LONG FALL TO THE SIDEWALK CAFE - CHAPTER II.
"Avery." More gruffly. "Avery." I turned away from the voice and pulled the sheet up. "Let me sleep." I said knowing it was hopeless, neither whining nor petitions nor indicating displeasure worked on Bill.
"I don't do breakfast alone. If I wanted cold cereal I'd have stayed a bachelor back in fifty nine.
"You should have. The sixties would have been more fun for you without me along."
"I didn't miss out on the sixties."
"Oh honey, face it, we both did." I squinted at the clock with big numbers. "Bill it's seven a.m. You know you get along on less sleep than I can."
"You know you get along ...." He imitated the whine.
I sighed. "You guys get bags under your eyes nobody holds it against you."
"I don't care what you have under your eyes. Anyway, it's not like you're a damn society girl for gawdsake ---"
Heavy artillery. I preferred the kitchen to abuse, sat up, threw my legs out of the covers. "No, it's not." I wasn't going to argue about my alleged society girl status when I'd worked in the Admission office for four years to go to college. That first year, he'd interpreted caution and shyness as class snootiness. I wasn’t going to be able to rewrite his revisionist history perspective now.
I pulled a robe from the closet where a rainbow spectrum of Chanel and Mizrahi suits hung in perfect alignment. My only vice. I was always on the prowl for the perfect jewel hue suit. Hard in the modern day world when your penchant involved rainbow colors and designers worked in black and more black for the last two decades.
"---slaving away for a homemaking degree you never used.
"I'm not making a home?"
He was really good at a dodge. "Tell Hedda I feel like steak an' eggs, toast, grapefruit, black Colombian. None of that decaf shit."
I dialed the phone and got cook out of bed.
* * * * * *
Our patio is surrounded on three sides by a cactus garden. Many a house guest has carelessly backed up a chair and toppled backwards into it. Bill loved when that happened.
There was a nip in the October air and Hedda, came out of the kitchen dressed in her white uniform, with a scarf which she put around my shoulders. Ginger kitty smelled steak and jumped up on my lap. Bill fussed with saucing his steak. I patiently hugged my cat. Bill sniffed and frowned at a vase on the table.
"Goddamnit Avery. A flower. HEDDA? It's a goddamn flower.
"It's a cactus flower, sir. I didn't think they had pollen."
"Well, they do, get rid of it." She moved the bloom.
He tore into the raw meat. "Eat," he ordered.
I took a toast square. "I'll just....."
"..go back to bed after I leave?"
"Mmmmmm....
"So eat the eggs. That won't keep you awake. Get the cat off your lap."
"I want to hold her. I need to hold something."
"Have it your way." Same sentence Candice used. Who got it from who? I pondered this. Bill tossed a piece of steak to the concrete. Ginger leapt after it.
"Hah! She's as loyal as a flea."
Ginger chewed, swallowed, then coughed and tried to spit. She turned in a backwards circle.
"You gave her hot sauce?
Bill laughed. Hedda brought the coffee pot.
"Hedda would you wash Ginger's mouth out then give her some milk? Hedda picked up the squirming cat.
From up in the tree the rats watched us. They ate their breakfast nestled close to one another, lovingly, grooming each other's fur, kissing one another's ears, waiting to share the buttered toast squares that would be tossed them.
Black tide engulfed me. Mice did it better than we did. I tried to reason the pangs away. I was the luckiest of women. I had a lovely daughter, now off on her own, successful as an actress. I had a privileged existence. I could look forward to getting back into that warm bed and pulling the covers over my head and crying for a while, Very restorative and healthy. Even Dr Irwin said so. Always made me feel better. Then I could go to Saks and Neimans and Magnins and look for my latest project: an indigo suit. Yogi Bajani said it was a very high color, and lead to stimulation of the crown chakra. So my day was stuffed with pleasures. I could bear up against a little crankiness from him.
What, did I hear you say? That guy there is not a pleasure? Divorce the SOB? Divorce would never occur to me, I mean it occurred --- but I thought it would destroy Bill and after all Bill Wendell was never meaner than I could tolerate. He didn't drink. He didn't play around. Well, I wasn't sure of that one. And as for that oil and water quality we had, heck, I always thought that I probably had a hand in it. Me with my chronic depression, always saddened by every little thing. Living with a guy who was just a big lummox, basically. No crime in that.
It wasn't like I'd sought out a Phil Donahue. I had chosen an ape who could have made it as a pro wrestler if he hadn't been a Marine which gave him a scholarship to study business and that last part had fooled me. I thought he was middle class. But under the MBA, he was just an oaf who wanted to re-enlist when Vietnam came around and be a fighting Marine like his dad. This is what I picked. Hello, Earth to Avery?
* * * * * * * *
I walked Bill out to the entry hall. These were the rituals, self imposed: you salute the uniform, not the person in it. I held out his jacket. He did something odd then, which would change the rest of his life and my own. Of such atomically small particles are left turns in history made. He left me standing there with the jacket in the air while he turned, crossed the entry hall to the bottom of the staircase where he picked up a transparent neon plastic box which sat on his briefcase. There seemed to be a little machine inside. "What's that?"
