The Solomon Organization

by Andrew Neiderman

  “How can they get that?”

  “They have their ways. Well?”

  Scott thought. Supervised visits whenever he wanted to see his own flesh and blood, and limited at that.

  “Okay,” he said quickly. “The way things are going, I’ll try anything.” Dante smiled.

  “Wise decision. I’ll be right back. Order me another drink, please, and one more for yourself,” Dante said, rising.

  Scott signaled the waitress and then sat back, wondering exactly what it was he had agreed to do.

  2

  Meg Lester didn’t join the chorus of laughter around her at the front window table in Antonio’s Trattoria. Instead, she turned away to gaze at a man and woman strolling hand in hand along the sidewalk on San Vincente Boulevard in Brentwood. Occasionally, they would pause to look at something in one of the upscale stores, and whenever they did so, the man would move his arm around the woman’s shoulders and draw her closer, embracing her as if he was terrified of losing her.

  Scott and she were once like that, Meg thought. She would never have dreamed then that she’d be sitting here after the start of a brutalizing divorce proceeding, her marriage in ruins. She continued to watch the couple, ignoring the joviality around her.

  Meg was tired of perfunctory laughter anyway, tired of participating in the cackle just so no one would feel uncomfortable, so no one would stop to offer her suggestions or voice her pity. She was tired of putting on an act. As far as she was concerned, what they said about Los Angeles was true: so many people were so immersed in illusions, so affected by the film and television world everywhere around them that they all became performers. All of them, including her, walked around imagining theme music in the background.

  As if to demonstrate her thought, a very attractive, tall young woman with ebony hair streaming down over her shoulders paused on the grass mall in the center of the boulevard and posed: her right hand on her hip, her left hand combing through her hair. She wore a metallic blue, skin-tight exercise suit that made her small rear end glitter in the California sunshine. Practically every male driver spun around. Horns blared, brakes squealed. The woman tossed her hair back with a quick gesture and continued to cross the street, her long legs moving to the rhythm of her own soundtrack.

  Meg sighed, realizing how much she longed to be young again, just starting, just discovering. She felt as if the events of the past few weeks had aged her years, and she certainly didn’t feel like the heroine some of her girlfriends were making her out to be. What’s more, she was growing tired of these so-called victory celebrations: wine and cheese parties, lunches and dinners with just the girls, two of whom here at the table were already on their second marriages. Whatever happened to the idea that a failed marriage was a tragedy, not something to be celebrated?

  Sure, she hated Scott for what he had been doing and she hated who he had become, but there was a Scott with whom she had fallen in love and with whom she had had a child, a Scott in whom she had once placed all her trust, a man who was full of promise and affection, who thought the day began with her smile and ended when she kissed him good night and turned over in bed to go to sleep.

  What about the memories of their courting—the funny little things he used to do, the way he would pop up unannounced, pretending coincidence; what about that wonderful period when they lived on impulse and improvisation, when it was nothing for her to put aside all her plans and get into his car and with no luggage, nothing, rush off to spend a weekend at some cabin retreat near Lake George?

  What should she really do with all those cards filled with romantic words…the cartons of pictures from their vacations, the special little gifts he surprised her with at dinners? Burn them as Sharma had suggested? She still hadn’t brought their marriage certificate to the girls to stage their ceremonial bonfire. She claimed she couldn’t find it. As much as she hated the Scott who now existed, she loved the one who had been. But it was painful to cling to the good memories. Sharma might not be wrong, she thought.

  “Why are you so pensive, Meg?” Patricia Longstreet asked. “Are you feeling okay?”

  Meg nodded quickly, but looked down, aware that everyone’s eyes had been drawn to her.

  “I’m just tired,” she said. “Every morning I wake up hoping it’s all been a dream, a nightmare. I was so stupid to ignore the signals, to let so many things slide by. Instead of confronting our problems head-on, I dove into every possible distraction I could find.” She raised her head, her eyes burning with tears. “Just like a stupid ostrich.”

