“What a crazy bunch of women!” muttered Debbie Starling.*
It was two nights later when one of Bo's favorite operatives, Debbie Starling, muttered those very words into a Long Island pay phone, just a few blocks from the Duchess's Codependents Anonymous meeting. Bo and I were on the conference call. “I've never heard anything like it!” she added. “I mean, I don't know how to even describe it to you guys. It was like, uh…” There were a few moments of silence, as I sat on the edge of my seat, and Bo, I assumed, sat on the edge of his own seat. He was working late this Wednesday evening, still in his office, waiting for Debbie's postmeeting debriefing.
I had never met Debbie, but, according to Bo, she was perfect for the job. In her mid-forties now, she had spent most of her career camped out on a park bench, looking sexy and vulnerable, waiting for a would-be mugger to approach. When he did, she would lure him close and then slap the cuffs on him. Then she would blow a whistle—at which point half a dozen of New York's finest would emerge from the shadows and beat the shit out of the guy. Then they would arrest him.
Still, this wasn't what impressed Bo about Debbie, especially when it came to this operation. In fact, it had more to do with Debbie being in the drama club back in her college days, where she'd earned rave reviews from the critics. She was perfect, Bo had said. She was a born actress, who could infiltrate the man-haters club faster than the Duchess could say codependency! So he wired her up and sent her behind enemy lines.
Finally, the aspiring actress spoke: “You know, maybe I could explain it to you guys this way: You ever see the movie Jerry Maguire?”
“Yeah,” we replied in unison.
“Okay, well, remember that scene in Renee Zellweger's living room, where all the divorced women are sitting around, bitching and moaning, calling men the enemy?”
“Yeah,” we said again.
“Well, it was like that—but on steroids!”
We all broke up over that one, but after a few seconds I found myself wanting to jump through the phone. Bo regained his composure and said, “All right, Debbie, so what went down in Fantasyland tonight?”
“Well,” said Debbie, “it seems like Jordan's wife is the ringleader over there. Does that surprise you, Jordan?”
“No, not at all,” I said. “That's how she is. Whatever she's hot for at the moment, she plunges into headfirst. Today she's an aspiring codependent; tomorrow she could be an aspiring astronaut; there's no rhyme or reason, no telling. But I love her anyway.”
“Well, she's very beautiful,” noted Debbie.
No shit! I thought. Why else do you think I'm in love with her— because of her f**king personality? Christ, she's enough to drive any five men crazy! “Thanks,” I said, “but that's not why I love her, Debbie. Beauty is only skin-deep”—while ugliness cuts straight to the bone, I thought. “It's her personality I love: her feistiness, her quick wit, the way she gives me a run for my money,” and the way she used to blow me while I was driving my Ferrari on the LIE during rush hour, as truckers honked in appreciation. “Looks have nothing to do with it, nothing at all.”
There were a few moments of silence, while my bullshit hung in the air like Los Angeles smog. Finally Bo said, “All right, so what's the verdict, Debbie: Does she love him or not?”
“Yes, she loves him,” said Debbie—my spirits soared!—“but she also hates him”—my spirits plunged! Debbie paused for a moment. “More than anything, I think she's just confused.”
“Confused about what?” I asked.
“Yeah,” added Bo. “What the f**k does she have to be so confused about? She ain't the one who got indicted! It's un-f**king-believable, these women.”
Debbie, with patience: “Are you finished, Bo?”
“Yeah, I'm finished,” he muttered. “So what's the story with the house?”
I immediately perked up. “Yeah, did she bring up East Hampton?”
“Not directly,” said Debbie—shit! I thought—”although she did say that she wanted to move out of Old Brookville.”
I perked up again. “Oh, really? Did she say why?”
“Yes; she said your name is in the paper all the time, and she's embarrassed”—my spirits plunged! “She says people are looking at her funny, especially at your daughter's school. She just wants to get away from it all and take the kids with her.”
“Well, that doesn't sound too promising,” I said softly.
“No it doesn't,” agreed Bo. “I think it's time you stop this housitation hunt. You know, Bo?”
