Claudia had to shut the door on all that. It wasn’t enough to mark him in the dark. She couldn’t leave anything open to interpretation. Symbolism was for critics and collectors; in real life, you have to point and say “rapist.”

But say it to who? The police? Ridley would get any charges dropped to nothing: Chad would end up picking up trash on Park Avenue every other weekend. Ten years from now, people who knew him would refer to the whole thing as a bit of youthful legal trouble. A reformed bad boy and boom: a whole new set of women ready to comfort him. A whole new set of victims.

Claudia put the phone face down on the bed. In a frame across the room was a charcoal drawing of a dancer she’d done the year before in high school. Most of her art classes had focused on “fine art,” art for art’s sake, but spring semester of senior year the studio teacher decided everyone needed something “practical” in their portfolios to graduate. Each student was assigned a client—a club or group or team at school—and told to create an image, one version on paper, one digital, that functioned as an advertisement for their performance or product or big game. Claudia was paired with the dance troupe who wanted to spread the word about their graduation show, proceeds to support Ballet Bushwick. She attended rehearsal after rehearsal, trying to get inspired, trying to come up with something to say about what their movements meant or at least what they evoked. She went to the Bushwick studio and took photographs, collected bits of ribbon and chalk; a Band-Aid, even a condom wrapper she saw in the bathroom trash can. She took it all home and came up with nothing. In the end, she turned in a simple charcoal drawing of a dancer, arms raised; the only flourish was her gold dance slippers—glitter nail polish on the original that she presented in class. She’d basically drawn a Degas and sprinkled Damien Hirst at its feet.

The teacher praised her.

“This is smartly done,” she’d said. “You’re most skilled at sketch and I like that you stuck with that. Commercial work isn’t about taking big chances or showing off. It isn’t about you at all, other than that they’ve hired you and, presumably, like your aesthetic. It’s about the client. How do you best use your skills to please the client? Have the dancers seen this?”

Claudia answered yes.

“And?”

“They like it,” she said.

“But you don’t.”