  “Don’t worry, honey. As soon as this is over, you’ll get over him,” Sharma Corman said, sharply, “and faster than you think.”

  “Will I? I don’t think I’ll ever forget the man I married,” Meg said.

  “What do you mean, Meg?” Brooke Thomas asked.

  “I didn’t divorce the man I married,” Meg said. “I divorced a complete stranger.”

  Everyone was quiet for a moment, digesting Meg’s thought. Sharma found it disagreeable and smirked, Brooke maintained her angelic smile, and Patricia narrowed her eyes and softened her lips in the corners. She was a redhead with a cherry blossom complexion, small featured, the daintiest of the clan and the most intelligent, as far as Meg was concerned. Patricia worked part-time as a coverage reader for one of the better known movie producers.

  “What are you planning to do when this is all over, Meg?” she asked.

  “What do you mean, what is she planning to do? She’s planning to do better,” Sharma declared.

  “I might go home,” Meg said, staring down at her bowl of angel hair and tomatoes. She had barely eaten.

  “Home?” Sharma said, sitting forward. The tall brunette sat back with an arrogant air. She twisted her mouth and squinted as if in pain. “You don’t mean…back to New York to that boondock town you were brought up in, do you?”

  Meg shrugged.

  “My sister wants me to come home,” she said. She smiled. “Abby’s four years older than I am and has been married happily for nearly ten years. They have three children. She thinks I’d be better off where I have family and lots of old friends.”

  “Well that’s good for her,” Sharma said, “but not for you.”

  “How do you know what’s good for her?” Brooke snapped. All of a sudden there was a minor rebellion at the table in Antonio’s Trattoria.

  “That’s running away!” Sharma Corman declared. “That’s letting a man ruin your life. Don’t go off with your tail between your legs. Show him you can make it without him.”

  “Sometimes that’s easier said than done,” Patricia Longstreet said softly. “We need them.”

  “We don’t need them!” Sharma Corman insisted.

  “Speak for yourself, Sharma,” Brooke Thomas said. “I need them.” She smiled licentiously, setting Sharma off on one of her favorite themes.

  “Sure we have sexual needs; sure we want romance and we want to be loved, but if we let them think we need them more than they need us, they’ll revert to the cavemen they are at heart. Every man wants to conquer every woman, Meg. That’s his nature. My first husband Charlie couldn’t keep his eyes from following every piece of ass in sight. You’ve got to keep the reins tight and make sure they know you’re no fool.

  “You’re going to whip his ass from one end of this city to the other in that custody hearing. He should be the one who hightails it out of here, not you.”

  Lectures and lessons, philosophy and theory, Meg thought, all her girlfriends, everyone in the clan, seemed to be a veteran of one bad affair or another. Everyone had been burned. Somehow all male-female relationships had degenerated into them against us.

  This wasn’t what she had dreamed and imagined when Scott had proposed. Of course, much of it had to do with the things he had said. Looking back through wiser eyes, Meg sadly concluded Scott was a salesman even then; he’d always been a salesman.

  “From now on,” he had said, “I’m a ‘we.’ Me doesn’t exist in my v
ocabulary. What pleases you, pleases me, and what makes you unhappy, makes me unhappy, Meg. We’re going to eat together, sleep together, dream together. It’s marriage with a capital M.”

  Those words haunted her. Taunted her was more like it. She wished that along with the judgments that would be handed down after the divorce proceeding, there was a power that would wipe her mind of all memories involving Scott. A blank slate, that’s what she dreamed of.

  She had to admit she was a different person from the impressionable young woman who had fallen in love with Scott Lester, but Los Angeles hadn’t existed as a viable place to live until she had met him. The house, all they had, the car, the things she really enjoyed here, even these friends were all because of Scott in one way or another. Everything carried his stamp on it. That was why she harbored the belief that in the end she just had to move away.

  “I mean,” Sharma continued, “imagine coming home unexpectedly and finding your husband had brought a woman into your house! Into your bed! He should be nailed to a cross of fire.”

