TORRES: Yes.
WOMAN: Were you alone with Mariana?
TORRES: I was with my friend, Rolando.
WOMAN: Last name?
TORRES: Jimenez. Rolando Jimenez.
WOMAN: And is Rolando Jimenez also a police officer?
TORRES: Yes.
WOMAN: And did he know there was a protective order in effect that barred you from going to Mariana’s apartment?
Detective Smalley pushed the ‘stop’ button on the remote and the screen froze on Jose’s face, his eyes again staring at something outside of the camera’s frame; something perhaps on the level of his waist or lower.
“What’s the answer, Rolando?” Smalley asked quietly.
Rolando cleared his throat, tried to swallow and accomplished that feat on the second attempt.
“You can see how he’s under duress, Detective, right? He’s fuckin’ scared of somethin’.”
“Is it true, Officer Jimenez? That was the question. Did you go there with your friend knowing a protective order was in place?”
Rolando hesitated, rubbing his hands together, aligning finger-to-finger, palm-to-palm. He nodded, ‘yes’.
Smalley pressed the ‘continue’ button.
TORRES: Yes, I had told him about the order.
WOMAN: And while you were there, did you have sex with Mariana?
TORRES: Yes.
WOMAN: What kind of sex did you have with her?
Jose hesitated again. He too had a very dry mouth. He struggled to swallow. A woman’s hand held a glass of water in front of his face and he drank. A different woman’s hand wiped his lips.
TORRES: She gave me a blowjob.
WOMAN: Just you?
TORRES: Me and Officer Jimenez.
WOMAN: The word ‘gave’ implies that she did so voluntarily. Did she do that voluntarily, Officer Torres?
TORRES: No, she didn’t.
WOMAN: And did she voluntarily perform oral sex on Officer Rolando Jimenez?
TORRES: No.
WOMAN: Did you force her to perform those sex acts?
TORRES: Yes.
WOMAN: What did you do to force her?
TORRES: I hit her. I took her hand in mine and I hit her across the face.
WOMAN: More than once?
TORRES: Yes.
WOMAN: Hard?
TORRES: Yes.
WOMAN: And was Police Officer Jimenez present when you hit Mariana?
Smalley stopped the DVD again.
“Would you like another beer?” Smalley asked.
Rolando shook his head ‘no’ then reached out with the empty can as though he meant to put it on the coffee table.
“No, no,” Smalley said taking the can from him and putting it on some folded newspaper. “My wife would not be happy if you put it there. She might treat you worse than those women are going to treat you when they get a hold of you.”
Smalley smiled and pointed the remote at the TV again.
“Don’t you see how fucking scared he is?” Rolando said. “They must have a knife or a gun trained on him. You gotta see that.”
“Actually, I was thinking they were using a cattle prod,” Smalley said. “It can give quite a jolt on the naked skin, especially in what you might call ‘sensitive areas.’ Personally, I would think an electric shock to the testicles would be about the worst pain, even worse than on the penis, or up the ass.”
Rolando stiffened in the chair. Beads of sweat appeared on his brow. His head was pressed backward against the cushions.
TORRES: Yes. He was there.
WOMAN: And did you force her to have sex of any other kind with you and Police Officer Jimenez?
TORRES: Yes.
WOMAN: Tell us what you did.
Torres closed his eyes and took a deep breath. When he opened his eyes again, he looked down and seemed to try to edge backwards but couldn’t.
TORRES: Please. I beg you.
He started to cry.
WOMAN: Did Mariana beg you to leave her alone?
TORRES: Yes.
WOMAN: Go on. Tell us all what you did.
TORRES: We ... we brought Mariana into the bedroom and we made love to ...”
Abruptly, he stopped. He knew he’d made a mistake.
WOMAN: Excuse me? What did you say you did to her!
The woman’s voice was suddenly very angry. She shrieked the words at him. Her face came closer so that some of her hair edged into the view of the camera.
TORRES: We fucked her.
WOMAN: What!!
TORRES: We raped her. The both of us. At the same time. Me in the front, Rolando—”
WOMAN: Do you mean Officer Jimenez?
TORRES: Yes. Officer Jimenez. We both raped her at the same time. Me in the front. Him in the back. No, please ...”
The screen went black. Detective Smalley let the blackness remain on the screen for several minutes without speaking.
“You can leave now, Officer Jimenez,” Smalley said.
Rolando did not look at Smalley. His eyes were still fixed on the empty screen.
“Detective, I swear to God, when we left her she was okay. I mean she was crying on her bed, but she was alive. She wasn’t hurt or nothin’. He didn’t even hit her that hard. She was there when we left and I don’t know what the hell happened to her.”
Smalley nodded.
“On your way out, Rolando, put your service revolver and your badge on the table by the door.”
“I want a lawyer.”
“Hey, feel free. You’re entitled to one. Hire as many as you can afford. But you want to know what you really need right now, Officer Jimenez?”
For the first time, Rolando turned to Smalley and their eyes met. Rolando’s held anger and resentment and a large measure of fear. Smalley’s were expressionless.
Smalley smiled; surprised somewhat at his own utter lack of sympathy and the pleasure he took in seeing the fear in Rolando’s eyes.
