him for how many years?”
“Not so happily! We had our moments. Maybe I threw him out a few times.”
Anthony asked me if I knew this. I said, “Um, Charles recently filled me in on a few nights spent on his—I hate to say it—office couch.”
“Poor him,” said Margot. “Poor, unloved perv.”
“Just when I was going to say that he paid his debt to society, I think I won’t. I’m buttoning my lip,” said Anthony.
“It’s very simple,” said Margot. “I hate him for what he did: illegal, immoral, unethical, creepy, whatever you want to call it. It doesn’t matter. He can make speeches and pay his debt to society until the cows come home, but to me, to a wife”—her voice rose—“to a devoted wife who sometimes sat in the outer office, deaf and blind, filling in for his receptionist! It’s unforgivable.”
Was Margot crying? Her voice got thick on the last two words so I stepped in. “If Charles had been a politician, Margot would not have been standing next to him at the press conference where he announced that he was taking full responsibility for his own actions.”
“We hate that!” Margot cried. “He wanted me to do something along those lines: go to court, sit behind him, look sympathetic in a matronly suit. I refused! His lawyer begged me. His mother and sister begged me. The politest answer I gave was ‘Yeah, you’ll see me in court, all right! Divorce court!’”
Anthony said, “So I, who am the resident expert on the trial of Charles W. Pierrepont, MD, won’t get to meet or lay eyes on him, despite his living twelve floors away from his ex-wife and ex-favorite-sister-in-law?”
“Go knock on his door for all I care,” said Margot. “Bring a notebook. Bring him cupcakes. Ghostwrite his autobiography. Just don’t give him our regards.”
It may not have been that exact night when the intercom buzzed, but it was soon enough, and in the middle of another discussion re Charles as unfortunate neighbor. I answered and heard our night doorman saying, “Dr. P asking me if Miz Considine home.”
“Why?” I asked.
“To visit, I think.”
Without consulting Margot—I surely knew what her answer would be—I said, “Absolutely not.”
“She’s out?” asked he who knew all our comings and goings.
“Actually, no. But she doesn’t want to see him.”
“He live here. He free to get on elevator.”
I heard in the background, unmistakably Charles, “Is she home?”
I told Rafael it was an awkward situation. Delicado.
Margot called from the table, “What’s the big discussion out there?”
“It’s Rafael asking if Charles can come up.”
“Maybe he has the first alimony check,” said Anthony.
I asked Rafael if Charles was holding an envelope. He was not. I said, “Please tell him that he should e-mail Margot and tell her what this is about.”
After another brief exchange, Rafael said, “He no has computer.”
Anthony said, “Oh, let him up. It’ll be interesting.”
“What about the ankle bracelet?” I asked. “He can’t just wander around the building.”
“I made that up,” said Margot.
Anthony was now on his feet and stacking our dirty plates. “Aren’t you dying to know what he looks like after how many months in prison? Ten, twelve, fifteen? He probably worked out in the prison gym.”
“Or maybe you’re dying to get a look at him,” said Margot.
And suddenly it was Charles’s voice on the intercom. “Margot?”
I flinched, backed away, then came back to say, “No. It’s Gwen.”
“Look. Let’s be adults here. I have something for her. It isn’t a social visit.”
I covered the receiver and whispered “I think he has a check” as loudly as I dared.
Margot said, “Tell him he can come up, but not inside. I’ll be in my room. Yell when he’s gone. And don’t feed him.”
“You look fine,” I told her.
“You think I’m worried how I look to this piece of criminal shit? Because I could not care less! I’m hiding because I don’t want to see or talk to him—not because I have to refresh my lipstick.”
I said, “Rafael, tell Dr. Pierrepont he can come up.”
“He probably there already,” he said.
11
No Hug?
EVEN BEFORE HE materialized, Charles offended by rapping twice on our front door, opening it unbidden, and calling, “Hul-lo! Don’t you lock the door?”
I sent Anthony out to the foyer because he was wearing a cropped, sleeveless T-shirt and sweatpants, abs and biceps exposed formidably.
“May I help you?” I heard him ask in the tone one uses with an intruder.
“Do I have the right apartment?” Charles asked.
Anthony said, “And how would I know that?”
“I’m Charles Pierrepont. Is this Margot’s apartment?”
“And