  Brooke and Patricia looked away for Meg’s sake.

  “I’ve got to get going,” Meg said. “I have some things to do at the office and I don’t want to be late picking up Justine.” She dug into her purse.

  “Forget it. We’re treating,” Sharma declared.

  “You treated me the last time,” Meg protested.

  “That’s all right. You’re still in mourning,” Patricia Longstreet said. She was the one of the three who had suffered the most through her divorce.

  “Mourning? That’s ridiculous,” Sharma declared.

  “No, it’s not.” Patricia held her ground for once and stood up to her overpowering friend. She turned back to Meg, her hazel eyes tender, sad.

  “I know what you’re feeling, Meg,” she said. “It’s really more like someone you loved died. You don’t want to admit that, to say you loved him, not after what he’s done to you, but you did and…” She smiled like a co-conspirator. “You might still love him.”

  “Don’t tell her things like that,” Sharma said.

  “Shut up, Sharma,” Brooke said. She wore a gentle smile on her face, too, but she looked like she was enjoying the emotional tension. For a moment, Meg had the feeling Brooke thought she was on the set of some soap opera.

  This is my life, Meg thought, my life, not some serialized afternoon slop.

  Brooke’s reaction encouraged Patricia to continue.

  “If you want to go home, go home,” Patricia said. “Even if it’s just for a short while to catch your breath.”

  “I might just do that, Patricia. I don’t know how long I can continue getting up in the morning and dressing myself in this angry demeanor. I feel like I’m putting on a suit of armor every day. I don’t laugh, I don’t smile. I hate what I look like.”

  “And the more you hate yourself, the more you hate him for making you that way,” Patricia concluded.

  “If there’s one thing she doesn’t need now, it’s self-pity,” Sharma said, slowly regaining her control of the clan. “She’s had a bad time, but whether she knows it now or not, she will be stronger and wiser because of it.”

  “You almost make it sound as if divorce is a good thing, Sharma,” Meg responded. “Well, maybe it is necessary. I certainly felt it was for me, but Justine keeps asking about her father, and the house is cluttered with broken promises. To tell you the truth, I’m sick of it. Sick of hating him and sick of loving him, sick of detesting the sight of him and sick of wanting him.”

  The tears pressed against her lids, but she held them back.

  “It’s as if…as if marriage was one of God’s big jokes. I’m sorry,” she said, wiping her cheeks. “I’ve ruined everyone’s good time. Thanks for lunch,” she added and got up quickly.

  “Meg!” Sharma cried.

  “Let her go,” Patricia said, firmly gripping Sharma’s wrist.

  Sharma tore her arm free and glared at her. Then she took a deep breath and as if she were releasing fire like a dragon, sighed, and said, “Men!”

  As soon as Meg stepped out of the restaurant, she practically jogged down the sidewalk to her car. Away from her girlfriends, she stopped trying to hold back the tears. They streamed down and across her cheeks. She pressed the car alarm clicker on her key chain and the vehicle produced that dumb metallic gulp. This was a city full of alarms. Houses were secured in devices hooked to windows and doors; everywhere cars sounded off because someone tapped a bumper or leaned on a hood. Meg read where even children were being wired so if a stranger came near them, they could set off sirens. Why wasn’t there an alarm for a failing marriage, a siren that went off as soon as your husband lost interest in you?

  She plopped in the Mercedes soft leather seat and tried to calm herself down. A package of Scott’s breath mints was still in the ash tray, some reminders he had written to himself remained in the pocket of the door, and behind the visor was his comb. Angrily, she opened the window and as she pulled away and started down the boulevard, she began to throw out whatever belonged to him. She resembled a sailor on a sinking ship, trying to lessen its weight by casting off whatever wasn’t nailed down.

  Her sobbing grew harder, longer. Sharma just had to bring it up; she just continually had to mention Meg finding Scott in bed with another woman. Meg was beginning to think Sharma got off on the story; she never failed to find a way to resurrect it.

