CHAPTER TWO
It was the day after his divorce was final. The very morning after. But why was he still feeling so uneven? Why did he feel as if he still had a ball and chain to drag around?
He stood at his floor-to-ceiling window in his massive penthouse apartment at the Watergate, and looked out over Foggy Bottom.
With a cup of coffee in one hand and his other hand buried deep inside of his suitcoat pocket, he was a man who still felt unmoored.
Adrift. A divorce from was a bitch like Cynthia should have been a feeling of triumph.
A freeing. But although he celebrated last night with his group of friends, and even managed to get himself pissy-drunk, that euphoria didn’t last. That triumph wasn’t as long as a nightcap.
Not because he regretted getting rid of Cynthia.
It was good-riddance as far as he was concerned.
He couldn’t wait to get rid of Cynthia and her gold-digging ass.
But maybe because it wasn’t his first rodeo.
She was divorce number three after all. Three hits.
Three misses. Maybe it was just old to him now.
Not that he was some eunuch. He was nowhere near it. But as far as a committed relationship of any kind? That was over.
Not that his women friends agreed. They were blowing up his phone already.
He picked up his phone and looked at the missed calls.
From Cecily to Gwendolyn to Amber and Ashley, they all had dreams of being Mrs. Vincent Fontaine number four.
But they were wasting their time. There was never going to be a number four.
They could rest assured of that. No wife.
No kids. No life. That was his fate and he was going to embrace it.
But as he took another sip of his coffee and looked out over the whole of Washington, D.C. where he could see the top of Fontaine-Bachman, his skyscraper of an office building, the fact that his heart’s desire was never going to come true felt almost debilitating. It felt like such a letdown.
“Sir?”
It was his butler.
“Yes?”
“You told me to remind you of the time. It’s time to leave, sir.”
Time to go to more meetings and more discussions and more disagreements and more, more, more.
“Tell Jason to bring the limo around. I’ll be right down,” he said as he made his way to the kitchen to pour out his remaining coffee.
And he felt like T.S. Eliot’s J. Alfred Prufrock: For he, too, had measured out his life with coffee spoons.
Nothing grand for him anymore. Nothing substantive. Just the motion of life without living.
That was him.
But at least he was rid of Cynthia.
That was him too.
He smiled at that sweet fact as he made his way to the exit.