god

 

In bed late that night, Larry dribbling into his pillow beside me, I wrote two new headings on the pad: Liabilities on the left, including the fees for the twins' exclusive girls' school underneath. And Assets on the right. And included Larry's life insurance.

I hadn't meant to turn it into a Joan Crawford moment, but when he stood in the hallway weeping into his hands saying, “I've lost my job,” I looked down at my Charles Jourdan pumps with the gold pom-poms and immediately went online and bought twenty Versace t-shirts.

Secondhand.

And after I bustled Cashmere and Chambré off to bed, fear in their eyes as they wondered at the strange noises coming from Larry in the toilet, I'd sunk against the 100% goose down pillows with the amazingly high thread count Egyptian cotton pillowslips and I'd started my first list.

         Decant cheap wine into more expensive bottles, I'd written.

         Buy cheaper cuts of venison.

         Buy lots of lotto tickets.

The litany of tough decisions scrawled on.

         Stencil Gucci on no-name jeans.

         Buy cheap chocolate and scrape the name off.

I looked over and watching the saliva encrusting in the corner of Larry's mouth, my heart sank. I knew a breach of promise suit, charging we were not being kept in the manner to which we were accustomed, would not deliver the desired result.

So I tore up the first list and started the second.

eBay's been good to me. We'll see what it delivers this time.