“That was the strange thing. He was asking about Bucky, and why your marriage ended. Why would a reporter be interested in any of that?”
“What did you tell him?”
“What could I tell him? I don’t know anything about why your marriage ended, do I?”
“Did he ask about anything else?”
“Well … Give me a second, I need to …” Ariel can hear the squeak-slam of a screen door. “I needed to get away from George.” Elaine is now talking in a low voice. “The reporter asked if I knew who your son’s father is. I said no, you’d gotten an anonymous donor. And he asked if I was sure.”
Oh God, Ariel thinks: She does not want to talk about this with her mother. Then she realizes something else: “Mom, why did you have your phone on? Didn’t I ask you to keep it powered down?” Ariel hears knocking on her door, which she starts walking toward.
“Well, I turned it on just for one minute, to check messages.”
“But—” Ariel is about to explain that a minute is plenty long to locate a cell, but there’s no point.
“And after I checked my messages, I forgot to turn the phone off again.”
“Mom could you hold on one sec?” Ariel opens the door to find Moniz and Santos there, as expected. “Sorry,” she says to the police, “can you give us a couple more minutes?”
“Certainly.”
Ariel shuts the door. “Okay Mom, can you get George now, please?”
“Yes. But Honey? Why would a reporter ask that? About George’s father?”
Ariel was well aware of her mom’s views on marriage, on sexual assault, on a woman’s place in the world, what it means to be a wife; she’d learned the hard way. So she hadn’t told Elaine the truth about her pregnancy. In fact she hadn’t told anyone. Then she’d gone ahead and signed away her freedom to tell anyone anything about it, ever. Certainly not over a telephone line that might be bugged by the CIA.
“I don’t know” is what she tells her mother, with butterflies dancing in her stomach.
*
“Oh my God!” Ariel startled, recoiled, released her grip on the handle of the bathroom door.
Charlie Wolfe grinned, swayed. “Hello there, sexy lady.”
She didn’t like the look of this, nor the sound. “Charlie, you scared me.”
“Sorry, didn’t mean-a.”
He was plastered. But why not, it was his party, and being inebriated was not a crime. Ariel chose to afford him the presumption of innocence—he was blocking the door because he was drunk and confused, he’d come to this out-of-the-way bathroom because he needed to snort a line, make a call, take a dump. Though Ariel’s racing heart told her that these guesses were all bullshit. Experience told her.
“Excuse me,” she said, nonconfrontational. Charlie wasn’t merely the host of this bash, he was also her husband’s most important business associate, a man who was flinging open doors for Bucky, allowing piles of cash to tumble in. Bucky’s business was on the cusp of everything that was about to blow up—digital media, social networks, partisan news, fake facts—and this drunk man blocking the bathroom door was helping it happen.
Charlie pushed back his hair, and Ariel noticed that his wrist was adorned with a couple of those rubber bracelets that profess support for some cause, self-adornment to display what a generous person he was, plus a rustic leather strap to display how cool, how laid-back, how fond of some unspoiled exotic beach. Tulum, probably. Everybody loved Tulum.
This was a man who’d bought a gala table in support of childhood literacy, he’d been the only one who’d raised his hand when the live-auctioneer asked if any of the assembled wonderful people could see their way to a hundred-thousand-dollar gift, and Charlie had looked down faux-sheepishly—humbly—when the room erupted in applause, with Ariel right there at his table, so she’d been one of the first of the little-black-dressed women and dinner-jacketed men obligated to rise, to clap, to gaze in ersatz admiration at this entrepreneur-philanthropist-douchebag until he reluctantly—begrudgingly—rose to acknowledge everyone’s standing-ovation acknowledgment of his altruism.
“What’s the rush?” he asked. “Why dontcha stay here with me?” He took a step toward her.
“No, Charlie, I don’t think that’s such a great idea.”
Ariel put her hand up—halt right there—but he didn’t. Instead he took another step forward, blocking the door completely.
“C’mon. Jussa minute or two.”
“No,” she said, “I should go.”
But he didn’t get out of her way. Instead he took another step forward, through the doorway, and now her outstretched hand was just inches from his chest.
“Could you move, please?”
Ariel didn’t want to touch him, so she pulled her hand back, dropped her arm to her side.
“I need to get back to my table. To my husband.”
Charlie ignored this. He lowered his hand to his crotch, and stroked his erection through his linen pants. “Whaddya think?”
“No,” she said, feeling her fear give way to panic; this was happening awfully fast. Was now the time to scream? “Please let me get by.”
“I know you want this.” He was nodding in agreement with himself. “You’ve always had a thing for me, haven’t you?”
There was absolutely no way he could have believed this. Ariel had never flirted with Charlie, never encouraged him by any stretch of any imagination, no matter how distorted.
“No Charlie, I really don’t.” How many times had she already said no? “Now please get out of my way or I’ll scream.”
“Oh”—arrogant smirk—“I bet you will.”
One of his hands was flapping around behind him, and Ariel realized too late that he was searching for the doorknob. He pulled the door closed, then she heard the click of the lock, and now full-on panic was coursing through her body like an electric shock, making it hard for her to think, and she blurted out, “Bucky is going to come looking for me,” an obvious lie.
“No.” Charlie shook his head, steeled his jaw. “He isn’t.”
She would need to scream very loudly, as loudly as possible, but people would hear, wouldn’t they? Someone would come running, a couple of men probably, she could envisage them bursting through the bathroom door, coming upon this impossible-to-misinterpret scene—
But then what? Charlie owned all these people, the businessmen out there, the politicians, the bankers, the socialites, the caterers.
Ariel could see exactly what would happen: She’d be the one portrayed as the aggressor, the seducer, the slut. The drunk social climber who’d fallen on her face.
“I told Bucky I’d be right back.” Ariel shuffled backward, away from Charlie, bumping up against the vanity, running out of room. Running out of time.
“No, you didn’t.”
“Please,” she said again, “don’t.”