The Ditto List

by Stephen Greenleaf

  Malpractice.

  A taxi pulled to the curb and discharged a passenger. Male. Wealthy. Past fifty. Furtive. A while later a car parked on the other side of the street and another man got out and unlocked the gate and went into the house. Then two men came out and drove away together. Then another one, young, trendy, on foot, went in. D.T. watched them all, hoping one of them would be Chas Stone, knowing that even sin was not that simple. After an hour he drove home.

  He undressed and turned out the light and got into bed. He tossed and turned, seeing legal words and Lucinda Finders in his mind. He turned on the light and picked up the phone.

  “Bobby? D.T. I’m making this a habit, aren’t I?”

  “It’s all right.”

  “I need something.”

  “What?”

  “A whore.”

  “But you …”

  “Not for me. A guy. A gay.”

  Bobby E. Lee was silent.

  “I want to set Stone up. I want him to meet Stone at the club, seduce him, then take him someplace where I can photograph Stone doing things that will make Judge Buchanan apoplectic. I’ll pay two hundred bucks. But it has to be a pro. No amateurs. You know anyone? Come on, Bobby, goddamnit. Do you?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Ask around. Let me know as soon as you can.”

  “I assume if I don’t find someone for you you’ll look elsewhere.”

  “You’re damned right.”

  “I’ll let you know.”

  “I could have done it without telling you, you know. I could have just done it.”

  “I know.”

  “Well, thanks for your help.”

  “I don’t want your thanks, Mr. J. I just want the money you owe me. Or I report you to the state.”

  SIXTEEN

  He couldn’t breathe. Something covered his mouth, something wet, heavy, soft. He struggled, twisting his head, straining to speak, fighting for air. When he raised a hand to his face other fingers forced it back. The weight of another body imprisoned him beneath his sheet.

  Although his eyes were open, the room—blackened by the thick drape across his window—allowed only a guess at the shape and danger looming over him. Del? Had Delbert Finders downed the twelve-pack and come to wreak a vengeance that Lucinda had rendered pointless? Would he die only comically, his entire threat to Del previously dissolved by the capitulation of his wife? D.T. twisted his head again, and finally freed his mouth.

  “I’m not her fucking lawyer anymore,” he shouted. “She fired me, goddamnit.”

  Hot breath brushed his face. The scents of things familiar—toothpaste, mouthwash, soap—made him want to scratch his nose. He sneezed. The shadowy form that crushed him pulled back and then rolled off, granting freedom.

  “Someone actually fired you? How cruel.” The voice was not Del’s, not a man’s.

  “Barbara?”

  “You were expecting someone else?”

  “What time is it?”

  “Nine. Sleepyhead. You’re hard to wake up.”

  “Jesus.” He struggled to a sitting position. “I thought you were trying to kill me.”

  Barbara crossed her legs and faced him like a sporty Buddha from the foot of the bed. As always, her full face was flushed with life. “Don’t be so paranoid, D.T. I’m on my way to Visalia. Want to change your mind and come?”

  He shook his head. “I promised Heather.”

  “We could be back tomorrow.”

  “Sorry. Next year.”

  She reached over and patted his cock, which was more alert than the rest of him. “Want me to crawl under there and give you something to be thankful for?”

  His head still sloshed with sleep, her words had little meaning to anything except the elastic cells she was massaging. “You know how I am in the mornings,” was all he said.

  “D.T.?”

  “What?”

  “You aren’t sleeping with Michele, are you?”

  “No. Of course not.”

  “Truth?”

  “Truth. Why?”

  “I don’t know. You seem a little less …”

  “Ardent?”

  “Right. Ardent. A little less ardent lately.”

  “I’m getting old, Barbara. It’s not that I feel less ardent, it’s just that by the time we get around to it, my ardent machine has already shut down for the day. It only works late about twice a month, for some reason. It doesn’t have anything to do with you.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Sure.”

  “You’re out of shape, D.T. Twenty miles a week would make a new man of you.”

  D.T. refused the bait.

