Ariel had closed her eyes tight, and inhaled deeply, trying to focus on the immediate physical sensations—the warm breeze blowing up from the Tagus, the distant scream of a seagull, a whiff of seaside air, salty and maybe a little fishy, the needles and pins of her hot prickled skin. She exhaled through her mouth, slow and long and completely in control. It was all about control.
She opened her eyes, ending the little drama that had existed purely in her mind, a private world of panic.
Ariel had been fearless when she was young, which is when people tend to be bold. She’d been an actor, after all. What’s bolder? But then life conspired against her audacity, sapped her courage, shattered her confidence that she could move safely through the world. She couldn’t. She didn’t.
John was still at the open window, his nude form at once very familiar—she felt like she’d explored every inch of his body, with her eyes, with the tips of her fingers, the tip of her tongue—but still so foreign, as any other body is, any other person. She could know what he looked like, what he tasted like; she did. But not how he felt, not what he thought.
Years ago, Ariel had lost all faith in her ability to see other people clearly. She’d been so sure about her first husband, yet ultimately so wrong, the sort of wrong that’s shockingly obvious in hindsight. Ariel had seen only what Bucky had wanted her to see, what he’d put in front of her to see. She’d been an unwitting accessory to his self-misrepresentation until it was too late. Not just too late for that relationship, but for all of her relationships. She’d lost confidence in her own judgment, in her ability to see anyone’s true self. For a long time, she’d barely tried.
Did she learn anything? Of course. But all lessons fade if you don’t keep up your studies. Calculus, French, colonial history, Greek myths, Ariel doesn’t remember any of this. She can’t remember what calculus even is. A couple of years ago, she looked up the word in the dictionary, but that didn’t clarify a damn thing.
“What are you thinking?” she asked.
John shifted position, turned toward her, angled his face away from the streetlight. Now she could see even less of his expression. Nothing, really.
“You know,” he said. “Just about tomorrow.”
Tomorrow was here. Tomorrow was now.
*
She’ll shower, that’s what she’ll do. She’ll shower and she’ll dress herself in today’s outfit, which she chose a week ago, deliberating through her closet with a little chart of what clothes she’d need, for what purposes, on what days of this short trip. Today it will be a mid-length skirt and a peasant blouse, simple, unfussy, yet sexy. Ariel’s normal outfit is jeans and a T-shirt and no makeup whatsoever. But this Lisbon trip is not normal, so she’ll put on makeup, and a low-hanging pendant necklace, accentuating parts of her body that she usually doesn’t.
Then she’ll open the door and find the American newspaper on the doormat, with the stories about the memorial service for the vice president, and about the man who has been nominated to succeed him, news that’s been dominating American media for months.
Ariel will scoop up this newspaper, and walk carefully down the hotel’s wide staircase, taking her time on the slick marble, her hand trailing the wooden banister that has been buffed smooth and shiny from two centuries of friction, the long-term degradations at the hand of man. She’ll stride into the large sunny breakfast room that’s perched above the bustling square ringed by elegant buildings and those lethal old trams clanging and screeching on their tracks, disgorging early-bird tourists and bleary-eyed commuters munching on their breakfast pastéis, their eyes drawn up to the hotel’s elegant fa?ade, where curtains are billowing through the first floor’s middle set of French doors just in front of the low table where Ariel and John have eaten their breakfast two days in a row already, it’s their table, and that’s where her new husband will be, sitting there with his coffee and his newspapers, waiting for her, looking up with that grin—
He isn’t.
CHAPTER 2
DAY 1. 7:49 A.M.
WHERE R U?
Her finger hovers above SEND, but she doesn’t press the button. Ariel is not a hysterical person, and she doesn’t want to be seen as one. She’d been accused of hysteria before. Of overreaction. She’d been disbelieved about serious matters more than once. She’d become reluctant to assert any claims that couldn’t be absolutely proven with incontrovertible evidence; nothing he-said-she-said. She’d already said. It hadn’t sufficed.
Only one other table is occupied in the breakfast room, the retiree-looking Australian couple who were here yesterday too; she can only imagine what sort of jet lag they’re battling. Behind the bar, a small television plays cable news with an unfamiliar logo in the corner of the familiar story, footage of the memorial service in Washington—senators, ex-presidents, a couple of Supreme Court justices, the president of course.
Ariel turns away from the big screen, back to her little one. She hits SEND and waits for the swoosh to confirm that her message was dispatched successfully, staring back at her from its little bubble, the pathos of an unanswered missive to a loved one.
Joao the waiter is wiping down glasses while a busboy unloads a tray of pastries onto a platter. Breakfast is self-serve. It doesn’t make sense for Ariel to sit alone here like this, at a table with neither food nor drink. She should have coffee. She should sit here and sip coffee and read the newspaper and wait for her husband.
This is the hard thing about an intense relationship, isn’t it? One of the hard things. The waiting. Maybe it was easier back when the only way to communicate was by handwritten letter transported by hand, by pony express, by three-mast schooner. It would take months to exchange a few lines, no possibility that any lover of any level of ardor of any sort—real or potential or purely imaginary—could respond instantaneously. No reason to sit around wringing your hands, eyes cutting over and over to this little lifeline, waiting, hoping for the thing to light up, the little window to pop up—Here I am, yes I still love you!
Ariel sits at the table with her coffee and her American newspaper, and forces herself to stare at the front page, the lead story, the only story these days. She has long been comfortable sitting by herself in coffee shops and restaurants, usually with one of the mystery novels that she never stops consuming, projecting herself into the role of the investigating detective or the scheming culprit, losing herself in crime-scene science and legal arcana.
But not today. Today she stares at the newsprint but can’t bring herself to actually read. Today she is not at all comfortable.
“Can I get you anything?” It’s Joao, very solicitous, as usual.
“No,” she says, “obrigada,” which is one of only a dozen Portuguese words she knows. She studied the little vocabulary primer in the back of the guidebook, but didn’t get very far.
“You are sure?”
Ariel doesn’t want to be a woman who’s wondering where her husband is, such an archetype of insecurity. But where is he? She has no choice.