Chapter 2

David Leland was rather busy shopping, more than a little concerned over his tighter than usual grocery budget now, especially without Alycen to help him out with that. It was usually her job to sort out the savings, discounts, coupons, etc., but now he needed to figure that out in a hurry, since he didn’t have all weekend. Sure, she was a cheating whore, but he missed her helpful hand with such things. Why did that sharp mind and practical nature, not to mention such a fine body, have to come with a vicious streak and an adulterous heart?

Despite her claims that it didn’t mean that she loved him any less, she had responded rather hatefully and spitefully to his decision to file for divorce, using her shark lawyer to ream him good in court, with the help of that bitchy dragonlady of a judge. They had made mincemeat of his own lawyer, who was admittedly cheap, but that was because she had already drained his savings. Well, he had gotten back half those savings, at least, thank God for small favors, but that only went to pay his pathetic lawyer and her evil, jaded, man-hating one. Now, he was required to pay child support for a kid that wasn’t his, at least until the paternity tests came back.

His lawyer had managed to do THAT much for him, but he was still stuck sleeping on the hideaway bed at his bachelor brother Dan’s cabin, which was a considerable commute out of town, because he still had to pay the mortgage for his ex-wife (well, the divorce wasn’t final, but would be within 60 days). He also had to pay alimony to Alycen, but thankfully, it was limited by Texas law to last only until she remarried, unless he chose to keep paying (yeah, like that would happen, right). He got to keep his bike, but Alycen got his pickup, too. At least she had to take over paying for that, another small victory for him (very small).

Alycen also won half of his 401 k, half of his CDs, and only gave up half of his business in exchange for clear title to his house (not that she had to pay for that ... he was still stuck holding the bag for it). In a very small win for him, though, the judge was forced to concede that she should only receive mortgage payments until her child was 18, or unless it was refinanced, in which case she would have to start paying for it herself. Unfortunately, as the owner of the house, she got to choose if or when to refinance it.

David seriously thought of appealing that rule, but he didn’t want to jeopardize his small, but growing business as a realtor (irony, that he sold real estate, but couldn’t afford to BUY any, thanks to the divorce judgment), and he couldn’t afford the legal fees, anyway. So, Alycen, his mean-spirited ex, got the joys and benefits of owning a house, but without any of the headaches (except property taxes, he smiled at that thought). David didn’t know how she, her lawyer, his lawyer (for being an incompetent asshole), or that accursed judge lived with themselves or slept at night, but he put more than even money (hypothetically, since he was hard-up on liquid cash) on them being sociopaths.

Add to this the Mayhem going on and the rise of a new regime that had required him to register his guns (but had firmly decided not to confiscate any or impose any actual gun bans), and David cursed his luck of late. The Chinese had an ancient saying, “May you live in interesting times,” and now he could see why that was a curse. He didn’t know what to think of the regime change, other than he was firmly convinced that the saying was true, “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” Regime changes seldom improved things in human history, at least from what he read, at least not a lot of things, and they often made things even worse. Still, the jury was out, and while David didn’t care for the loss of political freedom, he was also aware that democracy had been a sick joke for the last few decades, anyway. It was really bought and paid for by the lobbyists and their sponsors, after all. Maybe the new boss wouldn’t be same as the old boss, he hoped (with apologies to The Who).

That was when he saw her ... the evil cunt herself! Not his ex-wife, that was, not even her lawyer or his ... no, this was pure karma, as it was the evil bitch judge herself! What was she doing, mixing with the hoi polloi, anyway? Didn’t she have some other man’s balls to slice off and keep in a mason jar or something? David wouldn’t be surprised if she and the other radical feminists had a secret coven, where they brewed in a witch’s cauldron and mixed in men’s privates while dancing naked and having lesbian orges under the moonlight or something in honor of some kind of matriarchal deity or someone like that. David was no prude or homophobe, and he had even entertained the idea of swinging or open marriage at various points, only to have Alycen shoot them down, only to turn around and cheat on him, the hypocritical bitch! Anyway, didn’t Judge Crooked Face have a bunch of money like the rest of the corrupt judges, lawyers, and politicians, anyway? Shouldn’t she be shopping at some exclusive shoppe or whatever?