“I wouldn't jump the gun,” countered Debbie. “See, right after she said that, then she started saying that she still loved you. She even said that she missed being with you.”
“Well, that's great!” I said.
“Well, don't jump the gun there either,” warned Debbie. “A second later she said she hoped you'd die in a fire, or something along those lines. That way she'd be rid of you for good.”
“Can you imagine?” snapped Bo. “You can't trust these females for a second! You turn your back and they stick the knife in!”
Debbie, losing patience: “You're not being constructive here, Bo.” A short pause, then, “Listen, Jordan: Like I said, she's very confused right now. Maybe you should give her some space for a while, just give her some time to sort things out. Then maybe she'll come back to you. Either way, you have one thing going for you, Jordan.”
“What's that?” I asked.
“She hates her father even more than she hates you.”
“Well, that's comforting,” I said. “He abandoned her when she was three.”
“So where does this leave us?” Bo asked Debbie. “Can you give us an opinion on this thing?”
“I'm not really comfortable doing that,” Debbie said. “Maybe if I go back next week I can find out more. I'm sure she doesn't suspect anything. I was welcomed into the group with open arms. I think they were just happy to drag someone else into their misery.”
“This might take a long time, Bo,” said Bo.
“I don't have a long time,” I shot back. “My wife is not gonna stop pressuring me with this; I know her.” And I was running out of time for other reasons as well, reasons that I couldn't share with Bo and Debbie. Next month I would be going before the judge to enter my guilty plea, and, as part of that, I would have to put together a detailed financial statement. Of course, all this would be done in secret; nothing would be announced until next year, after my cooperation became public. But, still, the best time to sell the Old Brookville house would be now, before I completed a financial statement.
Bo said, “There's gotta be a way to get her to spill the beans quicker.”
The former actress: “Maybe I could strike up a friendship with her. I mean, what if I walked into next week's meeting, hysterically crying, saying that my husband just beat me or something?” The actress paused for a moment. “From what little I know about your wife, Jordan, I think she would come running to my side to help me.”
Oh, good Lord! I thought. I was going straight to hell with this one. There was no way I could ever let this happen. Never! Not in a million years! “That's an amazing idea, Debbie! You could invite her out for a drink even, and then get her sloshed. You should see what she's like with a couple of drinks in her. It's like truth serum!” Good God—what was I saying? “And I know the perfect place for you to bring her: It's called Buckram Stables. It's some old WASP hangout in Locust Valley; it's nice and quiet there, so you can make a clear tape.”
“This is terrible,” said Bo. “I can't allow this to happen”—a pause—”without giving Debbie some sort of small bonus, if she pulls it off.”
“Well, thank you,” said Debbie, “but have no fear: I'll pull it off. I'll just bring an onion with me and peel it in the car before I go into the meeting. I'll walk into that church with tears streaming down my cheeks!”
There were a few moments of silence.
“Christ!” said Bo. “This is bad, really bad. Let's do it!”
“I cannot allow this to happen!” I said forcefully. And then I said, “The only problem is that it's out of my control. It's already been decided. So what can I do?”
“Nothing,” answered Bo. “We've passed the point of no return.”
“Great,” said Debbie. “I'll go buy the onion!”
The man-haters club met once a week, on Wednesdays, and the meeting lasted for an hour, ending at eight p.m. Right now it was close to eleven, and I still hadn't heard from Bo. So I was pacing back and forth in my living room, trying to remain calm and doing my final calculations as to how much good karma I had left in my karma tank.
In a way, though, the Duchess had brought this upon herself, hadn't she? I mean, what man wouldn't want to know his estranged wife's secret thoughts? I was no worse than any other obsessed husband! The only difference was that I had the resources to take things a bit further than most men. Besides, if she were willing to share her secret thoughts with the first stranger who came along… well, that made her secret thoughts fair game for public consumption.
