Of People And Llamas

Today, someone called me while I was on the road.
It was a male client I had grown closer to than most because he was so damn nice and  his wife was cheating on him so blatantly. Not just once, not just twice, but with a third man.
We got pictures of this.
Now my client was no John Edwards, Jesse James or Tiger Woods.
However, my client was your better-than-average looking Joe, made over a six-figure income and he had a heart of gold.
He married this woman he met on the net about 10 years ago, she was 10 years his junior. 
She had an empty heart she wanted to fill with his gold and he became her Fort Knox.

They met right smack dab in the middle of the internet bubble so there was a lot of equity she could suck out of him. She got it all: a Beemer;  Cigarette Boat; the Jimmy Choos; Versace and Vera Wang on stand-by; endless travels;  single evenings that cost more an an average America's food budget for a month;  massive plastic surgery and the requisite American Express platinum card (though she sorely wanted the black one).

Then... the economic bubble burst and their relationship began to implode....
and ultimate explode.
As the housing and stock market collapsed, my client lost his job.
And  his self-entitled wife who never worked, was not happy with the bills that wouldn't stop coming.
Now did she appreciate the bill collectors who wouldn't stop calling.
However, she refused to work because she felt it was "beneath her".

One day, my client told me she socked him in the eye.
He laughed off the dark bruise and told everyone he walked into a wall...
though he told me he pushed her first  and she hit him back.
So if he called the police, he thought he go to jail. They'd believe her when in fact, he made the first move.

He said she cried, she was so sorry, claimed it was just a reflex from when her daddy use to beat her.
He believed her. 

Then, when his unemployment benefits were running out and the retirement account was tapped out, she ("allegedly") cut the brake lines on my client's car because there was a hefty insurance policy on his life.
Fortunately, the crash was minor, it was the insurance adjustor who discovered the cut brake lines.
It was my client who discovered his missing pocketknife in the trash can. the knife had serrated edges, the same edges made on his brake lines. 
I strongly and repeatedly suggested my client press criminal, civil and/or divorce charges.
He refused.
"No way," he said. "It's no longer about denial," he said to me, "It's about economic survival. And right now, to quote the Blues Brothers, it's cheaper to keep her."

So instead, he took her off as the beneficiary to his will and told her.
Second he told her he was onto her.
He said there was note and evidence in his safe deposit box, the key with his younger sister....
plus a letter and photos with his P.I. should he meet an untimely death.
And he told her if anyone was going to leave the house first, it would be her.
She could take her clothes and anything else she came into the marriage with.
Otherwise, until the sheriff evicted him from the house he wasn't budging.
She held her ground and said half the house was hers by community property laws, so she is staying too.
The only upside to this nightmare is no kids are involved.
What we got is a battle of the wills that has escalated to a war.... that will hopefully result in either no casualties, or a total of just two.

So there they both sit to this very day.
The house is in foreclosure and neither will move an inch.
Neither wants to pay the first divorce filing fee.
Neither wants to budge an inch.
This morning, her bright red BMW was repossessed, he told me on the phone with glee.
He owns his pickup outright.

So as I was thinking about the lunacy of this during my morning rounds, I came home to an email --  second in my favorite llama series a detective friend sent me.
Evidently, we share the same sick sense of humor.
Even though this video is a few years old, I've never seen and therefore posted it before.
I got a thing about these llamas... and the predicament they're in.
It reminds me of the lifeboat my client and his wife are in.
Good vs evil attempting to balance each other out to survive.
Wonder how this story will end?