“Let me do all the talking, please, Vincent,” George whispered to his client as they both were sitting down.
“If you say what I need you to say, then I won’t say a word. If you don’t,” said Vince as he looked at his lawyer and best friend, “then I will.”
And that was that. Vince always had the last word. George steeled himself for a rocky ride.
And then the arbitrator called the proceedings to order.
Cynthia and Vince had been divorced for only three months when she filed a dispute over the terms. She was arguing that the court ordered Vince to pay her restitution for the egregiously defamatory comments about her in public, while Vince was arguing that that big fat fifty-five-million-dollar settlement he agreed to pay her covered that and any and everything else associated with that divorce. It was in their prenup and he was sticking to it. He felt he was especially generous to her when she truly didn’t deserve a dime.
“It was an historically-high lump sum of money that negated everything else she was asking for,” George said to the arbitrator. “My client should not have to pay out another single dime to this greedy woman!”
“That’s for me to decide, Counsel,” the arbitrator fired back before Cynthia could.
“And beyond all of that,” said Vince, as everybody looked at him, “everything that I said about her, and I mean everything, was nothing but the truth.”
“You lie!” said Cynthia. “You called me a whore in public.”
“And?”
“I’m not a whore! I’m not!”
“Ye protests too much,” Vince said as the arbitrator was banging his gavel.
“That’s enough both of you!”
And on and on it went. For hours they argued back and forth. The arbitrator was more the referee than the tryer of fact. But eventually he heard both sides and agreed to issue his ruling in two-to-four weeks out. And then the proceeding was over.
Vince remained seated as everybody else stood up. George noticed how Cynthia kept looking over at Vince. Although a beautiful woman with that flowing strawberry blonde hair, her greediness was so pronounced that he couldn’t bear the sight of her. But she still loved Vince. Of that George was certain.
“You know what’s going to be a miracle?” she asked Vince as her lawyers waited for her to come on.
Vince finally looked up at her. To George, he seemed bored with her already. “What?” he asked her with no affection whatsoever.
“You’re going to miss me dearly. And not just in the bedroom either.”
Vince stared at her. He could see how she could have once turned him on. But that turn-on was so long ago that it seemed like a far-away mirage that never really happened. But it had. He actually had the gall to marry this woman once upon a time. “That wouldn’t be a miracle,” he said to her unblinkingly. “That would be a disgrace.”
“Fuck you, Vince Fontaine!” Cynthia yelled at him.
“You will never do that again,” Vince shot back.
And on that note, Cynthia turned in a huff and walked out of that conference room. Her attorneys, smiling as if they wanted Vince’s approval more than their client’s, left too.
Vince looked at George. “Your verdict?”
“Guilty as charged,” George said.
“Meaning?”
“Oh you’re going to pay her more money. How much? I can’t say. But you definitely owe it to her.”
“I don’t owe her shit,” Vince said angrily as he stood up. “That gold digger got every dime she’s getting from me and I’ll appeal it to the highest court in the land if I have to.”
George smiled. “The Supreme Court is not going to hear your divorce disputes.”
“Who said anything about the Supreme Court?”
“Then what highest court in the land you’re talking about?” And as soon as George said it, he realized what his friend and client was talking about. “The court of public opinion.”
