“When we cross the border, continue on the A-5. When we approach Mérida, please wake me up.”
John shifts position, but remains asleep. Ariel hasn’t been in the backseat like this with a man in—what?—maybe never. The last time she got into a car with a man for a long drive was fourteen years ago. Or at least she’d expected it to be a long drive, just like she’d expected it to be a long marriage. Both turned out to be brief.
*
“What?” Bucky glanced at Ariel, then back to the road. “What did you just say?”
They were in stop-and-go traffic on the Montauk Highway, short bursts of movement that interrupted long stretches of crawling. It was going to be an interminable drive to the city, three and a half hours, maybe four. Ariel had waited a few minutes after they got in the car, for no reason other than to delay starting this conversation she didn’t want to have. But she knew that with each passing minute it was going to get harder, and eventually impossible. So she jumped in without looking down, and blurted it out, too fast and too unexpected for Bucky to absorb.
She took a very deep, very long breath, and started again: “Last night. I went to the bathroom, and Charlie barged in, and locked the door, and raped me.”
“Oh my God.” Bucky flicked his eyes to her again, longer this time. “I’m so sorry. Here, let me pull over.”
“No,” Ariel objected. “Traffic is only getting worse. Keep driving.”
Ariel wanted Bucky to need to face the windshield instead of staring at all her humiliation, all her pain. She didn’t want anyone, even her husband, to see all that. Ariel of course expected Bucky’s full support, but empathy is not the same thing as sympathy, and she was worried that the space between the two might get filled by something poisonous.
“Are you okay?”
“No,” she said. “Not really.”
“And by raped, you mean … ?”
Ariel took another deep breath to steady herself, but it didn’t do much good. “I mean he forced his penis into my vagina, again and again, until he ejaculated. Inside of me.”
She stopped trying to fight back the tears.
“My God. When?”
When? “During dessert.”
Ariel had a sinking new feeling, in addition to all the other unbearable emotions that had been coursing through her. There was something about Bucky’s demeanor that seemed both very wrong and very familiar.
“Why didn’t you tell me before?”
“I didn’t tell you last night because you were plastered, and I didn’t think we’d be able to have a productive conversation, and I didn’t want to have a nonsensical one with a drunk. Then this morning you left before I was awake, then you brought home those people for lunch, then we rushed to pack, and now here we are, and I’ve told you, so can you stop asking about the logistics of my reporting to you of this sexual assault committed by your friend against your wife?”
“I’m sorry. I’m … shocked. I’m horrified, is what I am.”
She was on the verge of completely losing it.
“I’m so sorry,” he said again, tentatively. Ariel was worried about all this apologizing. Like “thoughts and prayers,” it’s what people say when what they plan to do is nothing.
“I’m not getting a very supportive vibe from you, Bucky.”
“I’m sorry,” yet again. “So what do you want to do?”
That’s when it hit her, the reason for her déjà vu: her father. You, not we.
“I think we need to go to the police,” Ariel said.
Bucky glanced at her quickly, then said, “Mmm.”
Ariel could tell that her husband was doing calculations, A to B to C, what Z looks like, for him. Bucky wouldn’t find any of those destinations acceptable. He didn’t want to say this aloud, but it was written all over his face. All over his silence.
She turned away, disgusted. You can’t know how horrible someone is until they’re given an opportunity to be horrible. In a privileged life such as Bucky’s—or for that matter hers—such an opportunity can take a long while to materialize. Maybe a lifetime. Maybe never.
“I don’t know what to think here,” he said.
Here was Bucky’s opportunity, right now. Ariel realized this with a sickening thud: She’d married a terrible person, and this was the proof.
“What to think?”
Her tears stopped. Her sadness was replaced instantly with fury, which had been lurking just beneath the surface, ready to take over.
“Are you kidding me? Tell me, Bucky—please tell me—what it is you think you’re debating?”
Ariel stared at him, waiting for an answer.
“I …”
Just like that, she made her decision, and in an instant her mind was shifting gears, trying to identify Route 27 landmarks, to figure out where she was in relation to train stations, bus stops, friends’ houses. Later Ariel understood how she’d been able to make her decision so fast: because she’d actually made it much earlier. But she’d been hoping to go her whole life pretending she didn’t know that Bucky was a terrible person, hoping to never confront the evidence. Even though she was almost certain it was there, somewhere. Here.
The car was crawling at five miles per hour. Up ahead, red taillights were blinking on, headed their way, like a synchronized light show titled Traffic Jam. In a few seconds the standstill would arrive, and Bucky would bring their black Range Rover to a stop.
There, that restaurant on the other side of the highway: Ariel knew exactly where they were. She grabbed her wallet from the center console.
“What are you doing?”
She yanked on the door handle, but it was locked.
“Ariel?”
She punched UNLOCK.
“What are—”
She pulled again, and this time the door swung open. The car was still moving, barely. “Stop the car,” she said.
“You can’t—”
“Stop the car, Bucky, right now.” She jumped out, left the door wide open.
“Come on, Ariel. Don’t be—” He stopped before he could find an acceptable insult. At that moment, none was acceptable; at least he had the sense to realize it. Bucky may have just proven himself to be horrible, but he wasn’t lacking in the self-preservation instinct, and he wasn’t stupid.
Ariel yanked open the back door and grabbed her weekend bag. She left that door open too, and walked away from the hulking black car stopped in the middle of a traffic jam on Route 27. There was no way he’d be able to follow her, not on foot, nor in the car.
She never wanted to see Bucky again. Nor of course Charlie Wolfe, especially him, but she did. Painful but necessary, like surgery, with a long, agonizing recovery. A whole lifetime of it.
“Hey,” her husband called after her. “Let’s—”
“Oh fuck you, Bucky.”
*
Wagstaff stands there admiring the lists spread across his dining table, nodding in appreciation. There are a lot of names.