The Easy Chain

by Evan Dara

  Near a corner of Willow Road in Winnetka, a large, long Mercedes waited. Auran parked just behind. She and Lincoln walked to the limousine’s left; a rear door swung open …

  In the car, driving off, Auran introduced Lincoln to Guy Ferzoco, thick-thighed and bottom-round. He wore a snug, puckering suit, dark blue with shimmery white stripes, and had pale, pored facial skin, creamed to shininess. His black hair, notchy at front, shunted straight back, as if turned towards a permanent windstorm …

  Blackened glass separated the three from the car’s front seat …

  Always do business with a happy man, Ferzoco said. I mean that. Bet on a winner. If he can’t manage a little nothing like his moods, how can he manage your bottom line … ?

  Ferzoco rubbed his snub chin. Take my case, for instance, he continued. Born in Dayton, raised in Dayton, over the course of twenty years all the family managed to accomplish was to swap a three-bedroom house for a two, when Nate – older brother – moved out. Went into the service. But did we complain? Nah. Never. My father baked his seeded bread, and his unseeded hamburger rolls. Fridays he had specialty loaf. My mother emery-boarded and polished – part-time – other women’s nails. After thirty years, the gal knew cuticles. Did we complain? Did we even think of complaining … ? Did my parents get on those boats just to aggrieve … ?

  I had an idyllic childhood, really, sweet-day’d and carefree. I was good in school, I was good on the ballfield. Everybody liked Guy Ferzoco. And when I graduated from Meadowdale High, they called me up on stage and gave me a purple ribbon. Student most likely …

  College in Phoenix – ASU – B school at Wharton. I was moving on, moving up. Gravity was working in reverse. A few years with Deloitte here in Chicago, then on my own. Use the contacts, make the practice. And in five years, Guy Ferzoco became one powerhouse of a capital manager. Deals leading to deals, opportunities creating other, even more magnificent opportunities. You would know several of the names whose wickets I tend. But you could not imagine the sums …

  And that’s just the trivia. I met Connie in Phoenix, and she followed me to Philly, and she followed me to Chicago, but if the circumstances had been different I would have followed her anywhere she wanted to go. Black, large-bore curls. Bumptious figure. Wing-tipped smile, brighter than Kiss Me Deadly. Let me tell you something. You know how they talk about love at first sight? Well, Connie and I were robbed of that. Because the first time we met, it was as if we had been gazing at each other for years. That kind of closeness. That kind of naturalness. And we recognized it: we were grateful …

  We met at an ASU mixer, on a Thursday night right after a football game. We had won, though the Sun Devils hadn’t fared as well. By the next week we were pretty much inseparable, and by the week after that you could pretty much drop the pretty much. You hear my fondness. Within a month we’d moved in together. Then moved on together, directly after that …

  We had a beautiful life. Mercedes and private chefs who felt no incitation to ask for a raise. A beachfront in Naples and a cabin in the Tetons. And a house featured in a Regional RoundUp in Arch Di. Twenty years of lavender, gliding days and luxe. Why deny it? Connie and Guy Ferzoco had a controlling interest in a corner of heaven. So it was sad-making for me, even incomprehensible, when Connie – slowly, slowly, ever so slow— started to take our good fortune for granted. She would walk by the garden view where she used to linger. The evening became the traffic, not the orchestra seats for Solti. First asparagus no longer made her giggly-giggle; she sloughed away the stalks. Having the tiniest, the tiniest of chores was unbearable. Having no obligations was worse. Carlos, our pool man, turned into Rudolf Hess …

  And, brother, it got to me.

  —How to capture the change?, he continued. How to do justice to the infinitesimal shift that becomes a trickle, which then becomes a groaning, which then becomes a landslide, which then becomes two mature adults racking through an eighteen-room home lashing and cawing at each other? And hurling flatware … ?

