Wingman

The best part of getting divorced was seeing Lori's face as the process servers handed her the complaint at the airport. I splurged and went for two people: one to serve the complaint and one to film that service. Heck, I could have ordered three. I was using Lori's credit card account to do it. She had let me have my own card on one of her accounts when she got it, at the same time she got the job that ended us. She had neglected to cancel my card when she moved out. I suspect she forgot she even had the account. She was careless that way. And all the banks in town were giving her credit then. It would have been easy to lose track of what cards she had.

The card's cash-advance feature was nice. Especially the convenience checks, which she had never destroyed when they came in the mail. She had a gold or platinum or whatever level credit limit, so the cash advance limit was similarly generous. I pulled $15,000 out and deposited it in the joint account I had with my sister. I signed my own name on the checks. No one ever asked any questions. Maybe Lori could have tried to get it back, but it was all part of "the marital estate," as my lawyer called it, so maybe not. Maybe she could have complained to the police. I don't know. She never did. It turned out alright. I put the money to good use. She made more than I did anyway. Much more.

Funny. That whole vignette was the first thing that came to mind as I saw her again, nearly five years later.

Don't misunderstand. I used the cash advance for a separate purpose than I used her regular credit card, which had a substantial limit of its own. With the card, I decided that, if I was going to have to start my life all over again because my wife had turned into a lying, cheating bitch, I was going to do it in style. So, I went shopping. I bought new clothes, new luggage, and nice dinners. Also, I got tested for sexually transmitted diseases. Even with the limited freaky-freaky over the immediately preceding months, I did not want to take a chance. It is fair to say that I did not touch any of my own money for the two weeks we were apart before I took off. Fortunately, the divorce lawyer took credit cards, so I paid him a generous retainer, courtesy of the then future ex-missus and her credit card account, which included the fees for service of process. The credit card fraud center called a couple of times, but they only had the home number, so I kept saying that the charges were fine. I knew all the answers to her challenge questions. And I could do a decent falsetto voice. Maybe she could have come after me for that, too. But no one ever did.

But here she was now, sauntering up to my patio table like she owned the place, wavy, shoulder-length blonde hair flowing behind her in the slight breeze, generous bosom thrust out, child-bearing hips oscillating like a hypnotist's watch as she slowly ambled closer. She was just wearing jeans, sneakers, and a T-shirt, but life around us stopped, as it normally did when she appeared, as everyone stared. Male or female; it did not matter. That had been the case in the old days. It was more so now, of course.

I had thought that there was a decent possibility that this moment was coming, although I was hoping that she had moved on and would skip it. Apparently not. I had bumped into one of her friends the day before at a store. Lori knew I liked this café. I'm a creature of habit on when I do things and where I go. It was a reasonable place to look for me, if she had wanted to. And the friend I saw the day before said Lori did.

"Hello, dear husband," she said.

"Lori," I said with a nod. I added, "Have you gained weight?"

She rocked back on her heels like I had slapped her. She had gained a couple of pounds, but it was distributed well. Nevertheless, I had never asked her anything like that before and had never suggested she was anything but perfect. Ever. I was being cruel, I knew, because I understood her sensitivities better than most people. I just did not want there to be any doubt of how this was going to go. I wanted her to have no false hopes.

"You don't have to be an asshole, Steve. That's not the sort of thing a husband says to his wife."

Again with the "husband" thing. Against my better judgment, I chuckled. That was an unexpected approach. In retrospect, it made what happened at the airport suddenly much more understandable. The lesson was that I should have listened to my lawyer. He really was telling me the truth. At the time, I thought he was full of it. She can't be that dumb, I thought, based on five years of knowing her. Apparently, I was wrong. Life was full of surprises.

Which brought me back to the expression on her face as the process server played divorce tag with her in the departures lobby of the airport five years ago.