  But it was as if Sharma had written the textbook entitled How to Get an Unfaithful Husband. She took her every step of the way, from the detective to the attorney to the accountant. Together with Brooke and Patricia, they became Meg’s little support group, her cheering section: the team. She had needed them and they had come through for her, but like the man who hated the messenger bringing bad news, she had begun to resent them for being so right and for knowing the most intimate details.

  Meg took a deep breath and stopped her sniveling when she realized that she had somehow driven to Jonathan Sanders’s offices in Santa Monica. She couldn’t remember the trip. Just lucky I didn’t have an accident, she thought as she pulled into the parking lot. She got out of the car, locked and alarmed it, and then hurried into the two-story wedgwood blue house that had been converted into an architect’s offices.

  “Oh, Meg, we tried to find you,” Vikki Carson, Jonathan’s junior partner, said, turning from the front desk when Meg entered. “The school’s been calling. Justine’s not feeling well.”

  “Oh, no,” Meg said.

  “Jonathan said not to worry about the filing and the bookkeeping. You can do it when you can.”

  “Thanks,” Meg cried and ran out. If it wasn’t one thing now, it was another. She was still being tossed about in a hurricane of personal trouble, a little boat adrift on an angry and unfriendly sea. Abby, she thought, I do want to come home.

  She thought about Justine as she drove to her school. The child hadn’t been eating well and had been slowly drifting into a deeper and deeper melancholy since the divorce proceedings had begun. The concept of two people tearing apart from each other and in the process destroying everything they had built together was a notion Justine couldn’t fathom. Daddy wasn’t coming home to sleep and to eat with them anymore. He never would. There was a vast gap in her life, an emptiness she couldn’t fill.

  Despite his extramarital activities, Scott had been a loving father, doting on Justine. Meg would be the first to admit that, although she found it disturbing that Scott respected and guarded his relationship with his daughter more than he had with his wife. Why wasn’t this relationship as holy and as sacrosanct?

  His lawyer had attempted to show Scott was a responsible father. How absurd that seemed in light of some of the things Scott had done; how twisted and distorted it made their lives look. Her attorney told her that ninety percent of all of it was posturing and she should let it go into one ear and out the other; which was something more easily said than done because this was her and Justine’s lives they were deciding.

>   Meg hurried into the school and down to the nurse’s office. Unfortunately, she didn’t need directions. She had been here twice before during the last two weeks.

  “Oh, Mrs. Lester,” the nurse said, rising from her desk. She glanced toward the room in which Justine was resting.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “She has no fever, but she’s complaining about those stomach cramps again,” the nurse said. She was a dark-haired woman in her late forties with eyes that were like gaping holes to her thoughts. “She is a very depressed young lady,” the nurse added, a little more caustically than Meg expected. “Have you considered some therapy?”

  “Therapy?”

  “Children of fresh divorces often undergo counseling,” the nurse replied pedantically. “Unfortunately, it’s like an epidemic around here,” she added. Meg blanched.

  “I assure you it wasn’t something I wanted to happen.”

  “Oh, I didn’t mean…”

  “Can I have my daughter, please,” Meg said. “I’d like to take her to a doctor and get some professional advice,” she added. Who would ever imagine that shy little Meg Turner from Jamestown would become a raging, flaming woman of independence three thousand miles from where she was born and bred?

  The nurse paled and then moved quickly to get Justine. Meg felt her heart pounding. Her five-year-old daughter stepped out of the room. Her light brown hair was disheveled; the sweet chestnut ribbon Meg had tied in it this morning was gone. Justine’s small, round sapphire eyes were bloodshot, the dried tears smeared down her soft cheeks.

  “Hi, honey,” Meg said. “You don’t feel well again?”

  Justine ground her tiny fists against her eyes and then, with her lips trembling, looked up at Meg and shook her head. Right now, Meg could see only herself in Justine. The child was a smaller reflection of her own misery and depression.