Ariel pauses for a respectable interval before shrugging her shoulders. She doesn’t want to seem too dismissive of cork, of the cops’ efforts. They’re trying. That’s all she can ask.
“I think,” Ariel says, “that the relevant executive is named Jorge.”
“Jorge, okay. And his family name?”
Ariel shakes her head.
“Okay, that too is more than nothing. Anything else?”
“Jorge—I’m pretty sure that’s his name—is a low-handicap golfer.”
Moniz jots this down.
“When did your husband tell you these things?” Santos asks.
“About a month ago. When he was inviting me to come on the trip.”
“One month, that is not so long. Why can you not remember?”
“When John told me these details, I’d had a little too much to drink. I’m usually very careful.”
She glances at Santos, a cop who’s a woman, a person who doesn’t need any further explanation. Ariel can’t help but glance down at this cop’s hand too, looking for a wedding ring, finding none.
“But we’d had a big meal with other people in a restaurant, the whole thing was a long evening, my glass kept getting refilled …” Ariel shrugs. “Anyway, it was on the drive home, I remember sitting in the car, thinking I was glad I wasn’t the one driving. That’s when John bombarded me with details that I didn’t absorb. I assumed he’d tell me the relevant bits again some other time, so it didn’t seem that important to pay attention. But he never did.”
Santos maintains eye contact. Ariel can feel her assessing this story. These cops have been assessing Ariel all along, every bit of herself. That’s always the case in a situation like this, a possible crime being reported by a woman, involving a man with whom she’s been intimate. It’s all about credibility.
“Do you have a photograph of your husband?” Moniz asks. It’s clear that this interview too is about to come to an inconclusive end. “We can share it with our colleagues, and the hospitals.”
Ariel retrieves her phone, finds the same couples selfie that she showed to the chambermaids. Moniz squints at the screen, sighs dramatically, then finds his glasses again. The reading-glasses situation is really hitting him hard.
“Maybe a different photo?” The one she offered is really about the backdrop, the panorama of the city from high above, a spectacular view. “Perhaps closer of his face?”
“I don’t think so.” Ariel scrolls through her library, pointlessly. She knows there aren’t any others. “I don’t really take photos of John.”
“Oh no? Why is that?”
“My husband doesn’t like it, all this documenting that people do. I don’t either.”
*
Nothing, and nothing, and more nothing; the hotel staff, and the police, and the embassy. No one is taking Ariel seriously, they are all seeing an emotional woman, an irrational woman, a confused woman, a mistaken woman, a disbelieved woman. Again, and again, and again.
The summer sun is blinding, bouncing off all the light-colored walls, the stone sidewalks, every surface seems to be hard and reflective, every structure designed to repel the sunlight, to keep the buildings’ interiors cool. This turns the sidewalks into open-air ovens.
Ariel is trudging toward her hotel, hugging the shady sides of the streets. Sweat is trickling down her temples, her scalp is tingling, she feels her skin flush all over, her cheeks, her chest.
It’s only tourists and desperate people who are out in this heat. Ariel feels like both, a desperate tourist, weaving between the iron bollards that separate the narrow roadways from the narrower sidewalks. She turns a corner onto a block with no shade whatsoever, now facing directly into the overwhelming sun beating down on both sides of the street, no refuge anywhere. It must be a hundred degrees plus humid plus so goddamn bright that even with sunglasses she’s squinting. The heat is like a physical assault.
Ariel considers turning around, ducking inside somewhere. Her head is throbbing—the sun, the fatigue, the tension, the worry—and she realizes that she’s parched, she has barely had a sip of anything to drink all day except coffee, she’s dehydrated, light-headed, dizzy—
She has to stop walking, if only for a minute. She’s on the verge of collapse. She steadies herself with a palm on the hot stone wall. She notices a small market back around the corner, a cool place where she can guzzle a bottle of water, wait for a taxi to the hotel, take a cool shower, lie down and guzzle more water.
Yes, that’s what she’ll do.
She turns her back to the sun, and starts walking whence she came, slowly, deliberately, possibly looking like a careful drunk, someone who doesn’t want to be seen stumbling at least as much as she doesn’t want to actually stumble. Heat exhaustion and dehydration are so often ignored, and she—
*
Wait.
That man across the street, walking in her direction? Ariel has seen him before.
Behind the privacy of her sunglasses, she examines him closely, his aviator shades, a plain blue polo draping a pear-shaped middle-aged torso, squarish rubber-soled leather shoes beneath the creased khakis. It’s been a long time since Ariel cared about fashion, and she has never paid much attention to what men wear. But she forces herself to focus on the lower half of this guy’s outfit, to memorize it. The top half would be easy to change.
She turns the corner, out of the guy’s sight, then searches for a window that might provide a reflection, and yes there, a gift shop’s big expanse of glass, and—yes!—she can see that he too stops in his tracks, turns back in her direction.
It’s hard to make out his features in the reflection of the window display—lots of items, lots of cork—and the angle isn’t great, nor the light. He seems to be leaning against the wall, head down, looking at … what? … must be at his phone, or pretending to look at his phone, just another guy attending to his device. But circumstances betray him: He’s standing in a nonsensical spot—hot, bright, uncomfortable—that’s explicable only if what he’s really doing is something else. Like waiting for Ariel’s next move.
She watches for thirty seconds, and he doesn’t move. That’s all the confirmation she needs.
Ariel steps into the small market’s aggressive air-conditioning, stands in the chill to drink a bottle of water while looking out the window. She hands her empty plastic to the cashier, buys a second bottle, steps back outside, stands amid the trays of produce that beckon passersby with the bright promise of oranges and peaches, cherries and lemons.
She peers again at the cluttered window’s reflections: Ariel can’t see him anywhere. She searches the real-life street in one direction, then another. He’s gone. At least for the moment.
What should she do? She could turn the same corner, try to see if she can locate him, to prove to herself that she’s being followed. But that would run the risk of making herself easier to follow.
Or? Or she could take advantage of her momentary freedom, and elude him.
Or she could confront him.
The answer depends, doesn’t it, on who’s following her.