Chapter 1

I DID NOT expect to like Bill, Sarah’s then-husband. To start with, his aversion to oral sex made him sound weird. I’d told Sarah, when she first revealed this after we met on her honeymoon, that I didn’t think there was a guy anywhere, no matter which team he played for, who didn’t like a blowjob. So I was prepared to meet a stick-in-the-mud. On the other hand, I knew he couldn’t be too much of a jerk or Sarah wouldn’t have married him.

Was he gay? I have no idea. Sarah says they weren’t on the same wavelength and that’s enough for me.

Instead of the strange person I’d feared I found an intelligent, funny and interesting guy. Except for his obsession with deep-sea fishing, he seemed pretty normal. Fishing never interested me, although my business partner Doug had explained more than once it wasn’t really about the fish. It was about a lot of other things. The fish were an object of meditation, or a means to meditation and self-knowledge, he said. I found that hard to believe.

“Matt, unless you’re really lucky you’re going to spend a lot of time sitting around,” Doug told me when I called bullshit on his argument. We’d had a couple of beers and were starting to feel pretty mellow. Good thing we’d also finished a pretty substantial meal of frijoles fronterizos and ceviche along with the beers or we’d have been in serious trouble. Neither of us was a big drinker. “So you’ve got plenty of time to think.”

“Sure, buddy,” I interrupted him. “So what about that cooler of beer you always take along for the day? Don’t tell me that never gets cracked open.”

He laughed.

“You bet it does. But that’s just lubrication for your mind. Unless you’ve got a pretty rowdy bunch aboard. Then all bets are off.”

Bill echoed Doug’s enthusiasm for fishing. I met him on one of my first trips to Santa Barbara after he and Sarah decided to split. I’d come down to give Sarah a hand in packing. They were going to put the house on the market.

Sarah and I hadn’t made a formal commitment yet. I was there as “a good friend,” but Bill made his view clear.

“Look, Matt, I don’t know you at all, but Sarah likes you. I don’t need to hear anything else.”

He looked me straight in the eye.

“Take care of her, Matt,” he said, “and let me know when the big day comes.”

“Whoa, Bill, we’re good friends. That’s it.”

He shook his head.

“Unless you’re bullshitting me you’re pretty much without a clue, Matt. I’ve known Sarah a long time. She’s got her eye on you, and you’re toast.” Bill laughed. “Seriously, she and I were friends long before we began to date. Maybe getting married wasn’t the best idea, but she means a lot to me.”

In California there are a handful of grounds to have a marriage annulled. Bill and Sarah weren’t blood relations, neither one had a disability or dysfunction that would prevent them from having children, both were of sound mind, and both were of age when they married. That left “fraud” and a couple of other grounds. They chose “fraud.”

At first glance that seemed an unlikely basis for declaring the marriage had never existed, but they decided Bill would assert he’d entered into the marriage without intending to fulfill his marital responsibilities. “Neither of us would contest the assertion,” Sarah told me. “There’s a thirty-day requirement before the hearing to permit the other party to respond, but in our case it was irrelevant. Bill called in a favor or two and got onto the court’s docket when a couple of parties ahead of us settled out of court. We got our hearing only forty-five days after we filed.”

She fiddled with her coffee cup.

“You know, this wasn’t all that far from the truth. Bill can speak for himself, but I think he simply hadn’t thought the whole thing through. I don’t know if he realizes it even now. Anyway, the judge bought it and granted the annulment. Bill and I shook hands and walked out together. It might have cast doubt on our sincerity if we’d hugged and kissed, which we almost did, but perhaps not. We never claimed we hated each other, only that the marriage had failed on the most basic requirement of all. Sex.”

Sarah did invite Bill to our wedding, and after the ceremony they kissed like the old friends they were and would continue to be.

“Keep her safe, Matt.”

Without thinking I hugged him, an abrazo.

“I will.”

Chapter 2 »