That look. First, it was a twisted mask of rage. Then, it dissolved into tears, transformed into bawling, and became a collapse and fetal curl on the floor of the terminal. Okay. Call me a dick, but my sadistic pleasure at that moment was the beginning of my fight back to manhood. It was the Doolittle Raid of my Pacific Campaign of growing balls again, after she pearled my emotional harbor. I must have played that video twenty times the day I got it, giggling until I just felt sad. Then, I drank bourbon until I was absolutely blasted and, when I woke up finally the next day, virtually begged for death because of the hammerfest in my skull.

At the airport, when the process server tagged her, everyone around her filmed the meltdown, of course, just for the novelty. When they figured out who she was, even more people started memorializing the moment. It went up on social media in minutes. I never really needed to have paid for the second guy to film it.

"There goes you having fun on your European vacation, beyotch!" I had thought at the time.

"Husband?" I said to her finally, looking her in her bright blue eyes.

Everyone around us was pretending not to eavesdrop.

"Husband," she nodded.

I just looked at her.

She crossed her arms over her chest.

"I told you I was never going to let you divorce me. That's why I tore up everything any process servers ever gave me."

She thrust her chin out when she said that, and I could sense that she was tapping the toes of one of her feet. Usually the right foot. It was a long-time nervous habit. Nature had already thrust out her breasts.

There was really nothing I could say. She had her alternative facts and was going to stick to them.

See, the backup process server's video showed that, after Lori picked herself up off the floor with the help of several baggage handlers who kept accidently pawing her breasts and butt as they helped her to her feet, she ripped the envelope holding the divorce complaint into four pieces and stuffed them into a nearby trashcan. She did the same thing to every single document with which my lawyer served her afterwards during the course of the proceedings: the discovery demands, which she never answered, the notice of her deposition, which she did not attend, the notices of the depositions of the witnesses to the adultery, the notices of the depositions of the other participants in the adultery, the hearing notice, and the final divorce order. She never got a lawyer, as far as I knew. She never appeared in court. She never answered anything we filed.

Instead, she said the same thing every time the process servers found her: "I will never agree to a divorce!"

The same two guys insisted on serving her after they gave her the complaint. They found the drama entertaining, even though she never had another meltdown. She never even tried to run away or hide. They never had trouble finding where she was. She just seemed to think that because she did not want to agree to a divorce, it was not going to happen. That is exactly what my lawyer told me he thought was going on inside her head, too. When he said that after she got the complaint, I paid him another hefty advance on his fees from the wife's credit card. I thought she had to be planning something dramatic at the last minute to head us off. Nope. I also thought she might at least dispute the credit card charges. Nope to that, too.

My sister had turned out to be right.

"I hope that girl fucks something wonderful, Little Brother," my sister told me, a few--okay, probably five--beers after I had told her I was getting married, "because I sincerely do believe," she said with special exaggerated emphasis on the verb, "that she is dumber than a sack of hammers."

At the time, that statement had offended me. Sure, I knew that Lori was not a top student, but she had a big heart, which she had opened to me. Along with her legs. We were each other's firsts. We were freshmen in college. We were both dumb. We both made a big mistake. After one missed menstrual cycle, the passage of a couple of weeks, the purchase of a home test kit, and a doctor's visit, I manned up and took responsibility by proposing. Both families were appalled. First, that I got her pregnant. Second, that she let me. Third, that we were planning to get married during our first year of college. Back then, I had her back, when everyone else was criticizing her. It made our love stronger. I was her knight in shining armor.

Neither of us wanted the baby, but it turned out we wanted the eventual miscarriage even less. Seems that about 10 to 20 percent of known pregnancies end in miscarriage, but the number is probably higher when you include the miscarriages that occur very early in pregnancy, even before the woman knows she is pregnant. By the time Lori miscarried, we had already married in a quiet civil ceremony, the victims of the wisdom of youth. Lesson learned. Always wait a couple of months, if you can, to see if a problem solves itself.

Getting married over Christmas break during our freshman year changed the dynamics of the college experience for both of us. We got an apartment, went to classes, and obviously did not date others. We still hung out with friends, but they did not quite know what to do with us as a married couple. As a result, we spent a lot of time with each other. First, we were getting ready for the baby. Then, we were dealing with the miscarriage. Finally, when that crisis passed, we were banging like bunnies because, hey, we were married. Lori was taking birth control pills, too, since we no longer had to hide anything.

