They talk about the river walk, and the recently announced plans for its expansion. Viola thinks, I’m glad that we didn’t have sex that night. There was a moment, of course… And he is in remarkably good shape… But he’s kind of a father figure. I like that, that he’s just a father figure. It’s much less complicated between us if he’s a father figure and we didn’t have sex. Viola had a friend in her MLS program who had a thing for father figures. This friend was very proud of it, or proud enough to tell Viola and some other people, anyway. She only dated men who were older, and who looked more or less like her dad. Viola wonders what happened to her. Then she remembers: she married someone at Robert’s firm. That’s funny that I would have forgotten about that, she thinks.
The judge pours them each another cupful of rosé. “What should we toast to?”
“We forgot to toast last time,” Viola says.
“That’s why it’s so important that we toast this time.”
“I don’t want to toast to anything important,” Viola says. “Let’s toast to chipped ice.”
“Chipped ice is very important,” the judge says, but they toast to chipped ice anyhow.
A little while later Viola says, “Are you drunk?”
“I’m slightly inebriated. ‘Tipsy.’” He says it in a way that makes “tipsy” sound like it’s something only other people say.
“‘Tipsy,’” Viola says, saying it the same way, smiling. “‘Tipsy.’ Isn’t this illegal, drinking out in the open? Aren’t you supposed to uphold the law?”
“I’m only sworn to uphold the secret law. And I’m retired.”
“Am I breaking any secret laws?”
“If you were I couldn’t tell you.”
“I feel like that’s all I ever hear, recently. For once in my life, I’d like to know what I’m doing wrong.”
“If you’re doing anything wrong,” the judge says. Viola glowers at him. “You seem to have gotten very serious all of a sudden,” he says, dividing the last of the thermos between their cups.
“I’m not sad,” Viola says.
“No one accused you of being sad.”
“Oh. I thought maybe you did.”
Viola and the judge observe couples paddling by in paddle-boats. They drink the last of the rosé. Viola sits fiddling with her cup.
“Here,” the judge says. “Let me show you something.” He peels back a place in his skin, an area perhaps an inch square on his forearm. Viola peers into the area that he has peeled away.
“What do you see?”
“Nothing,” she says.
“After so many years, I have started to become the law myself,” he says. “A kind of structured emptiness.”
“Am I allowed to see that?” Viola asks.
“Anyone is,” he says. “There’s nothing there to see. That is how the law remains secret: it isn’t there.” The judge replaces the flap of skin that he had peeled and pats it down.
Viola makes a small basket out of grass while they’re sitting on the bench and hands it to the judge.
“Where did you learn to do that?”
“I’ve just always known.”
“It’s lovely.”
“Thank you,” Viola says. She makes another. “When I close my eyes and think about the last several months, I picture a whirlpool, or a tornado. A ring of violence circling and circling around nothing. Continually drawling everything towards that emptiness in the center.”
“I see,” the judge says.
“I wanted to be a nun when I was younger, have I told you that?” Viola says. “Or a saint.”
“I didn’t realize you were Catholic.”
“I’m not.”
The judge examines the basket, holding it gently up to the light.
“Maybe secretly you thought I was sad,” Viola says, as they’re walking back to their cars. “But you didn’t want to tell me, because you saw how serious I’d gotten. You didn’t want to ruin our good time.”
“You’re a charming young woman,” the judge says, as they’re standing by her car.
“I can’t tell if you’re being serious.”
“I’m absolutely being serious.”
“I thought you were,” Viola says. “But you can see why it was important for me to make sure. I had a good day.” The judge gives her a peck on the cheek.
“I’m glad we didn’t have sex that time, when I took you to your room,” Viola says. The judge looks at her, dejected. She tries to explain about how she likes him better as a father figure, and he says that he understands, but she’s pretty sure he doesn’t. “It was a compliment,” Viola says.
“I understand,” the judge says. He kisses her check again, but it’s not the same.
Viola gets in her car and says to herself, stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid. She watches the judge walk back to his car in her rearview mirror. He is still holding the tiny grass basket. She thinks, why do I always have to explain myself about everything? Why can’t I just let something be? Viola thinks, I should get out of my car and go after him. She thinks, anything I do now would make him feel worse. She thinks, if I were him, wouldn’t I want me just to disappear right now, so I’d never have to think about me again?
~ ~ ~
Viola disappears. There is a Viola-shaped hole in reality, where Viola used to be. The Viola-shaped hole in reality sits with the FBI agent in the motel room and watches videos that he has taken in which he pretends to interrogate her. Except, she thinks, I haven’t seen this video before. That’s not even me. The image quality is bad: horizontal white lines wash up and down the screen like waves. Is it possible that we are watching an actual interrogation? Is there a market for interrogations, passed back and forth between members of the intelligence community, the government, police forces, amateur enthusiasts, connoisseurs? It is not the content of the interrogation that is important, she thinks, but the form… If you hurt someone enough, scare them enough, they will say whatever you want them to. It is a way of turning someone else’s body into a kind of puppet. Content becomes meaningless: you may as well be talking to yourself. But the form, the ritual… A tornado, a whirlpool, violence swirling around emptiness. Love, too: a kind of violence, drawing everything into the emptiness at its center… Eye, she thinks. That’s the term for it, the center of a tornado, that kernel of nothing. The eye.
“I want you to tell me exactly what I am allowed to do,” the FBI agent says. She is lying still mostly-dressed in bed, with the FBI agent looming over her.
“What do you want to do?” she asks.
“I want you to tell me.”
“Do you want to slap me?”
The FBI agent slaps her.
“Do you want to spit on me?”
The FBI agent spits on her.
When I was younger, she thinks, I wanted to live a life that was not just for myself. I wanted to do something large, something important, something pure and full of grace. When did life become such a small thing? When did I become an animal that mostly reacts? Oh yes, I loved men before Robert, and I was hurt by them, and I found Robert and decided that he would not hurt me. This is how life becomes smalclass="underline" you grow up, which is to say, you get hurt, and then you adjust your life in ways in which you hope you will no longer get hurt. But of course you get hurt again, and what difference does it make, who’s responsible?