The Ditto List (22 page)

He shook his head.

“I didn't think so.”

Michele walked to the door and waved good-bye.

“And no pony,” D.T. called after her, but she was gone.

Michele. If she had ever cried, or been visited by despair, D.T. had never seen it. At some time in her life she had simply decided to be happy, so that's exactly and perpetually what she was. She had also managed to avoid the blanket condemnation of the male that was so pathologically common to divorced women, and for that he was grateful, for his sake and for Heather's. Then suddenly, as he thought of his conversation with Joyce and of the behavior of his penis, he began to wonder if he was something more than grateful. He began to wonder if he was still in love.

It was impossible and stupid. Even if it was possible and smart, love was one thing and remarriage quite another. D.T. had long ago concluded that the surprise was not that Michele had divorced him, but that she had agreed to wed him in the first place. Their courtship had been more a daydream than a passion, a free trip to Bermuda won by a couple who only too late learned they had no desire to be in Bermuda at all, that sand and sun gave them hives. All along he had been haunted by the suspicion that he was in the nature of an experiment for Michele, a pool of middle-class attitudes into which she had decided, willy-nilly, to dive headfirst, like a kid at a quarry. Later, when she had found the water far too shallow for enjoyment, and even slightly brackish, Michele had simply climbed out, towelled herself off, and moved toward another pool, without rancor or regret.

Which had been simple enough for her, evidently, but far from it for him. For D.T. it had been yet another thing at which he had not been competent, and worse, a failure at the one thing at which his profession dictated he should be expert. He had agonized over the death of his marriage for months, had berated himself, accused himself, blamed himself, despised himself, then applied the same thoughts to Michele. She wanted him to risk all that again? He thought not. Indeed, he knew not. Didn't he? He smiled. Michele and Barbara. For one, life was so benign as to be a gracious gift. For the other, life was so adverse as to be a vital struggle. And D.T.? Somewhere sadly in between.

As he started toward the door it slid slowly open. He expected Michele to walk through it, to apologize, perhaps to renew her invitation to a romp. Surprisingly, he found himself ready to accept. It would be one of those sins that didn't count, like speeding on the freeway. But the person who came through the door was male, a stranger. D.T. resisted the impulse to run after Michele and let her take him home.

“Jones?” The man was short and wide, with stunted arms and legs and a voice that rattled windows. His hair was bristly, his complexion a wash of reds.

“I'm Jones. What can I do for you?”

“My name is Nathaniel Preston. I think we should talk.”

D.T. gulped back a burp. “Maybe we should.”

Preston closed the door and strode to the center of the room, advancing until they were separated only by a globe.

“Why are you investigating me, Jones? What the hell are you up to?” Preston's hammy hands clenched and then relaxed. In the cuffs above them were links of gold nuggets the size of normal knuckles. His tone was as heavy as his brow. D.T. suddenly pictured him with a metal flashlight, squinting, squatting, peering between a woman's legs and sneering at what he saw, a Rolls-Royce mechanic servicing a Ford.

“I talked with your first wife a few months ago,” D.T. began. “She told me some things. I decided to look into some other things. All very preliminary and informal.”

“Preliminary to what?”

“A lawsuit, I guess.”

Preston crossed his arms above his barrel chest. “Based on what? I don't understand this. Esther and I were married, and divorced. I gave her half of what I had. What the hell else was I supposed to do?”

“You didn't give her half of your degree.”

Preston's laugh was swift and brutal. “No, and nobody said I had to. That isn't the law now, and it certainly wasn't the law then. So I don't get it. What's in it for you, anyway?”

“Have you seen your wife lately?”

“Not for years. No.”

“You know she has MS?”

“Yes.”

“You know she's spent the few thousand she got in the divorce settlement on medical bills and that she lives on a disability payment that the feds are trying their best to eliminate?”

“I didn't know the last. But what am I supposed to do? There are a million sad stories in the world, Jones. Esther's is not the saddest.”

“I'll bet hers is the saddest of the ones of those millions you married.” D.T. looked peaceably at Nathaniel Preston. “But then maybe not.”

He thought Preston was going to punch him, and he halfway wished he would, even though the man looked capable of turning his jaw to dust.

