“My god! You seriously believe that? As if I could possibly have any regrets about Gerald Woolley. Other than letting him cling to me as long as he did. Your mother thought he was an utter drip. She’s the one who persuaded me to ditch him for that American of hers.”
“The one you—”
“Got jilted by. Yes!”
She gave a harsh laugh.
“That’s someone I do regret losing by the way. Ralph Pommeroy. Just so you don’t think I’ve become some man-hating harpie. I loved that man with all my heart.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
She switched on a bright overhead light and sat back down in the chair facing me, clamping her temples between a finger and thumb.
“What else? What other theories?”
“Something about repetition, imitation,” I said. “Doing it just because so many other women are doing it.”
“Accusing men of rape?”
I nodded.
She considered this for a moment, then tilted her head back.
“What . . . exactly . . . is wrong with that?”
“I guess he thought it made the accusation less, you know . . .”
“Original?”
I smiled, and she gave a faint smile back, just a flicker really, but it made me feel she hadn’t altogether merged me into Marco, for which I was grateful.
“Raping people isn’t exactly original either, is it?” she said.
“True. But listen, Julia . . . I want to ask you something.”
“Yes?”
“I mean—tell me if I’m out of line, but . . .” I broke off, unsure how to put it.
“Go on.”
She was gazing at me intently from the flimsy wicker chair. She seemed exposed at that moment, unguarded—the bareness of the little flat expressive, suddenly, of an acute and anxious vulnerability.
“Well . . . What actually happened in that hotel room?”
8
8
THE QUESTION hung in the silence for an uncomfortably long time. I began to wonder whether, in my growing fascination with the story, I’d allowed myself to lose sight of a certain basic decorum or tact. But when she finally spoke, there was no particular rancor or even discomfort in her voice.
“I’ve told you,” she said mildly. “What happened is that Marco raped me. What else matters?”
“I suppose I’m trying to understand how it came about. I realize it’s not my business . . .”
She gave a little movement of her head and the gesture seemed to express a tacit permission to probe. At any rate, I decided to take it as that, and she didn’t seem to object.
“You’d gone up to his room with him?”
“Yes.”
“Voluntarily . . . ?”
“Yes. And yes, I lay down on his bed voluntarily, and yes, we started kissing and touching and all the rest of it, voluntarily.”
“And then . . . ?”
“What do you mean?”
“Did something happen, to change your mind?”
“No. I just realized I didn’t want to screw him.”
“Do you remember the reason? Not that there, you know . . .”