Humboldt had said something, but I had missed it. The sight of the toothpick had reminded me all over again that I was floating cigaretteless on the waves of the world. ‘Pardon me?’
‘I asked if you know the Gotham Card on 53rd Street,’ he said, sounding a touch impatient now. ‘Between Madison and Park.’
‘No, but I’m sure I can find it.’
‘Noon?’
I thought of telling him to tell Diane to wear the green dress with the little black speckles and the deep slit up the side, then decided that would probably be counterproductive- ‘Noon will be fine,’ I said.
We said the things that you say when you’re ending a conversation with someone you already don’t like but have to deal with.
When it was over, I settled back in front of my computer terminal and wondered how I was possibly going to be able to meet Diane again without at least one cigarette beforehand.
It wasn’t fine with John Ring, none of it.
‘He’s setting you up,’ he said. ‘They both are. Under this arrangement, Diane’s lawyer is there by remote control and I’m not in the picture at all. It stinks.’
Maybe, but you never had her stick her tongue in your month when she feels you start to come, I thought. But since that wasn’t the sort of thing you could say to a lawyer you’d just hired, I only told him I wanted to see her again, see if there was a chance to salvage things.
He sighed.
‘Don’t be a putz. You see him at this restaurant, you see her, you break bread, you drink a little wine, she crosses her legs, you look, you talk nice, she crosses her legs again, you look some more, maybe they talk you into a duplicate of the safe deposit key—‘
‘They won’t.’
‘—and the next time you see them, you’ll see them in court, and everything damaging you said while you were looking at her legs and thinking about how it was to have them wrapped around you will turn up on the record. And you’re apt to say a lot of damaging stuff, because they’ll come primed with all the right questions. I understand that you want to see her, I’m not insensitive to these things, but this is not the way. You’re nor Donald Trump and she’s nor Ivana, burt this isn’t a no-faulter we got here, either, buddy, and Humboldt knows it. Diane does, too.’
‘Nobody’s been served with papers, and if she just wants to talk—‘
‘Don’t be dense,’ he said. ‘Once you get to this stage of the party, no one wants to just talk - They either want to fuck or go home. The divorce has already happened, Steven. This meeting is a fishing expedition, pure and simple. You have nothing to gain and everything to lose. It’s stupid.’
‘Just the same—'
‘You’ve done very well for yourself, especially in the last five years—‘
‘I know, but—‘
‘—and, for thuhree of those years,’ Ring overrode me, now putting on his courtroom voice like an overcoat, ‘Diane Davis was not your wife, not your live-in companion, and not by any stretch of the imagination your helpmate. She was just Diane Coslaw from Pound Ridge, and she did not go before you tossing flower petals or blowing a cornet.’
‘No, but I want to see her.’ And what I was thinking would have driven him mad: I wanted to see if she was wearing the green dress with the black speckles, because see knew damned well it was my favorite.
He sighed again. ‘I can’t have this discussion, or I’m going to end up drinking my lunch instead of eating it.’
‘Go and eat your lunch. Diet plate. Cottage cheese.’
‘Okay, but first I’m going to make one more effort to get through to you. A meeting like this is like a joust. They’ll show . up in full armor. You’re going to he there dressed in nothing but 1 smile, without even a jock to hold up your balls. And that’s exactly the region of your anatomy they’re apt to go for first.’
‘I want to see her,’ I said. ‘I want to see how she is. I'm sorry.’
He uttered a small, cynical laugh. I'm not going to talk you our of it, am I?’
‘No.’
‘All right, then I want you to follow certain instructions. If I find out you haven’t, and that you’ve gummed up the works, I may decide it would be simpler to just resign the case. Are you hearing me?’
‘I am.’
‘Good. Don’t yell at her, Steven. They may set it up so you really feel like doing that, but don't. Okay?'
‘Okay.’ I wasn’t going to yell at her. If I could quit smoking two days after she had walked out - and stick to it - I thought I could get through a hundred minutes and three courses without calling her a bitch.
‘Don’t yell at him, that’s number two.’
‘Okay.’
‘Don’t just say okay. I know you don’t like him, and he doesn’t like you much, either.’
‘He’s never even met me. He’s a . . . a therapist. How can he have an opinion about me one way or another?’
‘Don’t be dense,’ he said. ‘He’s being paid to have an opinion, chat’s how. If she tells him you flipped her over and raped her with a corncob, he doesn’t say prove it, he says oh you poor thing and how many times. So say okay like you mean it.’
‘Okay like I mean it.’
‘Better.’ But he didn’t say it like he really meant it; he said it like a man who wants to ear his lunch and forget the whole thing.
‘Don’t get into substantive matters,’ he said. ‘Don’t discuss financial-settlement issues, not even on a "What would you think if I suggested this’ basis. Stick with all the touchy-feely stuff. If they get pissed off and ask why you kept the lunch date if you weren’t going to discuss nuts and bolts, tell them just what you told me, that you wanted to see your wife again.’
‘Okay.’
‘And if they leave at that point, can you live with it?’
‘Yes.’ I didn’t know if I could or not, but I thought I could, and I strongly sensed that Ring wanted to be done with this conversation.
‘As a lawyer - your lawyer - I’m telling you that this is a bull-shit move, and that if it backfires in court, I’ll call a recess just so I can pull you out into the hall and say I told you so. Now, have you got that?’
‘Yes. Say hello to that diet plate for me.’
‘Fuck the diet plate,’ Ring sold morosely. ‘If I can’t have a double bourbon on the rocks an lunch anymore, I can at least have a double cheeseburger at Brew ‘n Burger.
‘Rare,’ I said.
‘That’s right, rare.’
‘Spoken like a true American-‘
‘I hope she stands you up, Steven-‘
‘I know you do.’
He hung up and went out to get his alcohol substitute. When I saw him next, a few days later, there was something between us that didn’t quite bear discussion, although I think we would have talked about it if we had known each other even a little bit better. I saw it in his eyes and I suppose he saw it in mine as well - the knowledge that if Humboldt had been a lawyer instead of a therapist, he, John Ring, would have been in on our luncheon meeting. And in that case he might have wound up as dead as William Humboldt.
I walked from my office to the Gotham Cafe leaving at 11:15 and arriving across from the restaurant at 11:45.I got there early for my own peace of mind - to make sure the place was where Humboldt had said it was, in other words. That’s the way I am, and pretty much the way I’ve always been. Diane used to call it my obsessive streak’ when we were first married, but I think that by the end she knew better. I don’t trust the competence of others very easily, that’s all. I realize it’s a pain-in-the-ass characteristic, and I know it drove her crazy, but what she never seemed to realize was that I didn’t exactly love it in myself, either. Some things take longer to change than others, though. And some things you can never change, no matter how hard you try.