“The whole time I’m there she keeps coming to see me, the wife suffering through her husband’s jail term, telling me how sorry she is, and she’s living with him. The whole time. She was with him the whole goddamn time. She felt guilty about the trouble I got in. Christ. I gotta find something to do for work.”
Faulk turned to the screen and cursored down to the list of contacts for handyman kinds of work: electricians, carpenters, landscapers. They were mostly contractors, seeking to hire people specializing in specific tasks. “Can you do electrical work?” He heard the quaking of his own voice. He cleared his throat and repeated the question.
“I remember looking forward to what you had to say on Sundays. Sorry. It was just a shock to see you here. Sorry. It’s nothing you need to worry about anymore, is it, and maybe it never was.”
“You have to concentrate on this,” Faulk said, seeing his own distressing images and trying to clear his mind. It came to him that it was going to be impossible for things to keep going on as they were. He would shake her out of her denials, would get it out of her some way, the real truth. The real truth. He put his hands to his face for a moment, his elbows resting on the desk. His own thoughts appalled him.
“I don’t know how to do electrical,” Witherspoon said.
Faulk stared at the screen. “I’ve got someone here who needs a carpenter. Do you have any formal training in that?”
“No.”
“Well, I can send you over there to talk to the guy.” He wrote the address and number down and handed the paper across the desk.
“Thanks, Father,” said the other, folding the paper. He shoved it into his pocket and went out the door into the bright sunlight.
Faulk turned to the computer, trying again, without success, to repress his own apprehension and doubt, seeing the mental image of Natasha with someone else, on the beach in Jamaica. He sought to shut it down, break it up into the reasons to deny it, to bring forth out of himself the belief that nothing had happened. He could not concentrate. And again he thought of forming the words simply to ask her outright: What did you do in Jamaica that you can’t tell me?
Except that he had asked her about it in direct and indirect ways, and in the same ways she had steadily denied everything while pleading with him not to bring it up, not to mention Jamaica at all.
There was already someone else waiting to see him.
3
After he was gone, she worked for a time. She had decided not to use the apartment in Midtown for at least the first few weeks, wanting to be in the Swan Ridge house where, as she expressed it to him, they were home. She spent an hour trying to make progress on the picture of the sad-eyed woman — the faded color of it seemed just beyond her reach, though she had come close several times. And she had not even begun to get down to the shades of feeling in the eyes. It was going to be a long struggle, but she had been thinking about it with a kind of hunger. The necessary concentration was good; it kept back fretful turns of mind. Today she felt the practical pressure of what else there was to do.
She washed the breakfast dishes and finally went into the bedroom and lay down. For the past week, she had experienced the signs of her period starting. She was late, but she had never been regular. There had been two episodes in her twenties where she worried about being pregnant. Sometimes she couldn’t bring herself to the point of concern. At that age, trouble was what happened to other people. And she was irregular. Nothing had ever happened. Lately, she had been getting up to pee in the nights, and while she knew what that meant, she still thought at first that it was simply because she was awake. But the tiredness had grown worse, and the tenderness of her breasts, more so than the usual feeling prior to a period. She did not want to think about any of it, and it was like a trap. She had been through that heavy period the last time, and so if this was a baby, it was Faulk’s baby, and Faulk wanted children. She wanted children. A family. And having a child could be the beginning of really finding the way to get past everything and be new again.
New again.
The receiver for the phone was on his side of the bed where he had left it. With a sudden strong impulse she took it and touched zero and waited for the operator. She was going to do this. During the few minutes it took to get the number, she held the receiver between her shoulder and collarbone and put on a pair of jeans and a white blouse. Then she sat on the bed and called the number. The Orlando Police Department. Her heart was pounding in her ears. She sat down and leaned over, eyes closed. The ringing went on, and she waited, feeling sick. A recorded voice answered and recited options. Before the menu was finished, she disconnected and lay back down.
Then, lying there, she brought the receiver up and punched in the number again. She could ask somebody how to proceed; she could find out some things.
When the menu started again, she touched the zero, and a female voice came on. “I want to report a rape,” Natasha heard herself say.
“Are you safe now? Can you say where you are?”
“It was — it was back in September. September eleventh.”
There was a pause.
“Hello?”
“Just a minute.” There was a slight static pulse and then silence. And then another female voice. “This is Officer Lorraine Brown. Who’m I talking to?”
“I just need some answers,” Natasha said. “I’m — this is not a crank call—”
“Do you need someone to come assist you. You sound distraught. Are you all right?”
“I’m — it was in September.”
“Yes, I was told — but you sound distraught.”
“No.”
“Okay, go ahead.”
“I was raped. In Jamaica. On September eleventh. The night of September eleventh.”
“Your name, honey?”
“Iris,” Natasha told her.
“Okay, Iris. Tell me about it.”
“The man — his name is Nicholas Duego — lives in Orlando.” She spelled the name. “He’s Cuban American.”
“That’s me, too, honey. I’m Cuban American. My husband’s name is Brown. There are some things I’ve got to ask you. Are you okay with that?”
“Yes.”
“Would you rather come in and talk to me?”
“I’m not in Orlando.”
“Okay. These questions are gonna feel intrusive. But I have to ask them. Okay?”
“Yes,” Natasha said. “Yes, okay.”
“Are you in any pain right now?”
“It was two months ago.”
“Okay. Not in any pain.”
She waited.
“And you’re not in any danger.”
“No.” She lost her voice and had to repeat the word. “No.”
“Well, you ready, then?”
Natasha sat up on the side of the bed and put her elbows on her knees. “Go ahead.”
Officer Lorraine’s questions were what she said they would be: Did you know the attacker? How well did you know him? How much time did you spend with him? Did you do anything that might’ve enticed him?
She kept using the word attacker even after Natasha had said the name again. And the questions seemed to lead into a kind of moral test: Were you drinking? Were you drinking with the attacker? How much did you drink? Were there any drugs involved? Did you have drugs with the attacker? How much? Did you allow him any kind of sexual advance before the incident? Did he threaten you? Did he use a weapon?
It went on.
“These questions,” Natasha said. “God! He almost — almost killed me.”