“You son of a bitch,” Preston snarled, rubbing his fuzzy head with a puffy palm. “It's money, right? Like every lawyer in the world all you want is dough, and you don't care who you have to smear to get it. So how much? To get you off my back for good? Five grand? Ten? How much blood will satisfy you, you goddamned leech?”

D.T. smiled. “I'll communicate your offer to my client. And recommend that she reject it.”

Preston rolled his eyes. “Reject it? What for? You've got no case. You've got nothing.”

“I've got a client who needs a lot more than ten thousand dollars to get her through the rest of her life in dignity, and I'm going to try like hell to see she gets it.”

Preston unwrapped his arms and pointed a stubby finger at D.T.'s sternum. “I'll see you in court, Jones. I'll fight you all the way. You won't get a dime out of me.
Not a fucking dime
.”

Preston stomped out of the room, slamming the door off its rollers in the process. D.T. followed suit after a minute he used to convince himself that Preston's bluster was only bluff.

He retrieved his coat from the unilingual maid and went out into the cold November night feeling surprisingly good, all things considered. Joyce. Michele. The power of a woman to make a man feel young. When he entered his apartment a ringing phone awaited him.

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

“So how was the party?”

“Fine.”

“How was Michele?”

“Fine.”

“Did you talk to her?”

“A little.”

“About what?”

“Heather.”

“What else?”

“George.”

“What else?”

“Me.”

“What about you?”

“I'm a shiftless bum, is what it comes down to. She despairs of my future.”

“You know what I think, D.T.?”

“What do you think, Barbara?”

“I think Michele still loves you. And I think you're still attracted by all that money and all that style. And most of all by what they would give you if you had them back again.”

“What would they give me, Barbara?”

“An excuse.”

TEN

The morning was as bright as a freshly sliced peach. Its colors lay around him like a scarf, snug and warming yet brittle, foretelling winter. He kicked at some leaves that had colored, fallen, and been blown into a pile at the base of a spindly aspen planted near the edge of the parking lot, at a point just south of the slot D.T. rented for four hundred bucks a year from a municipal corporation under investigation for corruption. D.T. feared the little aspen, already leafless, would soon become lifeless from the fumes it breathed each day. D.T. also feared its carcass would remain in place forever, symbolic of existence, an affront to his every morning. He wondered whether euthanasia was a defense to the murder of baby trees.

The palsied elevator raised him to his floor. He opened the door to his office and stood for a moment, transfixed by the sight of Bobby E. Lee typing words at the rate of ninety-five per minute. “What are you doing on Thursday?” D.T. asked as the shiny ball of type completed another manic whirl.

Bobby E. Lee didn't look up. D.T. repeated his question, then realized Bobby couldn't hear him because of the headset that admitted to his ears only the barely cogent murmurs from D.T.'s latest cassette of dictation.

D.T. walked over and tapped his secretary on the shoulder. Bobby E. Lee removed the foam-covered ear pieces and raised his brows. “What are you doing Thursday?” D.T. asked again. “Are you going over the river and through the woods or anything like that?”

Bobby E. Lee ran a hand through his curly hair. “If you want me to work I suppose I can.”

D.T. sighed. “I don't need you to work; I was just wondering if you had a place to go.”

Bobby E. Lee smiled. “I do, actually. Phil's parents have invited him home for the first time since the Bicentennial. They said he could bring a friend.”

“Phil. Do I know Phil?”

“No.”

“New?”

“Quite.”

“Congratulations.”

“Thank you.”

“I didn't like that other guy, the one with the diamond in his nose.”

“I know you didn't.”

“It showed?”

“It showed.”

“I hope it didn't cause you problems.”

Bobby E. Lee shook his head. “Tod got high on disapproval.”

D.T. inquired no further. “What have we got this week?”

“Well, there's no Fiasco. That's the good news. Judge Hoskins is taking Friday off. The bad news is, tomorrow's the Stone deposition.”

“Already? I thought it was next week.”

“Tomorrow. It's on the calendar, should you care to consult it.”

D.T. absorbed the sarcasm as his due. “Do I have time to prepare?”

“Later today you do. If you don't dally over lunch. Tomorrow morning's that funeral for your classmate.”