"Hard drive. Keep it here at night." He gave it to me to hold while he put on his jacket. Then he turned back to the staircase to pick up his briefcase and just then, the door bell rang. Freeze frame.
Really, do a freeze frame here, guys because this is where my life does a 180. Where my comfortable slumber as Mrs. William Wendell ends. Where Lucky Avery Wendell falls off the edge of the planet. What's outside that door believe you me, is the kind of surprise visitor you are never going to get at 7:45 in the morning. It'll never happen to you and thank God for that fact. Get down on your knees and be glad. Be very glad.
I pulled the door open and standing there were three FBI bozos, this I knew because of the suits and ties and unmarked Ford sedan and two Beverly Hills cops in blue with their unit parked beside the Ford. "William Wendell? DOB three twenty eight thirty nine? Of William Wendell CPAs 8535 Wilshire Blvd?
"I just work for him. He's in the patio." Bill said, and he walked past them and down the walk --- past the Bentleys toward Hedda's ancient Toyota. he got in to the car, started Hedda’s motor. He did it so well that the FBI guys didn't blink. They turn to me, to ask to come in. I noticed the neon box in my hand. "Oh honey? Your hard drive!" I held it up.
* * * * * * * *
Beverly Hills Police station was a madhouse, there was a movie star cowboy, a rock star and two different film directors waving their arms making allegations about my husband who was in cuffs making a phone call.
"Bloody two million pounds is missing. These are the Shearson reports. You said we were all tucked into that Mega Media Acquisition. It doesn't exist on paper. My lawyer was a week in New York getting warrants to find any paper on it Lemme tell you their hotel bills were only a few grand, their hourlies are appended, I want those twenty five g's back too. Put these numbers up against whatever Blarney Bill fucking Wendell says. You'll find the discrepancy is in the region of nearly four million bloody dollars. And if you're smart, you'll go see if he paid taxes on the kickbacks he got from junk bond salesmen and Wall Street Tycoons for leading me and my money to slaughter.
"Thirty million here." said the cowboy shaking papers. "Bad investments my ass. Back in West Texas that's jes plain horse rustlin'."
Bill had his forehead on the telephone and his eyes closed. "Here, honey, let me dial" I volunteered. His lip curled into a snarl. He tore the phone from my hands.
* * * * * * * * * *
After Bill made bail, a taxi brought us home. Bill was muttering obscenities the whole way. The Bentley's weren't there. The front door was wide open. "We've been robbed." I said, running inside. Ginger bound up to me, clearly panicked. The living room was bare.
"You bitch," Bill muttered. "Here's your hard drive sweetheart," he said sarcastically.
Somehow it got all turned around. It was my fault. From there on out, every step of the way, it was my fault. I had done it. Bill was the victim. Only I bought into it. Go figure.
We went upstairs. The empty closet stared out at us. "My suit collection, gone. My jewelry box open, empty. We've been robbed."
"Second story men with a warrant. You can bet they've got it all on video tape to prove they didn't scuff floors."
"Can they do this?"
"YEAH. Prove you bought it before I made a billion dollars and you get it back. You got receipts that old?
"You made a billion?"
"On paper. In reality though --- twice that maybe. See, half of it --." he thought better and clammed up.
"I thought people were innocent until proven guilty. There's been no trial. How can they repossess my flannel nightgowns, my blue jeans. What do they have government garage sales? They're going to get their money out of my old bras?
"You see, Avery, unlike real life, in this kind of a legal boat, you're in here with me. You're half of the dues if not the infraction."
"OK. Half. Half is ok. Half is not what they took. They didn't leave me a pair of jeans. Why wouldn't they leave me jeans? Do you suppose they know something? I'm going to be picking grapes in prison dungarees?
Bill fell forward onto the mattress which was on the floor with holes cut in it.
I tried to murmur, not scream, so I wouldn't upset him. "My shoes are gone. One pair of tennies left, one pair and one suit. Oh my God, my rainbow collection of Chanels. Gone."
"Resale value. Auditors know about this kind of thing. Your silk lingerie is gone. They left the nylon.
He was right. Nylon nighties, the few I owned, hung on pegs. "But surely when you're proven innocent, they'll give it back. They won't sell it unless..  you're proven guilty. And you're innocent."
His face was stricken. I leaned against the wall, faint suddenly.
You pleaded innocent, didn't you?
"Well I will of course. You've watched enough celebrity trials to realize you chutzpah it out, that's what prominent people do around here. They don't cop guilty by reason of insanity. Prominent people are innocent and have dream teams. But that doesn't guarantee ..." He sighed. "Go make dinner Avery."
I found a kitchen without appliances, a stack of frozen dinners thawing on the floor, selected a few Wolfgang Puck Beef and chicken dinners and lit the barbecue coals outside. I set the tin packages on the grill. Ginger, Monkey face and I sat watching the sun set.
I was not roused until the aroma of burnt beef filled the air. Bill was in the library on the phone. I peeled the foil. CHARRED. I threw a few more dinners on the grill. Bill came outside and saw the blackened dinners. " I always tell you, wait for the coal to die down."
