Ariel feels a shiver run down her spine. Jerry takes another sip, not quite emptying his glass.
“Suze?” Ariel indicates another round, sets two twenties on the bar. With Jerry, she’s always buying.
“How’s John holding up?”
“He’s fine, thanks for asking.”
Ariel has no idea how John is doing. She has sent emails that have gone unanswered, she has tried voice calls that have failed to go through. She tells herself that John will get in touch when he can, when he wants to. If he can.
If he wants to.
“Thanks.” Jerry nods at the fresh glass. “This is something, isn’t it? This whole circus around your nondisclosure being disclosed.”
Ariel’s fear is coming on strong now.
“And yet not by you. Everywhere I turn, I find the same thing: Ms. Pryce could not be reached for comment. Ms. Pryce was unavailable. Ms. Pryce refused to say a damn thing.”
This sensation in her gut reminds Ariel of when a deer jumps into the road, threatening various types of wrecks, some of them expensive, some of them deadly.
“You’re being very diligent about not saying anything, one way or the other.”
The same instant churn in her stomach.
“It’s my legal obligation.”
“Yeah.” Jerry takes another sip. “You don’t really drink, do you?”
Ariel is only halfway surprised by this abrupt change of subject. Jerry is fond of apparent non sequiturs that always turn out to be not.
“No.”
“I’ve noticed this over the years. Sometimes you allow a second drink to be put in front of you, but then you don’t touch more than a sip of it. Were you ever a drinker?”
She shakes her head.
“If you had two drinks, you’d probably be feeling it. Maybe you’d be tipsy. Drunk even?”
Ariel doesn’t know exactly where this is going, but Jerry is always on his way to some destination. He’d probably be a great lawyer, if he were a more functional human.
The bartender returns Ariel’s change, a small fan of small bills.
“You look at me, and you probably think: That guy is having four, five, six drinks in a night. Sometimes more. If you consumed that amount of alcohol, you’d be under the table. So you think, Jerry must be drunk all the time, no way that guy remembers those conversations when he was deep into his cups.”
Ariel feels the urge to flee, but knows she can’t.
“But I weigh a lot more than you, so the same amount of alcohol affects you and me very differently. Also, the thing about drinking is you build up a tolerance, as with anything. I’ve sat here with you, what—two dozen times? More?”
Ariel shrugs, forces a feeble smile.
“I know that I have a problem, I know that I shouldn’t be operating a motor vehicle many evenings. And I don’t, you know that, right?”
“I do.”
“But I remember every conversation we’ve ever had, Ariel. Every single one.”
Now Ariel recognizes the destination, just over the next sip—
“After Cyrus died, we discussed the transfer of goat ownership. What’s his name?”
Ariel’s throat feels tight. She swallows. “Fletcher.”
“That’s right! Fletcher.”
Ariel is pretty sure Jerry recalled the goat’s name on his own.
“I remember noticing when something I said seemed to come as a revelation to you. Flipped a switch.”
Ariel doesn’t need to ask what that was. She looks to her left, and her right, making sure no one can overhear. Another surreptitious conversation, with another man, on another barstool. Another life-defining interaction.
“Ariel, are you familiar with the Latin phrase cui bono? It means who benefits. This is almost always a guiding principle.” Jerry takes another sip, puts his glass down. “But sometimes it’s just as important to consider cui plagalis. Do you know what that means?”
Ariel can guess, but she won’t.
“Who is penalized,” Jerry says. “Who is harmed.” He stares at her for a few seconds. “I’m not going to insult your intelligence—nor for that matter mine—by asking you for any specifics. The truth is that for both our sakes, I’m better off not knowing. Much better.”
Ariel feels as if looking away would be an admission of something she doesn’t want to admit. She forces herself to hold Jerry’s gaze.
“Do you understand that you’ve pissed off not only your, um, intended target, but also the most powerful man in the world?”
Ariel doesn’t say anything. In the past couple of days she has grown very accustomed to not responding. Although Jerry has served in the past as her lawyer, Ariel isn’t sure how completely she’d be able to trust him if his back were pushed up against the wall. If his livelihood were threatened, or his actual life. She’s pretty sure that his back will indeed get pushed up against the wall. Maybe it already is. Maybe that’s the point of this conversation. Maybe Jerry’s wearing a wire.
The only acceptable level of trust here is one hundred percent, and Ariel has learned that one hundred percent is not realistic. She doesn’t say anything.
Jerry plucks one of Ariel’s dollar bills off the bar. “May I?”
“Be my guest.”
“This is not my area of expertise, Ariel. But who am I kidding, I don’t have an area of expertise. So you’ll definitely want to fire me soon, and hire counsel who know what the hell they’re doing. But in the meantime, you just hired me to represent you in this matter.” Jerry folds the bill in half, puts it in his pocket. “Here’s your one dollar’s worth of advice.” Jerry turns to face her. “Be very, very careful, Ariel. About everything.”
This is not news to her, not a warning she needs. Ariel has already been very careful; she has been careful for decades. But careful hasn’t sufficed. Careful is defensive.
“Today and tomorrow,” Jerry says.
Sometimes, she realized, you need to go on the offensive.
“Forever.”
THREE MONTHS LATER
Ariel awakens, momentarily confused about where she is—
That’s right: an airplane. She’s wedged into another middle seat in the back of a plane, with her feet cramped by her carry-on. By the time her ticket allowed her to board, there was no more room in the overheads. In the rigid caste system of airlines, Ariel is a person who travels in discomfort.
“I really just need to get away,” she explained to her friends, her employees, her mom. “Away from the press, away from home, away from everything.”
George is settling in fine to his first year of boarding school, the same institution that Ariel attended three decades ago. When she’d floated the idea of going away to school, she fully expected George to reject it out of hand. But he was receptive, which was both satisfying and devastating to her, a combination that she has come to believe is the definition of parenthood.