There were hiccups, of course. Lori dropped out of school after sophomore year. She was depressed about it. I tried to provide comfort, worrying that it was unresolved issues related to the miscarriage the previous year. Now, I just think it was because she finally figured out that she did not care about studying and had finally come to terms with it. Whatever it was, she pulled through and started working a variety of sales jobs. She did well. Turns out, men like to buy things from gorgeous, young women who smile at them with perfect white teeth that reflect light onto generous bosoms beneath those smiles. Me, I started taking more classes to try to get done sooner. In the summers, I started an office job that eventually developed in the fulltime job I took after graduating a semester early, working for a management consulting company.

The funny thing was that Lori never thought of herself as beautiful back then. In high school, she had been fat, had acne, glasses, and braces, and was short. Just before college, she had a final growth spurt that redistributed her weight perfectly into a voluptuous frame, her acne cleared up, she had her braces taken off, and she got contact lenses. But she still thought of herself as fat and ugly and lived most of her first few months at college in an introverted shell.

I met her at a party. She had been flirting with a guy--the first time she had tried coming out of her shell--when his drunk girlfriend body-checked her out of the way, calling her an obese, disgusting slob. Lori and the girl had known each other in high school and were not friends. Lori was in tears when I literally stumbled across her sitting on the walkway stairs in the dark. She was crying because she believed the angry girlfriend, all empirical evidence to the contrary notwithstanding. After I picked myself up and waved away her apologies for being fat and in the way, I calmed her down, took her for coffee, listened to her sad tale of woe about how repulsive she was, and tried my damnedest not to drool.

She realized that I had stopped listening to her and was just staring at her eyes. She became very self-conscious, withdrawing into herself with crossed arms, asking what was wrong.

Normally, I would not have been so forward. I had no steady girlfriends, although I had been doing okay with occasional handjobs. I was a grind. I had no gift of a silver tongue. I simply looked at her and told her she was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen in my life. She just stared back, waiting for the punchline. When she decided I was sincere, she burst into tears again and did not stop until I had taken her outside, found a bench, and hugged her tight. Somehow, the hug morphed into a kiss of such passionate intensity that paint should have melted at a distance of 100 yards. After that, she virtually never left my side. Until later.

As the fog of memory lifted, Lori sat down at my table, uninvited. The waiter was there like a shark heading to a feeding frenzy. Lori ordered a Cosmo. She must have been watching "Sex and the City" re-runs.

"Separate checks," I told the waiter.

He looked at me like I was crazy and departed to get her drink. Lori pouted.

"You don't want to buy a girl a drink?"

"A girl I like, sure."

She pouted some more. The waiter was back with her drink in under two minutes. That had to be a house record. Lori had that effect on people. Just not me anymore.

"I've forgiven you, you know," she announced to me as she looked into my eyes.

I waited, but she said nothing more.

"That's good," I said finally. "Internalizing rage leads to heart disease. They've done studies."

"I know," she said.

I could not resist.

"And what have you forgiven me for?"

She looked at me with surprise. She had apparently imagined a different conversation.

"For walking out on me and our marriage, of course. For posting that nasty stuff on social media. For trying to divorce me. For what you did with the house. But like I said, I have forgiven you. I'm ready to take you back so we can get on with our lives and grow old together, just like we planned when you were my knight in shining armor when we first met."

She smiled, waiting for me to accept her benevolence. I smiled back, watching the hope grow in her eyes.

"Nah. Thanks. I'll pass."

The hope was now gone from her eyes like a flame from a blown-out candle. I could see her face screwing up to let the waterworks loose.

"Save it," I said. "Tears won't work."

She immediately stopped the wind-up to weeping. I wondered what was next. Her eyes shifted around. I had been with her long enough to know what that meant.