In truth, I was pretty confident that I would be getting good news tonight. After all, I had gone through everything Debbie had said last week and, all in all, I had distilled the Duchess's inner thoughts down to two simple truths. Truth one: She still loved me, but she was confused. Truth two: In time, she would miss making love to me so much that she would have no choice but to come back. Yes, even that day on the beach she had specifically raised the issue of sex two times: once referring to us as plain old sex maniacs (which was certainly a good thing), and also commenting on how we never came up for air (which was an even better thing!). Of course, I had heard the past disturbing rumblings about Michael Bolton and her dirt-bag personal trainer, Alex the Douche, but in the end they were probably just that: rumblings.
Emboldened by those truths, I had called Magnum last week and told him what was going on with the Duchess. “Would the Bastard object to me selling my Old Brookville house and buying a much cheaper house in the Hamptons?” Magnum had responded with cautious optimism. He was knee-deep in negotiations with the Bastard, he said, and the Bastard was being his usual difficult self. However, he thought he would look positively on anything I did to cut my expenses. Either way, he hoped to have a deal hammered out by the beginning of May, at which point I would go before Judge Gleeson and enter my guilty plea.
Just then I heard the phone ringing. It was Bo! I made a beeline for the kitchen. When I reached the phone, I froze dead in my tracks. It wasn't the phone; it was the intercom system that interfaced with the phone. Someone was at the front gate! Who the hell? Cautiously, I picked up the phone. “Hello?”
“Yo—Bo!” said Bo. “It's me, Bo!”
“Bo!” I said to Bo. “What are you doing here?”
“Let me in. I'm making a personal delivery, Bo.”
I took a deep breath, trying to remain calm and trying to keep track of all the Bo-Bos. It could only be good news, I thought. Why else would Bo drive all the way out to Southampton? If it was bad news he would've just called me on the phone—unless, of course, he was one of those people who took joy in seeing another's misery up close and personal. No, Bo was not like that! How could I even think such a thing? He was a true friend, Bo, and he'd proved his loyalty to me a thousand times over. He just wanted to bring me the good news in person.
“Yo—Bo!” snapped Bo. “Are you gonna open the gate-atation or what?”
“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “I'm sorry, Bo.” I punched in the gate code and headed for the door.
A few minutes later we were sitting at my dining-room table, beneath a wrought-iron chandelier that cost a bloody fortune. Resting on the bleached-wood table was a small tape recorder. Bo was yet to reveal the contents of the tape; he was still in the process of explaining how former actress Debbie Starling had given an Academy Award-winning performance, quickly worming her way into the Duchess's confidence.
“….and the onionatation trick worked like a f**king charm,” Bo was saying. “So, Debbie's sneezing and wheezing her little head off, and the tears are streaming down her face-atation, as she's telling your wife about how her husband called her this and that and everything else. And, of course, the uh… the Duchess was very sympathetic to that, because that's how she is with everything.” Bo shrugged. “So the two of them bonded before the meeting even got started.”
I nodded and scratched my chin thoughtfully. “Huh,” I muttered. “That sounds pretty good so far. So what did she say during the meeting?”
Bo shook his head slowly. “It's not what she said during the meeting; it's what she said after the meeting.”
I perked up. “Oh, really? They went for dinner?”
Bo began rubbing his beard. “Drinks,” he answered. “You know, like in vino veritas.”
“Interesting,” I said. “So what truths did the vino draw out?”
Bo twisted his lips and nodded in resignation. “Well, I think you could stop your house-hunting, Bo. It's not recommended given the, uh, current circumstances.”
All at once I felt my heart drop to my stomach. The Duchess had been deceiving me! Such underhandedness! Was there no level she wouldn't stoop to? To play me for a house showed a complete lack of ethics on her part.
Bo continued: “You know, I came out here tonight because I look at you as more of a friend than a client, Bo.” With that he paused and looked down at the tape recorder, which was no bigger than a deck of playing cards, and then he looked back up. “So I'll make you a deal, Bo: This whole bugatation exercise has run about five Gs so far, but if you let me destroy the tape before you listen to it, we'll call it even. I'll pay Debbie out of my own pocket. But if you make me press the play button, then you gotta pay me. It's your call.”
With a sinking heart, I looked down at the tape recorder. Christ, it was an evil little instrument! So small it was, so tiny… so very f**king deceptive! It was the bearer of bad news, the bringer of bad karma. “It can't be that bad, Bo, can it?”
