"You let yourself get caught with another man?" Greg gaped at me. "No wonder Julie had a cow. Damn Jimmy, do you have a death wish or something?"

"If that's what you want to call it," I answered. The never-ending questions were starting to rattle me; I just wanted some peace and quiet for a while. Another hour of this and I'd confess to the Lindbergh kidnapping just to make him shut up.

"What do you call it, Jimmy?"

"A huge mistake. A huge mistake that I still pay for every month."

"Huge mistake...that's the understatement of the year. Ah, the joys of alimony. That must be a bitch."

"It is, but I think I owe Julie something after all that."

"Another reason to throw in the towel and switch teams," he said with a chuckle since he didn't have to live through the agony of all those divorces. "No more marriages means no more divorces, and no more divorces means no more alimony to wives until they die or remarry."

"Julie will never remarry just to spite me," I remarked with a disgusted snort. "She'll be squeezing every red cent out of me until one of us dies."

Greg's face went blank. "But you don't owe me anything, do you?" he said.

"I owe you a plate." It was the first thing to come out of my mouth and it was a stupid thing to say.

"Cut the crap. You know what I'm talking about." His tone was exasperated, maybe he was tired of talking as well and just wanted to hurry up and get it all over and done with already.

"I owed you an explanation, which I gave you," I said quietly and cautiously, hoping nothing else stupid spilled out before I could help it. "Other than that, no."

"That makes it so much easier to walk away."

"I was never going to walk away."

"You were making plans, right?"

"They were plans, that's all. Not even real plans. And they weren't plans to walk away. I told you they've been scrapped. I've made my decision," I replied, standing up. I didn't want to talk anymore. Anything else we had to discuss could wait. "I'm not going anywhere, except to bed." With that I walked out the room. He didn't try to trip me with the cane. He didn't follow.


For a while I lay there in the pitch dark, waiting for him to come crashing in with a hastily packed suitcase and demand that I get the hell out, out of his apartment and out of his life. For the longest time nothing happened; no sounds, no movement, then I heard the television click on and the sofa creak as he sat down. The usual routine, watching his shows with a glass or two of brandy. I drifted off as the low babble of The L Word swirled around the bedroom.

Still dark. Someone was talking to me. I managed to peel my eyes open. Greg's shadowy form was hovering me, shaking my shoulder. "You're taking your half out of the middle. Scoot over."

"Sorry," I mumbled and inched my way back over to my side, still groggy.

"Save it for something worth being sorry about." He flopped into the bed with all the grace of a drunk elephant seal, then suddenly yanked me right back to where I was. Before I knew what was happening, he was wrapped around me like a living straight jacket. The more I moved, the tighter his grip became. His hands were immobile manacles around my wrists.

"Here's a little thought to sleep on," he whispered hoarsely into my ear, smelling of soap and brandy. "If the day should ever come when you really want to walk away, remember two things. One, you'd better be serious about it. Two, you really better be serious about it. After all the this time, after all the years I've known you, I'm not about to let you go that easily. Do you hear me?"

"Yes." I gulped the air like a fish wanting to get back into the water.

"Damn right you fucking hear me," he growled, then moved his mouth up and down my neck as if to remind me what I might be missing before adding, "You said you made a decision. What decision was that?"

"To stay here with you."

"Why?"

"That's what I want."

"Is that really what you want or are you just telling me what I want to hear?"

"It's what I want, goddamm it, it's what I want," I managed to spit out that sentence before I broke down in tears again. "Christ, I said I was sorry. I'm still here. Can't you see that? I'm still here. What else do you want from me, Greg? What else do you want from me, just say it, please..."

His grip loosened and became an embrace. His hoarse whisper turned into some words of consolation that I couldn't hear as I sobbed into the pillowcase.