Blind To His Faults

Paul Schwartzman: The limo is on the way and 80-year-old Burton Pugach is crawling on the living room floor, searching for his cellphone.

"Burt! You have to dress! Now do it!" his wife, Linda, 70, shouts from the hall.

"Whaddya mean?!" Pugach roars back.

She groans.

He finds the phone beneath a chair, then disappears into the bedroom. She complains about what a slob he is. He has turned the kitchen into his personal filing cabinet, stuffing his legal files into the cupboards above and below the sink.

"El Creepo," she calls him with the slightest trace of affection.

Linda and Burt Pugach, just another bickering couple from Queens. Except for these unavoidable facts: Nearly 50 years ago, after Linda spurned him and became engaged to another man, a jury convicted Burt, a lawyer, of hiring a thug to throw lye in her face.