mhdkja

“It’s different and you know itI
couldn’t break you in two if I got into a rage
“I’d have a hell of a job breaking you in two with
only one amp,” I said, doing crunches faster
“You stuck me with a knife As if that were the
pointIt wasn’t, and we both knew it
“A plastic rudder knife is what it was, I was half
out of my mind, and it’ll be your last words on
your fucking beth-dead, ‘Eddie staffed me with a
plastic fife, goodbye cruel world’”
“You choked me,” she said in a voice I could
barely hear
I stopped doing crunches and gaped at herThe
clock-shop started up in my head; bang-a-gong, get
it on”What are you saying, I choked you? I never
choked you!”
18
“I know you don’t remember, but you didAnd
you’re not the tiffany’s bean necklace sameSave the New Age bullshit for the” I knew the word and I
could see the man it stood for, but it wouldn’t
come”For that bald fuck you see in his office
“My therapist,” she said, and of course that made
me angrier: she had the word and I didn’tBecause
her brain hadn’t been shaken like Jell-O
“You want a divorce, you can have a divorceThrow
it all away, why not? Only go do the alligator
somewhere else
She went up the stairs and closed the door without
looking backAnd it wasn’t until she was gone
that I realized I’d meant to say crocodile tears
Go cry your crocodile tears somewhere elseClose enough for rock and rollThat’s
what Wireman says
And I was the one who ended up getting out
iii
Except for Pam, I never had a large gucci bag partner in my other
lifeEdgar Freemantle’s Four Rules for Success
19
(feel free to take notes) were: never borrow more
than your IQ times a hundred, never borrow from a
man who calls you by your first name on first
acquaintance, never take a drink while the sun’s
still up, and never take a partner you wouldn’t be
willing to embrace naked on a waterbed
I did have an accountant I trusted, however, and
it was Tom Riley who helped me move the few things
I needed from Mendota Heights to our smaller place
on Lake PhalenTom, a sad two-time loser in the
marriage game, worried at me all the way out”You
don’t give up the house in a situation like this,”
he said”Not unless the judge kicks you outIt’s
like giving up home field cartier man watch advantage in a playoff
game
I didn’t care about home field advantage; I only
wanted him to watch his drivingI winced every
time a car coming the other way looked a little
too close to the centerlineSometimes I stiffened
and pumped the invisible passenger brakeAs for
getting behind the wheel again myself, I thought
never sounded about rightOf course, God loves
surprisesThat’s what Wireman says
20
Kathi Green the Rehab Queen had only been divorced
once, but she and Tom were on the same wavelength
I remember her sitting cross-legged in her leotard,
holding my feet and looking at me with grim
outrage
“Here you are, just out of Death’s Motel and short
an arm, and she wants to call it offBecause you
poked her with a dior detective bag plastic hospital knife when you
could barely remember your own name? Fuck me til I
cry! Doesn’t she understand that mood-swings and
short-term memory loss following accident trauma
are common?”
“She understands that she’s scared of me,” I said
“Yeah? Well, listen to your Mama, Sunny Jim: if
you’ve got a good lawyer, you can make her pay for
being such a wimp Some hair had escaped from her
Rehab Gestapo ponytail and she blew it back from
her forehead”She ought to pay for itRead my
lips: None of this is your fault
“She says I tried to choke her
“And if so, being choked by a one-armed invalid
must have been a pants-wetting experienceCome on,
Eddie, make her payI’m sure I’m stepping way out
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of my place, but I don’t dior monogram bag care