***Putting up with Torina the Terrible

What Was in it for Him? Everyone wondered how this sweet-natured good-looking man put up with Torina the Terrible. Torina owned this huge clubhouse on the golf course with its restaurant and bar, spa and the works. She reminded me of Catherine the Great – same dull and powerful look, same bombastic overbearing personality, and the voice of a drill sergeant, to complete the picture. How she humiliated him. He was required to be present fawning on her every evening at the casino, at the restaurant, everywhere. He did so with sincere grace no matter what. She called him a gigolo to his face in public, she called him her boy … what didn’t she call him? He was always all dressed up for these nightly appearances. His clothes were perfect, his posture was perfect … even his teeth were perfect. He had a smooth and gentlemanly voice. He reminded me of a groom on a wedding cake. Torina the Terrible is a client of my lawyer client, and I am a court reporter following Mr. Lawyer to Torina's restaurant complex where he will confer with her and be her guest of honor. Court reporters are machines; they don't register as real people in situations where they have that Stenograph in their possession. It is truly amazing what a person can have a frank chat about and what one can learn from those chats with medical examiners, blood spatter experts, drug dealers and banksters and gangsters and stunt men whilst waiting for the proceedings that brought you together like ships passing in the night to begin. One day I got to ask him how he endured Monster Lady … and why. He knew I dabbled in Tarot. She was not in any of the questions he wanted to know about. He wanted only to know about his golf game, whether he would ever get good enough to be a pro golfer. This he already knew: He was almost. This man lived for golf. Golf was his love, his only love. Here he could play on a pro level course all day – yes, all day out there doing what he loved best, practicing his game to his heart’s content in utter aloneness, happy from sunup to sundown. Then he came in, in uniform, and paid for that. That is exactly what he told me. Did Torina know he was cheating on her with the nine iron in his hand? I suspected she did and did not care because this was the condition that brought her such a lovely victim. Perhaps we should occasionally ask ourselves ‘What’s in it for him or her or them?’ Or for ourselves?