To make matters worse, she saw him and at first mistook him for an employee for whatever reason (maybe the red polo shirt that resembled the staff’s uniform). Approaching him with the utter gall of touching his shoulder after he turned away his head in disgust and scorn, she nearly started at the sight of her most recent victim, the fine, hard-working small businessman that she gave the shaft. That old Jerry Reed song, “She Got The Goldmine, I Got The Shaft,” came to mind again, of course. David visibly grimaced as Trudy Randall withdrew her hand in shock.

“Mr. Leland, I thought that you worked here. Sorry. You don’t, do you?” the fifty year old ex-judge asked the little guy she had screwed over.

“No, not yet. At this rate, though, I might have to take a second job to keep out of the poorhouse, thanks to you,” he practically spat at her.

Trudy stood there in shock, never having actually faced one of these men in person before after the divorce decree was handed down by her. She had no clue that he was so bitter, so angry. Was this typical of the ex-husbands that she had fleeced in court? True, she had often smirked at the thought of some of these men living on ramen in roach-infested apartments, mostly because she was convinced that most husbands were like her ex, abusive jerks who just never got caught mistreating and bullying their wives.

Now, however, she was forced to actually witness how it looked, how she looked from the man’s eyes, and she didn’t like how that felt. Did they really feel themselves so misused by her? Was there really such a collection of angry, bitter, jaded men, a path of destroyed wrecks and financial carnage left behind in her path? She knew this intellectually, even feared that some of them had a hand in her own downfall, but to actually see how it appeared to them from their perspective, that was a bit jarring, to put it mildly.

“Mr. Leland, by my calculations, you still have more than enough to live on comfortably, or did my staff really get those figures wrong? Besides, I’m not really supposed to discuss that ... or am I? I guess that there is no rule against it anymore. You’ll be happy to know that I got the sack today. Maybe that will give you some satisfaction, some Schadenfreude, if you know what that means,” Trudy naturally assumed that, as a “manly man,” David had no intellectual pursuits or interests, or even curiosity.

“Yes, I know what that means. Wrongful joy, and yes, the idea that you’ve been deposed from your throne of injustice, where you castrate one poor soul after another, and possibly put a step or two away from penury, another big word for you, that’s some sweet, poetic justice to my ears and my mind. I might even get some sleep at night. No doubt, sleepless nights are a novel concept to you and your sociopathic friends in the legal community, who gleefully roast men foolish enough to get married over the coals to add to our misery and suffering. It won’t give me back the hard-earned wealth that you, my wife, and her lawyer stole from me, the fruits of my labor, but it’s a little bit of satisfaction to me,” David snarled at Trudy.

“It wasn’t theft, Mr. Leland. It was a lawful judgment. Apparently, though, the new regime thinks differently. I’ve been told that my views, that women need more financial security to offset men’s economic advantages, are outdated, and that I’m a ‘dinosaur,’ stuck in the past century, that too much has shifted in women’s favor and needs to move backward a bit. I’m sorry that you feel ill-used, but so do I. And so does your ex-wife, no doubt. She won’t be living in the lap of luxury, even with your financial assistance, I assure you.

“All those years, and because she made a mistake in a moment of drunken passion and bad decisions, and who hasn’t been there, are your own hands clean, and she is tossed out on her ass, forced to start over and re-enter the workforce even with the alimony, and God help her if she remarries someone poorer, because then she’s screwed. It might look bad to you from your ivory tower of righteousness, but she’s lost her husband, her source of income, has to somehow keep a roof above her head, hence why you have to pay her mortgage for a while, and God forbid that she should have to refinance for some reason, because then she’s stuck with the bill for it, and now she might stuck raising a child all on her own because her husband thinks that she’s committed paternity fraud, which isn’t a real crime, by the way.

“What right have you to doubt her that she’s carrying your kid, anyway? It was ONE TIME! Statistically speaking, it’s much more likely that the child in her womb is yours instead,” Trudy went on the offensive now, feeling a bit rattled and shaken by this angry white male’s outrage at her.

“It wasn’t one time, Judge, or is it, Ms. Randall now? It was many times, as it turns out, but this was the only time that she got caught. I’ve done some digging, so I know it. This was the only time that I could prove, bitch! My God, you really do believe your own crap, don’t you? You actually think that she’s some victim! And, yes, if I’m defrauded into raising and providing for another man’s child, that IS a crime, as it should be! How is that NOT a crime? How is that not fraud, not theft?” David tore into her all over again, making her flustered now.

“Okay, it’s a financial hit and a fucked-up injustice, but she’s not intentionally cheating you by this. She didn’t know if it was your kid or not, so why endanger the child’s welfare over an uncertainty?” Trudy became defensive.

