Wakefield Page #2

Here's the conspiracy.

It's all a little too

convenient, don't you think?

Oh, yes, I agree.

I think she's totally guilty.

She murdered him.

Oh.

Oh, no.

Ben Jacobson, attorney at law

just stoppin' by

for a little deli.

Hello, Ben.

You're not fooling anybody.

I say, without shame

I'd given not

a single thought

to anyone at work.

And the documents

I carried away with me.

Documents, vital

to a very lucrative case

we'd been preparing.

All of that

was pretty remote now.

Well..

...I've got my own

little deli going here.

Oh, my god.

Here I am.

Ta-dah!

Oh, right.

Make her the victim.

Oh, please.

They've hardly been abandoned.

People, I'm right here.

Oh, I see.

Here it is.

Making your play, huh, Ben?

Go on, go on, go on. Go, on.

She's hurting.

Give her your hanky,

be a gentleman.

Oh, my god.

He..

He took out his phone.

What an ass.

A husband doesn't just vanish,

Mrs. Wakefield.

Howard Wakefield

is on this earth.

Or under it.

And only you, madam,

know which it is.

Are you accusing me

of making a game of this?

I assure you my frame of mind

was quite rational.

May I remind you

I was eating actual garbage

to survive?

Oh.

Come on back.

Come on, honey, come back,

come back.

Come back,

come back, come back.

There you are.

About my wife's

deliberate nudity.

Apparently

it's a side effect of her

having once been

a modern dancer.

Briefly.

I feel compelled to add.

Who exactly are you trying

to attract out there?

No one can see me

and if they can, I don't care.

Uh, clearly.

Strutting around this house

on full display.

Would it kill you

to put some clothes on

in front of our girls?

No, I'm not gonna

teach our daughters

to have shame

about having a body.

What if I started

parading naked

around them, huh?

What'd you think about that?

Hey, look at me!

Whoo, daddy's naked!

Mr. prude-o in the nude-o.

Hey, look at me,

I'm going to work naked!

Right, right, right.

Jesus.

Would you get away from there?

There's no one there, Howard.

Oh.

Seeing my wife in the nude,

oddly enough

usually got me

thinking about money.

I've only a slender amount

of cash with me.

And if it's my intention

to vanish completely

using a credit card

is out of the question.

I could pre-date a bank check

and cash it somewhere, yes.

But that might signal

to Diana

that my disappearance

was pre-meditated.

Which, I don't know,

seems unnecessarily cool.

It's not difficult

to run away.

People ditch their families

all the time.

But if this were

a simple abandonment of wife

and children, I'd have

written Diana a note

taken my car out

of the garage

driven to Manhattan,

checked into a hotel

and walked to work

in the morning.

Easy. Anyone can do that.

But you'd still be

the same person.

This is different.

You see..

...i no longer seem

to require those things

that only days ago

were so indispensable.

The armor of a clean shirt

the smooth shave

credit cards, cellphones

clients.

There will be no more

getting on that train.

I'll take nothing more

from her.

Nothing from that house.

Ever.

I'll sustain myself

like a castaway.

A survivor.

Undetected.

Unshackled.

I'll become

the Howard Wakefield

I was meant to be.

Oh, please.

You've imagined doing this

yourself. I know you have.

But what about

the twins you ask?

No regrets there.

In their current phase

our girls generally

think of me

as some kind

of unfortunate oddity

who embarrasses them

in front of their friends.

Believe me

I'm seeing more

of these two now

than I have in months,

if not years.

And I'm sure

it's not lost on you.

Though I might have

left my wife

I'll still be able

to keep an eye on her.

Ah.

There we go.

Did I ever miss

the conveniences of home?

Oh!

Yeah.

No TV..

...no problem.

Our neighbor, Dr. sondervan,

is a known authority

on down syndrome and other

developmental disorders.

When he began

to board some patients

a few months at a time,

I stood up for sondervan

when our neighbors

petitioned against him.

Sh*t!

God.

My spirited defense

of Dr. sondervan

and his young charges

for once gave me

the moral high ground

with Diana

who naturally

took the opposing view.

Howard, really?

Do we have any idea what

goes on behind those gates?

And the apparent answer

to your wife is

not too goddam much.

Morning's a little

social interaction.

Evenings conclude

with a hot shower.

And who can argue with that?

There you are.

Oh. That's so easy, isn't it?

In every marriage,

there's a division of labor.

Mine and yours.

By Diana's artful calibration

her tasks occur

only inside the house.

Children, cleaning,

provisioning.

Oh, which means shopping.

Lots of shopping.

But anything external,

the roof

the gutters,

the chimney, trash

you know, servicing the cars,

that's all left to me.

Her duties end at the door.

And of course,

any labor accomplished

outside the house

is invisible to my wife.

Paying the bills, invisible.

Property taxes,

life insurance

home insurance

and of course, our mortgage.

All faithfully and invisibly

taken care of

by one Howard Wakefield.

Now quite possibly deceased.

Celebration.

One, two, three, four, five.

Party?

P-a-r-t-y.

Yeah.

Tsk. Monday.

Who the hell is this?

Oh, my god. Ben Jacobs.

Oh, yes, yes, yes, uh-huh.

You dog.

Coffee? Cookies? Come on in.

Oh, he's gonna need

some whitener

for his coffee, Diana.

Uh, excuse me, you don't

have any soy milk, do you?

Of course, she's got soy milk.

She's got everything.

Please, Ben,

please tell her

about your tragic

lactose intolerance.

All the bloating

and flatulence.

Ah-ha!

Little pro-bono work

on behalf of the firm.

How nice of you.

I'm impressed.

You know,

I never used to sing.

I think that's worth noting.

If I sign this..

...it's declaring

my husband absentee.

What if I don't sign?

Would it make him

any less absent?

You've got to be kidding me.

Right away with the..

Come on, honey.

Show him the door. Show it.

Yes, yes.

Oh, Ben, you're such a douche.

She is totally

out of your league.

Attagirl!

That's for you, d*ckhead.

Yeah.

Absentee or no,

it's a victory, I guess

to know I've still got

possession of my wife.

Which reminds me,

I believe you're aware

that Diana was something

of a dancer.

By the time we met,

of course

Diana's brief flirtation

with the stage

had been replaced

by the occasional

evening bar class.

While she pursued a graduate

degree in art history

and complicated her life

in the usual ways.

Did I tell you she was

involved with someone else

when she started seeing me?

Dirk, dirk morrison.

Without touchin' the dime

or the bottle

and usin' only one finger,

get the dime into the bottle.

We met in the city

through an alumni mix

and hit it off.

A few years later,

my firm did some work

for his

capital investment firm.

I thought you were smart.

I guess he'd say

we were friends.

- Where's the $5?

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