The Winners Circle Read online

  “Dick,” Tom continued, “wants to save us all from what he went through.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “After he lost his wife and daughter ...”

  “Hold on. How’d that happen?”

  “He bought his wife a Lamborghini, and she wracked it up on the Parkway. She and the daughter went with it.”

  “That’s awful.”

  “Man, you want to know the worst part?”

  “What’s worse than that?”

  “Her remaining family sued her estate.”

  Jerry wasn’t surprised. The closer people came to his money, the more rights they claimed. He recalled standing on Jacob’s farm, after he’d knocked down the hen house. He peeled one hundred dollar bills off a big wad of cash, until Jacob’s grin split his bearded face in two. “Did her family get the money?”

  “Dick fended them off in court. You see his bodyguard?”

  “I did.”

  “Tucker carries a stun gun, not to mention the real thing. Dick told me that Tucker’s supposed to zap any family member who closes within ten feet.”

  Jerry felt ill. Was it Dick’s story or the pounding waves against the boat? His stomach surged with every dip. He should’ve taken a pill. He wasn’t going to make it.

  “You don’t look so good.” Tom drained the rest of his beer. Foam limned his upper lip.

  “Seasick.”

  “What are you doing on this tub?”

  A shrill of excitement rose from the dance floor, as the boat skipped over a sharp crest. The boat slapped the water. Jerry pressed his fist to his gut, losing confidence in his ability to keep food down. “I don’t know.”

  He pulled away from the railing, the deck swelling beneath his feet. “Where’s the men’s room?”

  Tom seemed to understand motion sickness. The last place you wanted to be was down in the belly of the ship. Tom grimaced an apology, pointing a fat finger downstairs.

  Jerry wanted to lean over the rail and purge the limited contents of his stomach, but he considered Chelsea. She’d be mortified if someone saw.

  On the stairs, he smelled the millionaires again. The place reeked of expensive cologne, perspiration, and abandoned bites of crab quiche and marinated olives. The air was stagnant, garlicky. It didn’t lift or swirl. The dancers stirred up little relief.

  He descended into the pit. His stomach gurgled. The boat chopped through the harbor. Few people noticed the sway. They mingled, swinging to the changing rhythm, supporting their bodies on other bodies. Jerry held his breath, hoping to ford the dance floor in time.

  The band played ‘Gotcha Love’—a hard rocking ballad that failed by any musical standard. Synthesized chords pounded from the big amplifiers, abusing Jerry’s unsteady inner ear. He pushed past the dancers and that damned Yankee who was hitting on two women at once.

  Jerry gulped the bad air, certain he reflected the color green. The men’s room door looked like a submarine hatch, complete with bulkhead and spinning lock. He bore down on the gray steel and pushed inside.

  A woman was giggling. Her voice stifled, as soon as Jerry’s feet clapped the corrugated metal floor. He paused. Someone breathed heavily. He saw three urinals, assured he’d located the proper restroom.

  The ship pitched and righted. He grabbed the sink, nauseous. But the giggle unnerved him. It was a delicate sound, fluttering deep inside a woman’s throat. He knew that sound. It was permanently tattooed upon his brain.

  He splashed the faucet in the sink and crept toward the stalls. He heard a man. A couple breathed, moaning softly. Jerry’s head spun inside. He crouched down, eyeing the shoes beneath the opening. A cordovan pair of tasseled loafers fumbled with black open toe high heels.

  Jerry braced his feet. He felt increasingly ill and dizzy, the essentials of vertigo. The normal reflexes reversed direction in his throat, as blood surged from his head to his gut. He grabbed the stall door with his big hands and yanked with the balance of his power. He wanted to rip the door from its hinges.

  The door smacked lamely against the wall. Chelsea sat upon a man’s lap, hunched on a toilet seat. Her blouse was unbuttoned to the navel, bra dangling beneath one arm. Her breasts—the gorgeous globes of flesh, which he’d paid ten thousand dollars to enhance—lay exposed to the harsh neon light. Haskell Cogdon’s wiry sideburns nuzzled in between.

