Kathy’s eyes widened for a moment, then she buried her face in her hands and began to cry loudly.
Instantly, Elise and Olivia were beside her, hugging and patting.
“I’m so sorry,” Olivia said. “I shouldn’t have told you. I’m sorry, sorry, sorry.”
Kathy got up, her pretty face covered in tears, and went to the refrigerator. She withdrew a cold bottle of champagne, untwisted the bale, and the cork popped out. She poured it into the glasses of orange juice and held hers up. “A toast! At this moment I am the happiest woman on this planet.”
Elise and Olivia were too stunned to speak. They managed to pick up their glasses but all they did was stare.
Kathy drank deeply, then poured more champagne into her juice. “Ray would never leave without someone waiting for him. Tell me it’s Rita. Please, I hope it is. They’re so perfect for each other. And if he marries her and they produce kids maybe Carl’s mother will forgive him about her son.” She looked at them. “If he told you about Rita, did he tell you about Carl too? Of course he did. Just so you know, Carl was a thug. Not the saint Ray wants to believe he was.”
Elise and Olivia were still holding their glasses in silence.
“Drink up, girls! We have a lot to celebrate.”
They took sips but their eyes showed their shock.
Olivia began to recover. “How do you know about Carl?”
“I’ve always known about him,” Kathy said. “Ray and Dad met when Ray invaded a lunch Dad was having with a client. Afterward, Dad said Ray was either the best salesman he’d ever met or a lying thief. He told me to find out which. My report said that Ray was both of them. Dad said he was perfect for the advertising world and hired him.”
Wide-eyed, Elise and Olivia sat down at the table and began to eat. “Ray said you hired his secretaries,” Olivia said.
“Yes, I did.” There was pride in Kathy’s voice. “Both my father and Ray dump clients’ social lives onto me. If some guy who owns half of Iowa comes to New York and wants Dad’s agency to advertise whatever it is he sells, I am delegated to show the wife around. Whatever she wants to do, I’m told to fulfill her wishes. One wife wanted me to hire a Magic Mike–type dancer to visit her in her hotel room. She seemed to think I’d know how to arrange that. ‘You live in New York, don’t you?’ she said.”
Kathy took a breath. “Anyway, I’d had enough of all of it. I was married to Ray but I didn’t feel like his wife. We were to the point where he’d pat me on the shoulder and say, ‘Good job.’ Like I was one of his colleagues. I wanted out. But you’ve met Ray. It was just like with Dolores. It had to be Ray’s decision to end it. I knew that the only way he was going to let me go—I mean really and truly release me—was if he had someone else.”
“So you set out to find her,” Olivia said.
“When Ray’s original secretary retired, I coaxed him into letting me find someone to replace her. I treated it like a beauty pageant. I don’t know Ray’s sexual preference except that he doesn’t like big, healthy, curvy women like me, so I
went for a variety.”
Smiling broadly, Kathy took a drink of her mimosa. “I found a Scandinavian blonde who had the men in the office running into glass doors. But Ray never looked at her. Next came a cute little Latin girl who married another guy in the office. Then there was a buxom redhead.”
Kathy laughed. “I nearly drove my husband crazy for over two years. Every time a girl learned how to run his office, I’d make up an excuse to get her another job.”
“And you were trying to find a wife for your husband.” Elise sounded as though she couldn’t quite believe it.
“Yes. Ray may wear a suit to the office, and he can sit down to dinner with men who play polo, but scratch the surface and he’s the guy from the streets of Brooklyn.”
“And that’s where Rita is from,” Olivia said.
“Oh yes! She was a godsend. The answer to all my prayers. I was to the point where I thought I was going to have to ask Ray for a divorce.”
“And if you did, he’d dig in his heels and say no,” Olivia said. “He had to make the decision and no one else. If you asked, out of principle he’d wage a war—and everyone would lose. You, your father, Ray, the company, your clients.”
“I think you understand my husband completely—and so did Carl’s mother. When Rita needed a job, she sent her to me, not to Ray. I think she figured that after years with him, I probably knew him pretty well. I had Rita come to the house for lunch and right away I saw that she was reserved enough for him in public, but underneath, she still had that street flair. I thought they’d make a perfect couple. I hired her to work for Ray.” Kathy grinned. “I am very proud of myself!”
“What about Dr. Hightower?” Olivia asked.
“That was another gift out of the blue. Totally unexpected,” Kathy said. “When Ray told me he was going to see a therapist, I think he expected me to talk him out of it, to say that nothing could be wrong with a great guy like him. But I didn’t. I was hoping with all my might that he was trying to get up the courage to ask me for a divorce. The man has the strange belief that my entire life is him. It almost is, but not by choice!” Kathy poured herself more champagne, minus the orange juice.
Olivia picked up the card and looked at it. “Now that you have what you want, you probably wouldn’t want to change anything.”
“You can get your New York apartment and maybe you can make your father listen to you,” Elise said.
Kathy thought about that for a moment. “I think that in this case it’s like a prisoner who’s released after being found innocent. All his life he would have people saying, ‘Weren’t you in jail? What was it like?’ In the advertising world, I will always be known as ‘Ray’s first wife.’ The one he dumped. As it is, women ask me what it’s like being married to him. They sense that he’s only half a step away from being some street gangster and it excites them.”