The Ditto List (21 page)

The band took a break. The sax player nipped something from a pocket flask and winked at D.T. D.T. nodded and moved away, feeling found out.

He was about to complete his third lap of the room when a finger tapped his shoulder like a single drop of rain. He turned and encountered his ex-wife. “Fancy meeting you here, Mr. Jones,” she said, smiling warmly, her lips as bright as blood.

He bowed. “You look très swell as usual, former Mrs. Jones,” he replied, eyeing the off-the-shoulder drape of the lamé gown that she apparently had only to shrug to be rid of.

“Thank you, kind sir. You look positively Lincolnesque yourself.” Above her high cheeks Michele's dark eyes began a game and asked him to play as well.

“It seems life is treating you with its accustomed temerity,” he said.

“I can't complain.”

D.T. laughed. “No one would believe you if you did.”

Michele gripped his upper arm with both her hands and pressed her flank to his. “Let's go in the den so we can talk,” she said. “I see you so seldom any more.”

“That's the price you pay to keep my hair out of your sink.”

Michele squeezed his arm again. Her breast lay like a hot water bottle against his bicep. He let her lead him out of the living room, conscious of the glances that passed over them like shadows and the whispers that followed them like cats.

When they reached the den Michele closed the sliding door behind them, leaving them alone with three walls of books, the aroma of stale cigars, and the heads of several former animals that hung from the walls with the dour demeanor of defeated politicians. Joyce Tuttle's earlier confidence about Michele plotting a sequel to their marriage was punched up on the word processor of his brain. He began to feel warmer than the room.

Michele swept to the rolltop desk and whirled and leaned gingerly against it so as not to tax her gown. “So how are you really, D.T.?” she asked, basking in his inspection, as blithe and perfect at this party as she doubtlessly had been at the same hour with the same people in the same milieu the night before. And the night before that as well.

Michele frolicked five nights a week, and confined it to that number only by rejecting the majority of invitations that came her way. While they were married, D.T. had found himself spending a substantial share of his day devising happenstances that would excuse him from the balls, dinners, cocktail parties, charity functions, soirées, and what-have-yous that made up Michele's normal nights. Based on his increasingly frequent absences from such affairs, the city's social arbiters realized long before D.T. did that his marriage to Michele was doomed.

“I'm really okay, Michele. How really are you?”

“I'm fine. I heard a good joke last night. It's about divorce. Want to hear it?”

“Sure.”

She squared her shoulders and clasped her hands. Like all women, Michele worried that she did not tell jokes well. Like most women, she was right. Her expression would have worn well on Lady Macbeth.

“These two old people, man and wife, walked into this lawyer's office and told him they wanted a divorce. The lawyer looked at the man and asked him how old he was. ‘I'm ninety-one,' the old man said. ‘My wife's eighty-seven.' Then the lawyer asked how long they'd been married. ‘Sixty-one years next April,' the old man told him. ‘Jesus,' the lawyer said. ‘Why on earth are you getting a divorce at
this
late date?' The old man looked at his wife and then at the lawyer. ‘We wanted to wait till the children were dead.'”

Michele's hands released each other and her eyes focused once again. “Funny, huh?”

“Crippling. How's Heather?”

“She's fine. She wants a pony for Christmas. Do you think I should get her one?”

“No.”

“Why not? I thought a horseplayer like you would welcome an equestrienne in the family. And why don't you ever laugh at my jokes?”

“For little girls horseback riding isn't sport, it's masturbation, and Heather's too young for self-abuse. And I don't laugh at your jokes because they're so often at my expense.”

“Come on, D.T.
I
had a pony when I was her age. And they are not.”

“You were never her age and you know it.”

Michele frowned and slapped her thigh. “I was too, D.T. That was our main trouble, you know. You thought I wasn't human.”

D.T. ignored her observation, though not easily because it bore some truth. “Is that why we're in here? The pony?”

