With and Without Class by David Fleming Page A

an amputation of a big part of yourself. When I’m dealing with some octogenarian billionaire looking to extricate himself from the floozy he married just to get one last taste-a-the-tang, I say go for it, but this, this is different, Harold.”
    â€œWhy do we have to split up all our ideas, anyway?”
    â€œYou earned those ideas together. After the divorce you can’t share them anymore and truly be separated in any meaningful way. We have to separate the spiritual currency.”
    â€œWhat? You mean ideas are like money? But we still use money.”
    â€œHarold, what have you been doing all this time? Don’t tell me you have all your money in stocks and bonds. Money buys ideas. It’s all the same thing. Money equal ideas. So we have to split it up. You have to think this through.”
    â€œI know. I’ve thought it through. It still just feels right. It feels like the right thing to do. We can’t go on like this, Sammy.”
    â€œHarold,” Sammy leaned forward, green ‘Would you like a receipt?’ text flashing, “Harold, look at me. You’ve been here, what, fifty some years. Take it from me. This place can be overwhelming. You come here and it seems for the first time you’ve got infinite power, infinite choices. But then there are people still trying to tell you what to do and it can be frustrating—infuriating. You just want to show them a thing or two. But you still have to make sound decisions. Let me tell you, Harold, sometimes—sometimes those decisions can stick with you for a long time—” Crisp, green bills flitted out, stacking themselves onto his tray and he swatted at them, cramming them inside a desk drawer. “Do you understand what I’m saying to you, Harold?”
    â€œYes. Believe me; I really do. It’s just. It’s over. I have to finish this.”
    â€œOkay,” Sammy said. “In that case, the first thing you do when you get into the court room is…”
    *
    Harold found her sitting alone with her elbow resting on the worn green wood of the dark tavern’s bar. A glass of water with lemon sat untouched near her left hand as she studied a form. She wore her black and white silk suit and her forties-face, her arguing face.
    â€œHello,” Harold said. He pulled out a stool and sat. “Is this the bar we had our college fight at?”
    â€œYes. The owner made a recreation of it after he died.” She turned the page on her form. “You’re almost an hour late. Isn’t this important to you?”
    â€œIt is. I found the directions you left to this place on the refrigerator door. They were a bit off.”
    â€œThey weren’t off. We just think of things differently.”
    â€œI have them right here.” Harold dug into his pocket and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper to show her. “It says Happiness137 Ambivalence228 Malaise092.” He watched for a change in her expression. “It’s the wrong Emotional Address . Happiness137 Ambivalence228? Just because this place has good German beer doesn’t make it Happiness137 Ambivalence228. I ended up in Leipzig.”
    Patty looked up, “What do you know about German beer? When have you been to Leipzig?”
    â€œTwenty minutes ago, and when I was thirty-seven.”
    â€œFine. Whatever. Sorry.”
    â€œIs that another vapor-paper ? Didn’t we cover all of that in the preliminary forms?”
    â€œThis is the real thing, Harold. It’s the GT-14675 Sep-Prep: Separation Preparation.”
    â€œWhat are those first four pages for?”
    She flashed a wearied expression. “That’s our identification numbers.”
    â€œYou wrote down both our identification numbers by hand? At 2,500 numbers each, that’s—”
    â€œYes, and I doubled checked them. They must really want to discourage people from filling these