  Here’s how to do it justice: by correctly assigning blame. Which in this case means: by correctly assigning blame to her! …

  That miserable hoyden blackened what was nickel, she soured the honey-est situation any man – any woman – any couple – could hope for. I hunted for months to find her a 1936 – peak period – Schiaparelli manteau, of course in shockeroo pink, and she just smiled – slightly, ohhh slightly – before going off about her redesign of the kitchen. And then she wore it all of once. The yearly, valet-park membership at Club Rip? She got it. The silica-flecked Carrara marble for the upstairs bathtub? She got it. The coarse-grain Guérande sea salt – oh, ohhhhhh, fleurs de sel, hand-harvested by a maître paludier – that she had stumbled upon and then not bought in that little place on the Rue de Buci? She got it. Then she forgot it all. I took six days off right during tax season because she wanted to go to San Diego for the azaleas, and yes I know how interesting it is to hear someone else’s grousing—

  —Ferzoco took a breath. Hm, he said. Sorry to, he said. But it was tough. I did not deserve this. The walk to the front door when I was coming home at night, the resistance of the hinges as I pushed, then hesitated, then pushed through to open – tremolos in the entrails even now. I hated what she had become, what she was doing to us, to our life together, to me. At home, the air was burning glycerin. I’d wander about, or try to sit, or try to get some work done, and my mind would be stuck in one gear: clench. And I couldn’t see a way to correct it …

  You can’t demand appreciation. Can’t even cajole it. Guy Ferzoco was way glum …

  It affected my sleep, it affected my work – sharpness, sharpness was gone – it affected my philosophy of antacids. Eventually, I thought of counseling – but I couldn’t possibly broach that subject with Xanthippe. Then, alas, I thought of the courts …

  But this too was an agony. Not the divorce – by that time, basta! No, for me there was agony, molten agony, guggling from the image of the harpy getting half. Of everything. Everything that I, alone, had worked for for twenty years. Everything that I, alone, had brought into the house. Everything that I had given her – and that she had come to take for granted, and that she, alone, would get! Impossible! Unbearable! She would sue for every last bit of booty that she, for years by then, in no way had appreciated!

  —I cannot tell you the number of cranked, stumblebum nights this caused me – and you can multiply that by five to get the number of ninety-second naps I slurred into at my desk, between clients. I was wracked by this, I paced and raged, I sweat my front hair into sticky bangs. Half of what the shrew had scorned! …

  Brother, doubt my mortality, or even my love of olive bread. But never doubt that I was not going to let this happen …

  So I paid a visit to my buddy Marty, whom I’ve known since Dayton, who has only missed four of our monthly lunches since he moved here seventeen years ago, who’s as fine a second baseman as any a sandlot softball team has ever had, and who also happens to be, pretty much since I first put on presentable shoes, my lawyer. A great, kind-hearted guy, always remembered the fruit basket on my mother’s birthday. Which is why I turned to him with my, for lack of a better word, idea …

  At first, I admit, the man was flummoxed. My friend Marty, this fine-tailored, broad-backed, dignified guy, a potentate at his desk, looked up and – already! – was glistening. He hesitated to reply. He swallowed cud. He stammered and panted, then turned to tomes and legal references. A shirt-collar tip skewed up into a photograph of flight. He made excuses, started others, pored over yellow pads. Then looked up again, and paused, and smiled, and said You know … ?

  My buddy signed on. It was preposterous, absurd, unheard-of, worse, and there was no reason it wouldn’t work. The law’s the law. Of course Marty knew my grief, had suffered with me through much of it. Been, in fact, a fabulous source of support. But if I was asking for such a thing, he said, he knew the situation had become serious. And so, he said, he would consider it …

>   What would he consider? Just this: In order to shield my assets – the details of which the harridan knew well-nigh nada – I would sell them all to Marty. But for cashew nuts. The houses, the stocks, the mutual funds, the cars, the whatevers – there was no reason on earth I couldn’t sell them to anyone I wanted to for fifty bucks apiece. So I was an inept businessman, I made a few unfortunate deals – too bad. Happens all the time. But our agreements, I proposed, and Marty concurred, had to be watertight. They couldn’t be sham documents, or the ingrate’s lawyers would punch holes clear through them. They had to be legal and binding and impenetrable, to withstand the inevitable challenges in court. Because our deal would become obvious when the laundry started fluttering. Then, after the divorce, Marty would sell everything back to me for exactly the amounts he’d paid, so justice would be restored and – handy, handy – all the capital gains would wash out …

