’s not nuclear war that’s going to be the end of us, it’s that men and women can’t stand each other any more. You think any species ever decided not to fuck? The dinosaurs, maybe?”
D.T. smiled.
“I think it’s the broads’ fault myself,” Gardner continued, “the lib shit, men are assholes, women are saints, working nine to five in a steel mill is woman’s greatest goal. But I suppose you disagree.”
“Not necessarily. I think lib’s off the track, too, in some ways. Putting all their eggs in the ERA basket. Devaluing motherhood. Promoting abortion like a cosmetic. But women have gotten screwed in some ways, and it’s still happening. Look at law firms. You could fire a shotgun in every partnership meeting in town and not hit a single woman who isn’t screwing the managing partner.”
“Yeah, maybe, but so what? Being a lawyer’s a piece of shit. Fucking lackeys, is all we are. Women are crazy to want it.” Gardner laughed. “Why do you represent all those broads anyway, D.T.? What are you, a traitor to your sex?”
D.T. laughed. “Hell, I don’t know. Because I like women, I guess. Better than men, I mean. Men are so damned frightened by their lives—their jobs, their kids, their age, their bodies going bad. Unless they’re a month away from discovering a cure for cancer they figure they haven’t fulfilled their potential, and then they figure, hey. Maybe I can’t cure cancer but I can sure as hell fuck young girls. So that’s what they do. Either that or they just crawl inside themselves and watch football till it’s over. Women fight for it. Truth. Meaning. Whatever. And when it still doesn’t keep their husbands from running off with the receptionist they’re devastated. Then the divorce system comes along and screws them to the wall.”
Gardner swore. “That’s a crock, D.T. I can name a hundred guys dragging around support judgments that are killing them like the plague.”
“And I can name a thousand women who live like slaves because they aren’t getting one red cent for themselves or the kids from husbands who’ve been ordered to pay and can but aren’t.”
Gardner’s grin was sly. “You want to know what I think?”
“What?”
“I think you guys who claim you’re so fucking liberated, who admire women so goddamned much, like to work with them and be pals and all that, I think you guys are the ultimate chauvinists.”
“Why?”
“Because deep down you think broads really are inferior. That’s why you don’t have any problems with them. You don’t think they’re really capable of being a threat to you in any way. I mean, hell. It’s like you say. All men are insecure, right? Comes with having a cock.”
“Right.”
“So if you really respected broads as much as men, then at least some of them would make you feel inferior as hell, the way some men do.”
“Not true.”
“Says you. That’s why there’s so much divorce, you know.”
“Why?”
“Women scare the shit out of us. Men don’t know their function any more, except maybe to get stiff on cue and take the blame for everything from cellulite to cysts.”
D.T. shook his head. “That’s not it. Want to hear my Dissertation on Divorce?”
“Shoot.”
“It’s simple physics. There’s a finite amount of intelligence and beauty in the world. In the first half of life, men get the brains, women get the looks. Then comes the Big Reversal. Men get dumber and handsomer, women get smarter and uglier. Ergo, divorce, because psychologically neither one can handle the switch. Plus there’s the First Supporting Principle.”
“Which is?”
“In middle age men’s and women’s sex drives start traveling in opposite directions. Women’s up after the birth of the first child; men’s down from age eighteen. Women want it more and more; men can do it less and less. Prescription for disaster, maritalwise. The big bang.”
Gardner was cackling. “Christ, D.T. You ought to write a book.”
“That’s just what the world needs. Another book about divorce.”
“One more thing,” Gardner said.
“Yeah?”
“What’s the D.T. stand for?”
“Dutch Treat,” he said, and threw a dollar on the table.
They listened to bar sounds for a while, laughter and debate, fellowship and hostility, the periodic voicing of swizzled dreams. D.T. wondered why he didn’t do this more often. Bullshit. Brag. Complain. Confess. Just like college. Then he realized he knew no one but Dick Gardner who would listen to his tale. Except maybe Bobby E. Lee, who had a tale of his own that D.T. thought he’d better not hear.
“So, you sleep with your clients or what?” Gardner asked suddenly.
“Nope. Never.”
“Bullshit.”
“Really. No future in it. All the guys I know who have, end up wishing they hadn’t.”
“You can say that again,” Gardner confessed, as D.T. remembered one of Gardner’s former wives was a former client. “Say, D.T. You aren’t seeing Michele any more, are you? I mean, you’re not about to remarry her or anything, right?”
“Once was more than enough.”
“You mind if I ask her out some night?”
D.T. was startled, then angry, then hurt. So this was the reason for the drink. And the bullshit. Gardner didn’t want a discussion; he just wanted a pimp. “No problem. Take her out.” The words soured his mouth.
“You don’t look too sure about it.”
“Hell, I don’t have any say in the matter. But I warn you, she’s about to marry a twerp named George.”
“No harm in trying, right?”
“Right.” Trying what?
“What’s she like, anyway? I mean, really.”
“Michele’s a wonderful woman. Cheerful. Enthusiastic. Funny. Spends money like an Arab, but the beauty is it’s all her own. Generous. Kind. A miraculous, marvelous creature. I’m sure you’ll be very happy.”
“Hell, D.T. I’m not going to marry the bitch. I just want to get in her pants.”
Gardner shook his head. D.T. grew morose by leaps and bounds.
“Want to go hustle up some chicks?” Gardner asked as he finished his drink. “I know this place on the west side where a lot of our type hang out.”
“What type is our type?”
“Oh, the ones who were born about the time ‘Moonglow’ hit the charts and give head without being strangled.”
“I think I’ll pass,” D.T. said. “The odds of two such lovelies being in attendance at the same saloon are astronomical.”
Gardner nodded absently, clearly eager to get away. “You’re probably smart. Know what happened to me the other night?”
“What?”
“I’m in this joint, see, and I spot this halfway decent chick sitting at a table in the corner, alone, dressed to kill, definitely on the make. So I go over. And buy some drinks, and put about a number two move on her, and she responds on schedule. So I ask if she wants to go to my place for a nightcap. Next thing I know this hand is feeling around my crotch. And I get about half hard, and she acts like she’s even hotter than I am, and then she says, ‘No thanks; I’m in the mood for something a little bigger tonight.’ Can you fucking believe it? The world’s going straight to hell. But fuck it, right?”
“Right. Fuck it.”
Gardner stood up. “Hang in there, D.T. Tell the Stone woman she’s about to have some spare rooms.”
“And you tell Chas he’d better start getting liquid.”
They shook hands and parted at the door. D.T. watched Gardner go off to hustle chicks, and quickly hated him. He drove rapidly to his apartment, his mind woolly with drink and with the feeling he had just been party to something a bit unseemly.
By the time he had changed his clothes it was after six. He was hungry, but there was nothing in the refrigerator he hadn’t eaten in the previous three days. As he surveyed the chilly larder the waxed carton on the top shelf reminded him of Lucinda Finders and the fantastic fact that she had nursed her child in his living room. His lips puckered. He opened the cupboard and inspected the crystal chalice that still contained a crusty remnant of her milk. He picked it up, tipped it, watched one last drop collect in a pearly puddle. He swirled the glass as though it held a priceless vintage, shuddered, then poured the droplet down the drain and threw the goblet in the soggy sack beneath the sink. Then he went to the phone and asked for Reedville.
The Ditto List Page 22