  Chelsea didn’t dare move or speak. Cogdon had beady eyes that seemed to expand by the second.

  Jerry didn’t know where to level his sights. He gazed down at Cogdon’s feet. The boat heaved, and his strength escaped him. He clutched the doorway of the stall and vomited on those hideous shoes.

  CHAPTER 6

  An Ounce of Sympathy,

  A Ton of Chocolate

  Court papers arrived in a plain brown envelope, via a man with an obvious toupee. Jerry stood on the farmhouse steps, watching the hair hat leave. It disappeared inside a vintage Monte Carlo with a scooped hood. The shiny chrome bumper receded down the driveway.

  He tore into the package from Haskell Cogdon’s Law Office. It was Chelsea’s first communication in almost a month. The last time he’d laid eyes on her, he was fisting the top rail of the Manhattan Cruiser. Rage swirled through his brain, and the remnants of nausea fired his throat. He saw Chelsea sprinting across the parking lot beside the pier. Her long tan legs cut like scissors between the cars. That bastard Cogdon was nowhere in sight.

  A strong September breeze rustled the tops of the Osage trees, shaking the plump neon yellow fruit to the ground. Jerry sifted through the crisp legal documents in his hands. CIVIL ACTION FILED IN SUPERIOR COURT OF MERCER COUNTY. Chelsea demanded half of the lottery winnings but passed on the farm. Like GM in Trenton, she was liquidating her position in Hopewell. She salvaged the things she desired, and she abandoned the rest, including Jerry, leaving them to rust beneath the sun. It was pink slip day once again.

  For weeks, Jerry prayed for a stalemate. Certified mail from Cogdon’s office piled on the kitchen counter, beside dirty dishes and empty cartons from microwave dinners. He spent his days wandering between the porch and the chair facing front. Caterpillars spun silky tents in the pear trees. The cornstalks on Jacob’s farm turned golden brown and faded into thin amber husks. Flocks of Canadian geese formed giant V-shapes over the hills.

  Jerry watched the last bit of summer wither into fall. His soul grafted to the rotting floorboards and cracked plaster walls of the old farmhouse. He waited, wanting, weary of the silence, unable to grip a notion of a different future.

  Whenever gravel churned on the drive, he rushed to the window. He saw the mail truck, the heating oil man, or herds of deer trotting toward the woods. He looked for Chelsea’s Jag, the first glimpse of the hydro-mag wheels spinning toward the house. He pictured the top down, her luggage bulging from the trunk, and her blonde hair trailing in the wind.

  “This is clever.” Ralph Tisch glanced over the court papers from Chelsea’s attorney. His head was shaped like an avocado, and wisps of dark hair clung to his feeble chin as if painted in place. He stood behind his desk, surrounded by enough books to crush a healthy man. “It’s very clever.”

  “I’m not surprised.” Jerry sat across the room, wondering if anyone really read that many books. They were bound in rich leather, matched sets like collections of encyclopedias. “Her attorney is a sneak.”

  “Cogdon? He’s making it easy for you.”

  “I don’t want it easy.”

  “Of course you do.”

  Jerry recalled the last delivery from Cogdon’s office. It contained a handwritten note from Chelsea: ‘You better deal with this.’ He sat forward on the couch. “What’s easy about it?”

  “A civil annulment erases the marriage.”

  Jerry sheltered his heart against the suggestion. That wasn’t what Chelsea wanted. She was angry for some reason. He just didn’t know why.

  “Her claim is bogus,” Jerry said. “I want children. So does she.”

  “Where a
re they? That’s what the court will ask. Where are the children? It’s the basis of her suit.”

  “We haven’t gotten around to children yet.”

  “Do you realize how you sound?”

  “I’m being honest.”

  “This woman wants a divorce.”

  “She’s being led on by that Cogdon man.”

  “She’s expediting her departure.” Tisch put down the paperwork and cast a staid look on Jerry. “Accept her terms, and you’ll have a clean break. Most men would jump at that.”

  Jerry wondered if they spoke the same language.

