“I know,” Kristin agreed. “I know…” She wanted to be careful about what she said; she believed that Philip had fucked one of the girls (both, for all she knew), because Richard had told her. But she had no idea whether Philip had confessed this to Nicole.
“People were killed,” Nicole continued. “I understand those two men might have been criminals. But they’re dead now. They’re gone. I mean, maybe they had wives or kids. They had moms. They had dads. And they’re gone. And those women who killed them?”
“Go on,” said Kristin. Nicole’s voice had trailed off before she had answered her own question.
“Whatever happened to them before they murdered those men must have been unspeakable. It must have been horrible. Imagine being so angry or so scared that you could kill people like that.”
Kristin sat down in one of the kitchen chairs. Ever since Richard had said something about how the girls may have been held in their jobs against their will—how they may have been kidnapped—her feelings toward them had been altered ever so slightly. And even if they hadn’t been abducted and coerced into the work, the truth was that no one becomes a prostitute because she wants to. It’s always the occupation of last resort. You go there because you need money for food or drugs or (the media’s favorite explanation, because it suggested simultaneously that the girls were clean and college was too expensive) tuition. And so she understood Nicole’s empathy. But this was still her house that had been soiled. This was her marriage that had been desecrated. In her mind, she saw her husband naked with one of the prostitutes in the guest room. “I agree,” she said after a moment. It was just so hard to reconcile Richard with a girl like that.
But then Nicole surprised her by asking rhetorically, “And how could those guys do this to us? How could Richard do it? How could Philip? All the men who were there? I mean, I figured there might be a stripper. I didn’t ask. But I figured since it was going to be at your house, it would be harmless. They weren’t even going to a strip club. They were going to…they were going to Westchester, for God’s sake.”
“What did Philip tell you?” she asked finally. She simply couldn’t resist.
“He wasn’t going to tell me anything.”
“Probably not.”
“He only told me what really happened because it was so clear he was lying.”
“And what did he say?”
“He confessed. He confessed that he had sex with one of the girls. He actually thought it would make me feel better when he reassured me that he’d used a condom. Some of the men didn’t.”
“Have you seen him? Or did you two just talk on the phone?”
“I can’t bear to see him. I just can’t.”
“I understand.”
“Tell me, how bad does your house look? How awful?”
“I have no idea. It’s a crime scene. I’m not allowed to go home.”
“A crime scene? Oh, God, that’s terrible.”
“Yup.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m at my mother’s—in the city.”
“How mad are you—at Richard?”
“I’m mad. I’m hurt. As you said, I just don’t see how he could do this to us. To our family.”
“That’s how I feel, too,” Nicole agreed. Then: “Why do you think they did it? Had sex with those girls?”
“Richard didn’t.”
“He didn’t?”
“No,” she said, though she realized instantly both that Philip had told Nicole his brother was equally guilty and that it was possible Richard had lied to her. Maybe he had fucked the girl he had brought to the guest room. But she wanted to believe her husband, because in the shipwreck that was her life this weekend, that was the only debris floating by she could latch onto. “He went upstairs with one, but he…he resisted her.”
“Resisted her. You make it sound like it was all the girls’ fault. It wasn’t, you know. I feel bad for them.”
“On some level, I do, too. On some level, I even feel a little bad for Richard. It won’t be pretty when he goes in to the office on Monday morning.” She gazed out the window at the overcast skies. “So, what are you going to do?” she asked Nicole.
“About?”
“About the wedding.”
There was a long silence on the other end of the line. “I don’t know,” she said finally. “I just don’t know if I can marry him anymore.”
…