LITMIR.BIZ

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baby, didn’t I tell you never to trust a man with Roman numerals after his name?” her father asked. Oh God. Was she going to get a speech? Angie had tried to call her mother first, then her best friend Lisa, but had only gotten their machines.

      “Please, Daddy. No lectures. Not from you.” She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “I can’t believe it. I want to kill him. What should I do?”

      “It’s okay, baby. It’s okay,” her father soothed.

      He was using the voice she trusted, the one she always obeyed. He’d used that voice when he had told her not to worry, she’d ace her SATs, the one that promised her she’d get into law school. Her daddy, despite his flaws, did love her.

      “Listen to me,” he said. “Here’s what you do. You hang up the phone. You walk out of that hellhole and get into a taxi. The last Delta shuttle to New York leaves from Logan in forty-five minutes. You can make it, easy. And I’ll be at the Marine Air Terminal to pick you up. Not one of my drivers. Me.”

      “I don’t know if I can make the plane. When I tell Reid I—”

      “You don’t have to tell that bastid a single fucking thing,” her father spat. “Don’t you go back to that table.”

      “You mean just … leave? But … I don’t even have my purse with me,” Angie said. She felt naked, helpless. But the thought of crossing that room, looking at Reid—impossible! While just leaving at least had … dignity. “I have no money, no I.D….”

      “I’ll have a prepaid ticket waiting at the counter,” her father told her. “They’ll ask you to tell them your mother’s maiden name and give your social security number.” Angie nodded.

      “But security. I.D. I … I don’t have anything.” That wasn’t technically true. She still clutched the Shreve box in her hand.

      “I’ll tell them how your grandma is dying and how close you were,” he said.

      “Nana? Okay.” She began to cry again. “Thank you, Daddy,” she said. “God, I’m so ashamed.”

      “Ashamed? What have you got to be ashamed of?”

      “Being so fucking stupid,” Angie told him. “You never trusted him.”

      “Well, there is that,” he admitted. “Forget it. Women are all blind or else there’d be no human race. Just leave the bum. Let him sit there and wonder if you fell into the shitter and drowned.” Anthony Romazzano waited for a laugh but didn’t get one. “Okay,” her father said. “You promise me you’ll hang up and walk right out the door?”

      “Yes,” Angela agreed. She hung up the phone and turned herself around. She took a deep breath and pulled down on the cuffs of her sleeves as if the gesture built up enough courage for her to take the first step. She ought to go into the ladies room and clean up, but what difference would it make? She’d only cry some more. When she walked toward the exit door, she felt as if everyone was watching her and that they knew what had happened. She couldn’t believe she’d never see Reid again. But the fact was that she caught a last glimpse of her husband as she walked past the dining room door. He was calmly leaning back in his chair, looking out at the water. Why was it he always looked as if nothing bothered him? So pulled together?

      With all her built-up rage, Angie pushed hard on the club door and was blasted in the face with cold salt air. She waved to the first taxi in line. “Logan Airport, please. Delta shuttle.” Then she again burst into noisy tears.

      It wasn’t until they got to the Callahan Tunnel and its inevitable traffic that Angie realized she might miss the flight. But since she didn’t have a penny on her, she couldn’t even pay the driver. “Please hurry,” she said. He’d already looked at her once or twice in the rearview mirror.

      “Did you say Delta or USAir?” he asked. He had a lilt in his voice. Irish. Just off the boat. Driving a cab the way her father had, back in New York; but her father had gotten into the limo business, gotten rich, and married a nice Jewish girl.

      “Delta,” she told the driver, and then explained about Nana. What would he do when she tried to stiff him? Call the cops?

      Well, if he did, she’d telephone her father. She thought of Tony, waiting at the other end of the trip. She was grateful to him for his help, but at the same time she couldn’t avoid remembering that he had done the same thing to her mother that Reid was doing to her now. The only difference was, her father did it after he and her mom had been married for twenty-something years, and he hadn’t told her mom until he’d been caught. He still swore that it shouldn’t have broken up the marriage.

      “Oops. Sorry. I missed the Delta turn. I’ll have to go around again,” the cabbie said. Perfect, she thought. Now she’d probably miss the shuttle and wind up sleeping in the airport. As if she could sleep. Sleep! She wasn’t even sure she could go on breathing. She felt as if there were jagged pieces of bone or steel or glass in her chest. Every time she attempted a deep breath, or when a sob shook her, the pieces would meet and rub and tear. How had this happened to her? She’d been so careful.

      She’d waited until she was finished with college and almost done with law school before she had allowed herself to become serious about a man. She’d always been smart, and independent. She’d wanted to do something with the law to help people. She’d dated, but had been wary of men, and she’d worked hard during her internships and summers, giving her time to Legal Aid instead of dinner dates. She still gave money to “Save the Children,” participated in AIDS walks, and worked for Meals-On-Wheels once a month. She was a good person, a strong person. She had judgment, intelligence, and persistence.

      She’d listened to her mother’s advice, and absorbed the lessons—all bad—of her mother’s friends’ marriages. She’d avoided alcoholics, neurotics, and the generally misogynistic. And she’d finally picked the man who pursued her, not a man she’d pursued. He’d come from a family in which there seemed to be no history of womanizing: Reid’s father was cold, not hot. She’d worried that Reid might not marry her, that her family wasn’t up to his social standards, but never that he’d cheat on her. How had this happened to her?

      The taxi was pulling up to the Delta terminal. Angie looked down at her hands. One held the crumpled mass of yellow pages, now all sodden, that she’d torn from the phone booth at the club. In the other she still clutched the Shreve box that contained the perfect sapphire ring.

      The driver pulled up to the curb and braked. Then, in an act of courtesy usually unknown to North Shore cabbies, he actually got out of the cab and opened the door for her. “Sorry for your pain,” he said, his Irish accent thick. “I really loved my granny, rest her soul.” He looked at her, and Angie knew her hair must be wild, her face a swollen, streaked mess. “That’ll be forty-one dollars,” the driver added, almost reluctantly.

      There was only one thing to do. She opened the Shreve, Crump & Lowe box and took out the ring. “Here,” she said, handing it to him. “I forgot my purse. But you can have this. It’s worth a lot. I know my Nana would want you to have it.” Then, the empty box still clutched in her hand, she walked through the airport’s electronic eye doors, away from her marriage, and up to the Delta ticket desk.

4

       Wherein we meet Jada R. Jackson, and we discover the cost of living in Republican Westchester, as well as the state of her union

      Jada looked at her watch, realized it was too dark in the car to see the dial, and checked the clock on the dash. Damn! It was half past eight already. The kids would have eaten and—if she was lucky—be settled down to bed and homework. Her eyes flicked away from the dash but not before she noticed, with a start, that the gas gauge was almost on empty. Damn it! Now, when she was so late, she’d have to take the time to stop and fill up. Why was it that Clinton, who was unemployed and had the whole

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