I certainly did not have this woman pegged as a clinger. “I always thought-hoped-” she chokes back a sob, “he’d change his mind.” The nape of a woman’s neck-so vulnerable, so quixotically erotic. Her head dips as if in prayer, exposing pale, downy vertebrae beneath the stiff blond bob. My client stops suddenly in the doorway I almost run into the back of her. Malinche, however, asserts that my “brutal kind of truth,” as she emotively puts it, is akin to judging a woman’s skin only in the harsh glare of daylight, rather than by the softening glow of the fire. My wife, of course-being a woman-begs to differ.
There’s no place in the context of divorce law for emotion or sentimentality one has quite enough of that kind of thing from one’s clients. I endeavor not to morally judge my clients it’s distracting and unproductive. My professional smile does not slip as I escort her to the door. But no meat on her bones, and breasts like a boy. Slender, neat calves, with nicely turned ankles. She’s the kind of woman one would find smeared all over the sheets in the morning, the pillowslip imprinted with her face like the Turin shroud. Far too much makeup I can’t imagine kissing those jammy red lips. Her scent is pungent and overpowering: synthetic cat piss. She extends a scrawny pink tweed arm her hand sits like a wet fish in mine. She stands and I rise with her, straightening my silk tie. Since I have just secured her an extremely generous seven-figure settlement from her ex-husband, I find her disdain for my sex in its entirety a little unfair. Her gaze briefly snags on the silver-framed photograph of my wife propped beside the leather blotter on my desk her expression of pity for my spouse places me foursquare with those unfortunates whose parents neglected the legal niceties before bedding down together. My client ignores my genial smile, gray eyes flicking dismissively around my oak-paneled office. Never more so, may I suggest, than when your client authoritatively declares all men are bastards, and you’re left shifting uncomfortably in your seat.
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