  Barbara smiled and released him. “I wish you were going home with me. You know how my mother and I get. We could use a referee.”

  He knew how they got, all right. Barbara blamed her mother for everything that was less than sterling in her life. Beyond that, Barbara faulted her mother for achieving nothing more notable than wife-and-motherhood; for wasting her life inside a bite-sized bungalow in the suburbs of a town that didn’t even have suburbs. More than once, D.T. had sat across a cocktail table from Barbara, and listened to bar chatter while she had railed for hours against her absent mother. In the process she would characterize what seemed to D.T. a rather normal childhood as a spectacle that would have intrigued Dickens and delighted de Sade. And all evening D.T. would struggle mightily to refrain from pointing out that if Barbara had the right to blame her mother for her own shortcomings, then her mother in turn had every right to blame her mother for her own deficiencies, and so on back to Eve, whose only recourse was presumably to have it out with God.

  “I may go on up to Grizzly Ridge on Friday,” Barbara was saying. “Cross-country skiing. Want to meet me there?”

  D.T. shook his head.

  “I’ll teach you how. I’ll have the equipment all ready, so you won’t have to wait in line.”

  She knew him well. “It’s not my bag,” he said.

  “And golf is?” She mentioned the sport with her usual vaudevillian hoot.

  D.T. replied in kind. “Finesse and carefully calibrated physical movement. None of this brute strength and witless reflex. It’s why I’m such a wonderful lover.”

  Barbara climbed off the bed and loomed over him like a spectre in a sweatsuit. “Not before noon you’re not.”

  She bent and kissed him, waved, and left.

  Barbara. What was he going to do about her? Over the years he had compiled a long list of things no couple should ever attempt if they wanted to preserve their alliance. Camping together more than one night. Wallpapering. Ice-skating. Playing chess. Those and more were often fatal, as were any activities requiring courage on the part of either participant and any sports in which one of the couple was truly expert and the other a beginner. Client after client had traced the initial tremor of divorce to blunders of this type. Yet these were exactly the things that Barbara insisted, time after time, that she and he engage in. To the point where he dreaded hearing her plans for the weekend more than he dreaded the Fiasco.

  What he suspected was that Barbara saw him primarily as a reclamation project, a vessel in need of filling with improvement in everything from his intake of polyunsaturates to the timing of his ejaculations. He in turn had begun to view Barbara as a professional resource. If he could figure out Barbara then he could figure out his clients—was the theory; but its converse must therefore have been true as well—if he failed to fathom Barbara then he must have been failing, day after clouded day, to fathom the women who trooped in and out of his office in the belief that he was qualified to help them. Their relationship was more the stuff of sociology than romance, the atmosphere of teacher-pupil rather than of friend or lover. So he guessed he was prepared to see it end with Barbara, but not for it to be his doing.

  He got out of bed, showered, dressed, read the paper. Thanksgiving. Cute features about turkeys and Pilgrims, and pious homilies from politicians thankful only for their own e
lection and the continued secrecy of their slush fund. Outside, the downpour matched his mood.

  He was due at Michele’s at noon. The meal wouldn’t be served till five. Much dead time, one of Michele’s best weapons. He wondered what time George was coming. What on earth would he say to the man? Should he offer tips? Would they end up comparing notes about Michele’s comportment in the bedroom, like frat brothers after the second mixer? No. George was a better man then that, and he hoped he was himself.

  He poured a second cup of coffee and went out on the deck, but the rain and the cold air and the immaculately enervating view quickly drove him back indoors. He turned on the radio and listened to Larry Gatlin and his siblings sing about Beverly Hills. He wondered if a year from now he would be giving thanks that no malpractice judgment had been entered against him. Or would he be scrambling through his scraggly assets, trying to figure out how to satisfy a judgment without going bankrupt. He wondered about Lucinda Finders, if she was with Del, if they were having turkey, if they had somehow managed to become happy. Not a chance. Big Macs and beer and an inevitable clash. He wondered about Mareth Stone. She had kids, and holidays were usually endurable if kids were around. Except maybe Christmas. Christmas was a predestined anticlimax, even if you got everything on your list. He remembered the year he had wanted an electric train. He never got one. Not that year, not ever. Maybe he should buy one now. Run it around the office. A whole train of tank cars filled with Baileys Irish Cream. He wondered about Esther Preston and Rita Holloway for so long that he telephoned the little red house.

