The Understanding

No one knows what I'm thinking. No one knows what I want, what I need, what I feel - unless I tell them.

Laura Ballantine is young, and beautiful, and smart, and she knows me. She knows everything because I’ve told her. Anyone knows that when you're in love - as I am - you hold nothing back. One will love whom one will - reason does not extend to love. At one time, I naively promised myself I would not be hers, but I consciously became that and more – where love is real, there are no dead ends. It had nothing to do with money, though it didn't get in the way. I’m a very successful attorney, and therefore, have little need of anybody else’s income. You need to know, however, that in my Wall Street days, I used to take some delight in having most of my dates pay for me whenever I went out. I figured my charm was more than worth the expense, and they were happy doing it - very strong women, ahead of their time, all of them. Don’t fault me for that.

Laura is a star insurance broker, and her commissions actually dwarf my six-figure income. In a hot year, she has easily cleared five million. But, I swear, the money was never a factor. And neither was the notoriety, glamour, or celebrity. I don’t care if I ever see my face and my name in the paper again or not, though I know I will. You might not know who insures the Olympics, the World Series, the Super Bowl, the Masters, the NBA finals, Wimbledon, the Kentucky Derby, and a host of Hollywood blockbusters, but I can tell you. Laura does. Naturally, she rubs shoulders and thighs with some pretty heavy hitters. All she had to do was please her first big client and it was not a very steep uphill climb all the way to the very top, although she would never say she's there, yet. My parents always told me - since I was old enough to talk – that I had to blend socially in order to make a success of myself, and they were quite right. Brains alone won't get you there. Brains and motivation won't do it either. Stop wasting your time and learn how to blend. Laura knows how. If one knows the art world, she says, one knows that most works of art have value solely because of the notoriety of the person who painted them, not because of anything else. That applies to everything. Subjectivity my dear friend, that’s the name of the game. Learn the wherefores and the formatting, but above all, learn how to blend.

The night this happened, Laura and I had gone to dinner at one of Boston's lesser-known restaurants – not the Rialto, for sure. This was one of Laura's idiosyncrasies - juxtapose your place in society with your choice of bars in the city, your fine taste with your crude instincts, your intellect with your choice of movies, your money with your choice of dress, and your conservatism with your extroversion. You know people like that, too, I'm sure. Laura is one of them. She is accepted in the stratosphere of society, even among the old money, but she gets a thrill from going to the sleaziest bars. She is unbelievably attractive, but some of her escorts have been just this side of brutish. She buys very expensive clothes – Versace originals, Oscar De La Renta, Carolina Herrera - but delights in going about in worn jeans and torn T shirts. She was virginal, but you wouldn't have known it from the skimpy outfits she frequently wore. She told me that the body is always decent until corrupted by our thinking. Not exactly an original thought, but I have yet to figure that out - probably you, too.

While waiting for our drinks, Laura said she wanted to discuss our relationship, which, then, was nothing and leading to less-than-nothing. Laura knew I was desperately in love with her, but that was all. She had taken me to the carnal brink, and then refused to acknowledge her other self. I have always thought that when someone is in love, they simply don't give a damn about anything, but this might not apply to Laura. She is just too obsessively determined. Anyway, she told me she was going to propose a resolution to our puzzling dilemma and my infuriating frustration. If I be open minded enough, I will seriously consider what she has to say. If not, we can continue on our present course, in parallel lines, so to speak. After all, our blood is the color of dogs’ blood, whatever she meant by that.

I remember the time I had to defend a known jewel thief, caught stealing in mid-act at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, against charges which could easily have stuck, except for a tiny legal technicality which, of course, I discovered. Or the time I represented an extortionist and suspected hit man and got him off on probation on flimsy legal grounds because the judge on the bench at the time had an important tennis date on the afternoon my case hit his court and didn't want to spend more time on it than absolutely necessary. Whom do you think arranged that tennis date? She was a very toned, bright, and beautiful Harvard Sophomore law student - he was sixty eight. Don't ask me again if I'm open-minded.

If beauty were nine tenths of the law, Laura would constitute the whole law. I know about love being blind and the rest of it, but, you see, I was only one of many men, and yes, women, after Laura. Men ten times as ambitious and fifty times as wealthy as I am could not get her. You might know women like that, though I doubt it. Having told you all this, I was nevertheless her only steady date. Even if that means nothing to you, it was exquisitely important to me - I knew I was at the head of the line, though you may think that, for all my lack of progress, I may as well have been at the end. Knowing that she liked sleeping alone made me furious, though I did not tell her that until much later.

Laura is the kind of person who seems to need nothing. She once told me that the trouble with Capitalism was the fact that no one could ever tell you how much was too much. I thought that was the great thing about it. Does Michael Dell have too much? Does Steve Cohen have too much? Does Rupert Murdoch? Does Richard Branson? Does Martha Stewart? Donald Trump? Helen Walton? It doesn't matter. She knows how to disagree because she is firm and loyal to her convictions. She is also the happiest woman I know. No chip on her shoulder. No ax to grind. No rush to judgment. On the other hand, she also already has all she needs - she just gives the impression that even if she had nothing, she would still need nothing.

As I sat serenely contemplating what she was about to say, she prefaced her proposition with a comment about how, if one just understands his place in society and the meaning of duty in that context, then things will simply flow from that to create harmony. She did not elaborate, but I listened and tucked that thought away for later study. She said that what she was going to propose might sound a little odd, but that I should accept it for what it was, an idea for a pleasant living arrangement. Don't make more out of it than you have to. There are billions of other people on the planet. You are only very, very slightly better-known than most of them. And compared to the Queen of England, nobody knows you. Before we finish our little dinner, thousands of people in Iraq or China or Africa or Colombia or India might be dead of one thing or another. Does that sort of put things in perspective for you? This was vintage Laura. She should have been a lawyer.

I wished more than ever that I could have her. Then she said she wanted me to marry her sister, Kimberly, just like that, which, believe me, was an offer not to be refused by any man - love or no love. I hesitated, but only for effect. She said I could have Kimberly and we could keep our close friendship. If Laura was platinum, I thought, Kimberly was gold. I told her I needed to know how Kimberly, who was three years older than Laura, felt about this. She said Kimberly had brought it up, and after some careful consideration, they had agreed. It occurred to me that the opposite might be true, but the last thing I wanted to do was push this inspired idea out of her head, so I didn't question it. Now, Laura wanted to know if I could accept such a proposal. I told her I was very fond of Kimberly and I would be very happy to be her husband, and that I was only sorry I could not marry both of them. Her laughter at my response was unencumbered and sincere, but that really didn’t matter at the time. I was anxious and she knew it.

I saw less and less of Laura and a lot more of Kimberly during the next few weeks, until our wedding day on a warm but pleasant, late August afternoon. They were both very happy that day, as was I. Laura said later that she delighted in it as if it had been her wedding day as well, and I could tell. After a two-week honeymoon, Kimberly and I returned to Boston to get settled, though there really wasn't much to it. We are both highly organized people and had taken care of most every detail before we’d left. Laura came to see me in my office the day after we got back, and she and I had passionate, radiant sex for the first time, then and there - just as I dreamed we would some day - my eyes finally having been opened. You need to know, Laura and Kimberly have been sharing me for some five years now, the happiest years of our lives.