An Ex to Grind (6 page)

"New what?" he said.

"New financial management," I repeated. He probably gets away with a lot of touching, I figured. Women tell him to buzz off and he can't hear them.

"Yes, ma'am. I decided it was time for a change," he said. "Can't let other people get too comfortable with your money, you know what I mean?"

Did I ever. If Dan hadn't gotten so comfortable with my money, I wouldn't be living at the Heartbreak Hotel in a—"I know exactly what you mean," I said, blinking away the intrusive thought. Where had it come from? No matter how angry I'd been at my ex earlier, I couldn't let him get to me now. Not in the middle of a client presentation. "And you've come to the right place," I went on. "Pierce, Shelley's excellent reputation speaks for itself, but it's the personal attention we give our clients that separates us from the pack. Our experts are the best in their respective fields, but we're not a money mall."

"A what?" he said.

"A money mall," I repeated. "Like a shopping mall."

"A money mall. I get it," he said, then laughed-coughed-wheezed for several long, excruciating seconds.

"I'm saying that while we have CPAs, insurance agents, retirement specialists, and stockbrokers under our roof, we're not just a one-stop-shopping experience. You won't be passed around from department to department. You'll be assigned to a qualified account executive who will work closely with you, overseeing all your assets. A person you can trust. Someone you can depend on day or night."

I caught Bernie's eye. He was grinning at me, pleased with me. So far, so good.

"I like the sound of that," said Jed. "With the kind of money we're talking about, I should be able to call you people whenever I damn well feel like it."

"Yes, you should," I agreed. "Our job doesn't end when the markets close. If I'm the lucky one who gets to oversee your account, you can be sure I'll be available to you twenty-four/seven."

He tipped his hat, revealing a head with exactly two strands of gray hair on it—strands that went straight across his scalp in a do I would come to call his cowboy comb-over. "I admire a gal who doesn't mind long hours," he said. "If you sign me up, you've gotta be willing to roll up your sleeves."

Sleeves. Yes. Dan's plush bathrobe was definitely Polo and definitely worth twice the price of the old terry cloth number that was hanging in my—Oh, God. Why was I even thinking—"Long hours aren't a problem at all," I said, furious with myself for allowing the distraction.

"Good. Getting back to the markets," said Jed, "what's the word on the Dow? We're at the end of the year. What does next year look like to you?"

"My opinion is that while there will be opportunities next year, there will be challenges too," I said. "It's a very bifurcated market. The recovery has been tech-centric and risk-oriented. Last year everybody jumped on safe, quality stocks as the place to be, but they turned out to be the place
not
to be."

"I'm betting that interest rates will spike, dragging everything else down the tubes," he said.

I didn't answer. Instead, I was picturing Dan's new moccasins and wondering how much he'd spent on them. The leather reminded me of—

"Interest rates, Melanie?" Bernie prodded.

"Right," I said, berating myself yet again for my lapse in concentration. It must have been my ex's crack about the champagne that was making me nuts. I wanted to bash him over the head with the bottle every time I thought about him toasting me with it. "The Fed will probably tighten later as opposed to earlier. They have tremendous fears about moving too fast. They don't want to re-create the deflationary atmosphere of the nineties in
Asia, so they'll probably take baby steps. We, on the other hand, will take huge steps with your assets, Jed."

"Damn right," he said, pumping his fist at Bernie. "How about the bond market?"

And he's playing catch in Central Park this afternoon, I thought. Isn't that special? I'm sitting here with this randy blowhard, busting my butt to pay my bills, and he'll be tossing around a football with—

"Melanie?" said Bernie, who had resumed his fingernail chewing. "Jed asked about the bond market."

"Right. My guess is it'll be a low-return world," I said. "Not just next year, but beyond." I leaned forward, met Jed's eyes underneath the brow of his hat, and prepared to deliver my signature line. It always got a laugh. "You know, Jed, Will Rogers once remarked, 'I'm not looking so much for the return on my money, but the return
of my
money.'"

On cue, Jed Ornbacher chuckled. We spent another hour or so on the details of his financial picture, and when it was all over he reached for my hand, stroked it suggestively, and declared that he wanted not only to move his money over to Pierce, Shelley and Steinberg but also to have me watch over it personally. He felt comfortable with the fact that I would be so accessible, he said, staring unapologetically at my breasts, as if he'd never heard of manners, much less appropriate behavior in the workplace.

After he left, Bernie congratulated me and went on and on about how I was still his top gun and always would be. He did ask me if anything was wrong, however.

"If you're talking about Jed, his hand-holding didn't faze me."

"I wasn't talking about Jed," said Bernie as he escorted me out of his office. "You didn't seem yourself during the presentation.
There were a few minutes when I wasn't sure we had your full attention."

"Are you kidding? I was totally engaged," I said with a laugh. "We got his account, didn't we?"

I waved away his concern. What I couldn't wave away was my own. I did zone out a couple of times during the presentation. It had never happened before, and it worried me. I would have to see to it that it never happened again.

Despite my Victory at the office, I felt glummer than usual when I stepped into my apartment that night, mostly because Buster wasn't around, but also because there was sobbing coming from the unit next door. Patty, my neighbor, was the owner of Letsmakeup.com, a company that sold high-end cosmetics online. She'd recently been dumped by her photographer husband and was extremely despondent about it. Normally, I kept to myself after a long, hard day at the office, but it would have been inhuman of me not to extend myself and try to comfort her.

"Patty?" I said as I knocked on her door. "It's Melanie Banks from 3B."

When she didn't answer right away, I pressed my ear to the door to listen. The sobbing had stopped, and there was silence—until the loud crash. A china plate? A glass vase? Definitely something shattering.

