Jake gritted his teeth a little, his pride definitely taking a shot but still standing.
“I guess that’s the way it will have to be then,” he said. “Call him up and tell him to remove me from consideration.”
The following afternoon, while Jake, Laura, and the two sets of parents were south of the equator and west of the International Date Line, waiting for their connecting flight in the first-class lounge of Auckland International Airport, Celia Valdez was having a business brunch with Anwara Khatun-Nelson, her high-priced divorce lawyer.
They were in a place called Mimosas and Eggs, a classy, trendy joint on the northern fringes of Brentwood. Celia, dressed in black slacks and a pink blouse, was finishing up her second of the signature mimosas while Anwara, who was wearing a dark gray pantsuit, was still working on her first.
“You’re all settled into your new place now?” Anwara asked her. Pauline had secured for her a six-month lease on a residential condo in the South Park district of downtown LA while she had been out on tour. It was a 2500 square foot luxury condo on the top floor of a twenty-two-story building. She enjoyed an impressive view of the west side of Los Angeles all the way to the ocean.
“For the most part,” Celia said. “Paulie arranged to have most of my clothes and other personal things brought over from Greg’s house, as well as getting me a bed and a few basic items of furniture. All I have to do now is finish up the interior design, get a few more couches and chairs and things, and set up my entertainment system.”
“Do you plan to stay there?” the lawyer asked.
“Not any longer than I have to,” she said. “It’ll do for now, especially since I won’t be there much over the next few months. Once we’re done touring, however, I plan to buy my own house, probably in Malibu.”
“Malibu is nice,” Anwara said appreciatively.
“It is,” Celia agreed. “I’ve developed an affinity for living on the ocean.”
“You know, I’ve talked to Greg’s lawyer a few times now. Greg is perfectly agreeable to paying your housing expenses until you acquire your own home.”
“Tell him thanks, but no thanks,” Celia said plainly. “I have enough money of my own. There is no reason for him to pay for anything for me.”
Anwara shook her head a little in wonderment. “Wow,” she said. “That statement goes against everything I believe in as a ball-busting divorce lawyer.”
“Greg has had his balls busted enough by Mindy Snow,” she said. “I am not without a certain degree of sympathy for him.”
“I suppose,” Anwara said. “It’s just ... you know ... un-American not to go after a man for everything he has during a divorce battle.”
“I’m not American,” Celia reminded her. “I’m Venezuelan, remember?”
“You hold dual citizenship now, don’t you?”
“I do,” she confirmed. “I went through the process about a year after Greg and I got married. I even get jury duty notices now, although they never pick me.”
“That makes you half American,” Anwara told her. “Couldn’t we go after half of his stuff?”
She smiled and shook her head. “I don’t need his money. I have enough of my own. I just want to make a clean split. I take my stuff, he takes his, and we stay out of each other’s way from here on out.”
“His lawyer said pretty much the same thing,” Anwara said sourly. “Greg just wants to get the whole process over with and start life over.”
“He’ll be fine,” Celia predicted. “Thanks to the little campaign we initiated, his reputation and mine remain reasonably intact.”
“Yes, that was quite the production,” Anwara had to admit. “Even before this last issue of Smooth Operator came out, Mindy Snow was pretty much trashed. And now that everyone is reading about her escapades in a notorious pornographic publication ... wow ... I’d be surprised if she has the guts to show her face in public for the next year. Maybe even longer. Did you read that article?”
“Uh ... well ... some of it,” Celia said. “I had the doorman of my new building pick me up a copy of it this morning. I only read about the first two encounters before it was time to start getting ready for this meeting.”
“I haven’t read it,” Anwara said, “just heard the tales from some of the paralegals at the office. They said it’s a very raunchy article.”
“That is what Smooth Operator is known for,” Celia said. “They spare no sleazy detail.”
“Alleged sleazy detail,” Anwara corrected.
“Of course,” Celia said with a chuckle.
The waiter brought their food to them—Eggs Florentine for Celia and a shrimp omelet for Anwara. Celia ordered one more mimosa. They ate slowly, talking a little more about the next steps in the divorce process and then gradually working the conversation over to Anwara herself.
Celia was fascinated by the story of how the beautiful woman before her had been born in the city of Dhaka in what, at the time, had been known as East Pakistan, a subdivision of Pakistan that had been created with the partition of British controlled India after World War II. Made up mostly of members of the Bengali race, of which Anwara and her family were a part, East Pakistan fought a brutal civil war with Pakistan in 1971, eventually bloodying the Pakistanis enough that they were granted independence and became the country of Bangladesh. While the war was in progress, however, Anwara’s parents, both of whom were professors at the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology and, as such, primary targets for Pakistani death squads operating in Dhaka, fled first to India and then, in 1975, to the United States.
Young Anwara flourished in the upper middle-class upbringing of diverse Los Angeles. Though she abandoned her adherence to the religion of Islam at a young age—her parents had both been quite secular themselves and never discouraged this—she held onto her culture’s reverence for education. After graduating high school as valedictorian, she attended USC and then the UC Berkeley School of Law, graduating summa cum laude from both. While at USC she met a fellow Philosophy major named Jeff Nelson, an easy-going surfer, very fond of marijuana intoxication, who was simply obtaining a college degree as a requirement of getting his hands on a trust fund his grandmother had set up for him years before. Nelson drifted through college, getting mostly C’s and the occasional B in his classes, keeping his head just enough above water to graduate. Still, there was something in him that Anwara fell deeply in love with. They got married shortly after they both graduated and had their first and only child while Anwara was in law school. Jeff now took care of their daughter Mia full time and had a part-time gig as a semi-professional surfer. He spent a lot of time getting stoned and playing video games and surfing the net on an expensive computer system with the highest available online bandwidth currently available.
Sounds like a dream life for this Jeff character, Celia thought as she heard the tale. At the same time, however, she could not help but notice the clear affection Anwara had in her voice whenever she spoke of her husband and her child. She really did love the man, it seemed. Which was a good thing for Jeff. Imagine if he had to get divorced from one of the best divorce attorneys in Los Angeles. I’m betting she had his ass sign a prenup.
The lunch wrapped up just after two o’clock. The two women hugged and said goodbye for now. Anwara retrieved her Mercedes from the valet and Celia used her cell phone to call for her limousine. It arrived a few minutes later and she climbed in the back for the trip back to South Park. She consumed a potent rum and coke on the way.