I woke up to the fact that I am pushing 80 when my wife, who is 34 years younger than me, had the divorce papers handed to me. By a man who looked half her age, although I acknowledge that the perspective on age differences starts to change radically when you are in your 40s. Which my wife is, while her server — let’s let that term sit and settle, until all of its unpleasant matter has descended to the bottom of a glass and can be seen for what it is — is not. But looking at that man, as he coolly said, “You’re served,” made me feel like I am the sediment at the bottom of a body of water and the scum at the top of it. Both.
A tiny part of my pea brain wants to protest: “I worked so hard.” But I had never seen anyone as striking, even gorgeous, as she was when I first laid eyes on her in one of my many holdings, the restaurant in Beverly Hills.
Of course she was a waitress. Didn’t even know how to mix a drink. Couldn’t carry four dishes out from the kitchen, much less seven, which I’ve always thought was the benchmark of an invaluable waitress. So yes, I had to marry her. I don’t mean that she made me. She didn’t have quite that heft. Or maybe she did, and I didn’t see it. I’m going with the second of the two alternatives now, as I face how terribly wrong I played my hands in business and in love.
It’s just that she was stunning. No. If I’m being honest, which is not my job — I am a trial attorney — it’s that she was unmistakably expensive, too expensive to own, and yet not available on any terms other than temporary ownership. That makes me her temporary secretary. Yes, I know my Paul McCartney, even in the electronic phase. I’ve lived.
The question I faced when that young Adonis handed me my papers, not of enfranchisement but divorce, is whether I ever wanted to be loved. I know I wanted to live. Love is more difficult. You can’t try corporations — and certainly not the Pope, which I did, as a Catholic — and focus on love. Jesus did that. I’m not him. I’m also not Him. But it would have been nice to be treated as if I were, for a third of my adult life, maybe from the time I was 33.
When I last saw her, that tall, cool glass of Bombay Gin (she was wearing blue just that color), she looked me in the eyes, without sentiment or even resentment — the lowest blow of all — and said, “I never loved you. I only wanted to like you.”
They still come honest sometimes.
Very good
good stuff