'Why?'
'Because I earned it. It's mine.'
'She says she earned it, too.'
'Half. I'm willing to give half.'
Again the anger ripped at his innards and he popped two Maaloxes in his mouth.
'I won't have it. I mean it's not fair. The house is ours. OURS. She takes the OU. I take the RS. I was going to give her the full value of one-half its worth.'
'She doesn't want the value. She wants the house,' Goldstein said. 'I probed all the possibilities. I offered half the house and told her she could continue to live in it with the kids.'
'I didn't authorise that,' Oliver said, looking at Goldstein with daggers of hatred. 'You had no right to offer that kind of deal. You never consulted me about that, Goldstein.'
'I was probing. I wanted to find out how far they were willing to go. I wanted to at least show them we were reasonable. Who thought they would go this far?'
'Not me. That's for sure.'
'It won't be nice,' Goldstein said.
'Nothing is nice. Not anymore.'
'Never mind nice. The subject is wealth. Yours. She wants to strip you of everything. What have you got besides the house?'
'My Ferrari,' he said stupidly. 'A three-oh-eight GTS. Red.'
'They didn't include that. Not the wine, either. Or your tools.'
'How generous.'
'What else?' Goldstein snapped. Oliver's mind clouded. 'What about insurance?'
‘What about insurance?’
'I forgot about that. She's the principal beneficiary.' 'Change it quick.'
The idea curdled his guts. If he died now, she would receive a million. And get the house to boot. The recollection agitated him, but cleared his head.
'There's the phone.' Goldstein pointed. 'If you walked outside this building and got hit by a truck, you would be very unhappy. .. seeing that she would get all that money.'
It took Oliver a few moments to reach his insurance man, who happened to be in his office. He wanted to know details.
'Not now. Just change it to Eve and Josh. All right? Cut out Barbara.' Oliver hung up the phone without a word. It wasn't like him to be rude. But the call had made him feel better, although he still had to sign a form the agent was putting in the mail.
'I'll make arrangements to speed up the inventory,' Goldstein said. 'I want everything in that house on a piece of paper fast. Before she gets any bright ideas.'
'She had better not take a damned thing. That would be stealing. I'll give up nothing. Not the house or anything in it. Never.' His throat tightened and his voice cackled.
'Never say 'never.' '
'Fuck you, Goldstein.'
Oliver stood up, started to leave, then sat down again.
'I built my whole life around that house,' Oliver mumbled, his head in his hands, feeling a whirlpool of sentiment well up inside him.
'I have my workshop there. All my antiques. My collections. My paintings. It's a total thing. It can't be broken apart.' He felt a terrible sense of persecution. All those years poking around antique auctions. 'I have my wine. My Lafite-Rothschild '59's, my Chateau Margaux '64's, my Grand Vin de Chateau Latour '66's. My orchids. You don't understand. You haven't seen the place. It's a jewel. I lavished love on it. In ten years it'll double in value, maybe triple. And so will everything in it.'
He caught his breath and sighed.
'You don't understand, Goldstein. I know every wire in that house, every fiber of wood and brick and slate. I know its pipes. Its innards. It is as much a part of me as my right hand.'
'Spare me please, Rose.'
'You have no sensitivity to that, Goldstein. It's not merely a possession.' He shrugged. 'People like you don't understand.'
'Don't get anti-Semitic. It won't solve anything.'
'Well, then, what the hell will?'
'The law. There is in the end always the law.' Goldstein stood up to his full, squat, half-pint size and, marching over to a wall of books, patted them fondly.
' 'The law is an ass,' ' Oliver said, remembering Dickens's famous character.
'Not as big an ass as you think. There are still some arrows in our quiver.' Oliver grabbed the shred of hope like a drowning man grabs a piece of floating flotsam.
