‘Did you, finally? Good for you.’
I felt another flash of anger, this time a really ugly one, at her politely dismissive tone. As if I might not be telling the truth, but it didn’t really matter if I was. She’d carped at me about the cigarettes every day for two years, it seemed – how they were going to give me cancer, how they were going to give her cancer, how she wouldn’t even consider getting pregnant until I stopped, so I could just save any breath I might have been planning to waste on that subject – and now all at once it didn’t matter anymore, because I didn’t matter anymore.
‘Steve -Mr Davis,’ Humboldt said, ‘I thought we might begin by getting you to look at a list of grievances which Diane has worked out during our sessions – our exhaustive sessions, I might say –
over the last couple of weeks. Certainly it can serve as a springboard to our main purpose for being here, which is how to order a period of separation that will allow growth on both of your parts.’
There was a briefcase on the floor beside him. He picked it up with a grunt and set it on the table’s one empty chair. Humboldt began unsnapping the clasps, but I quit paying attention at that point. I wasn’t interested in springboards to separation, whatever that
meant. I felt a combination of panic and anger that was, in some ways, the most peculiar emotion I have ever experienced.
I looked at Diane and said, ‘I want to try again. Can we reconcile?
Is there any chance of that?’
The look of absolute horror on her face crashed hopes I hadn’t even known I’d been holding onto. Horror was followed by anger.
‘Isn’t that just like you!’ she exclaimed.
‘Diane—‘
‘Where’s the safe deposit box key, Steven? Where did you hide it?’
Humboldt looked alarmed. He reached out and touched her arm.
‘Diane .. I thought we agreed—‘
‘What we agreed is that this son of a bitch will hide everything under the nearest rock and then plead poverty if we let him!’
‘You searched the bedroom for it before you left, didn’t you’ I asked quietly. ‘Tossed it like a burglar.’
She flushed at that. I don’t know if it was shame, anger, or both.
‘It’s my box as well as yours! My things as well as yours!’
Humboldt was looking more alarmed than ever. Several diners had glanced around at us. Most of them looked mused, actually. People are surely God’s most bizarre creatures. ‘Please… please, let’s not—‘
‘Where did you hide it, Steven?’
‘I didn’t hide it. I never hid it. I left it up at the cabin by accident, that’s all.’
She smiled knowingly. ‘Oh, yes. By accident. Uh-huh.’ I said nothing, and the knowing smile slipped away. ‘I want it,’ she said, then amended hastily: ‘I want a copy.’
People in hell want icewater, I thought. Out loud I said, ‘There’s nothing more to be done about it, is there?’
She hesitated, maybe hearing something in my voice she didn’t actually want to hear, or to acknowledge. ‘No,’ she said. ‘The next time you see me, it will be with my lawyer. I’m divorcing you.’
‘Why?’ What I heard in my voice now was a plaintive note like a sheep’s bleat. I didn’t like it, but there wasn’t a goddamned thing I could do about it. ‘Why?’
‘Oh, I Jesus. Do you expect me to believe you’re really that dense?’
‘I just can’t—’
Her cheeks were brighter than ever, the flush now rising almost her temples. ‘Yes, probably you expect me to believe just that very thing. Isn’t that typical’ She picked up her water and spilled the top two inches on the tablecloth because her hand was trembling. I flashed back at once – I mean kapow – to the day she’d left, remembering how I’d knocked the glass of orange juice onto the floor and how I’d cautioned myself not to try picking up the broken pieces of glass until my hands had settled down, and how I’d gone ahead anyway and cut myself for my pains.
‘Stop it, this is counterproductive,’ Humboldt said. He sounded like a playground monitor trying to stop a scuffle before it gets started, but he seemed to have forgotten all about Diane’s shit-list; his eyes were sweeping the rear part of the room, looking out for our waiter, or any waiter whose eye he could catch. He was lot less interested in therapy, at that particular moment, than he was in obtaining what the British like to call the other half.
‘I only want to know—‘ I began.
‘What you want to know doesn’t have anything to do with why Humboldt said, and for a moment he actually sounded alert.
‘Yes, right, finally,’ Diane said. She spoke in a brittle, urgent voice. ‘Finally it’s not about what you want, what you need.’
‘I don’t know what that means, but I’m willing to listen,’ I said. ‘If you wanted to try joint counselling instead of… uh… therapy…
whatever it is Humboldt does… I’m not against it if—‘
She raised her hands to shoulder level, palms out. ‘Oh, God, Joe Camel goes New Age,’ she said, then dropped her hands back into her lap. ‘After all the days you rode off into the sunset, tall in the saddle. Say it ain’t so, Joe.’
‘Stop it’, Humboldt told her. He looked from his client to his clients soon-to-be ex-husband (it was going to happen, all right; even the slight unreality that comes with not-smoking couldn’t conceil that self-evident truth from me by that point). ‘One more word from either of you and I’m going to declare this luncheon at an end.’ He gave us a small smile, one so obviously manufactured that I found it perversely endearing. ‘And we haven’t even heard the specials yet.’
That – the first mention of food since I’d joined them – was just before the bad things started to happen, and I remember smelling salmon from one of the nearby tables. In the two weeks since I’d quit smoking, my sense of smell had become incredibly sharp, but I do not count that as much of a blessing, especially when it comes to salmon. I used to like it, but now can’t abide the smell of it, let alone the taste. To me it smells of pain and fear and blood and death.
‘He started it,’ Diane said sulkily.
You started it, you were the one who tossed the joint and then walked out when you couldn’t find what you wanted, I thought, but I kept it to myself. Humboldt clearly meant what he said; he would take Diane by the hand and walk her out of the restaurant if we started that schoolyard no-I-didn’t, yes-you-did shit. Not even the prospect of another drink would hold him here.
‘Okay,’ I said mildly .. and I had to work hard to achieve that mild tone, believe me. ‘I started it. What’s next?’ I knew, of course: the grievances. Diane’s shit-list, in other words. And a lot more about the key to the lockbox. Probably the only satisfaction I was going to get out of this sorry situation was telling them that neither of them was going to see a copy of that key until an officer of the court presented me with a paper ordering me to turn one over. I hadn’t touched the stuff in the box since Diane booked on out of my life, and I didn’t intend to touch any of it in the immediate future.. but she wasn’t going to touch it, either. Let her chew crackers and try to whistle, as my grandmother used to say.
Humboldt took out a sheaf of papers. They were held by one of those designer paper clips – the ones that come in different colors.
It occurred to me that I had arrived abysmally unprepared for this meeting, and not just because my lawyer was jaw-deep in a cheeseburger somewhere, either. Diane had her new dress; Humboldt had his designer briefcase, plus Diane’s shit-list held together by a color-coded designer paper clip; all I had was a new umbrella on a sunny day. I looked down at where it lay beside my chair and saw there was still a price tag dangling from the handle.
All at once I felt like Minnie Pearl.
The room smelled wonderful, as most restaurants do since they banned Smoking in them – of flowers and wine and fresh coffee and chocolate and pastry – but what I smelled most clearly was salmon. I remember thinking that it smelled very good, and that I would probably order some. I also remember thinking that if I could eat at a meeting like this, I could probably eat anywhere.
‘ The major problems your wife has articulated – so far, at least –
are insensitivity on your part regarding her job, and an inability to trust in personal affairs,’ Humboldt said. ‘In regard to the second, I’d say your unwillingness to give Diane fair access to the safe deposit box you maintain in common pretty well sums up the trust issue.’