  “They’ll be no recourse in the future,” Tisch continued. “Once the paperwork is approved by the courts, she won’t be able to make another claim. No alimony. Nothing. Your money will always be yours.”

  “It’s not about the money.”

  “At this juncture, it’s only about the money.”

  “I want children too. I want them.”

  “You’re missing the point.”

  “But it’s not true.”

  “What does the truth have to do with this?” Tisch walked around the desk. His long limbs moved with grace, like an alien Jerry’d seen on late night TV, gliding toward its human subject on the examination table.

  That’s how Jerry felt, strapped down and dissected by strangers with large probing eyes. There were the secretaries with their questions and forms, not to mention Tisch and his legal pad full of scribbled notes. A dry record of Jerry’s personal life with Chelsea was being gathered and fed into files and computers for the courts. The emphasis centered on dates, figures, and property—not days, laughter, and memories. It was inhuman, exposing all the wrong parts of their characters.

  “Let the case proceed uninterrupted,” Tisch continued. “The annulment will come to fruition without a legal battle. It’s the smoothest, if not the cheapest path.”

  “What if I contest?”

  “You’ll have to answer the primary question in her suit. Where are the children? Their absence strongly supports her argument.”

  “I can say it’s her fault.”

  “What are you trying to accomplish, Mr. Nearing? That will only drag this out to the same end. Do you understand?”

  Jerry refused to understand. Chelsea was confused, her mind clouded by Haskell Cogdon. If Jerry discovered a way to jog her memory, she’d snap out of it and return to him. She used to say, ‘There isn’t a place in the world for me without you.’ How could she forget that? How could anyone?

  “I want to talk to her,” Jerry said.

  Tisch hovered close, his head shifting like a slow motion pendulum. “Mr. Nearing.”

  Jerry kept waiting for some hideous probe—a jagged spiraling tool—to come whirling toward his brain. He’d wake up without Chelsea, stripped of his memory of the event. “I need more time.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “It’s a game.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Jerry followed events backward, drawing a line to the instant that Cogdon first set foot on his farm. He’d been a fool to let the little attorney seize the upper hand. Chelsea was his girl. He understood her in ways that Cogdon could never grasp. Life was ideal for her now, but what if things went sour? Who knew her then? He was experienced at lifting her from the hole that she’d inevitably dig for herself.

  “Mr. Nearing?” Tisch stopped moving, fazed by Jerry’s deep current of thought.

  “Let Cogdon try anything he likes.”

  Jerry stormed from the office. He rushed past the secretary pool and another massive array of books. His heart beat like when he broke Peter Kurt’s nose by the creek, but this time, he set his sights on Haskell Cogdon. Let Cogdon come close and—wham—he’d drive the creep to the ground.

  Jerry drove to the mall. It was what Chelsea used to do when she wasn’t sure what she wanted. Hard rain sheeted his foggy windshield. He parked the Ford beside a fire hydrant, threw on his flashers, and rushed indoors. He hoped for inspiration.

  The woman in the chocolate boutique wore a mauve sweater dress with a thick black belt. Her brown hair was separated in a ragged part, and brown locks draped over one eye. It was supposed to be sexy but looked like something out of an old black and white horror flick. “Can I help you?”

  Jerry stopped and unzipped his duster. A scrap of paper from Tisch’s office stuck to his wet boot. He saw the attorney’s raised letterhead. It stoked his will to fight. “Do you have Godiva?”

  “Of course.” She swept her hand over the gold-trimmed display case between them. “We have truffles and fudge on the back shelf.”

  “Good.” He roamed the golden boxes with ribbons and bows. The smell of the place touched off a memory. It harkened a scent on Chelsea’s breath. He used to tuck chocolate kisses in her uniform pocket before she left for work.

  “Purchasing early for the holidays?”

  “It’s for my wife.” He clung to the word ‘wife’ like the final rung of a ladder. The void was widening between Chelsea and him. He needed to close it fast.

  “Is there a particular type that she prefers?”

