“How are things?”
Helga Myerhoff laughed. “Couldn’t be better,” she said. “Never better.”
“You’ve talked to Paul’s attorney, then?”
“No,” Helga said with a laugh. “I talked to Paul himself. I have no idea why he seems to think he’s qualified to do this on his own.”
Ali was astonished. “He’s trying to do this without an attorney?”
“Men who are used to running the show end up thinking they’re smart enough to run all shows,” Helga said. “And more the fool him,” she added. “I believe your soon-to-be-former husband is what people in the real estate business refer to as a ‘motivated seller.’ He wants out of this marriage in the very worst way.”
“And he’s willing to pay for the privilege?” Ali asked.
“Apparently,” Helga said. “I believe it’ll be to our benefit if we can make the deal before some hotshot pal of his talks him into changing his mind.”
“What’s he offering?”
“Fortunately, he wants to keep the house. He’s willing to buy out your half of the equity on both that and on the condo in Aspen, which was also purchased after the two of you married. The selling prices are to be based on the average of three separate and independent appraisals.”
“Sounds fair,” Ali said.
“That’s what I thought,” Helga agreed.
“What else?”
“He also wants to make a lump-sum payment for you to sign off on his pension. I’ll need to look into that because I think there’s a good chance he’s screwing us on the pension’s current valuation. Don’t worry, though. I’ve got my favorite accountant bloodhound working that line of inquiry.
“Mr. Grayson is also willing to pay lifetime alimony, but only in the event you don’t remarry,” Helga continued. “That’s standard, of course, but I told him the amount he was offering was a joke. I let him know that if he really wants us to sign off on this so he can make it to the altar before his kid gets here, he’d better get real in a hurry.”
“I’m surprised he didn’t hang up on you.”
Helga laughed. “Frankly,” she said, “so am I.”
As she drove, Ali had been keeping a close eye on traffic, which had mostly slowed to the posted 60 m.p.h. limit. Glancing in her rearview mirror, Al pulled out to pass two slow-moving trucks, one driving on the paved shoulder and the other in the right-hand lane. She was easing around them when a vehicle-a bright iridescent red SUV of some kind-suddenly emerged from around the obscuring curve behind her and charged forward.
“Ali,” Helga said. “Are you still there?”
Ali knew the red car was coming way too fast. “Just a minute,” she said. “Let me get out of the way of this nutcase.”
Ali pressed down on the accelerator, and the turbo-charged Cayenne shot forward. Even so, by the time she had overtaken the trucks and was ready to move back into the right-hand lane, the red car was right on her bumper. Once Ali returned to the right lane, however, the red car didn’t pass after all. Instead, it slowed and stuck-right in Ali’s blind spot.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Ali muttered under her breath. “Why the hell don’t you just pass?”
“Ali?” Helga asked. “Are you talking to me?”
“This jerk behind me won’t…”
Just then something slammed into her back left-hand fender. For what seemed like an eternity, as metal screeched against metal, the front end of the Cayenne swung sickeningly toward the left. As the median rushed toward her, Ali gripped the wheel and desperately twisted it to the right. Too late she realized that by then the other driver had veered away. Without the pressure against the rear of the Cayenne, the front of the vehicle suddenly snapped straight again. Ali knew instantly that she had overcorrected.
With terrible clarity, Ali saw the Cayenne swerve back to the right, aiming dead-on at the steel guardrail that lined the right-hand edge of the pavement. Invisible beyond the pavement was a sheer two-hundred-foot drop-off.
Wrestling the wheel, Ali tried to compensate for the overcorrection, but there wasn’t room enough. Or time. Instead there was a sudden grinding explosion of steel on steel. Lost in a blinding curtain of air bags, Ali felt the disorienting sensation of spinning. Then, with the Cayenne still astonishingly upright, it came to a sudden stop.
The driver’s side air bag had blown Ali’s hands free of the steering wheel. Side-curtain bags had protected her head. But now, as the passenger space filled with smoke and dust, Ali sat stunned and gasping for air, trying to piece together what had happened.
Off in the distance, hidden somewhere in the wreckage, she heard Helga’s voice. “Ali! Ali! What in God’s name happened? Are you all right?” Then, there was a sudden sharp pounding on the car window next to her ear.
Fighting her way through the empty air bags, Ali saw the face of a bearded man peering in the window. Behind him, parked on the freeway, sat a gigantic idling semi.
“Lady, lady,” he shouted through glass. “Are you all right? What the hell was the matter with that woman? She tried to kill you.”
“I think I’m all right,” Ali managed, but since she could only summon a whisper, he probably didn’t hear her.
“Can you unlock the door?”
Eventually Ali complied, and the man wrenched it open. “Come on,” he said. “My buddy’s stopping traffic. He’s calling the cops, too. If you think you can walk, let’s get you out of there in case something catches on fire.”
Once Ali was upright, the good Samaritan took one look at her battered face and backed away in horror. “My God, woman, you really are hurt! I’d better call an ambulance.”
Ali laughed at him then. She couldn’t help it. She laughed because, no matter how awful she looked, she wasn’t dead and she should have been. She laughed so hard she finally had to sit down on the pavement to keep from falling over.
An Arizona Highway Patrol car showed up while Ali was still laughing.
“I think she needs an ambulance,” the truck driver told the officer. “She’s gone hysterical on us. Maybe she’s in shock. Did you catch the woman in the other car?”
“We’re working on it,” the officer replied. He turned to her then. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” she said. “No problem.”
“License and registration?”
But she wasn’t fine enough to retrieve the paperwork herself. For an answer, Ali pointed back to the wrecked Cayenne. “In there,” she said. “Registration’s in the glove box. My cell phone’s in there somewhere, too. If you could find it…”
The cop reached into the vehicle. He emerged a few seconds later, holding a piece of paper and the cell phone along with the loaded Ziploc bag she was using for a purse. To her amazement the bag was still fastened.
“This?” he asked dubiously.
Ali nodded, and then she began to laugh again. “Those Ziploc bags are something, aren’t they?” she asked before dissolving in a spasm of giggles. “Maybe they could use this in a commercial.”
When the EMTs from the Black Canyon City Volunteer Fire Department arrived, none of them was prepared to take Ali’s word for it that she was fine. Instead, they loaded her onto a gurney, strapped her down, stuffed her into an ambulance, and took off. The ambulance hurtled forward for what, in Ali’s disoriented state, seemed like a very long time. Suddenly it slowed almost to a stop, but still it kept moving forward, siren blaring.
“Are we there yet?” she asked the young attendant at her side.
He shook his head. “Not yet,” he said. “There’s a problem on the freeway. We’ll get through it, though. Don’t worry.”
Don’t worry, Ali thought. That’s what I told Chris. I’ve got to call him. But she couldn’t. Someone had taken her phone.
Eventually they arrived at the John C. Lincoln Hospital in Deer Valley. For the second time that week, a no-nonsense ER nurse, armed with a scissors, came in and began snipping off Ali’s shirt and bra.
“Do you have to do that?” Ali asked. “I’m going to run out of bras pretty soon.”
Shaking her head, the nurse went right on snipping. It took three hours of poking, prodding and X-raying, before the ER physician finally shrugged and shook his head.