  “Happy Thanksgiving,” he said.

  “Same to you, D.T.”

  “How’s Mrs. Preston?”

  “Fine. I’m about to serve her some cranberry sauce. She’s a fiend for cranberry sauce.”

  “We filed the complaint.”

  Rita Holloway paused. “At one time I would have jumped for joy. Now, it terrifies me. If anything happens to Esther it’ll be my fault.”

  “No, it won’t. It’ll be the fault of whoever makes it happen.” And more than a little bit mine for not putting a stop to it, he thought but didn’t say. “Any sign of someone snooping around?”

  “No. Not while I’ve been here.”

  “You have my number, right?”

  “Right.”

  “I’ll be at this one from noon till about seven. Then I’ll be home.” He gave her Michele’s number. “Do you have someplace to go?”

  “My boyfriend’s taking me to Antoine’s.”

  “Nice place.”

  “Yes.”

  He waited for more about the boyfriend but it didn’t come.

  “Remember how I told you to mark the door, to see if anyone got in while you were gone?”

  “I remember.”

  Pause. “Your family live here in the city?” he asked, reluctant to cut the connection.

  “No. They’re dead.”

  “I’m sorry. Brothers or sisters?”

  “No. You?”

  “Only a mother. In the Midwest. In a rest home. She’s dying, the last I heard.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah. You think I’m a lousy lawyer you should see how bad I am at being a son.”

  “I don’t think you’re a lousy lawyer, D.T. I think you’re quite the opposite. You’re one of the things I’m most thankful for today, in fact.”

  “I guess I’d better quit while I’m ahead,” he mumbled. “You have a nice day, Miss Holloway. I enjoyed breakfast.”

  “So did I.”

  “Do we need to talk about it?”

  “Not now.”

  “Good. Call me if anything comes up.”

  “I will. Don’t worry. Brave is something I’m not.”

  “Nonsense. Nurses are the bravest of us all.”

  “I …”

  “Bye, Rita.”

  D.T. hung up and fixed a bowl of shredded wheat to tide him over, then turned on the TV and watched the football game. He had a big bet against both the Lions and the spread. Too big. A loss would wipe out the small surplus he had accumulated over the past few months by virtue of a few paying clients and a few successful wagers. Before he was comfortable in his chair the Lions scored. But Sims was out at least temporarily, his bell rung by a linebacker who had anticipated a swing pass and had gotten there before either the ball or Billy. D.T. cracked a beer and checked his watch.

  The phone rang. He let it cry unattended, a baby with the colic, as he imagined every person who could possibly be calling and decided he didn’t want to hear anything any of them might tell him. They could stew in their own juice, like the turkey at Michele’s. If somebody died, somebody like Lucinda Finders, say, well so what? Society worried too much about death, stretched too far to prevent it, emasculated itself to eliminate risk. It had made cowards of us all, shiftless squid who knew no real danger and so found danger in everything, who knew no real triumph and so found worth in the worthless, success in the insignificant, achievement in the trivial. Nothing noble occurred any longer, in a nation where nobility had once been the everyday measure of man. It was so bad that lawyers like himself could amass wealth and fame for doing nothing more than advancing the collapse of civilization by sundering its most basic institution. The Lions intercepted and ran it back for six. Jesus. In a sneak attack, age had rendered him reactionary. The Steelers fumbled the ensuing kickoff.

  He wondered if his gambling was a subconscious evasion of success, a deliberate impoverishing of himself so that he could not be accused of profiting from something so ignoble as divorce law. If that was really and truly the reason he bet, then gambling might be the best and not the worst of his activities.