Michele shifted position. As she crossed her legs the opposite way her gown divided to reveal a lengthy cylinder of thigh. D.T. found himself remembering what the rest of her was like, the tight thin flesh, the lithe and malleable body that was so eagerly dutiful in matters of sex that D.T. ultimately suspected he had never brought Michele to the point of unfeigned orgasm, despite her elaborate denials on the one evening they had been drunk enough to discuss it. As he stared at his wife—his
ex
-wife—his penis pierced the gap in his shorts and scratched its head on his zipper.

“I was at a dinner party last night,” Michele said after a minute. “At Nita Ellerson's. Remember Nita?”

“Vaguely.”

“There's nothing vague about Nita. Breasts the size of bathyspheres, which she displays at the drop of an engraved invitation. You always claimed you wanted to take one home as a pet.”

“Ah, yes. I seem to recall she offered to nestle my weary head somewhere between them one particularly drunken New Year's. How is dear Nita?”

“Only a shadow of her former self, I'm afraid.”

“Illness?”

“Breast reduction. Her designer refused to do any more gowns unless she sliced some off. But Nita isn't the reason I mentioned the party. One of the guests at her little bash was one Nathaniel Preston, Medical Doctor.”

“Ah.”

“I think I remember you asked me about him some months ago.”

“Yes.”

“He was extremely interested in
you
, D.T., which he demonstrated by feigning a rather breathy interest in
me
. To my regret, since the good doctor has halitosis of a distinctly camphorish nature. Although I must admit I was tempted to find out what kind of sex turns on a man who spends all day looking into women's organs of generation. Any ideas?”

“Foot fetish.”

“Really? And I have such a nice arch.” Michele raised a foot and looked at it. “Anyway, not having a set of stirrups handy, I feared I would quickly bore the jerk, but it turned out his real purpose was to pump me about you. He wondered, and I quote, what the hell you were up to.”

“Did he, now?”

“He definitely did. So tell me, D.T. What
are
you up to? Did some horrible medical malpractice case walk in and plop itself down on your desk? Are you about to get filthy rich at long last, at the expense of Nathaniel Preston and his errors and omissions carrier? Will you succeed despite yourself, Mr. D. T. Jones?”

D.T. only shook his head. “I'm not up to anything at all, as far as I know.”

It was true. He hadn't heard from Esther Preston or Rita Holloway in weeks. Months. Not, in fact, since the day he had appeared at Esther Preston's Social Security hearing and watched the government try to cancel her paltry benefits in the name of fiscal integrity and the MX missile. He didn't even know the result of the hearing, or if Rita Holloway's essay in the detection of hidden assets had borne fruit. He wondered if Esther Preston had succumbed to her sclerosis, or if Rita Holloway had found a more participatory attorney, or if it had all just faded away, as so many grievances do, for reasons ranging from inertia to good sense.

Michele was smiling at him impishly. “The doctor sounded more than a bit upset, D.T. If I didn't know he was a sophisticated man about town, not to mention vaginas, I'd say he was asking me to deliver some sort of warning.”

“What kind of warning?”

“To mind your own business, or words to that effect.”

D.T. shrugged. “That's exactly what I'm doing, more's the pity. So I'm not going to lose any sleep over it, if it's all right with you.”

“I can suggest some other ways for you to lose sleep, D.T. Want to hear them?” Michele patted the back of her newest coiffure, which looked rather like a bat with a missing wing. The diamonds loitering about her hand and wrist spit light at him contemptuously.

“Joyce told me she'd reserved us a room,” D.T. said, not saying what else she had said. “But I assumed she'd confused me with George.”

Michele laughed quietly. “I don't know why I flirt with you so outrageously, D.T. I guess it's because I know you're immune to it. Are you still seeing Barbara?”

D.T. nodded. “Are you still marrying George?”

They exchanged looks that hinted just a bit of pity. “Life is so amusing, don't you think, D.T?” Michele asked when the silence made them squirm. “I mean, given a certain perspective, everything is so completely droll. I'll probably regret marrying George as much as people assume I regretted marrying you.”

