“Simpkins came here this morning. In fact, he was here when he called you.”
I tell James only half of what happened, leaving out the choicest details. Simpkins had arrived, unannounced, at the doorstep demanding to see me. “What brings you here this morning?” I asked, first thinking Simpkins had come to collect the money I pledged to give him when I rescheduled our appointment and then fearing he had stumbled upon the fact I had stolen Anne Elise. “We need to talk,” Simpkins said, brushing past me and walking into the living room. He hadn’t slept all night, he said. Not a wink. He didn’t comment upon how lovely the room’s furnishings were or how impressed he was at my father’s oil portrait. “Do you think anyone knows I’m here?” Simpkins asked, and when I inquired as to the reason for his fright, he told me someone outbid me for the Laurel Bloom information. For this, he apologized. And then he told me it was James who outbid me. I fell into the Hepplewhite, not believing James had it in him to be treacherous. But then Simpkins explained that James paid him with counterfeit money. “But there’s good news,” Simpkins said. “I’m giving you the opportunity to get your husband out of trouble. Otherwise, I’ll fix it so that he goes to jail.” To avoid this unpleasantness, Simpkins wanted me to make good on the counterfeit money, but the notion that I fork over $10,000 for James’s misdeeds was crazy. I gave James’s cell phone number to Simpkins and instructed him to tell James how upset he was at being tricked. I did all this because I knew James didn’t have the money to satisfy Simpkins’s demands for immediate repayment. I knew he’d be forced to come groveling back to me. “Tell him you’re going to kneecap him,” I said to Simpkins. “That’ll light a fire under him to give you real money.”
“He’s going to kneecap you, James. That’s what Simpkins said, right? And believe me—he means it.”
James flops down on my father’s old desk chair, which creaks under his weight, and buries his face in his hands, stricken. “Ten thousand dollars. He wants ten thousand dollars from me. Today. Where am I going to get ten thousand dollars? Trish, I need your help. I’m begging you for ten thousand dollars.”
I pat James’s hair. He looks so soft, so vulnerable, a shivering gray mouse caught in a warren of tomcats. He hadn’t returned to rescue Anne Elise. He came back to throw himself on his hands and knees and grovel for money.
“You can have the ten thousand dollars. I can give it to you,” I say, reaching into a desk drawer for the Montblanc fountain pen I’ve used for occasions like this. James has always been so easy to control, so responsive to the predictable male-motivating factors of money and sex. As my father said, most men will sell their souls for significantly less than you’d think possible. James doesn’t know it yet, but $10,000 is the lowball price of his soul. “Let me have your signature on the promissory note so I can give you the money and make your problems disappear like I always do. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? I’ll get you the money. Won’t you like that? You can have your knees. You can have Anne Elise. And you can have me.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
JIM
Trish shoves the fountain pen in my hand. A sheaf of preprinted promissory notes, complete save for the blank spaces where she fills in the date and the dollar amounts, lies in an open drawer. Humiliation scorches my cheeks. I can’t believe it’s come to this. Normal people would help their spouse without bringing embarrassment upon them—wouldn’t they?—but as Hemingway wrote of Zelda Fitzgerald, Trish’s a hawk who doesn’t share. Every quid brings a quo. Trish has never loved me. I know that now without a doubt. She might’ve loved the idea of me—a handsome, presentable flatterer gliding her into society dinners and onto the ballroom floors at charity fundraisers—and she might’ve liked the idea of me being the gentle, nurturing father of her children, but she never loved me. She’s used me at every possibility, mocked me for my failed investments. She knows I despise signing these promissory notes, but it’s the only way she’ll give me the money.
“James. The money. Don’t you want the money? You don’t need to tell anyone I’ve got Anne Elise. Think of it: ten thousand dollars. Enough money to pay off Simpkins. Enough for you to avoid getting kneecapped.”
Something hardens inside me. “I’m not going to sell out Laurel for ten thousand dollars.”
Trish closes her eyes, sighs. “How about twenty thousand?”
I’m speechless. Twenty thousand dollars would be enough to pay off both Simpkins and Tully, who—counterfeit or not—sooner or later will demand his money back. Trish’s never shown a willingness to negotiate when it comes to bailing me out, and from this willingness, I sense that I’ve got her over a barrel. Should I call the police, they’ll arrest her. She can’t buy me off as easily as her father has bought off all his floozies. She’s been turning the screws on me, but now’s my opportunity to reverse our positions. My livestock futures investment opportunity comes to mind. If I can pony up a quarter million dollars, I’ll be set for life. I can pay off Laurel’s student loans, giving her more reason to trust me. Never again will I need to grovel for more of Trish’s money.
“Three hundred thousand dollars,” I say, naming a figure that’ll satisfy all my immediate needs. “That’s what this is going to cost you.”
Trish draws a breath, bites her lip. She reaches for the fountain pen in my hand. Without makeup, her skin’s dry, in need of nourishment. Her open robe rakes across me as she takes the pen from me. She pulls out one of her preprinted promissory notes and fills in the date and the amount of $300,000 on the two blank lines in the form’s opening paragraph. She’s trembling, angry, and nervous. For once in her life she knows she can’t dictate the terms of this negotiation, and I feel strangely elated. For once in my life I’ve outsmarted her, but then sadness falls over me: in getting the better of Trish, I’m pledging to sell out Laurel. It’s a Pyrrhic victory, a lose-lose situation. Trish pushes the promissory note across the desk. Though the ink hasn’t dried where she filled in the blanks, it’s ready for my signature.
“I’m not going to sign another of your promissory notes,” I say.
“Sure you are. We can’t do this without a promissory note. I’m putting my foot down on that. My father told me long ago that whenever I give money to you—”
“Your father’s the one who told you to make me sign these promissory notes?”
“If he hadn’t suggested it, I never would have thought of it myself.”
I thought Jack Riggs liked me; I thought he was a good guy. Though cognizant of my foibles, he got me my job, confided in me his lurid conquests. He must have known how humiliating these promissory notes are, but he’s been forcing me to undergo this humiliation for years. I can’t believe it. But then I do—men like him only respect money, their mercantile maneuverings pervading even into family relationships.
“What’s wrong?” Trish asks. “Don’t you want the money? I’ll give you the money if you get rid of Laurel. We can have her baby! And we can have the baby I’m carrying too. Two babies for the price of one!”
My gut clenches up. Not an ounce of my soul wants to do as she tells me, but if Simpkins doesn’t get his money, my kneecaps are history. I put Anne Elise down in the cardboard box. An amber plastic prescription bottle sits beside the cardboard box. I give it a shake. Dozens of pills rattle inside. “These the Valiums you’ve been popping?”
Trish glares at me. “It’s no crime to be under a doctor’s care.”
“How many have you had today?”
“I don’t know. Maybe a couple. I forget.”
“You should keep track of these things. You don’t want to overdose.” I shove the bottle in my trouser pockets.