“Hey, not me. That’s Teddy’s MO. We finally hammered out an agreement. Everything’s divided up right down to the penny. I get this. She gets that. Sign on the dotted line and we have a deal. She signs. I sign. Now she wants something else. What the hell is that about?”

“Did you ever stop to think this is a conditioned response on your part?” I said. “You’re so accustomed to Teddy besting you, you can’t accept peace when she offers it.”

“You want a drink? Iced tea?”

“Sure.”

“Wait here.” He moved to the doorway, where I could see an intercom mounted on the wall. He pressed a button.

“Yes, sir?”

“Tell Maurie to bring us a couple iced teas, and not that mint shit.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’ll be right back,” he said. He paused to pull off his running shoes and padded into the next room in his sock feet. A moment later I heard a shower running.

Three minutes later he was back wearing fresh clothes and running a pocket comb through his hair. We went out onto the patio and sat down. Maurie, who’d met me at the door, made her way down from the main house bearing a silver tray on which she’d set two tall glasses of iced tea. When she reached us, she placed the tray on the wrought-iron table between our two chairs. She’d included a silver creamer, a sugar bowl, and real linen cocktail napkins monogrammed with an X.

While we sipped our tea, we sat and looked out at the property. The gardener’s leaf blower punctuated the otherwise still air.

I said, “How do you keep the lawn so green?”

“I have water trucked in.”

“Ah.”

I thought he had finished bad-mouthing Teddy, but he’d clearly been brooding that I hadn’t been brought around to his point of view. He took up his list of grievances as though I gave a shit.

“Okay, here. I should have told you this. Typical. She gets the sterling silver flatware? Six hundred and thirty-nine pieces that price out at three hundred ninety-eight thousand five hundred. She sold it to an antique dealer in New Orleans and got top dollar. I know because the dealer called me to make sure it was on the up-and-up. Are you following?”

I was following, but I didn’t think he was going anywhere. This recital constituted a peculiar form of bragging. He was elevating himself by enumerating the dollar amounts of everything he’d lost to her. “It sounds like she’s stockpiling cash,” I said.

“Why would she do that?”

“You still have earning power. She doesn’t, unless she has a skill set you haven’t mentioned yet,” I said. “Who got the house?”

He seemed surprised. “This house? I did. Because she couldn’t afford the property taxes or the upkeep.”

“It has to be worth millions.”

“Twelve, but that’s down from what it was. Market’s flat.”

“What else did you get?”

“Well, you know. Half the stocks and bonds. I did get a Tiffany necklace she’d kill for. It was an anniversary gift, our tenth, but the judge put it in my column to offset the art she was claiming on her side. She put up a fuss like the jewelry had sentimental value, but that was strictly a negotiating tool.”