Michele laughed uneasily; her lips curled toward a pout. D.T. said nothing. His penis re-inhabited his shorts. He took his hand out of his pocket.

“Are you coming for Thanksgiving?” Michele asked, suddenly back on beam. “Mirabelle's doing goose. And creamed onions. Black-eyed peas. Mince pie. You know how orgasmic you are about Mirabelle's mince pie.”

“I know that. It's George I find less than succulent.”

“I can't very well leave him out, D.T. We're going to be married in three months. And besides, he's a nice guy.”

“I know. That's precisely the best and worst of him. An evening with George is like an evening with Gerald Ford.”

Michele looked momentarily stricken, a condition he had not sought to induce. “I need an escort. D.T.,” she said softly, reaching for him with beseeching eyes. “You should
see
some of the men my more bitchy friends have paired me with since you and I threw in our monogrammed towels. The last one left me every nine minutes to phone his mother. The one before that had a lisp and an earring.”

“I can imagine.”

“And George is … well, anyway, I think you should come for Heather's sake. She's worried about you, you know.”

“Why?”

“I'm not sure. She just keeps asking me if you're all right.”

D.T. swore, remembering the summer day at the museum. “Maybe it's because you told her I was the most pathetic creature since Emmett Kelly. Christ, Michele. Why did you do that sad sack shit, anyway?”

Her lower lip stiffened. “Because it's
true
. You do nothing with your life but burrow away in that wretched little office with your wretched little clients, listening to all that woe. No wonder you're so gloomy. No wonder you live like a monk. Those women have made you ashamed to be a man, D.T. And I think Heather has a right to know. So she'll understand your more neurotic behavior.”

“Bullshit. I'm not
that
depressed, Michele. And I'm not neurotic, at least not when I'm with Heather.”

“The hell you aren't. You're so guilty about our divorce and how you think it's affected her you can hardly look her in the eye.”

“That's not
true
. And I'm
not
unhappy, goddamnit. I
enjoy
my work. My clients need help and I try to give it to them and I feel good when I can. When I can't I get upset, maybe, but at least I
feel
. At least I respond to the pain in the world, Michele. That's more than you can say for the twits
you
run around with.”

“I've never offered my friends as role models, D.T. You know that.”

“You've had it all, Michele, from day one. You peeked out of your crib at that fucking chateau you were born in and you never for a moment had to doubt that there was something important about your life. I mean hell, all that money just
couldn't
be insignificant, could it? Well, not all of us had that advantage. I work my ass off so I can at least be
good
at what I spend ten hours a day doing. So I can
matter
to somebody. It's not much, maybe. And maybe next to Heather it's all I've got. But, goddamnit, I'm
good
, Michele.
I'm the best fucking divorce lawyer in this rotten stinking town!
”

He was shouting, evidently. Someone he had never seen before peeked in the door, looked at him, and closed it, frowning. Michele said something, her hand over her eyes. “The sad thing is, you think it matters,” was what he thought it was.

D.T. sweated in embarrassment. He turned his back and began reading book titles, the words barely registering in his fevered mind. Michele's capacity to wound him still survived, was a slap for which he was never ever prepared.

She spoke again, the words sunken in apology. “Please come on Thursday, D.T.”

He nodded. Barbara had already invited him to spend Thanksgiving in Visalia with her mother and her brother Bob. Bob was thirty-two and lived at home, grew roses, had asthma, and liked to cook. D.T. very much did not want to go to Visalia and now he had an excuse. Fatherhood. He would endure Barbara's wrath as best he could, which was better every time.

“Tell Heather I'll be there about noon,” he said. “If it's too early I'll take her to the park.”

“Thank you, D.T. We'll have a nice time. Maybe you'll even grow to like George.” She gathered her gown and started toward the door, then stopped, then laughed dryly. “I was going to ask you to take me home tonight. Heather's spending the night with a friend and Mirabelle's at some church thing that lasts till dawn. I thought it would be nice for both of us to be with someone who already knew what to do. I even bought an outfit. But I guess you wouldn't want to participate in anything like that, would you? After what I said.”