"So, I see it's going to be story time, right? What is the story going to be?" I asked.

She slumped in her chair, giving up that option, too. If I guessed correctly, she might be about to be direct with me. Kind of like when we met nearly ten years ago. Refreshing but years too late.

"You never gave me a chance to explain," she said after a moment.

Here we go, I thought. I'll need the ethanol, stat! I had wanted to enjoy the Bordeaux in the glass before me. I am not a wine snob by any measure, but I do like the different tastes of good wines. I started drinking them after we split and I was finding my feet again. Good wine takes me back to the beginning of hope. This red was better than average, but this place was now affiliated with some local wineries and importers, so that was no surprise. Once upon a time, the place had just served coffee. Then, it upgraded. Back when it served coffee, neither of us could have afforded the wine anyway, even if they had it. Things were different now, a half-decade later. I wanted to take a little while to savor it. I had ordered it to follow my espresso--because why the heck not? And, like I said, these guys started with coffee, so that was top-notch--but I was going to need to chug the wine like swill just to get through the next fifteen minutes. And there I had been, hoping not to let her get to me.

I realized that I needed backup. I picked up my phone and typed a text.

"Bogey has missile lock. Need wingman ASAP!!"

I no sooner had sent the text than a reply came back: "I'm driving with Do Not Disturb While Driving turned on. I'll see your message when I get where I'm going."

Fine. I was going to be in this dogfight solo.

I fixed Lori with a glare while reaching for my wine glass. I drained it in a gulp.

"Bullshit!" I said.

She jumped in her chair a bit and then sat back. I never used to raise my voice to her. But it was time.

"'We need a trial separation! Can't you see that this marriage has problems?!'" I nearly shrieked in what was, in my opinion, a fairly good imitation of her voice, matching the intonations and pitch, making it just a teensy bit over-dramatic, but making sure to include an expression of lunatic intensity, which was only a smidgeon off what she had looked like at the time.

Some of the people at other tables, the ones who were pretending to ignore us, started chuckling. It seemed they agreed. They knew her voice. Most people in town did.

"'I just need some time to myself! To find myself. I'm losing my identity! I don't know who I am anymore!'" I continued to quote her in a shrill squawk, but turning it up to eleven on the dial.

"'We were just children when we got married. Hell, I'm still just a child myself. I can't even begin to think about having children, if I'm still just a child, too!'" I continued, adding the dramatic arm-waving that went with this statement, that transformed into the arms held straight out, parallel to the floor, leaving an image of Lori nailed to a cross of breedership.

Then the kicker.

"'I'm suffering from Fear of Missing Out!' And then, the best part, Lori, which was, 'I want to suck the marrow out of life, Dear, Sweet Husband,' and I'm quoting that line from that 'Dead Poets Society' movie that you like, even though they stole it from Thoreau, to distract you from the fact that what I really want to do is suck the juice out of the dick of the guy who does the sports segment before I do the weather. And eat out his wife!'" I squawked.

Lori looked at me stunned. The guests at the neighboring tables were doing their best not to seem like they were listening at all. This whole tawdry mess had made international news back when it happened, largely thanks to me. They all knew the story, I suppose, but I doubt that anyone had really thought about it after a week or so. People had the attention spans of moths these days. But it was coming back to life now.

In truth, she never said the last thing I quoted. Well, not most of it. She did say the bit about her fear of missing out. She also said the bit about sucking the marrow out of life, which almost made me laugh at the time for being overly dramatic. And I only found out about the sports guy and his wife after our argument.

What stopped me from laughing at the time she mentioned marrow-sucking was that she had immediately followed it up, after only the briefest of pauses, by saying, "If you love me, you'll let me do this."

I did not even think about the words I said next. They came out unbidden like hounds from Hell set loose to drag sinful souls back in an abyss of eternal despair. I could not have stopped them if I had tried.

"Well, I guess I don't love you then," I had said as I immediately went up the stairs two at a time to the bedroom and started emptying the drawers with her clothes by dumping them over the upstairs hall railing down into the living room below.