One Hit Wonder. Charlie Carillo

thing, and words weren’t always her best friends. This observation was a rare thing, almost a lyric from a country-western song. I wondered if she’d heard it someplace or if she came up with it herself, but before I could wonder too long, Lois asked, almost casually, “What’s her name?”

      I sighed, felt my shoulders slump. I had to tell her. I owed her that much.

      “Lynn.”

      I trembled at the sound of my own voice. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d spoken her name aloud. I felt as if I were violating a gravesite, just speaking her name.

      Lois was breathing hard. “Is she prettier than me?”

      I sighed with weariness and impatience over her refusal to let me and herself off the fucking hook.

      Prettier? Jesus Christ, it wasn’t a question of measure. Lynn was all alone in my mind. There was Lynn, and then there was everybody else.

      But try and explain that to your brand-new ex-wife.

      “No, she was not prettier than you.”

      “Where is she? Back in New York?”

      “I have no idea. She ran away from home when she was a kid.”

      “How dramatic.”

      “As a matter of fact, it was pretty damn dramatic.”

      “You love her.”

      “I did, yes.”

      “No, you mean you do. You still do.”

      I rubbed my face, spoke through the forest of my fingers. “We’ve been divorced for twenty minutes now, Lois. Why are we even talking about this?”

      “Because it’s all over and I realize I never even knew you, Mickey. God! What are you, man? An actor? A singer? A songwriter? Or maybe you’re just a lost soul.”

      “That last one, yeah. That sounds about right.”

      “Make jokes. But I want you to understand that I am not a joke.” She was practically bawling, and shoved the sunglasses back over her eyes. “I have to know all this stuff before I can get rid of you, Mickey. I have to know why you couldn’t look me in the eye after we made love. So now I know, okay? Thank you. Thank you. We’re done now, Mickey. I know it wasn’t my fault. I was competing with a ghost, and ghosts always win.”

      She turned and walked off to her car. I sat on the courthouse steps and watched this normally graceful girl staggering with a clumsiness brought on by fury, and when she got in her car she roared off at such high speed I was sure she’d kill herself and maybe a few other people before she could get home to the hotel I’d been ordered to pay for by the City of Angels.

      Two months later the sale of my condo went through and I sent Lois a check for two hundred and fifty thousand bucks.

      I never resented her for taking me for half. Without that money, Lois wouldn’t even have been in the game to get a second husband. A desperate woman never gets anywhere in Los Angeles.

      Funny, though, how Lois got the wheelbarrow full of money that I’d promised Lynn. And now I was back pushing a lawn mower for a living.

      Three hundred and twenty bucks a week, before taxes. It would take me a hundred years to fill up a wheelbarrow, even if the bills were all singles, even if I could live that long.