Oh God no.
Ariel desperately needed a shower, immediately; she needed to rid her body of every toxic trace of Charlie. But she didn’t want Bucky to misconstrue the motivation behind her nakedness, nor even to construe it correctly. So she snuck off to the ground-floor guest room, marched toward the en suite, and froze in the doorway.
Another bathroom.
Could she do this? Should she? She felt her whole body vibrating again as she tentatively crossed the threshold, as she switched on the lights, terrified of this brightly lit sterile space, terrified that she was about to wash away crucial physical evidence of the crime scene that was her body, but also terrified of the alternative, of trying to survive the night without at least making every effort to cleanse herself of the violation, even knowing that she wouldn’t succeed.
She had no choice. She peeled off her dress, she would’ve peeled off her skin if she could, which is what it felt like she was trying to do, scouring herself everywhere, using a loofah as if it were a Brillo pad, rubbing raw flesh that was already bruised, abraded, violated, it was pain on top of pain, horror at what she was now doing on top of horror at what had been done to her.
Ariel eventually crept up the stairs, listening carefully, and thankfully she could hear her husband’s snoring before she got to the top. She slunk into their bathroom, brushed her teeth, flossed. She had a good smile, it was one of her most notable features, and of course a smile was a function of healthy teeth, whose foundation was healthy gums, so she flossed every goddamned night, even apparently on nights when she’d been raped.
She glanced at Bucky splayed in bed, not even half-covered by sheets, shirtless, hairy, beastly.
No, she absolutely could not get into that bed.
She returned to the bathroom, popped a Xanax, then on second thought another. She decamped for the den via the kitchen, where she pulled a four-hundred-dollar chef’s knife from the block. Then she sat in the dark, willing herself not to fall apart while also suspecting that it may have been too late for that. Maybe this was what a fallen-apart person looked like, clutching a blade in both hands, staring at the door, her whole body buzzing in anticipation of the next assault, even though she knew that it wouldn’t be here, and it wouldn’t be tonight.
*
After a couple of hours, rational thoughts began to form, all coalescing around one central question: What should she do now? Should she drive over there, wake up Charlie’s wife, tell her? Or wake up Charlie, beat the crap out of him with a golf club? Or drive to the police station? Or call the police?
Now that she’d had time to think, it felt like such a failure, doing nothing. She should do something, shouldn’t she? But she could not force herself to decide what to do. Every option was bad—started with the same unspeakable thing, and ended with something unacceptable. Ariel had no good choices. She needed to figure which was least bad.
At three in the morning, it occurred to her that she needed to take a pregnancy test tonight, when it would still be absolutely clear who the father was if the result was positive. So she crept back upstairs, and peed on a stick, and waited, and broke down in tears.
*
“Your wife does not often accompany you on business trips.” Moniz looks to Ariel, then back to John. “This is the first such trip, yes?”
“That’s right.”
“Why this time?”
“Business trips are lonely, and difficult. I figured if I could turn that into something fun with my new wife, I should.”
“Yes, but why this specific trip?”
“I’d been to Lisbon a few times before, I know the city pretty well, so I wouldn’t mind missing out on some of her adventures while I had to work. It’s a short flight, it’s convenient, it’s inexpensive, it’s beautiful, and honestly I just thought she’d love it. A lot of reasons.”
“But it is not because your clients are interested to meet your wife?”
John doesn’t answer immediately.
“Is that not what you are telling her?”
“Yes.” John swallows. “That’s part of it too.”
“Are your clients asking you for this? To bring your wife to Lisbon?”
“Well, no. Not explicitly.”
“Please forgive me. Perhaps I am not understanding. How do you know that this is what your clients want?”
“I have a lot of experience doing business in Europe. This is common.”
“Is it?” Moniz looks again at Ariel, then back at John. “So you are assuming.”
“Yes.”
“But that is not what you are telling your wife, to convince her to join you.”
“I didn’t want her to feel guilty about taking the time, and spending the money, and being away from her child, her business. I guess I was sort of tricking her into a vacation, which she otherwise refuses to do.”
“So you are lying to your wife.”
“Well, lying? That’s a strong word. A romantic ruse, is how I’d put it.”
“Yet it is not turning out so romantic, is it?”
“Senhor.” Santos jumps in again. All eyes turn to her. “When is the last time you are speaking to your sister?”
John is a deer frozen in the headlights. “I’m not sure. A couple of months?”
“Do you know her current location?”
“No.”
“You are having recent contact with her? Text message? Email?”
Ariel doesn’t like where this is going, not one bit. She wants these cops to leave, she wants to go to the airport, get out of this town, this country, she wants to be home with George, away from this whole misadventure. Why the hell did they come here? This was such a monumentally bad idea.
“John, can I speak to you a minute?”
*
“You are exhausted,” Ariel whispers, behind the closed door of the bedroom. “You have been through a horrible experience. You are traumatized, you are in pain. You need a break, you need sleep.”
John is looking at her, searching. “But I don’t.”
“Yes.” Ariel glowers at him. “You do.”
“But …” He turns toward the bedroom door, the detectives sitting out there, waiting with their notepads, with their suspicions, their handcuffs, their guns.
“But I have nothing to hide. So I don’t want to look like I do. And honestly—”
“Don’t say honestly. Please, just stop using that word, forever. It’s what liars say.”
“And it’s guilty people who refuse to talk to the cops.”
“No, it’s what rational people do when they realize that the cops are not on their side. I’m serious, John: We need to shut this down, right now. I don’t know what exactly these cops suspect, but I don’t think we should just wait around to find out.”
He sighs; he knows she’s right.
“Remember: Everyone will understand that you can’t talk about this, just like everyone will understand that I can’t divulge the name, and neither can you. And anyone who doesn’t understand? That’s someone we shouldn’t be talking to anyway. We’ll just go home, and get you a lawyer, get me a lawyer, and we’ll shut the hell up about who provided the ransom money.”