“You need a fuckin’ bodyguard.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
They didn’t race each other back to the house. Jane was afraid that if she lost contact with Maggie’s warm flesh at any point, she might also lose the desire that had been building in her all day since she had first glimpsed Maggie through the back window. Silly thought because this desire had obviously grown unacknowledged inside her for much longer. Was it in the intimacy of the car ride up or those minutes by her bedside afterward? Or over their dinner the night before and their pleasant walk along Madison? No? Then on the raft that very first night they had sat naked beneath the moon, casual as two sisters with their bodies just touching. Hadn’t she wanted her even then? Hadn’t she felt that she would not be complete until the length of her could be pressed into Maggie, one flesh?
So they picked up their clothes and walked back to the house with deliberate speed, not hurriedly but with arms around each other’s waists, stopping now and then to kiss, to caress, always touching, and always moving forward to the comfort of the darkened house and the bedroom at the top of the stairs.
Someone had suggested a shower together first to wash off the residue from the pond, the dirt that covered their feet. Beneath that hot stream of water, in a bathroom lit only by a candle, it was easy for Jane to get used to the idea of touching another woman’s body, a mirror image of her own—breasts, thighs, private places—and allowing another woman to touch her.
Afterward, they dried each other with large soft towels and climbed into Maggie’s bed. She had put on clean sheets that day. They felt crisp against the skin and had the special smell of being dried outside on the line in the back yard. It seemed to be another detail that Maggie had considered.
“Did you plan all of this?” Jane asked later while they lay quietly beside each other, their bodies touching from shoulder to toe beneath a light cotton blanket. The white curtains were undulating gently in the breeze.
“How could I plan when so much depended on you?”
“But you knew I wou
ld come to bed with you?”
“No,” Maggie whispered. “I thought about it, of course. I hoped. But I didn’t plan it. I didn’t want to have to convince you. I just wanted it to happen.”
“What a funny way to put it,” Jane said. She raised her hand to Maggie’s cheek. Maggie turned, her head deep in the pillow, her eyes meeting Jane’s.
“It’s not an easy thing to love another woman, Janey. Not everyone can, even though they may wish it so. I don’t think I could bear being rebuffed by you. I really don’t.”
Jane paused a moment. She pulled the blanket up to her chin, stretching it out like a long tent with her toes the other upright.
“Well I wanted to be seduced, Maggie. I wanted to be swept off my feet by love, to know you loved me. I didn’t want my first time to be like the lifeguard at camp that summer I told you about.”
“So this was your first time?”
“Wasn’t it obvious?”
“No,” Maggie said, although her smile indicated that this might not be entirely true.
“When I was a teenager, maybe fourteen, a girlfriend of mine and I had a sleepover at her house, and we tried to ‘experiment’. We fumbled and prodded under the covers but neither of us felt a thing. I know I didn’t. It was mostly embarrassing. We didn’t say a word to each other for about a month.”
“That’s what I was most afraid of,” Maggie said.
In response, Jane turned to Maggie, still somewhat amazed at the novelty of touching a body like her own, knowing when to be gentle, when to be firm; when to slide her hand beneath the blanket, drift slowly, feather like, up over the breasts until the nipples grew hard; down again along the curves of the hips, fingertips barely touching the skin even now, to slip between her legs, causing Maggie to turn to her in anticipation.
“Promise me that you’ll speak to me in the morning,” Maggie said, a slight edge of desperation in her voice. “Promise me that even if you can’t love me, you’ll always be my friend. Promise me, Janey.”
“Oh, Maggie, of course I will ...”
“No!” Maggie said. “Promise me, Jane. Promise.”
Jane wrapped her arms around Maggie and pulled her close. Their breasts kissed, their legs were intertwined like strands of rope, and Jane hugged her tight, as hard as she could.
In the darkness, in Maggie’s farmhouse, amidst the open fields, beneath the shining stars, with only the country night sounds outside their window, it was easy to respond. Natural. So natural.
“I promise,” she whispered.
* * * *
Saturday morning, Jane woke up to find the bed beside her empty and the sound of Maggie’s light footsteps coming up the stairs and into the room.
“You see,” Jane said. “You abandoned me.” She pouted like a coquette, pulling the sheet modestly up to her chin and extending one naked arm across Maggie’s half of the bed.
“I didn’t abandon you,” Maggie laughed. “It was light out and I wanted to check on those fruit trees we planted. We forgot to water them yesterday.”
“Thrown over for trees!” Jane whined softly. “Alas.”
Maggie sat on the bed beside her and bent over to kiss Jane. Her clothes still held the fresh cool air from outside and her skin was chilled. Jane warmed Maggie’s hand between hers and pulled it under the blanket.
Maggie kissed her again.
“Sleepyhead, it’s time to get up. We’re on a farm.”
“We’re on our honeymoon,” Jane replied. She unbuttoned Maggie’s coveralls. “You can’t abandon me on our honeymoon.”
Maggie lay down beside her, still in her clothes. Jane pulled her hand deeper under the covers and held it against her breasts.
“Please Maggie, love me again,” Jane said.
