Mr. X

Well, I'm just going to behave inappropriately and talk about my ex-husband in a negative way for a minute. This is a very small thing, so I feel that I can get away with it. We'll call him -- hmmm -- Mr. X.

When Mr. X and I were first married, and we were moving in to the Envoy (that was a lovely apartment! Parquet hardwood floors, casement windows, gorgeous view of the city...sigh!) he unpacked a set of five James Bond novels, by Ian Fleming. These were of a matching set, hardbound with dust jackets, and quite nice looking -- and they were all sealed in plastic sleeves.

Now, I was (and still am) an enormous fan of James Bond movies, but at that time in my life, I had still not read any of the books. So I exclaimed with delight at seeing these books, and reached for them to read them. Mr. X responded with sharp horror, and forbade me to ever, ever, EVER open these plastic sleeves and remove these books because they were EXTREMELY VALUABLE editions, and would, in case of emergency, be able to buy us a house or support us in our old age or pay for our cancer treatments or some such thing. So, I, still thinking that he was an ordinary, intelligent, believable human being, and not a bizarre, soulless, self-absorbed pathological liar, said, "Oh," and withdrew my hand.

Well.

I would like to tell the world that I have now collected, on my own, with no assistance, those same five books and two others of the same edition, not one of which has cost me more than two dollars.

Two. Dollars.

And, since I have now become used to Mr. X and his lies, I feel quite sure that these books were merely books, in someone's storage locker, and he stole them when he was a security guard. Because that is what he did. Repeatedly and always. Stole things and then proclaimed them to be family heirlooms, or priceless artifacts.

Nonetheless, my little shelf of Ian Flemings gives me extra-special joy when I see them, because I bought them for myself, and disproved Mr. X's lies to myself.