Читать книгу The End Specialist - Drew Magary, Drew Magary - Страница 15

“They’re All Getting Divorced”

I’ve been at work all week, ever since getting the cure. This was lousy planning on my part. I should have booked a vacation in Aruba to coincide with it, so I could sit back, relax, have a fruity drink, smoke a joint, and bask in my own foreverness. And now Katy says I can’t ever retire. That was all I could think about this week, as I got loaded with files: you will be doing this forever and ever and ever and ever. I’ll always need money, I imagine. But I’m not quite sure what I’m doing here now. I have no life goal anymore. There are no golden years I have to stockpile for, and the idea of trying to save for some thousand-year retirement makes my head explode. I can’t worry about the future, because now it’s not finite. I can only worry about what’s right in front of me, at this very moment. It’s kind of liberating, when I think about it. I could go be a bartender in Denmark if I wanted. I don’t think I want to, but it’s a nice option to have.

I said nothing to any of my co-workers about getting the cure. But yesterday, while I was doing research for some eight-thousand-page brief, a colleague pulled me aside. Well, not a colleague. One of my boss’ colleagues. Someone far more senior than I am. He asked me if I had a few minutes. This terrified me, because I thought I had fucked something up. Then he brought me to his office.

“Do you know anything about divorce law?” he asked.

“A bit.”

“You need to learn it all. I know you’re buried right now, but I’m organizing a special divorce seminar, and you need to attend.”

“Why?”

“Because they’re all getting divorced,” he said. “All of them. Every banker and hedge fund guy in this town is looking for a way out right now. And if they aren’t looking for a way out, their wives are. We have three guys here who are good with divorce statutes. That’s not enough. We’re gonna have to double or triple the load. We’re talking about cases that could go on for ages. They haven’t even defined the law on most of this stuff yet. Big, big moneymaker. It’s where you’re going to want to be. You don’t want to stay in estate law. It’ll be extinct within two decades.”

“Jesus.”

He then told me a story relayed from one of the divorce partners at some other firm. One day some big swinging dick showed up at the firm, flew past the receptionist, and stormed into his office.

“I want an annulment,” shouted the big swinging dick.

The lawyer was nonplussed. “What?”

“You heard me! I want an annulment, and I want it done quickly.”

“You can’t get an annulment,” the lawyer told him. “You’ve been married to your wife for twenty years.”

“It was under false pretenses.”

“What false pretenses?”

“She got the cure, and so did I. Completely changes the parameters of our original arrangement.”

“Yes, but the cure didn’t exist twenty years ago. For there to be false pretenses, it had to have existed back when you signed the marriage license. And even then, I’m not sure how it would count.”

“Listen, I’m a traditional man. I believe when you take that vow at the altar, you should abide by it. I vowed to stay with that woman all the days of my life. But I figured that was seventy or eighty years, tops. Now I’m supposed to spend the next thousand years with her? That’s insane.”

“I think what you want is a divorce.”

“Why? So she can take everything I own? That woman has been spending every weekend with her personal trainer for six years. And then I have sex five times with a brand manager and I’m the asshole? You tell me how that makes sense. No, I want an annulment. Our marriage never would have existed if this cure had been around.”

“I can’t issue you an annulment under those circumstances. It’s a binding marriage. It lasts forever.”

“But no one told me forever would be this long!” the big swinging dick screamed. “I know I swore to be with her till death, but that was under a different definition of death, was it not?”

The lawyer stammered, “Well, that’s a bit of a gray area right now.”

“Well, ungray it. Make it black or make it white. I don’t care which. I’ll pay you five million if you can get it annulled. Five million. And, if you can’t, you get me my divorce. Then you charge me one hundred million in legal fees. That way, I’m technically broke and she can’t touch the cash. But I only pay you five million, and you ignore the rest of the debt.”

“That’s illegal in about thirty-seven different ways.”

“I don’t care! I want my money, and I want a clean break from that woman. Give her the townhouse if you need a negotiating tool. Between the dog hair and that glass sofa she bought, she’s made the place all but unlivable anyway. And I want it done by fall. I have a two-week vacation in Majorca with our former nanny, and I don’t want to cancel it. Get it done or I’ll find a real lawyer.”

And with that, the big swinging dick stormed right back out. Two hours later, his wife walked into the exact same lawyer’s office, demanding the townhouse, the Hamptons estate, and “alimony for the rest of his miserable existence, regardless of length.”

I’m definitely attending that seminar.

Date Modified: 6/26/2019, 10:10PM