Bleeding Edge - Pynchon Thomas. Страница 6

“So . . . the alimony’s good?” inquired Daytona, her second day on the job.

“Isn’t any.”

“What?” having a good long stare at Maxine.

“Anything I can help you with?”

“That is the craziest crazy-white-chick story I have heard yet.”

“Get out more,” Maxine shrugged.

“You got some problem with a man partying?”

“Of course not, life is a party isn’t it Daytona, yes and Horst was fine with that, but as he happened to think marriage is a party also, well, that’s where we found we had different thoughts.”

“Her name was Jennifer and shit, right?”

“Muriel. Actually.”

By which point—part of the Certified Fraud Examiner skill set being a tendency to look for hidden patterns—Maxine began to wonder . . . might Horst actually have a preference for women named after inexpensive cigars, was there perhaps a Philippa “Philly” Blunt stashed in London he’s playing FTSE with, some alluring Asian arbitrix named Roi-Tan in a cheongsam and one of those little haircuts . . . “But don’t let’s dwell, because Horst is history.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I got the apartment, of course he got the ’59 Impala in cherry condition, but there I go, whining again.”

“Oh, I thought it was this fridge.”

Daytona is an angel of understanding, of course, next to Maxine’s friend Heidi. The first time they really got to sit down and chat about it, after Maxine had gone on at a length that embarrassed even her.

“He called me up,” Heidi pretended to blurt.

Right. “What, Horst? Called . . .”

“He wanted a date?” eyes too wide for total innocence.

“What’d you tell him?”

A perfect beat and a half, then, “Oh, my God, Maxi . . . I’m so sorry?”

“You? and Horst?” It seemed odd, but not much more than that, which Maxine took as a hopeful sign.

But Heidi seemed upset. “God forgive me! All he did was talk about you.”

“Uh-huh. But?”

“He seemed distant.”

“The three-month LIBOR, no doubt.”

Though this discussion did go on, for a school night, quite late, Heidi’s escapade doesn’t rank as high as some offenses Maxine in fact still finds herself brooding about from back in high school—clothes borrowed but never returned, invitations to nonexistent parties, Heidi-arranged hookups with guys Heidi knew were clinically psychopathic. Sort of thing. By the time they adjourned for exhaustion, it may have disappointed Heidi a little that her mad fling had somehow only found its natural place among other episodes of a continuing domestic series, begun long ago in Chicago, which is where Horst and Maxine originally met.

Maxine, in on some overnight CFE chore, found herself at the bar in the Board of Trade building, the Ceres Cafe, where the physical size of the drinks had long been part of the folklore. It was happy hour. Happy? My goodness. Irish, which for some says it all. You ordered a “mixed drink,” you got this gigantic glass filled up to the brim with, say, whiskey, maybe one or two tiny ice cubes floating in it, then a separate twelve-ounce can of soda, and then a second glass to mix it all in. Maxine somehow got in an argument with a local bozo about Deloitte and Touche, which the bozo, who turned out to be Horst, insisted on calling Louche & De Toilet, and by the time they had this sorted, Maxine wasn’t sure she could even stand up let alone find her way back to the hotel, so Horst kindly saw her into a taxi and apparently slipped her his card also. Before she had a chance to deal with her hangover, he was on the phone snake-oiling her into the first of what would be many ill-fated fraud cases.

“Sister in distress, nobody to turn to,” and so forth, Maxine went for the pitch, as she would continue to, took the case, pretty straightforward asset search, routine depositions, almost forgotten till one day there it was in the Post, S-S-S-PLOTZVILLE! SERIAL GOLD DIGGER STRIKES AGAIN, HUBBY DUMBFOUNDED.

“Says here it’s the sixth time she’s cashed in this way,” Maxine thoughtfully.

“Six that we know of,” Horst nodded. “That’s not a problem for you, is it?”

“She marries them and—”

“Marriage agrees with some people. It has to be good for something.”

Oooh.

And why, really, go into the list? From check kiters and French-roundoff artistes to get-even dramas that have pinned her revenge detector way over in the blind, forget-but-never-forgive, sooner-or-later-felonious end of the scale, still she kept going for it, every time. Because it was Horst. Fuckin Horst.

“Got another one for you here, you’re Jewish, right?”

“And you’re not.”

“Me? Lutheran. Not sure what kind anymore ’cause it keeps changing.”

“And my own religious background comes up because . . .”

Kashruth fraud in Brooklyn. Seems a goon squad of fake mashgichim or kosher supervisors have been making their way around the neighborhoods pulling surprise “inspections” on different shops and restaurants, selling them fancy-looking certificates to put in the window while rooting through their inventory stamping jive-ass hechshers or kosher logos on everything. Mad dogs. “Sounds like more of a shakedown racket,” to Maxine. “I just look at books.”

“Thought you might have a rapport.”

“Try Meyer Lansky—no wait, he’s dead.”

So . . . some kind of Lutheran, huh. Way too early for any shaygetz-dating issues to arise of course, still, there it was, the outside-your-faith thing. Later on, deep in the first romantic onset, Maxine was to hear a certain amount of wild—for Horst—talk about converting to Judaism. How ironic that “Jew” also rhymes with “clue.” Eventually Horst became aware of prerequisites such as learning Hebrew and getting circumcised, which triggered the sort of rethink you’d expect. Cool with Maxine. If it’s a truth universally acknowledged that Jews don’t proselytize, Horst certainly was and remains a prime argument for why not.

At some point he offered her a consultancy contract. “I could really use you.”

“Hey, anytime,” a piece of lighthearted industry repartee which this time, however, would prove fateful. Later on, post-nup, she grew much more careful with the blurting, reaching, in fact, along toward the windup there, almost to the point of silence, while Horst sat grimly pecking at a spreadsheet application he’d found in some Software Etc bargain bin, called Luvbux 6.9, totaling up sums in the range Hefty to Whopping he had spent for the sole purpose of getting Maxine to fall silent. To torture himself further, he then opened a feature that would calculate what it had been costing him per minute of silence actually obtained. Aaahh! bummer!

“Once I realized,” as Maxine presented it to Heidi, “that if I complained enough, he’d give me whatever I wanted? just to shut me up? well, the romance, I don’t know, somehow went out of it for me.”

“As a natural kvetch, it got too easy for you, I understand,” Heidi cooed. “Horst is such a pushover. The big alexithymic lug. You never saw that about him. Or rather, you—”

“—saw it too late,” Maxine joined in on the chorus of. “Yes, Heidi, and yet despite it all sometimes I would almost welcome somebody that accommodating in my life again.”

“You, ah, want his number? Horst?”

“You have it?”

“No, uh-uh, I was going to ask you.”

They shake their heads at each other. Without needing a mirror, Maxine knows they look like a couple of depraved grandmas. An untypical adjustment to have to make, their roles being usually a little more glamorous. At some point early in their relationship, which has been forever, Maxine understood that she was not the Princess here. Heidi wasn’t either, of course, but Heidi didn’t know that, in fact she thought she was the Princess and furthermore has come over the years to believe that Maxine is the Princess’s slightly less attractive wacky sidekick. Whatever the story of the moment happens to be, Princess Heidrophobia is always the lead babe while Lady Maxipad is the fastmouthed soubrette, the heavy lifter, the practical elf who comes while the Princess is sleeping or, more typically, distracted, and gets the real work of the princessipality done.