"Patty?" I said, pounding on the door with my fist now. "Let me in, okay?"

A few seconds later she appeared, her eyes flooded with tears, her mascara running down her cheeks in black streaks and sticking to them like tar. I made a mental note not to purchase the mascara on Letsmakeup.com.

She was about my age and very "done." Hair professionally blonded. Nose professionally bobbed. Chest professionally boobed. She'd even had a couple of toes shortened so she didn't have to cram her feet into her stilettos. And she was clearly a guinea pig for the products she peddled. In addition to the mascara, there was evidence of three different shades of eye shadow, a heavy eyebrow pencil, lipstick and lip liner, and enough foundation to replaster the walls of the Heartbreak Hotel.

"Melanie, hi," she said between sniffs. "Wanna come in?"

"Is it safe?" I said as I entered her studio, which was furnished identically to mine. All the units at the Heartbreak Hotel were set up with the same cheesy tables, chairs, and lamps, which looked like they were held together with Krazy Glue and produced in some third-world country. I guess you'd call the decor "outsourced chic."

"Sure," she said and pointed to the photograph of the studly guy she'd taped to the wall. Shards of a crystal champagne flute were lying on the floor below it. "I was just taking target practice." She grabbed another glass off a tray of about a dozen glasses and flung it at the photo. I feared it would be a long night if I didn't intervene.

I held her elbow and guided her away from the weapons of mass destruction, toward the sofa.

"That's your ex?" I said, nodding at the photo as we sat.

"Yeah, that's Jason. He shot his picture with one of those self-timers. It was probably the last time he used the camera." She dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. "He was too busy with the hundred-and-fifty-dollars-asession shrink appointments."

"So he didn't really work as a photographer?"

"Jason didn't really work, period. He didn't have to. He lived off me." She blew her nose, causing a fissure in the foundation underneath her left eye.

"I'm sorry," I said. "What attracted you to him in the first place? Other than his good looks, I mean."

"I thought he was an artistic type. Who knew he'd turn out to be a freeloading type. A total bumbo."

"Bumbo?"

"Yeah. That's what you call a male bimbo who doesn't have a job." She started to cry again. "And now I have to pay him alimony. How much does that suck?"

"A lot," I said. "I'll never understand how the lawyers come up with these settlements."

"It's all about the math," she said. "If you're the one who earns it, you're the one who pays it. Such a joke, huh?"

"I hear you," I said with a sigh and told her about Dan.

"I think a lot about killing mine," she said with a faraway look.

"I think about killing mine too, but I'd never go through with it," I said. "We have a dog together."

She nodded. "Jason and I talked about getting a dog, but I figured I'd be the one who'd have to do everything. Housebreak it. Train it. Walk it."

"Actually, Dan did all that. He may be a bumbo, but he loves our Buster."

"Let's get back to killing our exes," she said, rubbing her hands together with entirely too much enthusiasm.

"I wasn't serious about that, Patty."

"Okay, forget killing. But Jason's just begging me to smack him around. Last week he took his girlfriend to Australia. To the outback." She started crying again in earnest. "The only outback he ever took me to was the steakhouse. And
I
paid."

"It's torture to watch them piss away our money, I know." I patted her. "But you say Jason has a girlfriend?"

"Yeah, the little bitch he left me for."

"Is he living with her?"

"Don't I wish. Then I could nail him on the cohabitation provision and terminate the support payments. Another joke, huh? The guy's too dumb to get a job, but he's not dumb enough to lose his meal ticket."

I then remembered my conversation with Robin—the part about the terms of the agreement. "So you have a cohabitation clause too?"

She shrugged, as if I'd asked a dumb question. "Everybody has one. Is your ex living with somebody?"

"No," I said. "I mean, no one I know about."

"No one you
know
about?" Her jaw dropped. "Like, you're not keeping tabs on the women he sees?"

"Why should I? I'm trying to get him out of my life. The last thing I want to do is involve myself in his affairs."

"Hellooo? If he lives with somebody for ninety days, you'll get him out of your life. No more chest pain every time you add up what you're paying him. No more headache every time you see him wearing something stupidly expensive. No more irritable bowel every time you realize you've been thinking about him in the middle of an important business meeting."

That last one got my attention. I'd do anything not to repeat my lapses in Bernie's office, minor though they were. And all it would take to get Dan out of my mind and out of my bank account was ninety days with a woman? It sounded so simple, but how could it be? Robin and I had already concluded that he wouldn't fall for it, wouldn't let me off the hook. Nobody in their right mind would forfeit their support payments unless…

"If Jason really loved his girlfriend—I mean, really loved her, in spite of the negative experience he had with you—he'd want to be with her every night," I said, testing out what was just a vague notion, a harmless line of reasoning. "He'd decide that the money isn't nearly as important as waking up next to her in the morning."

Patty gave me another look that suggested I was out of touch. "That's very romantic, Melanie, but you've been reading too many Danielle Steel novels. Men aren't wired that way. They've always got an agenda."

"I'm not sure you can generalize. There must be some men who'd rebound from a bad marriage, find new love, and put it ahead of money." I was grasping, I suppose. Hoping. Nothing serious. It was only Patty's next response that bumped up the hoping a notch—to something more akin to wondering if maybe, possibly, conceivably the hope could become a reality.

"You think so, huh?" She rolled her eyes. "Yeah. Like maybe if they—I don't know—grew up in the middle of a cornfield or something. I bet those farm boys have different values than guys from New York. All that corn probably stays with them."

Hopeful, yes. But still just that.