Of course.
“Excuse me,” she says, turning on her heel. “Excuse me,” elbowing past this group, back to the door, inside to the cops who are still at their table along the far wall, relaxing with cake and espresso and dubious looks at the American woman who simply will not quit.
“There must be a dinner reservation,” Ariel announces. “For tomorrow night.”
Both cops are chewing.
“I don’t know the name of the restaurant,” she continues. “But I do know that it’s walking distance from the hotel, and that it’s a place requiring me to wear a fancy dress, and that it’s for six or eight people, and that it’s at nine o’clock. That’s a lot of information.”
Moniz swallows.
“So you can call around to all the fancy restaurants near my hotel. Ask for the reservation names for large parties tomorrow at nine. Then call those customers. How many can there be?”
The cops still don’t say anything.
“One of them will be my husband’s client.”
Santos nods; Ariel is right, there’s no denying it.
“Yes,” Santos says. “We are doing this.”
“Oh God thank you. Thank you. When?”
“Right now.”
*
Men had called her touchy. They’d called her prickly, combative, hypersensitive. A stuck-up bitch, a cocktease, a cunt. They’d raised their hands as if to hit her, and she’d stared right back: Go ahead, asshole.
Surely it wasn’t that bad, people said. Even some women said it, and not just her mother that one horrid time, that relationship-wrecking moment.
Part of it, Ariel knew, was that she’d led a life that looked privileged, you could tell by her hair, by her skin, her elocution, her diplomas, by the stamps in her old passports. Her whole life had looked enviable, safe, as if it were always broad daylight in a big crowd with plenty of witnesses, even when it was late night, all alone. Bad things did not happen to someone like Ariel, not in America; everyone believed that, even people who knew the contrary. America was nothing if not cognitively dissonant. That’s the real hysteria, the national pretense that we’re not what we empirically are.
Ariel’s father, her mother, her husband, her friends, the police years ago, and these police now: her whole life. She has been silenced by operant conditioning, by receiving the same response again and again, like an electroshocked lab rat, or a beaten dog. A disbelieved woman.
*
The first time: She was thirteen years old, an eighth-grader, and that tenth-grade Mackenzie kid groped her in the pantry when she was looking for marshmallows for backyard s’mores.
“Brett Mackenzie?” Ariel’s mom had asked, incredulous, shaking her head. “Are you sure, Honey? I’ve known that boy his whole life. He’s a good boy.”
Ariel marched away.
*
The second time: She was sixteen, watching a horror flick in Brittany’s basement rec room, everyone blitzed on convenience-store beer. This was the summer between junior and senior years, that season of studying for the SAT, writing college-application essays, working internships, last-ditch efforts to look like serious citizens while getting plastered on Saturday nights to relieve the stress.
Liz was passed out in one of those big leather chairs, and Jared slunk out of the room to call Francesca, and all of a sudden Don was on top of her, smothering her.
“No,” Ariel said, but he ignored her. She tried to push him off, but failed.
“Stop,” she said. She clamped her legs together. He pushed them apart.
“I’ll scream,” she warned.
“No you won’t,” Don said. She could feel his fingers trying to open her pants. “You don’t want to wake Liz, do you?” Then an idea dawned on him. “Or do you?”
That’s when she gathered her strength, and squirmed to the side just enough to free her leg just enough to slam her knee just hard enough into his groin to make him shift just enough for her to just wriggle out from under him. Just enough, just enough, just enough—
Ariel jumped out of the chair. She thought about fleeing, or shaking Liz awake, or smacking Don in the face. But he was face-planted on the chair, unmoving. Unconscious? No, there was a sound coming out of him, maybe sobbing. Had she really hurt him that bad? She hadn’t thought she’d hurt him at all.
But no, Don was not crying. He was laughing. He rolled over, sporting a big drunken grin. “That was funny.”
That was funny? “Are you serious?” she asked.
He didn’t seem to understand what she was asking. He was concentrating on trying to re-button his jeans, and failing almost entirely. “You want something-a drink?” he asked, without looking at her.
She was stunned, and too drunk herself to trust her brain completely. She was already losing confidence in her understanding of the past minute.
“No?” He gave up on his pants, just one button closed, in the wrong spot. Button flies are a bad choice for drunk people. “I’m-a get a beer.”
*
The next day, Ariel told her mother. Elaine was at the kitchen island, having a lunch of hot water with lemon, reading the Styles section. Though maybe reading wasn’t really what Elaine was doing; she was scrutinizing photos of parties and weddings.
“You’re telling me that Don tried to rape you.” She didn’t even bother to close the newspaper, peering over her reading glasses at Ariel, taking her in, the unmistakable look of a hungover teenager who’d emerged from bed at the crack of noon, having made at least one bad choice last night. They come in clusters. “Don Williamson.”
“Well, he didn’t get that far. But that was definitely the direction he was heading, yes.”
“How did that happen?”
“How? I just told you. Which part is confusing?”
“I mean, how did it get that far?”
Ariel was at first too stunned to respond.
“Did you lead him on?”
“What the fuck do you mean, lead him on?”
“Don’t curse at me, young lady, I won’t stand for it.”
As a teenager Ariel had been lavish with profanities, largely because neither of her parents cursed, ever. Years later, she realized that women can either curse freely or live on Park Avenue, but not both. Now in her life’s second act, swearing freely is one of the things she appreciates about being away from the strict rules of New York society. Which were not that different from the rules where she grew up, her parents’ rules. They were just enforced more stringently.
“But why don’t you believe me?”
“It’s not that I don’t believe you, Sweetheart. But are you sure that’s what happened? Or is it possible that this is a misunderstanding?”
Ariel’s mouth was hanging open. She and her mom were each in disbelief about the other. Ariel turned and took a step away.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“Daddy.”
Her mom sighed heavily. “Oh Honey.”
Ariel turned back. “What does that mean?”
“Your father is not going to want to hear something like this.”