  “All of it.” He remembered the times that he wanted to buy the best for Chelsea but didn’t have the money to waste. The summer ended before he’d gotten the chance to make up for the past.

  “I love it too.”

  “No, I want all of it.”

  “Every box?”

  “Yes. And put aside a three-pound box. I want to take it with me.” He had a special plan for that one.

  “What do I do with the rest?”

  “Can you ship them? I’ll give you an address.”

  “Are you kidding?” She stared, gauging the seriousness of his request, the utter weight of it.

  “That’s what I said.”

  “I think we can do it.”

  “Can you?”

  Her spine whipped straight like an old-fashioned car antenna—commission maximus! “You’re damned right I can ship it.”

  Jerry’s plan began to gel as he drove to Princeton. He parked outside a string of pricey condominiums near Palmer Square. He saw Chelsea’s Aunt Laura walk past the white chiffon curtains of her living room window. She was going to be a hard sell, but he had little choice. His parents were both gone. He had no sisters or brothers to make his case. Forget about asking Chelsea’s parents; they didn’t return any of his phone calls. He needed a good witness to break up the court proceedings. The cost didn’t matter. He needed to buy time.

  As Jerry rang the bell, Laura Adams opened the door. She was short but managed to look down on him, observing him like a bruised melon in the market. She didn’t like many things. She loathed men, especially her ex-husbands both dead and alive. She reserved her kindest words for wine, opera, and chocolate.

  Jerry presented a three-pound box of powdered truffles—the one he’d kept apart from the cocoa tonnage heading toward Chelsea’s new address. “How are you, Aunt Laura?”

  “Not for long, I hear.” Her hair was streaked an unreasonable reddish color. It was an afternoon for bad haircuts.

  “I gather you’ve heard about that. It wasn’t my choice.”

  She fingered the doorknob. “A man who wants to stay married. I’ll be damned. What did you do to her?”

  He prepared to view a door slamming in his face. He edged his boot tip forward to block. “Can I come in?”

  She looked him over again, stopping at his boots. “Take those off.”

  Jerry undid the laces and took off his work boots. Laura was a neat freak. If he’d thought better, he’d have changed into nicer clothes, opened one of those boxes that Chelsea piled in the corner of their bedroom, taking Laura by surprise in a silk shirt and slacks—the GQ man no one ever suspected, even him.

  “Are your socks clean?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “No holes?”

  “Yes.” He abandoned his boots beside the door and entered Laura’s sterile abode.

  The carpet was flat whit
e, as were the walls and Swedish bookshelves. Satin pillows accented the plush off-white couches and chairs. A fluffy cat curled beside a smooth marble sculpture of a woman’s torso. Laura bleached the cat’s fur at regular intervals. Jerry and Chelsea used to joke about it. It looked like a walking bag of cotton with paws.

  “How’ve you been?” he asked.

  “Better than you. You look tired.”

  “I don’t sleep great,” he said, but in truth, he slept on and off all day long, just never through the night.

  “Do you miss her?”

  Jerry set the chocolates on an oriental table beside the door. “Every minute.”

  “No kidding.” Laura sat in a chair by the sliding glass windows. The sun reflected off the marine white deck, adding to the overall brightness of the room.

  For a second, Jerry was snow-blind and groped his way to a seat nearby. “Chelsea’s filed for divorce.”

  “No kidding.”

  “I want to stop it.”

  “What can I do about it?” She tossed back her shoulders.

  He watched her glom onto the moment. She wanted him to grovel. He recalled why he didn’t visit her very often. She enjoyed other people’s pain, savoring it like a treasured port wine. “Do you remember us in the beginning?”

  “You and Chelsea?”

  “This isn’t easy for me. I wish you’d stop joking.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Did you think we belonged together?”

  She didn’t answer. Her eyes wandered about the pristine room.

  “Chelsea’s annulling the marriage,” he said. “She’s suing on grounds of bearing no children.”

  “You don’t have children.”

  There she goes, he thought, restating the obvious just like Tisch. “It doesn’t matter. She knows I wanted them. You know it too.”