Hold On, I'm Opening a Bottle of Wine....

In late November, Ex emailed me and asked me to meet with him so that we could come to a resolution in this divorce without going to trial. I agreed, albeit hesitantly, to get together in public. I wasn’t sure if he was going to abduct me and lynch me or if he might just shoot me in plain sight. Or perhaps he’d gotten a girlfriend, was over me, and would be rational (please, God!). I’m not sure to this day that it was any of the above.

The meeting took place on a late Sunday morning (with my long bangs firmly in place over my left eye to hide my injuries) in a well-known restaurant in my city and it began with chit chat about what was happening in our respective lives. Initially, I was puzzled with regards to the nature of the conversation because it was as surreal as chatting about the weather with Osama Bin Laden. I wanted to spend about as much time with him as I would with Charles Manson, so I wasn't interested in Britney Spear’s latest meltdown and whether or not Suri is actually a product of L. Ron Hubbard’s frozen sperm. I felt like I had just fallen down the rabbit hole. Or taken a hit of LSD (which I've never done, by the way, but I can only imagine after watching one of my distant cousins take it and then roll around on the asphalt in front of a gas station pump screaming, "I'm a bear! I'm a bear! Grrrrrrrr!").

Finally, nearing the end of the brunch, he handed me a piece of paper and said, “This is my offer.”

After looking it over, I said, “I’ll have to talk to Lawyer about this, of course, and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

He agreed. Then he said, “Oh, and by the way, I have 12 bottles of wine from the wine cellar for you in my car. I want to give those to you before we go.”

Conveniently, half of the wine in the wine cellar was left off of the settlement offer. I was already feeling suspicious of the genial way he presented himself, so this just served to increase my suspicions tenfold. After all of the nutty behavior, believing that he was actually a logical person was as difficult for me as believing that Xenu actually flew DC-10s filled with aliens here 10 billion years ago. I wondered, was he trying to bribe me with a case of wine, and if so, did he actually believe that would work? Sure, I love good wine, but I’d rather go a lifetime without Opus One than let myself get screwed over in the divorce as I already had in the marriage. Or was he really being genuine, truly desiring a friendly resolution? The fact that the settlement offer was lacking, to put it mildly, gave me the impetus to lean toward the former, but I still haven’t quite made an assessment on that one.

Lawyer and I haven’t had much time together lately, partially due to my genius self-inflicted facial injury and traumatic brain injury, and partially due to his busy schedule, but I did finally get together with him in early January. I gave him the paper that Ex had given me.

“Well, we agree on certain things, but absolutely not on others,” he said.

We were out to dinner with his cousin and Anastasia, so I said, “Let’s get together later and really go over this to come up with a response.” He agreed.

Needless to say, the catch up game I’ve been playing since I f*cked up my face and brain in October has been more brutal than swimming the English Channel in a g-string and bedazzled pasties in February, so we hadn't gotten together yet.

A few days ago, I called Newscaster Cousin. I hadn’t spoken to him since my injury, which is unusual because we typically talk or see each other at least once a week, and he was initially pissed that I had gone into hiding. After I ran the gauntlet with him, metaphorically flogged myself repeatedly, did my penance, explained what had happened to me, and gained forgiveness, he began to disclose.

“Almost, Ex called me three weeks ago. He wants me to vote for him for some award that he’s up for and then he asked me if he could take me and my boyfriend to dinner.”

“You said no, didn’t you?” I asked, aghast.

“Of course I said no. I was pissed at you, but I’m still loyal to you. Even though you’re a bitch. And why in hell didn’t you call me when you injured yourself? I would have been there in a second,” he growled.

“Wait, let’s get back to the subject. Ex asked you and your boyfriend out to dinner? And by the way, you’re never this much of an a**hole on the air.”

He laughed. “I can’t be an a**hole on the air, but I can be to my beloved cousin who doesn’t call me for three months. Anyway, yeah, I think Ex is trying to get custody of me in the divorce. And plus he told me that you’re going to trial. I thought that trial was only for, like, the Heather Mills/Paul McCartney kind of divorce. What’s going on?”

I was silent. Blown away. He thought we were going to trial? It had only been a month and a half since we’d discussed settlement! Granted, he didn’t know that I almost either killed or permanently disfigured myself, but still, I thought he’d be more generous with the time factor.

“Uh, I don’t know,” I answered Cousin. “I have to call Lawyer and deal with this right this second, I suppose.”

“Yeah, you do, because Ex is a freak and he’s nuts.”

I hung up with Cousin and immediately called Lawyer, telling him what happened. He said, “My week is totally jammed, but how about a dinner on Monday night?”

I sent Ex an email, letting him know that he’d receive our response today, to which he replied that he has been preparing for trial and will continue to do so. I rolled my eyes because I know that he hasn’t even spoken to his lawyer in months, so that statement is about as true as if I were to assert that I’d just grown a third breast.

My meeting with Lawyer last night went just as I thought. We laughed, caught up, and finally went over our business, coming up with the same proposal that we had set forth months ago when we had a settlement conference with Ex and his attorney. We laughed about the total lack of progress in the case, but then Lawyer became serious.

“Almost, Ex would be a fool not to take this offer,” he said. “You’ll get a lot more if we go to trial.”

“I don’t want to go to trial and I don’t want more, you know that. The depositions, the witness stand…. all of that stuff makes me more nervous than a virgin in a supermax prison.”

He laughed. “Yeah, but don’t worry, I’m ready, and you really won’t have to do that much. And you know what? If they want to be fools, f*ck it, I’ll tear them apart in court.”

Trial is set for the end of February and Ex has a week to respond to our offer. Perhaps his response will answer the questions with which I was left after I met him alone to discuss settling this mess. If he accepts the offer or is willing to discuss it out of court, maybe he really has become somewhat rational. If he rejects it and we go to trial, I’ll know that he tried to bribe me with a case of wine and a friendly façade.

I think I’ll open a bottle of that Opus One tonight. I have a feeling that I’ll be sworn to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth in a matter of weeks.