  That’s why Marty was the perfect man for the job. He was my oldest friend, and he knew the law, and he could draw up documents that would make the lagoon-dweller’s lawyers see red. So I explained him this, and begged him to consider, to scour the statutes and find a way to make it work. And – although he didn’t really need it – I told him I would make it worth his while, a hundred times over. My every future business bonanza he would be part of. Every time I had a chance at anything, he would have the same. And he could bill me at ten times hourlies …

  He was still pasty-mouthed when I left his office, and when I called a few days later I only got the secretary. But by the next call the next week the secretary was prepared, and said that Marty was looking into what we’d etc. And then, when Mart set up a meeting for the Tuesday after that, and when the first thing he said, just after I’d sat down, was Well, it’s hard to believe, but … , my brain went Bingo …

  He was touching. He was wonderful. He said he’d thought about it for a long, long time, and if I was in such need and the law permitted it – which he’d found it did – he could see no reason why not to proceed. My idea was a good one. The legal structures were sound. Yes, it was morally questionable, but so was my wife’s claim on goods and chattels she’d never earned. And, as we were shaking hands, Marty nodded and said he was honored by the trust I had placed in him. He had always dreamed of having so deep a friend …

  Brother, Guy Ferzoco climbed to cloud nine, and used it to sky-ski out of that immortal office. I grabbed a cab, and rerouted it to Charlie Trotter’s for a stroll down the Grand Menu that under no terms could be justified, then went back to my office and continued working as if it were any other day. Except, of course, that on that day, for the first time since the onset of The Troubles, I was working for myself alone. A thought that reinvented appreciation for our time …

  The car slowed, pulled slightly right, then came to a stop. It was a gentle, gradual transition, barely felt. Once parked, Ferzoco looked through the window at his right. The glass was dark, smoked: nothing much could be seen beyond a few light-scarabs and, in the middle distance, a presence, hulking and black. After perhaps thirty seconds, the car started forward again. It moved left, rejoined traffic, regained slow-cruising speed …

  Twice a week, Ferzoco continued, Marty and I would get together and fine-tune details, and shipshape our agreement, and hash out strategies. And after the paperwork was pretty much finished, I brought it to another lawyer buddy because you know you never know. The second lawyer swore silence, and signed off. Then, on a sweet-winded Thursday night, at casa-soon-again-to-be-a-me, I recited the words and dumped the documents, and the gorgon howled and the gorgon thrashed – and right in the middle of the gorgon-storm I thought Hm: that maneuver just cost Marty a really nice crystal vase – and I moved into the Doubletree Inn and forgot all about it. Correction: I chortled and grinned unto infinity and then forgot about it.

  —How can combustion produce cool? Six weeks later we’re before Judge Bardenas, and I’m there with Marty, calm and smiling, standing rocking on my feet, while Connie is braising and steaming among a battalion of attorneys three deep. We present our positions and cough up the first paperwork – and in the middle of this I realize I had forgotten something, so I yelp and panic and call Marty aside, and he asks for ten minutes, during which time I sell him my parents’ old house in Dayton for a fin. Eventually we go back to session, and there’s more this, and there’s more that, and then we move to asset declarations …

  I repeat: to asset declarations …

  First the face grew skewed, pivoting atop the tense-cord neck under brows that angled, eyes that riled. Then the face came alight, arching upward, thrusting outward, encircling irises with white fire. Then the entire organism both collapsed and exploded, as it screamed and flailed and clasped its forehead, and charged forward, and fell back, and had to be restrained by suited men usually paid for legal discrimination. And then these same men appealed for adjournment, which the judge, by that point in the proceeding, was all too grateful to grant …

  Opposing counsel had no objection …

  We agreed to reconvene two weeks later, during which time, Marty explained, his office would no doubt be pelted with phone calls, and we would see if our position was proof. And, indeed, the phone calls came, and they were often accompanied by threats. Serious ones – countersuits, fraud claims, criminal liability, action before the Bar. So when we again went in front of Judge Bardenas, we knew trembling. We knew chalk in the throat. Hand-skin pinched. Until a slumped, rent Connie, in limp, blue-gray shift, stood among her stolid attorneys and admitted they had to accept the declarations as presented.

