Free The Winners Circle by Christopher Klim Page A

holes?”
    “ Yes.” He abandoned his boots beside the door and entered Laura’s sterile abode.
    The carpet was flat white, as were the walls and Swedish bookshelves. Satin pillows accented the plush off-white couches and chairs. A fluffy cat curled beside a smooth marble sculpture of a woman’s torso. Laura bleached the cat’s fur at regular intervals. Jerry and Chelsea used to joke about it. It looked like a walking bag of cotton with paws.
    “ How’ve you been?” he asked.
    “ Better than you. You look tired.”
    “ I don’t sleep great,” he said, but in truth, he slept on and off all day long, just never through the night.
    “ Do you miss her?”
    Jerry set the chocolates on an oriental table beside the door. “Every minute.”
    “ No kidding.” Laura sat in a chair by the sliding glass windows. The sun reflected off the marine white deck, adding to the overall brightness of the room.
    For a second, Jerry was snow-blind and groped his way to a seat nearby. “Chelsea’s filed for divorce.”
    “ No kidding.”
    “ I want to stop it.”
    “ What can I do about it?” She tossed back her shoulders.
    He watched her glom onto the moment. She wanted him to grovel. He recalled why he didn’t visit her very often. She enjoyed other people’s pain, savoring it like a treasured port wine. “Do you remember us in the beginning?”
    “ You and Chelsea?”
    “ This isn’t easy for me. I wish you’d stop joking.”
    “ Go ahead.”
    “ Did you think we belonged together?”
    She didn’t answer. Her eyes wandered about the pristine room.
    “ Chelsea’s annulling the marriage,” he said. “She’s suing on grounds of bearing no children.”
    “ You don’t have children.”
    There she goes, he thought, restating the obvious just like Tisch. “It doesn’t matter. She knows I wanted them. You know it too.”
    “ So what.”
    “ Remember that day a couple of years back. You gave us the crib and baby stuff. You said you were never going to need it. It belonged to your mother. I cooked dinner—ravioli and Bolognese sauce. I told you how much we wanted kids.”
    She bent down to retrieve a scrap of lint from the floor, pinching it inside a tissue. She folded the sides of the tissue over the lint as if wrapping a present. “It’s nice to reminisce but ...”
    “ You have to help. Tell the courts what you know.”
    “ I can’t do that to my niece.”
    “ Chelsea’s gone mad. I don’t know how it happened.”
    “ You must have done something. Did you beat her?”
    “ Never.”
    “ Drink too much?”
    “ You know I don’t drink.”
    “ Ahh, that’s why I don’t trust you.”
    He sensed his blood pressure rising. He tried to look away from her, but she was tossing back her shoulders, pondering the ceiling.
    “ This is refreshing,” she said.
    “ What is?”
    “ Now you know how a woman feels.”
     
     
     
     
     
    Christmas passed like the ticking of a clock. New Years too. Each minute separated from the next. He cooked a turkey with sausage stuffing. He watched TV. He stared at that ridiculous log flaming on the tube for hours. He made soup from the turkey bones. A couple of teams played in the Super Bowl, and the same player fumbled twice and blew the game, but Jerry lost track of the score. He kept waiting for camera angles of the fumbler seated alone at the end of the bench.
    The sky outside was slate gray for days, but it never snowed. The wind ripped through the barren hardwoods and rattled the skeletal branches and the antique windowpanes. Somewhere along the line, Jerry managed to take his only suit back and forth to the dry cleaners. It was his wedding suit, but court day was coming, and he was going it alone.
     
     
     
     
    Jerry headed for his day of divorce, hardly able to mouth the words. He latched onto phrases like proceeding and dispensation, as if the event had no beginning or end. He drove the Ford out of the hills, descending toward Trenton. His necktie bunched