9

Lady Astor: Sir, if you were my husband, I would poison your drink. Winston Churchill: Madam, if you were my wife, I would drink it.

 

 

 

“Uh-oh ... Bingo.” Kiki looked up at me, gripping a nondescript manila envelope.

“This is exactly what I was looking for.” She held it up, looking almost dismayed by her eureka moment, a discovery she had wanted to make but was then unhappy to unearth, like someone whose job it is to deep-sea dive for dead bodies. You’re successful when you locate one, but the find is extremely unpleasant.

I got up and staggered across the room to see what she was holding. Nothing special. The return address was GTP Mortgage, LLP, on Oakdale Avenue, Suite 4300, in MacLean, Virginia. So what? I stared at her blankly.

“See this? Looks boring and tedious, right? Some dumb financial packet you put aside for Tim?”

“Yeah. . . .” We got tons of stuff like that. I never cracked them. I never dealt with the finances. When tax return time came, I just signed on the dotted line where the yellow stickers with red arrows told me to.

“This is how Hal did it, look—” She opened the envelope to reveal a packet with two CDs. The discs appeared to be normal, unmarked in their jewel cases.

Huh?

“See, this is how they mail them. Top secret, in an unmarked envelope. Like Ticketmaster, since they don’t want people to swipe concert tickets. You know, they send them from some P.O. box in Iowa or something?”

I nodded, vaguely recalling how in college I had chucked some Smashing Pumpkins tickets by accident, thinking the envelope was some junk-mail solicitation for a magazine subscription or political campaign.

“These hedge fund guys, they order these kits. It’s how to plot your exit. They cost like a thousand dollars and this guy instructs you how to start laying the groundwork.”

I still had no idea what she was talking about. Kiki walked over to Tim’s Bose CD player by his desk and popped one in.

“Hello,” a man’s voice spoke crisply. “This is Lachlan McDonald. And with these divorce secrets for high-net-worth men, you’ll be ahead of the game. These guidelines will instruct you how, over a one- to two-year period, you can be armed with information on arranging finances and understanding the reality of the divorce process. Back in the day, a caveman would simply kick his wife out of the cave. Now, the woman gets half the cave. . . .”

 

 

 

Mr. Lachlan McDonald droned on as I started panting. Harder and harder. I meandered back to the couch, where I melted down completely. So it wasn’t some trashy whore; it was phase one of Operation Leave Holly. My hands shook. Kiki came over and hugged me as I wept in silence, a silent hysterical cry like toddlers in the moment before the air comes back out of their tiny lungs accompanied by an unbridled piercing wail. All we could hear over my retinal faucet were McDonald’s introductory tips:

DIVORCE RULES

1. All’s fair in Divorce. It is a War.

2. NEVER forget that the root of the word “uterus” is the Greek root uster, which means “hysterical.” Women, fueled by their uncontrollable emotions, will want revenge when you leave them, so you must be prepared.

3. You must start by selling major assets like your home; rent something smaller so that her lifestyle is diminished.

4. Dissipate proceeds from asset sales and borrow money to create marital debt, which will also be her obligation to repay.

 

 

 

Blah blah blah. On and on and on it went, a tricky litany of fox-like ways to hide money, a dizzying verbal collage of words like “offshore” and “deferred compensation.”

“You see,” Kiki said soberly, putting her hand on my knee. “These bastards planned it. Yes, I kissed that guy, I filed the papers, but I found Hal’s computer cache with Web sites like mensdivorcesecrets.com and divorceprep.com—he was already thinking about bailing, so I bolted before he could take the year or two this asshole tells them to plan.”

Could that possibly be true? I staggered toward Tim’s desk, which I previously couldn’t bear to look at. I looked at the closed drawers, potential keepers of more secrets, a dormant volcano that could spew the lava of hot lies were I to explore them. And yet with Kiki beside me, I exhaled and got on the floor and opened them.

At first, it was the usual boring taxes, investment research information, and other yawn-inducing legal and financial documents. As I sifted through the files, I started to think maybe this was a fluke, a whim on Tim’s part. Once we talked about this, I’d discover it was some onetime thing. Maybe she was a high-class hooker? He loved our family! Maybe he was just getting his rocks off. . . .

But then I saw a brochure for a Relais & Chateau spa in Oregon. Huh?

“What’s that?” Kiki said, as my brow furrowed.

“Tim was just in Oregon. But he said he was at some huge convention hotel. This looks awfully romantic and luxurious for a business meeting.”

Kiki grabbed it and perused the high-gloss photos of body wraps, massages, mahogany four-poster beds, and couples dining by candlelight.

“This was not business. It was bidniss,” she scoffed, clearly nauseated. “Monkey business.”

I sifted through folders, envelopes, Pendaflex files—each containing mystery receipts—La Petite Coquette, a lingerie store on University Place. One If by Land, Two If by Sea, a romantic restaurant where one would never do business, on a MasterCard I’d never seen before. My head spun, my tongue dried, my gag reflex triggered.

“I-I don’t know what to say,” I sputtered, zoned in my pile of piecemeal clues that the man with whom I’d shared a bed literally was leading a double life.

“Say you’ll call the lawyers. Two can play at this game, Holl.”

I wanted to die. I obviously wasn’t truly suicidal and could never leave Miles mommyless, but I got it into my head that if Tim came home and found my dead body, he’d be sorry and would weep to the gods for atonement. There were more than a few Upper East Side suicides that were legendary, and often were caused by husbands upgrading to trophy wives or losses of fortune.

I gathered what strength I had to pick up Miles. Seeing him almost made me dissolve again into tears, but I summoned every last ounce of energy I had to hold it together and take him to Dylan’s Candy Bar on Third Avenue. I had heard kids of divorce are more spoiled; I guess this was part one of indulgent sugarfests to come. He beamed as he got his crystal Baggie and started scooping pieces from the various bins with the tiny shovels. Kids with backpacks from all the different schools crammed the aisle, eyes ablaze, mouths watering, as mommies and nannies reined in the small-handed grabbers and gobblers. The Wonka-esque megastore was a candied kaleidoscope of lollipops, chocolates, every jelly bean shade in the color spectrum. And yet through my new eyes, it was all slates, grays, and blacks and whites.