'I'm behind on the gas bill, the electric bill, and the telephone bill. Two months each. They're getting a little persnickety, but they apparently haven't talked to Oliver yet.' She looked at him and frowned. 'Why don't you lend me a few thousand? You'll get it back in spades.'
'He's already behind three months with me.'
'I've seen your bills, Thurmont. He sends me notes with Xerox copies attached.'
'I sell time, Barbara. Every time you come up here for one of your sessions, it costs. Two hundred an hour. It works by a clock. You knew that from the beginning. I keep telling you not to keep running up here every time you've got a problem.'
'You're supposed to keep me out of trouble.'
'I'm a divorce lawyer, not a business consultant. I keep telling you to get payment on delivery.'
That doesn't help me now.'
She went to a bank to borrow money. The loan officer was a woman and that made Barbara immediately hopeful.
'All I need is five thousand. No big deal.' She explained her business problems and her current domestic difficulties.
'What sort of collateral have you?' the loan officer asked pleasantly. She was an intense woman who chainsmoked.
'Collateral?' She had only a vague idea of what the term meant.
'Like stock, bonds. Your house.'
'My house? We own it jointly. That's why we're having difficulties. You see I'm asking for - ' She interrupted herself, feeling foolish. She seemed to be deliberately looking for allies. But she could see from the woman's indifferent expression that she had not been able to transfer her outrage.
'It's the litigation that scares us,' the loan officer explained.
'I thought they had changed the laws to give women a break.'
'They have . .. but you see - '
'That's bullshit,' she said, getting up and walking out. She wondered if the loan officer also felt she was too emotional. Oliver, that bastard, she thought, has crippled me. The idea only made her more determined and she tried two other banks. One loan officer, a man, offered to take her out for a drink.
'You mean if you fuck me, I'll get the money,' she said, raising her voice so that others within earshot might hear her. She returned home shaking, mortified. Then she called up her customers and pleaded for the money. Her heart was in her mouth and her voice ragged and tremulous.
'We get paid slowly, too,' the Thai ambassador's wife told her indignantly. 'It takes a long time from overseas. You must understand that, dear.'
She swallowed hard and tamped down her anger to avoid a confrontation. It wasn't at all like what she'd thought it would be. She worked so hard to make her products perfect, artistic creations, something of which she could be proud. She hadn't expected such indifference when it came to payment.
At night, she had imaginary conversations with Oliver.
'I told you it was a jungle out there,' Oliver confirmed in her imagination. 'Dog eat dog. I tried to protect you from that.'
'You should have tried to teach me how to protect myself.'
'That wouldn't have been manly. You agreed to love, honor, and obey. That meant to oblige me sexually, take my advice, and give me none of your lip.' His voice seemed to come from a wind tunnel.
'But it's wrong to keep someone locked up.'
She had deliberately avoided taking Valium for months. High on life, she had told herself, but the business problems began to crowd in on her. Soon the kids would be off to camp, she reasoned, and she might be able to scrimp and get back on her feet financially without Oliver's finding out. If only he would get the hell out of the house. His presence galled her. It was unfair. Wrong. She admitted to herself that she would have been perfectly content had he been boiled alive in the sauna. She wouldn't have given it a second thought.
Then Thurmont called her.
'He's found out about the overdue utility bills. He's fuming. Goldstein was leering through the phone.'
'Then we've simply got to ask Oliver for more. It's simply not enough. I never had trouble before this.'
'He cheerfully paid everything, Barbara. Remember, this is a divorce action. And there's a written agreement. The case doesn't come up for a few more months. If you get yourself more into the hole, you may be forced to compromise.'
'Never,' she said. She paused, then looked into the mouthpiece of the phone. 'Are you charging me for this call?'
'Of course.'
'Then bug off.'
She spent a great deal of time now holed up in her room. It began to get warm, and she opened the windows. Before, she would not have thought twice about turning on the air conditioner. Now she resisted, concerned about the utility bills. Mostly she brooded about her former self, that stupid little doll baby willing to sacrifice herself, everything, for some silly, girlish romantic notion.
'For you, Oliver,' she had said, 'I'll do anything. Anything.' He had offered her the same assurance, but it didn't mean the same thing. She remembered how his every utterance was pregnant with wisdom. She had idolized him,
