Beneath the article are the usual comments by the dregs of society, complete with one person convinced the situation is Obama’s fault. This is of less interest to me than the photos tucked in beside the text. The first one shows Carter and Lorena Hale in happier days, the two of them standing together at some museum gala—him in a tux, her in a richly embroidered evening jacket, his arm around her shoulders and a glass of champagne in her hand.
The second one includes Jonah.
This shot isn’t posed. Jonah is walking out of the courthouse, resolutely not looking at the phalanx of reporters clustered around the steps. Next to him are two other people—a woman with long dark hair that I instantly recognize as his sister, and a man with fair hair and broad shoulders who looks nothing like Jonah, yet seems to be part of the family. To judge by the coats and scarves they all wear, this picture must have been taken not long after “the alleged February incident.”
Kip says, “You can’t tell me that’s not intriguing.”
“You can’t tell me it’s any of our business,” I say. Yet I’m already turning this sordid situation over in my head, spinning the facets as if Jonah’s psyche is a Rubik’s Cube I could solve.
I’ve wondered what could have led to Jonah’s fantasy. He insists he would never, ever rape a woman for real, and I believe him. He’s been fiercely protective of me, and of all women. Yet still, he’s fixated on the idea of rape, forcing himself on a woman despite all her protests. I’ve watched his eyes darken as he tore off my clothes. I’ve seen him come inside me while he held me down.
Maybe . . . maybe he grew up with a violent mother. My mom dropped the ball, and I know it, but she never hit me. I never thought she would, even for a second. How much worse would it have been if she’d waved a gun around and actually threatened to kill me? I can hardly imagine the terror, or the sorrow. After something like that, you’d feel as if there were no safe place in the world.
So maybe, deep inside, Jonah has this anger at women. But instead of turning out to be a misogynistic shithead, he sublimated his rage into a fucked-up sexual fantasy. Made up for his powerlessness as a boy by imagining having total control over the object of his desire.
“You’re interested,” Kip said. “Knew you would be. Why don’t I get us another round?” He’s on his feet walking toward the bar before I can even tell him no.
As long as I’m already neck-deep in this, I might as well dive in. So I leaf through the other stories in Kip’s folder. However, relatively few of them are about Jonah’s immediate family, and those that are mostly date from before the legal battle about Mrs. Hale’s sanity, or control of the company, whichever is really in dispute. Instead I see glossy, society-magazine stuff about the Hales’ charitable giving, an Architectural Digest story about the renovation of Redgrave House, that kind of thing. One article mentions Jonah as a “track star,” which I wouldn’t have guessed. Runners always seem so skinny. Jonah’s body would better suit a swimmer or a diver—lean but powerful.
The older articles focus on Redgrave House and what appear to be a centuries’ worth of screwed-up people who have lived inside it. Suicide pacts, sex scandals, an alleged haunting: You name it, it happened there. This is probably the most famous house in the world that no one would ever want to live in.
Enough, I decide. This comes too close to prying for me to be comfortable with it. The CNN stuff, okay, whatever—but the rest of this is Google overkill gone bad. Jonah has respected my privacy, and I’m ashamed not to have respected his.
Now I’d like to leave, never mind the second round, but Kip is by now deep in flirtation with the bartender. As I learn when my Corona is presented to me, this sexy bartender turns out to be named Ryan, and he’s the most interesting person Kip has met in forever so I have to stay to give Kip an excuse to hang around. I give Kip a look, but what the hell. I sigh, and drink my beer—slowly. Their mating dance continues for another half hour before Kip finally manages to get the guy’s digits.
The way he carries on as we walk out onto the street, you’d think Kip had won the Olympic decathlon. “Come on, Ryan’s hot. Scorching. Radioactive. And now he’s in my phone. Normally it would take any amount of sexy groveling on Grindr to get that far.”
“Sure. Ryan’s gorgeous.” Not my type, really—short, muscled, like lots of bodybuilders—but that hardly matters, since I’m not Ryan’s type either.
Kip pouts. “Why aren’t you celebrating my moment of glory?”
And there’s the opening I was looking for. “Because I try not to meddle in my friends’ love lives. Unlike some people.”
“I wasn’t meddling. Simply making sure you were informed.”
“How did you even know about—that I’d gone out with Jonah Marks? Whatever your barista source saw, it wasn’t even about that, so . . .”
“I have other connections, as you should know.” Kip’s omniscience is one of the great campus mysteries. “In this case, one of the earth science grad students mentioned that she’d seen the two of you standing rather close at Carmen’s last wingding.”