Heart. Forty-six. In the middle of
voir dire
. A definite harbinger. “Anything else?”

“Two dittos this morning. Routine.”

“How do we stand with your salary?”

“Two thousand at the end of the month will get us square,” Bobby E. Lee said quickly.

Bobby E. Lee was clearly tired of bearing more than his share of the fallout from the financial incompetence that seared the office. D.T. needed to come up with a Christmas bonus that would make it up to Bobby, once and for all. But how? Maybe a quick trip to Reno. Or a big bet on the Niners. Or another dip in the well that was Michele.

“I'll try to scrape it up,” D.T. said. “Has the copy machine been fixed?”

“Nope. Rental is three months in arrears. They won't come until it's current.”

“How about the letterhead?”

“The printer will deliver it tomorrow. C.O.D.”

“And in the meantime?”

“Toilet tissue.” Bobby E. Lee laughed, then turned back to his machine and spun the platen. “And if you were about to invite me someplace for Thanksgiving dinner, thank you. It was nice of you to think of me.”

D.T. nodded. As usual, their eyes zigged and zagged, never met. He went into his private office and sat behind his desk.

The morning mail was piled in front of him, envelopes slit, contents not extracted. He flipped quickly through the jumble: gaudy brochures promoting everything from personal computers to private detectives; the state bar journal, as foreign to his practice as
Scientific American;
résumés from job applicants, one of whom had written him six times, another of whom offered to work for free for six months on a trial basis, a third of whom enclosed an 8 × 10 color photograph of her standing on what looked like the bleachers at Stanford Stadium; an introductory offer from one of the several newspapers that specialized in the hot blood of legal gossip, whispering to the few who cared which firms were breaking up and why and which partner had walked off with the most wealthy and litigious clients. Two of last month's statements returned as undeliverable. Various legal papers that had been filed or served, on him or by him. A motion seeking a thousand dollars in sanctions for D.T.'s failure to file timely answers to interrogatories and for imposing baseless objections to same. A notice that one of his contested matters had been placed on the dismissal calendar for his failure to prosecute the action. A request that default judgment be entered against his client in a suit to collect damages for inter-spousal assault, on the ground that he had failed to amend his complaint as ordered by the judge. And one last item: a note from his process server, indicating he had not yet located one Delbert Wesley Finders and thus had not effected personal service of the petition for dissolution filed by his wife, Lucinda, or the restraining orders obtained by her lawyer, Jones. Reimbursable expenses totalled forty-seven dollars. Payment would be expected before further efforts would be undertaken to locate the subject.

Christ. He thought that had been taken care of a long time ago. Lucinda should have had her interlocutory decree by now. Instead, Del hadn't been served so the case hadn't begun. How had it slipped by him? How about all the others? He supposed there were reasons for them, excuses for his neglect, but he couldn't think of what they were. Bobby E. Lee would know, though. Good old Bobby. The shepherd of his life.

D.T. tossed the relevant documents into his Out Box and tossed the rest of it into the circular file, all but the subtly erotic glossy of the member of the Stanford class of '84. That he pinned to the cork-board on the wall behind his desk, just below the row of Guindon cartoons that had struck him as particularly illuminating of his life.

As he finished with the photo, Bobby E. Lee brought in his phone messages. After glancing through them all, D.T. returned only the most essential calls, the ones from colleagues from whom he needed favors or from clients from whom he needed money. The rest of them, the majority, the ones urging him to action, all those he ignored.

The first call was to a lawyer whose client had not submitted his itemization of the amounts spent for the child's support, leaving D.T. unable to determine who would have the right to claim the kid as a tax deduction. D.T. made a few mentions of past cooperation, a few forecasts of future complications, and extracted the lawyer's promise to goose his client in the ass. The last call was to a woman whose ex-husband had defaulted on the mortgage and left the city without word to anyone, perhaps carrying out a threat that 50 percent of them made at some time or another—to run away, plant a crop, write a novel, fuck the rest of it, the job included; let the bitch pay her own way for once in her life, I'd rather rot in jail than pay her one more dime. D.T. had nothing cheery to tell the woman, and hung up helplessly while she sobbed in strangled squeaks.