Read Online The Women by T. C. Boyle - Free Book Online Page B

got her the number and her heart began to race as she waited for the connection to be made. There was a sound of static, a soft mechanical buzz, and then a voice she didn’t recognize—a man’s voice—came at her out of the ether: “Hello?”
     
    “I want Frank,” she said and she wished now she’d taken a shot to calm her nerves. She was wrought up all over again, the tension tearing at her till she felt as if she were reliving the shock of that first moment at the door when that little man, that fleck of human detritus, had handed her the summons—
     
    “Yes?” the voice said. “Who is this?”
     
    “Miriam. His wife. And who the hell are you?”
     
    “Uh . . . sorry.” The phone was muffled; someone was whispering. “One moment, please.”
     
    Frank came on the line then and his voice was bluff and businesslike. “Yes, Miriam, hello. What can I do for you?”
     
    She couldn’t contain herself, the air ratcheting up out of her lungs and tearing at her throat as if she’d swallowed a pneumatic pump: “Criminal!” she shrieked. “Weasel! You, you fucking vermin! How dare you treat me like this? Really, how dare you!?”
     
    “Miriam,” he said. And he might have said something to calm her, something in the soft priestly tones he used when he was being holier-than-thou, which was about eighty percent of the time, but she didn’t hear him, didn’t want to hear him.
     
    “Shit!” she shouted. “Shit! You think you can cast me off like some whore, some, some bitch you’ve used for your pleasure and got enough of, is that what you think? Because if you do—”
     
    There was more, a whole lot more, and tears too—she couldn’t help it, she was only human and this was the lowest, dirtiest thing that anybody had ever done to her—and he tried to be meliorative and soft but the sound of him, the smugness, the finality in his voice, just turned all her jets on high till he began to harden and the connection was suddenly, violently, broken.
     
     
    In the morning, once she’d bathed and done her hair and used her pravaz to spread its creeping warmth even to her toes and fingertips and numb her to whatever the day might bring (and yes, she’d hidden her kit from Frank as much as possible and from Leora too, not that she was ashamed or in danger of becoming a morphinomane or anything of that nature, but because her medicines were private, her own affair and no one else’s, no matter how close they were— or had been ), she sat down with Leora over breakfast and they both agreed that she needed a lawyer of her own. Frank had a lawyer. Why shouldn’t she have one? How many women had they both known who’d been tossed out in the street like so much baggage and without a dime to their names? Or a nickel? Not even a nickel.
     
    After breakfast she went back out to the bungalow and used the telephone to make an appointment for that afternoon with Wilson Siddons Barker III, an attorney who specialized in divorce cases and came highly recommended by any number of people Leora knew. She spent a long while on her face and clothes—the better part of the morning—finally selecting a spring suit of her own design, an all-wool Poiret twill in navy with a silk peau de cygne lining, and her blue velvet cape and turban to match. She completed the outfit with her pearls and lorgnette along with two strings of jet beads and a diamond brooch her mother had bequeathed her. “Oh, my, my,” Leora said when she had a look at her, “you are a marvel.”
     
    “You think the brooch is too much?” she said, surveying herself in the full-length mirror in the front hall.
     
    Leora had taken some care with her dress too and she did have style, no doubt about it. She wasn’t nearly as dramatic as Miriam herself was, but then Miriam could carry it off in a way Leora never could—and yet still she had to admit her friend looked terrific in mauve crepe de chine and a bob hat with a spray of pheasant feathers