Free The Ex-Mrs. Hedgefund by Jill Kargman Page A

hold it together and take him to Dylan’s Candy Bar on Third Avenue. I had heard kids of divorce are more spoiled; I guess this was part one of indulgent sugarfests to come. He beamed as he got his crystal Baggie and started scooping pieces from the various bins with the tiny shovels. Kids with backpacks from all the different schools crammed the aisle, eyes ablaze, mouths watering, as mommies and nannies reined in the small-handed grabbers and gobblers. The Wonka-esque megastore was a candied kaleidoscope of lollipops, chocolates, every jelly bean shade in the color spectrum. And yet through my new eyes, it was all slates, grays, and blacks and whites.

10
    â€œBigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same.”
    â€”Oscar Wilde
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    â€œ M ommy, thanks for the PEZ. I love you!”
    â€œI love you, too, sweetness. But Milesie, you
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should love me even if I don’t buy you the PEZ. We have to love each other no matter what.”
    â€œI know. Can we read Frog and Toad ?”
    â€œSure, lovely.” We curled in his bed with a pile of books as I choked back tears. The innocent words of friendship and simple values buoyed me as I got through the final pages, kissed his forehead, turned on his dinosaur night-light, and closed the door. His little noggin would soon be matted with the sweat of sleep, peaceful and restorative. I wondered if I’d ever slumber that like again in my life.
    Kiki had offered to come over and be with me, but I was so wrecked I just wanted to crawl into bed. As I lay there, not even twelve hours after my life-altering revelation, I started going back. I thought of each and every business trip. It was then that I first had a Keyser Söze flashback of my own: recollections of his “day trip” to Cincinnati, or that supposed conference in Utah. Was there even a board meeting in Wichita, Kansas? Or that boat ride with no cell reception with a client in Nassau? It was all lies. Like Chazz Palminteri, I mentally dropped that teacup—my heart, my happiness, my history—and it shattered to the floor in scattered pieces I couldn’t even begin to sift through.
    Just then, the phone rang. I sprang into action, pouncing like a puma to the caller ID screen. Tim. No way was I going to pick it up. I let it go to voice mail, which I furiously dialed a minute later. The computer voice alerted me to my One. New. Message.
    â€œHey, Holly, it’s Tim. I miss you guys. Chicago’s busy and really warm. Looking out my window now at the Sears Tower. I’ll be back tomorrow night, can’t wait. Love you guys. Call me if you’re up, but I’m pretty pooped from these meetings all day and might crash. Love you.”
    Fucking liar. In all my years, I was never a curse-word kind of gal. But this whole debacle morphed my tongue into Kiki times ten. That fucking assholic, deviant serpent had packed countless lies into probably every voice mail he’d ever left me. In St. Louis: “I’ll say hi to the Arch for you.” In San Francisco: “I’m looking at the sun setting over the Golden Gate Bridge.” The Eiffel Tower. Big Ben. That was his stupid modus operandi: drop details of his surroundings. He probably even checked the paper and saw it was unseasonably warm in the so-called Windy City. I bet he was lying naked with that slutbag and winking at her while he uttered those patent falsehoods into the receiver. “I’m pretty pooped from meetings.” Yeah, how about pooped from porking your skank? I oscillated from frothing vitriol to self-pitying grief and back again every second. What would I do? How could I cope? For years I had looked at my few single friends through a lens of pity and relief that it wasn’t me. And now it was.
    I thought of my childhood friend Natasha in Boston who had gone through this, but she had no kids. I had baggage. Not just baggage, Vuitton trunks of baggage: what will