Bo shrugged. “Like I said, Bo: in vino veritas.”
I shook my head slowly, the saddest of smiles on my face. Then I let out a short chuckle that so much as said, “It serves me right!” And a chuckle that also said, “So this is it: the end of the line, the end of a marriage, the end of all my false hope.” My marriage is a coffin, I thought, and this is the final nail in it. I looked Bo in the eye and said, “Play the f**king tape!”
Bo nodded and hit the play button.
All I could hear at first was a low hum and some background noise, then a mumbled exchange with a waiter. Bo said, “I cued it up to the good part. They're in Buckram Stables, about to make a toast. Listen….”
I nodded and put my elbows on the edge of the dining-room table and crossed my arms, one atop the other. Then I rested my troubled brow on them, staring at the evil tape recorder from a side angle. It was all so terrible. I had bugged my own wife—the mother of my children! And what had Bo said? A woman's secret thoughts…
Just then I heard the Duchess's all-too-happy voice: “Here's to breaking the cycle!” And now the actress's surprisingly believable response: “Yes! To breaking the cycle of codependency!” Then the unmistakable clink of wineglasses.
“Can you believe this shit?” muttered Bo. “I never even heard of this codependency shit before. It's f**king mind-boggling.”
I nodded in agreement without lifting my head. Now the Duchess started talking again. She was bitching about me, saying that I had slept with hookers while we were married. Well, what had she expected? She had been my mistress, for Chrissake! She knew what I was up to well before she married me—and now she was holding it against me.
All at once I was jerked alert: “Well, I've been having the best sex of my life lately; I'll tell you that much! I mean, the last few years with my husband were so boring—you know, the same position over and over again.”
Whuh—how could she? She was emasculating me in front of Debbie—a total stranger! Someone in my employ! How could the Duchess say I sucked in bed? I didn't! I used to rock her world! She used to call me her little prince
Against my better judgment, I snuck a peek at Bo, to gauge his reaction. Was he staring at me? Was he smiling? No. He wasn't. He was staring at the recorder, his face a mask of concentration. He was nodding his head slowly. And gritting his teeth, the way a person does when they're trying to make heads or tails of something. Suddenly he looked up. I opened my mouth, to defend myself against the Duchess's baseless accusations. No words came out. I couldn't think of anything to say. The Duchess had emasculated me in front of Bo too. To deny it would only make me seem guiltier.
Just then Bo smiled and shook his head. “It's all bullshit, Bo! Every wife says her husband sucks in bed. It's par for the f**king course.” He shrugged. “But if you happen to get another crack at nailing her, you should take some Viagratation before you stick it in; then you'll teach the girl a lesson!” With that he winked and looked back down at the recorder. I rested my brow back in my arms and prepared for more pain.
“Anyway,” said the voice on the tape, “I had a little thing going with my personal trainer for a while, and that was pretty good”—I knew it!—“but then I got sick of him, so I started dating Michael Bolton. You know him? The singer?”
Debbie's surprised voice: “Yeah, of course! What was he like?”
The Duchess's voice: “Oh, he was nice. Very romantic, actually. We spent a weekend together in the Plaza Hotel. We stayed in the Presidential Suite, and he filled the whole room up with fresh flowers.” The voice on the tape giggled. “Like I said, he was very romantic.”
I looked up at Bo. “That ungrateful bitch!” I snarled. “You know how many times I filled up the Presidential Suite with flowers for her? She forgets that!”
Bo nodded in understanding and then pointed back down at the recorder. “Listen to this, Bo; this is where it gets good.” I shook my head in disbelief and looked down at the evil little recorder. Bring on the pain, I thought.
The voice of the Duchess, twisting the knife: “Anyway, there's been some others too: I met a golf pro while I was up in Pennsylvania, learning about codependency, and then I was with one of my old boyfriends for a while, although that was only for old time's sake.” Then, much happier: “But now I'm involved with a guy who owns a big garment-center company! I kind of like him, actually, although he's a bit closed off emotionally. I'll have to wait and see.”