  The Lions fumbled. He flicked off the TV and glanced at his watch. The phone rang once again. He grabbed his coat and left his apartment and drove through a storm to his ex-wife’s mansion, arriving thirty minutes early, the unanswered phone still a mite in his inner ear.

  Michele opened the door. Her eyes widened in surprise when she saw him, her mouth in pleasure. “D.T. How prompt. You must have missed mince pie more than I suspected.”

  She leaned toward him and he kissed her cheek. She smelled like flowers, tasted like squash. The long red gown that covered her fell as heavily as burlap.

  “Sorry I’m early,” he said. “I had a sudden attack of depression and figured if I didn’t come over now I wouldn’t make it at all.” He grinned to undermine the words.

  Michele frowned. “Are you all right? Do you want to go in the den and talk? Mirabelle doesn’t really need me out there, though she pretends she does.”

  D.T. shook his head. “George here?”

  “No. He’s coming at four.”

  “Heather?”

  “She’s across the street at a friend’s. I told her to be back at twelve sharp. I’m sure she’ll be here any minute. She’s been looking forward to this for weeks.” Michele looked at him closely. “Do you want to say anything to me about Heather, D.T.? I mean, about how she’s growing up? I worry about what you think, and it’s been so long since we’ve had a chance to really talk.”

  “I think you’re doing a fine job, Michele, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Do you really?”

  He nodded.

  She examined him intently. “It means a lot to me to hear you say that, D.T. I want you to know that I’d be interested in anything you have to suggest about her. I mean, it’s going to start getting tricky pretty soon, you know. Adolescent girls can be a problem.”

  “Adolescent girls are the world’s most febrile beings. Followed closely by middle-aged men who’ve slept with only one woman in their lives.”

  Michele laughed and stepped back to allow him into her house. “Just so you know I can use all the help I can get,” she said to him over her shoulder as they walked down the glistening foyer. “Want a drink?”

  “Sure.”

  “Scotch?”

  “Wine, I think. White. For a change it’s not an appropriate day to get
smashed.”

  “I’ll bring it to you in the den.”

  Michele went off toward the kitchen. D.T. made his way past the double doors to the living room and the single doors to the dining room and kitchen. Although he had lived in the house for six years he had little affection for it. It was less a former home than a hotel he had visited once, on a not particularly successful business trip during which he had comported himself less than honorably.

  He looked around as he walked, inspecting. The paintings and mirrors and occasional pieces were as he remembered, but the carpet and the colorings were new. Michele redecorated frequently, for no reason that he could see other than boredom and a fondness for tradesmen. The result was not always an improvement, but that didn’t seem to be the point. Her decorator was a friend of Bobby E. Lee’s, who had spent a year in Paris.

  The den was as cozy as he remembered, possibly because he had refused to let the decorator alter it while he had lived there and Michele had evidently continued the tradition. But most of the toys she had bought him during coverture had been removed—the rear-projection TV set, the video recorder, the laser disc player, the quadraphonic music system. He wondered if George had them now, and if George would be willing to sell him the big-screen TV cheap. How she had spoiled him, though his Puritanism had caused most of her largesse to backfire, to stoke not gratitude but a persistent ember of resentment.

  He sat in the soft leather chair and put his feet on the soft leather ottoman and waited for his drink. The trinkets he had given her—the calfskin edition of Emily Dickenson, the Steuben apple, the World War I topographic map of the Balkans—all were where he had placed them for her admiration. He wondered if she’d just hauled them out of storage. He walked over to inspect. No dust. No clear evidence one way or another. He returned to the chair and listened to the rhythm and blues that danced from Mirabelle’s radio and smelled the smells that were as present in the air as birds.

  Michele came in and handed him a glass of Chablis. It was cool perfection, as were most of her possessions, potable and otherwise. She bought wine by the case, at a discount available to no one who needed it.

  Michele sat on the tufted leather couch across from him, crossed her legs, looked at him with earnest intensity. She seemed not to have aged a minute since that same look had first captured him, at a benefit auction for a crisis center he sometimes worked with. She seemed always to blend with her surroundings, to be never out of place, even on the days she had visited his office.