"I can put on something else. There's stack of stuff, pre-thawed. Spago Halibut, Spago chicken." Bill shook his head sadly. It was a kind of childish sorrow that made me remember why I once had loved him. I moved to embrace him, leaning my face against his cheek. "Well start over." He pushed me away, knocking my earring off with his hand.
"Order pizza". He said coldly.
* * * *
At the front door, I gave the Pizza boy my credit card. He was about to swish it when a hand reached in from behind him.
"That credit card is no good, sonny. Here, let me get that." The man peeled a twenty.
"Are you a friend of Bill's?
"Larry Grady. Can I come in?" I held up the pizza box. I nodded and stepped aside. "Where's Bill?"
"In the patio." I followed the stranger.
"Honey, ? " Bill was sitting on a pillow beside a huge box of Tide I was using as a table.
"What, you want a tip? You're going to have to make do with a dollar." Bill reached into his pocket.
"I don't think so Wendell. Actually, we're looking at more than five hundred million dollars. IRS income tax fraud. A summons from the U.S. Federal Tax court, for January 17th. Be there or be square. And don't try the borders. Your passport is hotter than this pizza." The stranger tossed the pizza onto the makeshift Tide table. The Cardboard pizza box bent like wet paper and a Daliesque melting clock pizza slid down the Tide label onto the patio tiles. I stared in pained horror. The man turned on his heel and left. I ran to retrieve the pizza before all the toppings hit the floor, lifting the crumpled, melting cardboard back onto the Tide box table.
"Jesus fuckin' H christ. You open the door to the US government and invite them fucking in --twice in one day?
"EEEEEE." I said between my teeth.
Rats in the palms high above, heard timid  squeaks of pain and terror coming from a human throat, identified with one of their own kind, terrorized, despised by brute man, and felt compassion.
* * * * * * * *
The next morning, I rooted around in the pantry. There were boxes of marzipan and tinned asparagus. Not much of a breakfast. Luckily, there were canned pinto beans with a few sprigs of arugula from the kitchen garden, spoons, a good protein breakfast. I found Bill in the library and held out a bowl.
"Cayman Caribbean National bank? Is .." he whispered, "Winnie Grovenor at her desk just now? Could I speak with her? I'm long distance so put a rush on it."
There were bankruptcy forms all over the desk. "You were doing this last night? Honey, you have to sleep."
"Gotta figure this out. Bankruptcy's very tricky. We gotta downsize our assets."
"Oh I think they've been downsized."
"Declare Chapter Eleven. It's the only way to keep the house. Homesteading gives us a lousy hundred grand. They can sell it for ten mil and legally give you a c-note but that's better than nothing.
"A hundred grand is a start." I said with a smile.
Yeah like the world is trying to tell you, go buy a new house in Watts."
"We'd have each other."
"In a cab to the barrio but see, I take back a loan against the house, a first, say four million, that's legal because there's probably no lien on it yet. We put the money in the bank. Legal beagle, for living expenses. Then we disappear the money at the rate of a hundred grand monthly, stay out of the courts for a year or two, that's two million that's ours to keep.
"How do we stay out of the courts?"
"They can't make you show up. You know, I get a slipped disc or something, mental break down. Depression. Then, say two years later, if we lose on embezzlement charges, then the government moves in for the tax fraud and they attach the house, we're mortgaged to the hilt, we spent the money on legit living expenses, it's not fraudulent conveyance. Cuz you can do time on that one. But we can make ourselves judgment proof by pulling a chapter eleven, neat and tidy. Don't have to pay anybody back. My share of protection is about a quarter mil and your share as a dutiful spouse the same. Worst case, we can shelter 750k right there plus the two million we conveyed fraudulently then I (cough) some cash socked away in...... " he looked at me suspiciously, "---in my sock drawer."
"Really," I said at the same time it dawned on me that nothing he said was true.
"So just sign here, it's an application for Chapter eleven.
"Wait a minute. If we have all this money, then we can start paying back your clients and there's no problem at all."
"Good point. Sign here."
"I'll sign when you give me your word you'll pay back the rockstar, the cowboy and the director."
"I'm not paying anybody back what I didn't take. They lost that money in a media acquisition which tanked and in the bond market. It's all on paper. I got records to prove it."
"But the kickbacks they allege."
What are you working for them now Avery? Fuckin try to prove kickbacks. Don't talk to me about ... sign on the dotted fucking line!
No?" his eyes bulged.
"We pay back the people who lost money."
THEY LOST the money in risky investments."
That's not what they say."
"Whose side are you fucking on?"
The side of what's right."
What's right is that you stand by my side."
If your side is right."
He put his head on the papers and started banging it. The papers on the floor kept him from drawing blood so it was more for drama than anything. I stood by him, staring out at a big empty house, one of my hands resting lightly on his head, the other holding up a soggy plate of cold beans. Years later, I would think what a fabulous Michelangelo statue the two of us would have made.
<----- CONTINUE TO CHAPTER III.