She snorted, and the sound was incongruous to her polished exterior. “Plenty of fertile ground there.”
“Enlighten me, then. Other than his aversion to fidelity, what are some lessons your husband needs to learn?”
She took another sip of wine before looking out into the distance, tapping her chin while she thought. “He’s the antithesis of gracious or generous. He wouldn’t lift his pinkie to help someone in need.”
“So a soup kitchen would do him good?”
“I wouldn’t trust him to cook for others. He might accidentally poison them.”
“Something more labor intensive, then?”
She spewed a bit of her wine. “I would pay dearly to see him do manual labor.”
“Paying for what you want to see is the plan, isn’t it?” I said with a grin.
“The filthier, the better.”
“Challenge accepted. What else?”
“Ugh. He’s so dismissive of any woman with power. Won’t vote for a woman. Won’t watch women’s sports. We have three daughters, and he won’t let them listen to Taylor Swift in the car if he’s driving, much less buy tickets for the girls to see her in concert. And he has the money, I assure you.”
It was on the tip of my tongue to ask why she’d married him in the first place, but I kept that to myself. Sometimes people showed you only one face until you were invested in the relationship. Sometimes being in love was like wearing blinders. Often, the truth of a relationship gone wrong lay somewhere in between.
“And another thing.” She paused to take another sip of wine. “I swear he lost interest in me because I had the audacity to get ‘old.’ Being a few years older than him didn’t seem to be a problem back when he was trying to get into my pants. Now he has no use for women over the age of thirty-five. Not even his own mother.”
I thought of Ken’s dewy-faced bride and how Soft Hands had muttered “saggy-ass bitch” with such rancor. “How dare we women age. How dare we?”
“Yes!” She continued in this vein, really warming to the topic with a colorful selection of four-letter words. I smiled and nodded while waiting for her to move on to the next topic. Finally, she said, “And he always wants things just so, with his clothes clean—all name brands, of course—his house neat, and a home-cooked meal the second he gets home. But no casseroles, heaven forbid! ‘That’s cheating,’ he says, as if he’s ever so much as boiled water.”
Having worn herself out with her very legitimate grievances, she stared beyond me with glassy eyes. While waiting for her to compose herself, I mentally summarized what she’d said:
No casserole—noted.
Fastidious about clothing and surroundings—also noted.
Stranger to manual labor and not in the least charitable—most duly noted.
Total chauvinist.Oh, how much sweeter that made being the woman who’d be making his life difficult for the next few weeks.
When she looked up at the ceiling and began blinking furiously, I looked away. I had been known to use that trick to quit crying back when I actually could cry. After a few more deep breaths, she said, “Do you think you can get photos or video of him doing any of those things?”
“That’s my plan, but I need to knowwhohe is andwherehe lives.”
“His name is Blake Malone—”
Malone? My heart sank in irrational disappointment. Surely, her husband wasn’t my “Man in Finance.”
“—and I think he’s currently living in some dump of an apartment off Delk Road—”
Of course. A Malone in a dump off Delk? At least you found out who he was before you fantasized too much.
“Here’s what I know: His company, Malone Construction, has an apartment that they’ve leased for years, supposedly for out-of-town guests. Perfect place for him to hole up. We visited it once or twice back when we were dating. Bell Something Apartments. He claims he needs to find himself. I’m just hoping—”
“Bel Air.”
And why did I have to blurt that out? So much for anonymity.
She paused. “I think that’s right. But how ...?”