“The hell she didn’t know, or at least suspect, and if she even suspected, she should have told me and agreed to the paternity test on her own. That’s fraud by omission, and you know it! I’m not some fancy lawyer with your bullshit ethics rules and such, but I know that much! That is common sense!” David lit into her even more, now just getting warmed up.

“And have a poor, unlucky kid whose fault it isn’t be forced to live hand to mouth in a foster home or something, because your pride couldn’t take being suckered?” Trudy made a vain attempt to rationalize her actions one more time.

“Think that I would have punished a baby? No! I would have found a home for her, a loving home, or perhaps adopted her if Alycen had shown some remorse and maybe groveled a bit, perhaps we might have had a future, but she showed nothing but malice and spite that I dared to confront her for persistent adultery! God damn her ... and God double damn you, cunt!” David snapped at Trudy again, “and she wasn’t kicked out onto the street ... I was! I live in my brother’s cabin because I can’t afford a place of my own! I don’t know where you got your notions or figures or calculations, but after the fleecing that I took at your hands, my ex-wife’s, and her cunt lawyer, I can’t even keep a roof over my own head, because every spare dime that doesn’t go to her has to go into my business! That’s what it’s like to run your own firm! You really don’t know that, do you? You and your fellow elite judges and lawyers don’t know what it’s really like to run a small business at all!”

Trudy was white as a ghost now, not having taken such things into consideration, and now no longer able to fix her mistake. Her whole worldview, her entire judicial career, all of her work, was now cast into doubt by a few revelations that she now realized couldn’t be lies. The man was shopping for groceries in a discount supermarket. He wouldn’t do that if he were as well-off as she thought him to be. Her head began to spin and she began dizzy, her stomach doing flip-flops as she awakened to the lies that had guided many of her judgments.

Why? How? Why hadn’t she listened to more of these men? Sure, many were still bad like her ex, but some were apparently good men like David who got nothing but cruelty and oppression at her hands, not justice. She was supposed to be a fair and impartial judge, and she had nearly always sided with the wife, wasn’t that a form of bias, didn’t that make her a poor judge, not only of laws, but of character? Trudy couldn’t take the shock of this epiphany. She fainted and fell to the floor, weak and nauseated by this earth-shattering news.

In spite of his anger, David Leland had the decency and compassion to help Trudy to her feet and call for a chair so that she could sit down. He gave her some 7 Up that he quickly paid for in cash, sacrificing some more of his small discretionary (and shrinking) beer (domestic now was all he could afford, not his favored craft brews) budget. The store clerk looked at him strangely, since people had witnessed him in a shouting match with this woman, who had apparently been the trial judge in his divorce case. Why would a man buy a lemon-lime soda to help settle the stomach of an aging woman that he had traded barbs with just minutes before? He even gave her some Rolaids, much to her surprise.

“Sir ... I saw some of that altercation. You’re clearly mad at her, but after your confrontation somehow led to her fainting, you were actually kind to her. What gives?” Sasha Rothstein, the curly, chubby strawberry blonde, asked the once hostile guy who had shown an unexpectedly softer side to him.

“I was mad at her because she was the trial judge who royally shafted me and went more or less completely along with my wife’s plan to take me to the cleaners in the divorce. I was nicer to her after that because she fainted and she’s an older woman who clearly doesn’t have the robust constitution that she did before. While I was happy that she got sacked from the bench today, I couldn’t help feel something for her, some kind of empathy, after she seemed to have realized something that upset her, plus losing your job is not exactly the best day for anyone, not even judges,” David explained himself, wondering what Sasha would make of it.

“So, in other words, you’re a human being with the usual full gamut of emotions, even compassion and worry for others. And enough of a gentleman in spite of your obvious bitterness toward womankind to lift a hand to help an old lady who fainted. What I would have to call, dare I say it, a GOOD man? Just remind me not to get on your bad side, though. You clearly have some rage, but then, you got screwed over in a divorce, probably by a cheating bitch of an ex-wife, just like Dad was by Mom. I’m still mad at Mom for that, by the way. I’m working this job, and don’t tell my Dad this, to help him out a bit until Mom finally remarries and he doesn’t owe her any more alimony,” Sasha surprised even herself by hugging David.

“To think, when she touched my shoulder, I felt seriously violated, my person and my space breached, but when you hugged me, I felt nothing but, and I know that this sounds corny, but ‘warm fuzzies’ all around. You’re clearly not a bad person yourself,” David told the clerk, who was little more than a stranger.

