Chapter 11

Sheila was sitting in her office at her new home on Monday afternoon. She was working on some endorsement deals for a new client of hers, a girl rock band that had just moved from Sweden to the states and met Sheila after playing a set one night at a local club. There was a knock at the door. It was Chad.

“Hi She, how are you?” he said, as he entered the door.

"Oh, hey Chad! Come on in, I’m just reading some contracts right now.”

He made his way to her office, and sat down in one of the chairs in the room. “I got your mail for you today, and this came from Charlie’s lawyer’s office, so I thought I should bring it by.”

“Oh.”

“What do you think it is?”

“Well, Chad – probably divorce papers from him, I am sure. I doubt his lawyer would be sending me a birthday card, for heavens sake.” After hearing the words, “Charlie’s lawyer’s office” from Chad, she was not in the mood for niceties.

“Sorry, Sheila,” he said, feeling a bit charred by her comments. He held out the envelope towards her.

“Let me see it,” she grabbed the envelope from Chad’s hand and ripped it open with her index finger. She extracted it from the envelope, unfolded it and stared at the top of the letter. Chad was silently watching her, and dying to know what it said.
Sheila sighed. “Irreconcilable differences. There it is, Chad. After all these years and it comes down to irreconcilable differences. I should have known this was coming, now that he’s getting back into the business.”

“Yeah, I’m sorry Sheila. Are you ok?”

“I’ll be fine,” she folded up the letter and put it back into the envelope. “You can get my lawyer on the phone for me. I need him to look this over with me and I need to figure out how I get my fair share of things from him.”

“Ok. I’ll do that right now.” Chad got up and left the room, closing the door behind him. He stood there for a second or two, long enough to hear her quietly start to sob. He couldn’t leave her alone, not right now. He turned and walked back into the room.
“Sheila, are you alright? Come on, don’t cry. You said it yourself, you knew this was going to happen.”

“I know what I said,” she was getting angry at him, “don’t tell me what I should be feeling!”

“I’m sorry.”

“Oh, Chad, I’m not mad at you. I just,” she let out some loud sobs and took the tissue he handed to her. She blew her nose, and continued, “I just thought I would be the one sending him papers from my lawyer, you know? I didn’t think he would ever want to leave me. I know he has Jean Marie living with him now, but she’s nothing like me. What does she have that he wants?”

“Don’t think about that now, Sheila. That’s just gonna make you more upset, you know?”

“I know. It’s just that I’m so mad at him! Why did I have to get him a physical therapist in the first place? I should have just let him rot and die a crippled old man in that big house all by himself, the bastard!”

“There, there. Take some deep breaths.”

“Leave it to him to end up with the hottest physical therapist in the county, and them hitting it off together so wonderfully. Oh gag me! She’s probably ten years younger than he is!”

Chad was clearing her desk of all the paperwork, so that she wouldn’t either ruin it with tears and snot, or in a fit of rage rip it all up as she had been known to do in the past when confronted with bad news. “Sheila, just be glad you’re not raising his kids now, by yourself. You’ve got this great house, and your business and your clients. And I’m still here.”

“Chad?” she said, looking up at him from her chair.

“Yes, She?”

“Do me a favor?”

“Whatever you want.”

“Will you screw me?”

“What!” Chad backed away from her and the desk, and tried to move to the door.

“Come on, Chad. I want you to make me feel better.” She got up from her chair and walked around the opposite side of the desk and stood in front of his path to the door. “I’m not saying you have to make love to me, you know? I just want you to screw my brains out until I can’t think straight.”

“Sheila, I can’t do that!” He was feeling his heart pound in his chest. “I – I’m your assistant!”

She dropped to her knees and grabbed the waist of his jeans. “Chad, you are the best assistant in the entire world, believe me. I know. And I wouldn’t ask you to do this for me unless I thought you would be willing to help me out.” She unbuttoned his pants and started to unzip them.

“Stop it! Stop it!” He swatted her hands away, but it only made her more determined to get his pants off. She took her hand and ran it up the inside of his leg. “Oh my god! Sheila!”

“You’re not going to stop me, Chad! I always get what I want!”

Finally, Chad slapped her across the face. Sheila froze. He was silent. She sat back on to her feet, and held her cheek.

“I – I’m sorry Sheila. But you can not do this to me.” He buttoned and zipped up his pants again.

“Chad?” she looked at him and was puzzled. “Will you forgive me?” The tears started to well up in her eyes again.

Chad scoffed. “You know, you can really be a crazy bitch. I have always put up with you, for these last few years, but I just don’t think I can take it anymore, She! This is really unbelievable!”

She started to sob and fell to the ground, huddled over her knees and holding her face in her hands. “I’m so sorry! I’m so sorry!” She repeated this over and over again.

