changed her hair color from brown to a modest blond and shed the name Pug for good, becoming Meg.
During her sophomore year at Ferrum, she met a Virginia Tech student named Alton Warner Gold IV, a handsome frat boy from a rich Delaware family, and they married in 1995, only a few months after they both finished college. The wedding was a six-figure spectacle, but the Golds were snotty to Meg’s parents, snickering about her daddy’s accent and her momma’s Sunday-best church clothes. Meg and Alton settled in Arlington, Virginia, because she’d accepted a job at a health insurance company and he didn’t care where they lived; geography was no restriction for a layabout’s universal skills.
Three years later, Alton had spent all the money his parents and grandparents were willing to waste on him, he’d jacked up creditcards and bogged down equity lines, and he wouldn’t work, hell no he wouldn’t, though he did declare himself, at various times, a day trader, a financial adviser, a consultant, an entrepreneur, a freelance journalist, a life coach and a corporate troubleshooter. He printed impressive business cards and squandered money on office space. He leeched off Meg’s paychecks and stole cash from the zippered slot inside her purse. His true gift was a passion for top-shelf highballs and Las Vegas, Tunica, Atlantic City and any cruise ship, backroom or Indian casino that offered green felt and a pair of dice. He stayed gone, rambling and carousing. He wrecked their car. He was arrested for shoplifting hair gel from a mall department store. He cheated on Meg. He charged a diner waitress’s West Virginia abortion to their MasterCard and busted the account’s credit limit, tacking on an extra thirty-five dollars and a collection call from the bank to the already dreadful insult.
Meg quickly moved into her own apartment and did all she could to salvage her finances and dump her no-count spouse. Still, untangling herself from a crybaby cad like Alton Gold was complicated. He’d surface at odd hours and pound on her door, sometimes penitent, sometimes enraged, occasionally promising rehab and religion but most often threatening to cut her throat or punch a screwdriver through her skull. She wouldn’t even peep out at him, so he’d stand in the hall arguing with dead bolts and double locks until security arrived to remove him. Between disappearances with new druggie girlfriends and craps junkets financed by rubber checks, he’d ambush her in the parking garage at her job and insist—snarling, fussing, pleading—she owed him another chance, and he’d impulsively send flowers and, better still, store-bought cards with ponderous snatches from
The Prophet
printed across the front in fancy script. “Love, Alton,” he’d usually scribble in red ink, a shaky, deformed heart drawn underneath.
She visited a lawyer, but most of her options were Byzantine and costly, and injunctions and protective orders meant time away from work, more lost wages and more contact with her dumb-ass husband, whose family, no matter how dismal his behavior, considered it a matter of status and clan pride to ensure he was utterly lawyered-up in any legal proceeding, even though they well understood he was a bum and a spendthrift. And all those court orders and official documents withseals and certifications were just sound and fury, little paper tigers that wouldn’t mean diddly-squat to Alton Gold and would probably serve as a goad and a dare rather than any kind of effective restraint.
The worst of it came in March 2000, after she’d finally managed to pay an attorney for a divorce filing and the papers had been served on her husband. She arrived home to discover that Alton—drunk or high or both—had wormed inside her apartment and was waiting for her, and he rushed directly at her, grabbed her and rammed her hard against the wall, and her arm tangled in her purse strap and she lost her balance and twisted her ankle as she fell,
During her sophomore year at Ferrum, she met a Virginia Tech student named Alton Warner Gold IV, a handsome frat boy from a rich Delaware family, and they married in 1995, only a few months after they both finished college. The wedding was a six-figure spectacle, but the Golds were snotty to Meg’s parents, snickering about her daddy’s accent and her momma’s Sunday-best church clothes. Meg and Alton settled in Arlington, Virginia, because she’d accepted a job at a health insurance company and he didn’t care where they lived; geography was no restriction for a layabout’s universal skills.
Three years later, Alton had spent all the money his parents and grandparents were willing to waste on him, he’d jacked up creditcards and bogged down equity lines, and he wouldn’t work, hell no he wouldn’t, though he did declare himself, at various times, a day trader, a financial adviser, a consultant, an entrepreneur, a freelance journalist, a life coach and a corporate troubleshooter. He printed impressive business cards and squandered money on office space. He leeched off Meg’s paychecks and stole cash from the zippered slot inside her purse. His true gift was a passion for top-shelf highballs and Las Vegas, Tunica, Atlantic City and any cruise ship, backroom or Indian casino that offered green felt and a pair of dice. He stayed gone, rambling and carousing. He wrecked their car. He was arrested for shoplifting hair gel from a mall department store. He cheated on Meg. He charged a diner waitress’s West Virginia abortion to their MasterCard and busted the account’s credit limit, tacking on an extra thirty-five dollars and a collection call from the bank to the already dreadful insult.
Meg quickly moved into her own apartment and did all she could to salvage her finances and dump her no-count spouse. Still, untangling herself from a crybaby cad like Alton Gold was complicated. He’d surface at odd hours and pound on her door, sometimes penitent, sometimes enraged, occasionally promising rehab and religion but most often threatening to cut her throat or punch a screwdriver through her skull. She wouldn’t even peep out at him, so he’d stand in the hall arguing with dead bolts and double locks until security arrived to remove him. Between disappearances with new druggie girlfriends and craps junkets financed by rubber checks, he’d ambush her in the parking garage at her job and insist—snarling, fussing, pleading—she owed him another chance, and he’d impulsively send flowers and, better still, store-bought cards with ponderous snatches from
The Prophet
printed across the front in fancy script. “Love, Alton,” he’d usually scribble in red ink, a shaky, deformed heart drawn underneath.
She visited a lawyer, but most of her options were Byzantine and costly, and injunctions and protective orders meant time away from work, more lost wages and more contact with her dumb-ass husband, whose family, no matter how dismal his behavior, considered it a matter of status and clan pride to ensure he was utterly lawyered-up in any legal proceeding, even though they well understood he was a bum and a spendthrift. And all those court orders and official documents withseals and certifications were just sound and fury, little paper tigers that wouldn’t mean diddly-squat to Alton Gold and would probably serve as a goad and a dare rather than any kind of effective restraint.
The worst of it came in March 2000, after she’d finally managed to pay an attorney for a divorce filing and the papers had been served on her husband. She arrived home to discover that Alton—drunk or high or both—had wormed inside her apartment and was waiting for her, and he rushed directly at her, grabbed her and rammed her hard against the wall, and her arm tangled in her purse strap and she lost her balance and twisted her ankle as she fell,
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