"Block, Lawrence - CMS - Strangers On A Handball Court" - читать интересную книгу автора (Block Lawrence)

"But you don't want to marry her."

"There's nothing I want more than to marry her and spend the rest of my life with her."

His frown deepened. "Wait a minute," he said. "Let me think. You're both single, you both want to get married, but there's a problem. All I can think of is she's your sister, but I can't believe that's it, especially since you said it's a common problem. I'll tell you, I think my brain's tired from too much time in the sun. What's the problem?"

"I'm divorced."

"So who isn't? I'm divorced and I'm remarried. Unless it's a religious thing. I bet that's what it is."

"No."

"Well, don't keep me guessing, fella. I already gave up once, remember?"

"The problem is my ex-wife," I said. "The judge gave her everything I had but the clothes I was wearing at the time of the trial. With the alimony I have to pay her, I'm living in a furnished room and cooking on a hotplate. I can't afford to get married, and my girl wants to get married-and sooner or later she's going to get tired of spending her time with a guy who can never afford to take her anyplace decent." I shrugged. "Well," I said, "you get the picture."

"Boy, do I get the picture."

"As I said, it's not a very original problem."

"You don't know the half of it." He signaled the waiter for two more beers, and when they arrived he lit another cigarette and took a long swallow of his beer. "It's really something," he said. "Meeting like this. I already told you I got an ex-wife of my own."

"These days almost everybody does."

"That's the truth. I must have had a better lawyer than you did, but I still got burned pretty bad. She got the house, she got the Cadillac and just about everything else she wanted. And now she gets fifty cents out of every dollar I make. She's got no kids, she's got no responsibilities, but she gets fifty cents out of every dollar I earn and the government gets another thirty or forty cents. What does that leave me?"

"Not a whole lot."

"You better believe it. As it happens I make a good living. Even with what she and the government take I manage to live pretty decently. But do you know what it does to me, paying her all that money every month? I hate that woman's guts and she lives like a queen at my expense."

I took a long drink of beer. "I guess our problems aren't all that different."

"And a lot of men can say the same thing. Millions of them. A word of advice, friend. What you should do if you marry your girl friend-"

"I can't marry her."

"But if you go ahead and marry her anyway. Just make sure you do what I did before I married my second wife. It goes against the grain to do it because when you're about to marry someone you're completely in love and you're sure it's going to last forever. But make a prenuptial agreement. Have it all signed and witnessed before the marriage ceremony, and have it specify that if there's a divorce she does not get dime one, she gets zip. You follow me? Get yourself a decent lawyer so he'll draw up something that will stand up, and get her to sign it, which she most likely will because she'll be so starry-eyed about getting married. Then you'll have nothing to worry about. If the marriage is peaches and cream forever, which I hope it is, then you've wasted a couple of hundred dollars on a lawyer and that's no big deal. But if anything goes wrong with the marriage, you're in the catbird seat."

I looked at him for a long moment. "It makes sense," I said.

"That's what I did. Now my second wife and I, we get along pretty good. She's young, she's beautiful, she's good company, I figure I got a pretty good deal. We have our bad times, but they're nothing two people can't live with. And the thing is, she's not tempted by the idea of divorcing me, because she knows what she'll come out with if she does. Zeeee-ro."

"If I ever get married again," I said, "I'll take your advice."

"I hope so."

"But it'll never happen," I said. "Not with my ex-wife bleeding me to death. You know, I'm almost ashamed to say this, but what the hell, we're strangers, we don't really know each other, so I'll admit it. I have fantasies of killing her. Stabbing her, shooting her, tying her to a railroad track and letting a train solve my problem for me."

"Friend, you are not alone. The world is full of men who dream about killing their ex-wives."