*
She used to believe it was possible to know everything about another person, at least everything important. She’d said yes to a previous marriage proposal from a man she’d known for a couple of years, ended up living with him for a couple more—plenty of time—before she discovered that she’d never really known him at all, not the important parts. Maybe she doesn’t know this new man either.
We tell ourselves stories about each other, about ourselves too, our pasts. We construct our narratives, we start with the big picture and then add details one by one, like building a house, the foundation and the framing and the roof and eventually you’re installing doorknobs and light fixtures and banister newels, an entire home where there used to be nothing at all, something that looks like it’s been there forever, even though it’s a brand-new fabrication.
We can do the same thing for ourselves. Ariel had. Who’s to say John hadn’t? Maybe this cop is right: Maybe she doesn’t know her husband at all.
*
“Because sometimes,” Moniz continues, “this is what can happen with an old habit that perhaps a man is stopping for health reasons, or legal reasons, or financial reasons. Later in his life, he comes to a place such as Lisboa, where the health and law and finances of the drugs are different, and here he thinks, oh, this is so much safer, so much cheaper, I can try just a little. And then …”
Moniz sweeps open his hand, there it is: a bender.
“I understand what you’re saying.” Ariel is trying to not be offended by this suggestion, she knows she shouldn’t be, but somehow she is. Taking offense is not a rational choice. “But that’s not what’s going on here.”
The cop nods; it’s not his job to convince her. “Is it possible—this also is not a very pleasant question, I am sorry, but I must ask, I hope you are understanding …”
“Yes, go ahead.”
“Is it possible that your husband is right now with someone else?”
Ariel cocks her head.
“Another woman?” Moniz clarifies.
She’s growing frustrated with this line of questioning, even though it’s expected, maybe inevitable. Just as it’s inevitable that she’ll object this way—John wouldn’t do that, he’s not a cheater, not an addict, not a sociopath. How much of this does she need to actually say aloud?
“Listen,” she says, looking from Moniz to Santos and back again. “John practically begged me to come on this trip with him. If he was going to come here to be with another woman, or to do drugs, why would he beg his wife to come along with him? Why?”
“That is a very good question. Do you have any ideas?”
“Because that’s not what’s happening.”
Santos chimes in: “Is it possible that he is not coming to Lisboa with bad intentions but these things are happening anyway? Life is not always as we intend.”
That’s for damn sure.
“Listen,” Ariel says again, trying to sound levelheaded. “I understand your suspicions: He’s with another woman, he’s doing drugs, he’s scamming me. I can see why those might look like possibilities; I can understand why you’d need to pursue those theories. But I’m telling you, they’re all wrong. So what I’m asking is: What’s it going to take before you start believing me?”
Moniz glances around, looking uneasy. Ariel realizes that she has become loud. What some people might call shrill.
“Please, senhora, contain your voice.”
“But goddamn it, why don’t you believe me?”
“Have we said that we do not believe you? No, we have not.”
“Well then why don’t you do something?”
Ariel is hotheaded, always has been, even as a little kid. Her parents loved telling stories about young Ariel’s hair-trigger disproportionate responses to missing toys, canceled parties, bad food. But short-tempered is very different from hysterical. Men often try to reframe temper as hysteria, to recast righteousness as overreaction, as hypersensitivity, as irrationality.
So this is the response Ariel has seen before, the response she expects, this indulgent look, dismissive, saying something like this: “What is it that you want for us to do, senhora?”
It’s the tone that a man uses when he thinks he’s being the reasonable one. A tone that transcends generations, cultures, languages. The universal tone of condescension.
Moniz leans forward. “Please, I am asking: What is it that you think the police can do for you, now? When your husband left your hotel safely this very morning, when there is no evidence of anything wrong at all? The evidence that you bring”—Moniz points at the note—“is, if anything, evidence that your husband is unharmed, not in any danger, not connected to any crime.”
“You can trace the location of his phone.”
Moniz leans back quickly, away from this suggestion.
“You can demand it from the mobile provider.” Ariel glances between Moniz and Santos.
Santos is the one who answers. “Only with a warrant. A judge is not issuing a warrant because of these evidences that you are bringing.”
“Your intelligence service, then. Portugal has an intelligence service, right?”
“Of course,” Moniz answers. “This was once the center of the espionage world, did you know that? During the Second World War. More spies here in Portugal than anywhere else.”
Who gives a damn?
“So they can do this,” Ariel says. “They can—whatever it’s called, triangulate the location of John’s phone.”
“Yes, they can. But they are not unless there is evidence that this is a matter of international intelligence. Is there any such evidence?”
Ariel knows she doesn’t have a compelling answer, and that’s when it all falls apart, her lower lip quivering, her chin too, then the whole bottom of her face.
“I don’t know,” she blubbers through sobs. She can feel the few other customers watching this scene, and the staff pitying the cops—what are they going to do with this woman? Awfully glad it’s not their responsibility. If there’s one thing Ariel is sure of, it’s that no one wants to deal with a hysterical woman.
CHAPTER 11
DAY 1. 6:47 P.M.
Ariel storms out of the restaurant onto the busy street, teeming with life, loud with the music that’s everywhere in Lisbon, Brazilian sertanejo and Puerto Rican reggaeton, Euro pop and American rock and the traditional fado, music is spilling out of shops and cafés, pubs and clubs, street performers in every little plaza in front of every little church. She can’t imagine what would happen if a rock band set up on the lawn of her Main Street’s Episcopalian Church on a Monday afternoon.
Directly in front of the restaurant, the sidewalk is packed with a dense mass of what seems like business colleagues, a dozen people who’d already begun their evening with cocktails elsewhere, spirits high, backslapping and joke telling and loud laughing, on their way to a big—