“That’s the upside to a fat girl, sir. We can keep you warm at night,” Sasha joked with her usual self-deprecating humor, attacking the issue of her weight problems before others could.

“Actually, you’re not fat. Plump, sure, but it looks good on you,” David told Sasha, triggering a startled look on her face, but adding, “I know, that didn’t sound right. I’m a bit out of the game, so to speak. I’ve hardly been dating in recent months, unlike my wife, who has her dance card full.”

“No, no, your words ring more honest, more true, so your praise doesn’t seem like empty flattery or an attempt to sugarcoat things. It’s unpolished, but more authentic that way. When you compliment me that way, I feel as if ... you mean it, and that has me wanting to reach for the 7 Up myself. I got butterflies floating around in my stomach over this, but would you like to eat supper sometime together? I know that we’re both probably strapped for cash, but that’s all the more reason for a home-cooked meal together. The only downside is fewer leftovers for Dad and me, but we have enough canned goods to make do,” Sasha invited David on a date.

“Are you ... asking me out for a date ... Sasha?” David acknowledged her nametag, “David Leland, by the way, and the answer is yes. I don’t even like the dating scene anymore, and I’m definitely rusty, but for you, well, that’s another matter. You’re a very real, honest, caring person, I can see that, and you’ve got lovely hair, by the way.”

“Yes, but I’m Jewish. You don’t mind that, do you? Sasha Rothstein,” she added her last name, a bit nervous in case he somehow turned out to be an anti-Semite.

“Hell, no! Even if you were kosher, it would be a nice culinary adventure, wouldn’t it? I bet, and I hope that I’m not stereotyping too much, that you’re a terrific cook, too,” David blushed as he realized that he might indeed have fallen for the stereotype that chubby girls knew how to cook, and he might have put his foot in his mouth.

Seeing the look on David’s face, Sasha put his face in her hands and told him, “I got no complaints so far, no, I’m not kosher, but I’m a pretty fine cook, if not quite a pretty one.”

“I disagree. You’re very pretty. I love your smile, your eyes, even your braces. You might lack some confidence, but you had enough courage to ask me out, which was more than I had, given how much I’ve been burned. You’re braver than me that way, at least for now. Then again, enough of your company, and I might well get bolder,” David beamed as he recovered.

“Please make very bold with me ... and my body. Sorry if that comes out as too forward, but I’m a twenty-one year old virgin who missed out on college thanks to Daddy’s wrecked finances. I had to actually convince him to spend some of my college money to get by, too, and that was tough, because he didn’t want me to give up on my dreams. That was when I told him that those were his and Mom’s dreams for me.

“My own dreams are different. I just want, and I know that this is very old-school, which is funny because I’m not really that old-fashioned ... I want to be a housewife. There, I said it. That’s what I want, my ambition in life. Don’t tell my friends, some of them very hard-core feminists who might want to drop me if they knew the truth about me. Definitely don’t tell my mother. It would destroy what’s left out of our relationship if she found that out,” Sasha confessed now.

“So, you’re applying for a new job as Mrs. David Leland, then? Just know what you’re getting into, missy. I’m a very, very embittered, jaded, even angry, thirty-one year old, ten years your senior, unhappily not-quite divorced, cash-strapped small businessman whose wife is probably carrying another man’s baby. That’s if I’m lucky and it’s not mine, tying my life to hers forever. I wouldn’t mind being a father, but I don’t like the idea of her being in my life anymore, not at all. Then again, I’m stuck with her to an extent, at least until I can get that judgment vacated, and with that woman’s dismissal, I might actually have some small, faint hope of that,” David ranted a bit, while Sasha held him close to her bosom and even ran her fingers through his hair.

“Sorry, so unprofessional of me, doing this on the clock. Still, I’m ... I guess that I’m getting a slight crush on you. Sorry, that’s a bit much, but, yes, I wouldn’t mind the idea of being at least considered for the wife position. And some ... er, other positions, such as doggy-style, reverse cowgirl, regular cowgirl, and missionary, just to name a few. I know, I know, shocking that I can even find my own pussy, let alone know anything about sex, but really, I studied ahead, just in case,” Sasha bit her nails a little as she blushed, realizing what she said in public, even within the judge’s ears, as the old battle axe stared at them and her colleagues looked at her very funny.