  —Holiness! Heaven-light! I hugged Marty harder than I’d ever hugged any man, and he offered back a somber, professionally-hued handshake. Connie was led from the hall in tears, and when that great oak door closed it marked the beginning of the sixty days during which she had, by order of the court, to clear out her belongings …

  Some say party; some use revel. I don’t really know how to call what I did that Wednesday night, but I believe it marked a paradigm shift in the history of happiness. All future fun would have to be defined with reference to it. Food and drink and pulled-in street musicians for everyone within radius – any radius. That is to say, lots of very good stuff. And then lots more. High times and circulating waiters and long arcs of champagne, with feral spillage. Les Atouts on North State became, for the night, one nice place to be …

  I retired way late to the Doubletree, and then, of course, couldn’t settle down to sleep, and then, of course, fell out so dramatically that I didn’t even remove my suit. I woke at eleven and went to work, and pretended that, one day previously, the universe hadn’t reversed polarity and aligned itself with the angels. Time’s flavor seemed liberally sprinkled with emotional MSG …

  That night, after work – a day when I pulled off a leveraged buy on a hefty percentage of outstanding Perduraco shares – you see happiness’ smiling synergy? – I took out three of my assistants to continue the celebration. We were at Smiley’s, and effective liquids were flowing, and at one point some of them flowed over the left sleeve and side-panel of my suit-jacket. I had an appointment at Chancellor Capital the next morning, and this coat, after two months of solo-life and two days of bacchanals, had been my last remaining clean top. So I decided to stop by the house and pull out a few more suits, before, in a brief matter of weeks, putting them right back in again …

  Maybe an hour later, I was walking up my home’s flagstones with a spring in my step, tickled beyond my imagining to see the place again. The house really was comely – elegant and, above all, large. I could in no way stop, or even hinder, my smile as I pulled, after this long absence, into a humanizing close-up. I rang the bell, the crisply familiar chime, and turned about to look upon the sleek, accommodating lawn, soon returning to its source. Might I say my heart twirled when I heard the door-lock twist? Because it was true. I was nearly pogo-ing with delight at the thought of seeing the shot-down crone, and labored mightily not to beam when she opened the portal up
on her scowling mug. Yes, there she was, dark-haggard and grim. And then she pulled the door a bit further, which action revealed Marty, dear Marty, standing beside her …

  What … ?

  What could … ?

  How—?

  I burled, I farreled, I charcled, I chorled …

  And then I understood …

  Six years it had been, I later learned: Six years! Behind my back – and in front of my face! While I was – while he was – while they were … And I didn’t, I couldn’t – there was no bloom dooming—!

  I made pebble into bone. I threw ingot grouses. I hauled and trammeled newel plasters til carpal starkled stone! I carked marsh crackhouses and wranged durg throttle for the canker korg thrumming do you know what I mean? …

  Iyeh yeh yeh …

  Iyih yih yih …

  Iyih …

  Iy …

  Do you know what I—?

  They did not laugh …

  They did not gloat …

  Neither, o neither would I …

  I ran from the house – dashed – ran – and then I stopped, and then turned, turned to look back. I took a step forward – back! – then stopped again. Then I started slapping – open-hand smashing – my thighs, the upper outer parts of my legs, right there in the open. In the open …

  Don’t ask why I did this. You know why I did this …

  I ran up to the house, and grabbed the door handle, and slammed the door …

  On them …

  I slammed them in …

  And I, oh …

  And I …

  Oh, oro pro those beasts …

  Guy Ferzoco was one rageful mofo …

  The car slowed again, then stopped. Ferzoco stopped as well, to take chuffling breath. He rapped on the blackened glass separating the rear seat from the driver, and the car glided off …