Read Online The Ex-Mrs. Hedgefund by Jill Kargman - Free Book Online Page B

than life itself. So how could I, coming from a perfect family, be headed for splitsville? It was too crazy! This was not my life. Maybe I’d confront him and he would freak and beg for me to stay. I had to at least see what this was all about before calling lawyers. The crazy part is that Tim was the person I’d call whenever something bad happened—I almost wanted to call him to cry about what I was going through. My body felt both heated, charged with boiling rage, and chilled with an icy grip of devastated sadness. I watched Kiki, who was cracking file cabinets and opening stacked boxes in a frenzied hunt for God knows what. My eyes focused behind her, on an eight-by-ten wedding photo, grainy and black-and-white, our faces smeared by the kinetic twirl on the dance floor, my veil wrapped around us in a gauzy ethereal sheath, binding us together. We were partially obscured by the white tissuey wave, but you could see our faces beaming through the delicate tulle. As I looked at the picture, which so captured the beauty and joy of that moment, my eyes gushed for the first time, recollecting the paralyzing vision on Wythe Avenue in Brooklyn. He was kissing that girl and holding her as he once had held me. Clearly what bound us together was not a wedding vow stronger than oak: Our bond now seemed as wispy as my veil, as fragile and transparent as its lace border.

9
    Lady Astor: Sir, if you were my husband, I would poison your drink. Winston Churchill: Madam, if you were my wife, I would drink it.
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    â€œ U h-oh ... Bingo.” Kiki looked up at me, gripping a nondescript manila envelope.
    â€œThis is exactly what I was looking for.” She held it up, looking almost dismayed by her eureka moment, a discovery she had wanted to make but was then unhappy to unearth, like someone whose job it is to deep-sea dive for dead bodies. You’re successful when you locate one, but the find is extremely unpleasant.
    I got up and staggered across the room to see what she was holding. Nothing special. The return address was GTP Mortgage, LLP, on Oakdale Avenue, Suite 4300, in MacLean, Virginia. So what? I stared at her blankly.
    â€œSee this? Looks boring and tedious, right? Some dumb financial packet you put aside for Tim?”
    â€œYeah. . . .” We got tons of stuff like that. I never cracked them. I never dealt with the finances. When tax return time came, I just signed on the dotted line where the yellow stickers with red arrows told me to.
    â€œThis is how Hal did it, look—” She opened the envelope to reveal a packet with two CDs. The discs appeared to be normal, unmarked in their jewel cases.
    Huh?
    â€œSee, this is how they mail them. Top secret, in an unmarked envelope. Like Ticketmaster, since they don’t want people to swipe concert tickets. You know, they send them from some P.O. box in Iowa or something?”
    I nodded, vaguely recalling how in college I had chucked some Smashing Pumpkins tickets by accident, thinking the envelope was some junk-mail solicitation for a magazine subscription or political campaign.
    â€œThese hedge fund guys, they order these kits. It’s how to plot your exit. They cost like a thousand dollars and this guy instructs you how to start laying the groundwork.”
    I still had no idea what she was talking about. Kiki walked over to Tim’s Bose CD player by his desk and popped one in.
    â€œHello,” a man’s voice spoke crisply. “This is Lachlan McDonald. And with these divorce secrets for high-net-worth men, you’ll be ahead of the game. These guidelines will instruct you how, over a one- to two-year period, you can be armed with information on arranging finances and understanding the reality of the divorce process. Back in the day, a caveman would simply kick his wife out of the cave. Now, the woman gets half the cave. . . .”
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    Mr. Lachlan McDonald droned on as I started panting. Harder