“Look,” Chad knelt down next to her. “I know you’re sorry, ok?” She looked up at him, shaking and sobbing still. “We’ll get past this, alright? I’m going to call Ken and fax him the papers and tell him to call you when he can, ok?”

She nodded at him, and fell into his lap.

“Come on, it’s ok. I know, you’re totally insane.”

This got her to let out a little giggle.

“I knew that when I signed up for this job.”

She picked up her head and rested her chin in her hands. “I’m really sorry Chad. I know I must look absolutely pitiful to you right now. I am just so mortified that I did that to you. I will understand if you never want to see me again.”
Chad leaned towards her and kissed her on the forehead. “That’s all the action you’ll get out of me Sheila. I can hire a male entertainer for you, if you want, but that’s it, ok?” He smiled at her, and she smiled back. “I’m gonna make a phone call, and I’ll come back with a nice glass of wine for you.”

“Thank you sweetie.”

The next day her lawyer had set up a meeting with Sheila, and before she left for his office, she stopped at Chad’s house. She left him a bouquet of flowers with a note that said “You’re not my assistant, you’re my friend. Love, She.”

At the office of Ken Draper, Sheila was greeted with the red carpet treatment. She was whisked into the conference room by the secretary, and left with a pot of coffee, a decanter of scotch and whiskey, and the view of the city through huge windows. It made her feel taken care of, but the view was a little too stunning this morning, so she drew the drapes over them. They were striped with dark green and dark brown, and coupled with their height made her feel like she was surrounded by trees in a dark forest.

“Never been much of a camper,” she said to herself as she poured a large snifter of whiskey.

Just then, Ken entered the room through the giant wooden doors. “Mrs. Clark, glad to see you.”

“It’s Sheila Polk, Ken. Good to see you too. I was just making myself comfortable.”

“Good, very good. So I got the papers from Mr. Clark’s lawyers, and I went through them last night.”

“So, how bad is it? Or am I getting the goods out of this?”

“Well, Sheila we need to talk about some things here. Assets, the relationship. I hope you’re feeling up to it?”

“Nothing worse then I’ve already gone through myself. Let’s do this.”
Through the next hour and a half, Sheila and her lawyer went through all of the ramifications of the divorce paperwork. They looked over the marriage license, her tax returns and bank statements. Sheila was exhausted.

“I feel like I should have dragged in my dirty clothes from the laundry pile, too.”

"I understand. We just need to make a sure accounting of your assets. Since you’ve been legally separated through these last nine months, your assets have been frozen, as well as Mr. Clark’s.”

“What does that mean?” She got up to refill her snifter with whiskey.

“Essentially, any money or property either of you have acquired during the separation is off limits to one another. But, the property and earnings acquired before the separation is up for examination.”

“Ken, what is the bottom line here? Am I going to get alimony from him, or what?”

“Chances are, no – you won’t get alimony from him. He was basically dependent on you for his income, as you were his manager and helped acquire jobs and work for him. It can get very tricky, but it is possible that you will be the one to pay him alimony.”

“Oh, that’s just fucking great, Ken!” Sheila finished her whiskey in one dramatic swig of the glass, and slammed it down on the counter top.

“Unless…”

“What? Unless what?”

“Unless you want to consider this an uncontested divorce, Ms. Polk.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“By uncontesting the divorce, you are saying that you and Charlie are going to agree to your own privately decided upon terms of the divorce. You would sit down with him and write out who gets what from whom.”

“And you’re there with me during this whole process?”

“No, unfortunately in these cases you need a mediator to sit down and go through things with you. They don’t need to hear the nitty gritty details that you have both figured out, but they do need to be there to agree that the divorce is legal.”

“Oh. Is it fast?”

“It can be, if you both cooperate with each other and the mediation.”

“Should I do it? What do you think, in your professional opinion Ken?”

“Sheila,” he reached his hand out to her, across the conference table, “I think if you can both be civil enough and agree to some terms with each other, then this will be a bloodless, painless way to end everything. If that’s what you want. Did he ever harm you?”

“No. He never – well, once he did. I had witnesses…”

“Was it a pattern with him? Or was this a one-time thing?”

“Oh, it was just one time. And the witnesses would probably all agree that I had egged him on to do it. Let’s not talk about this anymore. Where do I sign to make it an uncontested divorce?”

Sheila and Ken wrapped up the paperwork in the conference room, and she headed back home. She would have his office call Charlie’s lawyer, to tell him about her decision. She got to her house and went to her bedroom, and closed the blinds and drapes on the windows. It was pitch black, and she climbed into her bed and cried herself to sleep. The relationship between her and Charlie was soon to be over, forever, and Sheila felt the need to mourn its end.