The look of absolute horror on her face crashed hopes I hadn’t even known I’d been holding onto. Horror was followed by anger.
‘Isn’t that just like you!’ she exclaimed.
‘Diane—‘
‘Where’s the safe deposit box key, Steven? Where did you hide it?’
Humboldt looked alarmed. He reached out and touched her arm.
‘Diane .. I thought we agreed—‘
‘What we agreed is that this son of a bitch will hide everything under the nearest rock and then plead poverty if we let him!’
‘You searched the bedroom for it before you left, didn’t you' I asked quietly. ‘Tossed it like a burglar.’
She flushed at that. I don’t know if it was shame, anger, or both.
‘It’s my box as well as yours! My things as well as yours!’
Humboldt was looking more alarmed than ever. Several diners had glanced around at us. Most of them looked mused, actually. People are surely God’s most bizarre creatures. ‘Please... please, let’s not—‘
‘Where did you hide it, Steven?’
‘I didn’t hide it. I never hid it. I left it up at the cabin by accident, that’s all.’
She smiled knowingly. ‘Oh, yes. By accident. Uh-huh.’ I said nothing, and the knowing smile slipped away. ‘I want it,’ she said, then amended hastily: ‘I want a copy.’
People in hell want icewater, I thought. Out loud I said, 'There's nothing more to be done about it, is there?'
She hesitated, maybe hearing something in my voice she didn't actually want to hear, or to acknowledge. 'No,' she said. 'The next time you see me, it will be with my lawyer. I'm divorcing you.'
'Why?' What I heard in my voice now was a plaintive note like a sheep's bleat. I didn't like it, but there wasn't a goddamned thing I could do about it. 'Why?'
‘Oh, I Jesus. Do you expect me to believe you’re really that dense?’
‘I just can’t—'
Her cheeks were brighter than ever, the flush now rising almost her temples. ‘Yes, probably you expect me to believe just that very thing. Isn’t that typical’ She picked up her water and spilled the top two inches on the tablecloth because her hand was trembling. I flashed back at once - I mean kapow - to the day she’d left, remembering how I’d knocked the glass of orange juice onto the floor and how I’d cautioned myself not to try picking up the broken pieces of glass until my hands had settled down, and how I’d gone ahead anyway and cut myself for my pains.
‘Stop it, this is counterproductive,’ Humboldt said. He sounded like a playground monitor trying to stop a scuffle before it gets started, but he seemed to have forgotten all about Diane’s shit-list; his eyes were sweeping the rear part of the room, looking out for our waiter, or any waiter whose eye he could catch. He was lot less interested in therapy, at that particular moment, than he was in obtaining what the British like to call the other half.
‘I only want to know—‘ I began.
‘What you want to know doesn’t have anything to do with why Humboldt said, and for a moment he actually sounded alert.
‘Yes, right, finally,’ Diane said. She spoke in a brittle, urgent voice. ‘Finally it’s not about what you want, what you need.’
‘I don’t know what that means, but I’m willing to listen,’ I said. 'If you wanted to try joint counselling instead of... uh... therapy...
whatever it is Humboldt does... I’m not against it if—‘
She raised her hands to shoulder level, palms out. ‘Oh, God, Joe Camel goes New Age,’ she said, then dropped her hands back into her lap. ‘After all the days you rode off into the sunset, tall in the saddle. Say it ain’t so, Joe.’
‘Stop it', Humboldt told her. He looked from his client to his clients soon-to-be ex-husband (it was going to happen, all right; even the slight unreality that comes with not-smoking couldn’t conceil that self-evident truth from me by that point). ‘One more word from either of you and I’m going to declare this luncheon at an end.' He gave us a small smile, one so obviously manufactured that I found it perversely endearing. 'And we haven't even heard the specials yet.'
That - the first mention of food since I'd joined them - was just before the bad things started to happen, and I remember smelling salmon from one of the nearby tables. In the two weeks since I'd quit smoking, my sense of smell had become incredibly sharp, but I do not count that as much of a blessing, especially when it comes to salmon. I used to like it, but now can't abide the smell of it, let alone the taste. To me it smells of pain and fear and blood and death.
'He started it,' Diane said sulkily.
You started it, you were the one who tossed the joint and then walked out when you couldn't find what you wanted, I thought, but I kept it to myself. Humboldt clearly meant what he said; he would take Diane by the hand and walk her out of the restaurant if we started that schoolyard no-I-didn't, yes-you-did shit. Not even the prospect of another drink would hold him here.
'Okay,' I said mildly .. and I had to work hard to achieve that mild tone, believe me. 'I started it. What's next?' I knew, of course: the grievances. Diane's shit-list, in other words. And a lot more about the key to the lockbox. Probably the only satisfaction I was going to get out of this sorry situation was telling them that neither of them was going to see a copy of that key until an officer of the court presented me with a paper ordering me to turn one over. I hadn't touched the stuff in the box since Diane booked on out of my life, and I didn't intend to touch any of it in the immediate future.. but she wasn't going to touch it, either. Let her chew crackers and try to whistle, as my grandmother used to say.
Humboldt took out a sheaf of papers. They were held by one of those designer paper clips - the ones that come in different colors.
