Free The Ditto List by Stephen Greenleaf Page A

least one IRS audit and, after a particularly persistent streak of ill fortune, a telephone call from Las Vegas that could only be termed terrifying. But he wouldn’t quit, he knew, not as long as he had an income and a bookie, because gambling was his one indulgence that yielded a quick and certain judgment. When he won at trial the victory, though always sweet, always had its price—delay, expense, anguish, the unseemly if not illegal gambits that litigation so often required of him. So despite his losses he craved the wager more and more, its purity, its definition, its lack of nuance, its rush. He shrugged and replaced the phone and flipped through the latest issue of Flannery’s Football for an early look at the NFL.
    A minute later the intercom buzzed and Bobby E. Lee announced his final appointment. “It isn’t a ditto, is it?” D.T. asked. “I don’t want any more dittos this afternoon.”
    â€œNon-usual,” Bobby E. Lee said simply.
    â€œBut what?”
    â€œWho knows? She looks like a cheerleader. Maybe someone stole her pompons.”
    It was far too late in a far too depressing day to stage his usual charade of sedulity. Instead, he tossed aside the football book, dropped his heels to the floor, and went straight to the waiting room.
    â€œThis is Miss Rita Holloway, Mr. Jones,” Bobby E. Lee announced, emphasizing the title. “Your final appointment for the day. I’ll be leaving now,” Bobby E. Lee added quickly. “Have a nice weekend.”
    â€œYou, too,” D.T. said, then remembered the diamond in the lunch companion’s nostril, then envisioned the two men about to couple, then stopped himself.
    When he turned toward the couch he saw a small woman looking at him eagerly from behind the undisturbed row of periodicals. She was short and dark and wore grey slacks, white sandals, and a yellow knit top that billowed around her shoulders. Her smile exposed a perfect row of teeth. Her skin was the color of the leather purse that lay beside her; her hair was a fixed swirl of black meringue. Her quick black eyes made D.T. feel like a somewhat loathsome specimen.
    When she had learned all she could from a glance the woman crossed the room and stuck out a hand so small it seemed a technological triumph of Oriental origin. “I’m pleased to meet you, Mr. Jones,” she said easily, the words crisp, the gesture accomplished. D.T. swallowed her hand in his and she squeezed with surprising strength.
    D.T. was immediately on edge. He was used to serving the distraught, not the capable. “Come in, Miss Holloway,” he managed. “May I get you some refreshment?”
    â€œNo, thank you. But please help yourself.”
    D.T. let her precede him into his office, then turned and watched as Bobby E. Lee lifted his jacket off the coat rack, draped it across his shoulders, and sauntered to the door. When he reached it he turned back and saw D.T. watching him. He shrugged a wordless disclaimer and opened the door and entered his other world.
    D.T. entered his office and took his seat and watched as the eggplant eyes of Rita Holloway took in his lair. What she saw mostly were books, law books numbered and stacked in tiers, text books arranged by subject, special books inside an antique glass case, including the leatherbound set of novels given to him by his ex-wife, all of them written by men about women— Moll Flanders and Clarissa, Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina, Sister Carrie, Ruby Red , and The Easter Parade .
    After sweeping through the books her black eyes lingered over the tousled heap on his library table, the detritus of a brief in progress, the issue a divorced wife’s right to abort her child over the father’s objection and offer of custody and support following birth. Her forehead wrinkled at the peculiar pen-and-ink drawings on the wall—Michele’s essay into a Germanic style of political art, inspired by