A few hours later, I was hungry when Helen walked into my office, carrying a big bag of McDonald’s stuff. It was after nine at night, and I hadn’t had time for lunch, yet. It was an unusual event, since Helen didn’t like the factory. She came to my office maybe once a year, if that. I was used to it, and it no longer bothered me. Since the night before had ended in another yelling match, her actions struck me as being a peace offering. I took it as such. She was as beautiful as ever, and I never could stay mad at her for long.
She sat on my desk and smiled while I ate a Big Mac and admired her. It must have been then that she swiped the divorce papers from my “IN” basket before I even knew that they were there. Or that Helen was divorcing me.
* * *
Before I found out what was happening, Adam reported that his new Chrysler convertible was gone. “It was in my driveway last night and it wasn’t dere in da morning.”
I had Shirley file the paperwork with the leasing company, and got him a replacement. Only this time he got a cheap compact, and I told him to take better care of it.
In the end we were victorious. The Brazilians happily “bought off” all six lines in one single day, and promised to send me a whopping big check shortly. All the machinery was loaded onto the same container ship bound for Rio de Janeiro. I thought that when all the checks cleared the bank and all the bills were paid, I would be a multimillionaire.
It was time to make up with Helen. I bought some flowers for her on the way home, but the clerk at the shop said that my check wouldn’t clear. She said that the computer said that my account was empty.
I said that there was some mistake somewhere, but I’d worry about it later. I paid her with a company credit card and went home.
To find that I didn’t have one.
The furniture was gone, along with everything else that wasn’t nailed down. Even my dog Boner was missing, along with his doghouse and his water dish. A thief couldn’t have taken Boner, not without leaving somebody’s blood around, and who’d want to steal an old water dish?
Having no idea at all what I should do next, I sat down on the front steps. After a bit, a process server came up, handed me a folder of divorce papers, and went silently on his way. I was so shocked that I didn’t know what to do, so I didn’t do anything for about an hour.
Eventually, I got up, drove downtown, and checked into a hotel. Then I spent most of the night in the hotel bar. I had long known that Helen was less than totally pleased with me, but I had been sure that she would eventually see that what I was doing was a good thing for both of us. I mean, she knew that when I wasn’t at home, I was working. I wasn’t out with another woman.
I knew that she really wanted to be filthy rich, and I had finally gotten us up to that Great Mud Puddle in the Sky! At no time did I ever imagine that she would leave me at the very moment of our victory.
Now that she was gone, I didn’t know where she was, and I could think of no way to contact her. Her mother wouldn’t even talk to me, and I didn’t see anything that I could do about that, either.
Sometimes, booze is the only answer.
Booze stayed the only answer for about a week and a half, until Adam showed up about noon one day and half carried me over to his place. After a few days of drying out, he and Shirley let me back into my office.
Things were up and running, in a quiet sort of way. All of the temporary people had been let go, along with the rented factory space. The permanent crew was working on a traveling hoist or crane, the sort that they use to lift big boats out of the water and drive them over to their cradles. It was half built in the big assembly bay.
“You don’t really want to ask,” Adam said, and I nodded yes. “Boss, why don’t you go back to your office and administrate something. Or better still, go out and find us some more work. Me and Shirley’ll take care of everything else.”
And they did. Shirley even refurnished my house. It was mostly done in K-Mart modern, but at least I had a place to sleep. She was looking for a housekeeper for me when the other trouble hit.
I hadn’t had any luck with new work, some of my old customers being a little miffed at the way I’d been sending “No Bid” notes to them for the last six months in reply to their requests for quotes.
I was getting ready to go to divorce court when a certified letter arrived from Brazil. It said that my good friends south of the border were declaring bankruptcy. They wouldn’t be paying me for the machines I’d sent them.
* * *
The thing about special machines is that they are special. They’re built for one specific customer to do one specific job. It is most unlikely that anybody else would want a special machine secondhand, except at scrap metal prices. Even if I could get my machines back, it wouldn’t do me any good. I was in absolute trouble.
A Brazilian lawyer wrote that if I appointed him to be my attorney, with a suitable retainer fee, he might be able get me ten, or even twenty cents back on the dollar. Of course, between the bank and my other creditors, I owed about sixty-five cents on the dollar for those machines, and my company bank account was running on fumes.
At the divorce court, my lawyer, Alan Greenberg, wanted to fight, but I told him to just agree with anything Helen and her lawyer wanted. It didn’t make any difference. I was wiped out in any event. I figured I might as well let Helen feel good for a little while, anyhow. And so her lawyer and the limp- wristed little judge gave my wife more of my nonexistent money each month than I had ever made even in good times, not that she had any chance of collecting any of it. They simply had no real comprehension as to what the universe was about to dump on all of us.
Finally, Alan insisted on doing something for me, and got the judge to agree that if Helen remarried, or cohabited with a male, all of my obligations toward her would cease. I didn’t much care, or see how it would make any difference, but it seemed to make my lawyer happy.
A week after that my creditors pounced on me and I found myself sitting in bankruptcy court, with the same damn judge. My lawyer said that it was illegal, but the judge didn’t agree. I also thought that more time would be given me to sort things out, but within three weeks, my factory was empty, padlocked and sold. So was my house, but the money there went to Helen and her lawyer.
My car was leased, so they had to let me keep that, and I had always kept a set of credit cards separate from my wife’s, so they were paid up, but when I went across the alleyway to look at The Brick Royal, she was gone.
I had abandoned the Catholic Church along with the whole idea of God when I was in my early teens, and my family had abandoned me a few years later after we had one final knockdown dispute concerning religion, or rather my lack of it. For many years, my whole life had wound around—had actually consisted entirely of—my fine little company and my magnificent wife.
With both of these two foundations brutally ripped away by the power of law, government, and a woman that I still couldn’t help loving, I found that I had nothing left out in the world, and nothing left inside of me either. I was a hollow man, empty, and without hope. I was devoid of everything, even hate.
I was back in the bar when Adam found me again. He sat down beside me and ordered a beer. “You know, boss, it wasn’t really da Brazilian’s fault. At da courthouse, I heard dat dey got knocked flat because deir biggest customer went belly-up.”
“Just like a line of dominoes,” I said.
“An dey are still fallin. It’s lookin like Delta Distribution might crash and burn because of what we didn’t pay them. A coupla udders might go, too.”