Mickelsson's Ghosts by John Gardner (guided reading books .TXT) 📕

“Wait a minute,” Mickelsson said.

“Take it easy, Professor!”

The only furniture in the room was a long maple table with six matching chairs. Windows looked down at the snowy street, a few slow, cautious cars. Finney pulled out a chair at the corner of the table and motioned for Mickelsson to sit. Leaning over him, his belly protruding as if cantilevered, Finney smelled of cologne, maybe aftershave, but also, sickeningly, of perspiring flesh. From his stuffed briefcase he drew out a yellow legal pad crammed with figures and illegible notes. She hadn’t exactly rejected his offer, nearly twenty thousand dollars—more than half of what he made in a year—but she had added twenty thousand more to it: life insurance, money for the children’s education, mortgage payments on the house he’d left to her, payment to her lawyers. …

Mickelsson stared at the figures, both hands flat on the tabletop. “That’s crazy,” he said. “Where am I supposed to get forty thousand dollars a year?”

“Well, that’s alimony,” Finney said, and laughed. “The screwing you get for the screwing you got.” He laughed again.

“If we went by that theory,” Mickelsson growled, “all she’d get would be a couple of tires from the car.”

“Don’t get up tight, now,” Finney said. “It’s not completely unreasonable. Unreasonable, I grant you. But not completely.”

He looked up at the flushed, tight-skinned face, skin so tight and pink it looked peeled. “Whose side are you on?”

“Easy, now! Whoa there!” He put his hands on Mickelsson’s shoulders. “I told you it’s just games. You gotta pay your income taxes, right?—both this year’s and seventy-seven, seventy-eight’s? Pay her twenty thousand dollars and you can’t do that, right? And the I.R.S. won’t be giving you any choice. So what’s she want from you, blood? Does she want you in the slammer where all you can send her is censored picture postcards? So OK, we hold the line.” He made a fist and shook it, the hand oddly small, like a child’s, but so fat it looked inflated. “Maybe we can even chip away just a little. Teach her a little appreciation of the har-de-har finer things.”

“It’s not that I want her to lose the house,” he said.

“Right, I understand that. That much is wonderfully clear to me.” With his puffy right hand he swept away all reasonable objections. “You want her to have the house, you want her to have the car, you want the kids to go to college. Right?”

“Well—”

“Impossible but right. I swear, you act like you’re the guilty party. That’s how both of you act. I know, don’t tell me! You were a real crapola husband, and she’s desperate, that’s her nature. Scared lady. OK. OK, so we’ll hold the line. But of course she imagines she can’t handle the mortgage, which is probably true, and she’s got these lawyers’ bills—three fucking lawyers, one for reading, one for writing, one for chewing on the pencils—which three aforesaid lawyers she also can’t pay. So where does that put us?”

Mickelsson leaned forward, resting his forehead on his hands. After a minute he said, “I guess I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Finney straightened up and put his hands on his hips, pushing his chin out and aiming it down at Mickelsson. “I’m talking this deal you’ve offered her, mafriend. You tell her what you’ll give her, she tells you what it costs, and you tell her you can’t pay it. What kind of facockta deal is that? So we gotta get this straight right here and now, me-you.”

“All I make in a year—”

“Look, why don’t we throw it to the court and just fuck her? You know what the court will say she’s worth, gold teeth included? Big fat zilch!” He hit the tabletop with his hand. “After you’ve got the settlement, you can always pay her more than zilch. Take it off your taxes as a charity, kid! Sign up for more than you can pay her, she’ll throw you in the clink. You won’t like it there, believe me. The tobacco store sucks.” Not quite lightly, he slapped Mickelsson’s back and laughed. “So what are your instructions?”

“As I’ve said from the beginning,” Mickelsson said. He felt confused, nauseous. It was ridiculous that he couldn’t seem to figure it out. It was simply not that hard. When he tried to concentrate, he got an image of Leslie walking with him down by Rizdy, sea-wind in her hair, about a week after he’d left Ellen. They were holding hands, Leslie swinging his arm, apparently in high spirits, talking about the wonderful possibilities of Mickelsson’s new life, and then suddenly she had turned to him, tears streaming down her cheeks, crying her heart out.

“As I’ve said from the beginning,” Mickelsson whispered, raising his hand to his forehead.

Abruptly, all Finney’s gyrations stopped at once and he stared at Mickelsson with distaste. “Right,” he said at last, nothing moving but his mouth. He clicked his ballpoint pen shut and put it in his pocket. “You want her to have the house and the car and fifteen hundred every month, maybe a little extra for the kids’ education. No problem, except the arithmetic.” He raised both hands slowly, then laid them on the table, leaning over. “Professor,” he said, “maybe you could learn a new trade, like for instance computer crime.”

“How come you told me you had all this worked out?” Mickelsson asked.

“Practically worked out,” Finney said. His grin looked malicious. “We got the both of you here to talk at least. All right, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll tell them it’s definite at twenty thousand smackers, which God only knows how you’ll pay even that, and if she thinks she needs more to keep the house, let her fucking take in washing.”

Before Mickelsson could say another word, he was gone, papers fluttering.

For two hours after that he sat staring out the window. Then Finney was back. “Her lawyers make an interesting point,” he said. He laid the papers on