“I’ll never stop loving you, silly. And the thought of me abandoning you is so preposterous that—I don’t even know—words fail me.”
“I wasn’t asking for words,” Jane replied.
Maggie slipped out of the coveralls and Jane lifted the blanket up and let it fall over both of them.
“But can I ask one thing also?” Maggie whispered.
“Anything.”
Maggie’s face grew serious in the soft filtered darkness beneath the blanket. “Can we leave off the phones again, and the internet, and the lights? Just one more day?”
Still under the covers, Jane lifted Maggie’s shirt up high on her chest.
“What is this thing, this phone of which you speak?” Jane replied, and tugged at Maggie’s panties, removing them. “And electric, are you mad, woman? Have you lost your mind?”
Afterward they went downstairs together. Jane cut onions and a green pepper for a western omelet, one of her specialties. Maggie made home fries and bacon.
“We need the carbs,” Maggie said as she put a mound of potatoes on Jane’s plate. “We’re farmers.”
When breakfast was over, they spent much of the morning clearing leaves and brush from under and around the two small outbuildings. Then they went to town and bought a gallon of white paint and brushes and rollers. Soon the two smaller buildings sparkled in the brilliant sunshine. The barn was next, although they had bought two gallons of red for that.
“I think we should use some of the red to paint the trim around the doors and windows on the chicken coop,” Jane said. “Or do you think that would be too cutsie for a real farm?”
“I think it would be perfect,” Maggie said.
While they were working on the barn, Jane excused herself to go inside to the bathroom. As she walked up the stairs of the quiet house, with the subdued light and shadows everywhere, she thought of Ellen and wondered if she had tried to reach her about the appointment. She took the phone into the bathroom to make the call, feeling a little guilty about hiding this way, but sure in the end that Maggie would understand.
She reached Ellen at the gallery. It was obvious from the tone of her voice that everything was fine. A hum of voices could be heard in the background.
“You’re not going to believe what’s happening,” Ellen said. “The phone’s been ringing off the hook with people who want to come tonight, and others have just stopped by. I opened early, there were so many. Ari came over to help, and Charmaine was here for a while too, and Susan.”
“That’s fantastic.”
“Yes! And everyone who comes in is getting a brochure about other exhibits of ours, and many are saying that they’ll come back. We even had an artist come by who asked if she could show us her stuff—someone whose name I recognized.”
“We? Is Tommy there?”
“No. Of course not. At any sign of my success, he disappears.”
“Ellen, I don’t get it with him. He wasn’t this way before? Is something else going on?”
There was a pause. Jane could hear Ari laugh in the distant background.
“I don’t know, Jane,” Ellen said. “I’ve wondered the same thing.”
“An affair?”
“Tommy? I doubt that. But there was a guy I knew from long ago who called me a few weeks ago. He didn’t know I was married. He left a message that was not exactly discreet. Tommy may be upset by that, I don’t know. The guy called again and I got rid of him. You know, it may be strange to say, but Tommy and I never discussed our sex lives prior to our marriage. I’m not sure he had one, actually. I suppose that could be the issue now. Tommy can be a little possessive at times.”
“We all can be, I guess,” Jane replied softly, remembering the comment Glaser had made. Had he been indiscreet also in his talks with Tommy?
“Are you all right?” Ellen asked.
“I’m fine,” Jane said. “Maggie brought me up to her country house and I’ve been relaxing and working and I feel brand new. It’s been great. David is a distant memory.”
“Good for you. I may be needing a little of that treatment myself with Tommy. I’ll see you Tuesday then. I better get back to my guests.”
“See you then.”
Jane turned the pho
ne off and put it back where it had been, trying to remember if it had been upside down or not when she had retrieved it and if Maggie would even notice. She decided that it was ridiculous to be acting this way—guilty for not making the call, guilty for making it. Still, when she went back outside she didn’t say anything about the call to Ellen, even though she would have liked to tell her about the reaction to the tumult of the opening night.
They worked mostly in silence as the sun set lower and lower over the hills to the west, and finally went inside and made a simple meal. They had potatoes left over from breakfast to which they added some of the spaghetti from the night before, a couple more strips of bacon, onions, peppers and broccoli. They took the skillet and put it on a trivet between them on the table and ate by candlelight. After they had cleaned up, they opened a new bottle of wine and brought it with them upstairs, lighting their way with a candlestick.
“Like farmers,” Jane said. “Early to bed.”
“Exactly like farmers.”
* * * *
In the morning, Maggie drove the car to town for the Sunday New York Times and The Portal. After she returned, they took their plates, a pot of coffee and fresh muffins and sat on the porch to read. Both papers had stories about the disappearance of Jose, but The Portal was more extensive and mentioned a video that had been prepared by the shadowy group holding him hostage. Judith was quoted as saying that they and the Eumenides had no affiliation with the kidnappers, but she would not condemn their activities.
“If the law is unable to protect women, then women have the right and the duty to protect themselves,” Judith said.
“Crazy Judith,” Maggie said. “Where is this heading, except disaster?”
“Who knows? Every movement needs a radical, someone who is out there fighting at the edges, pushing the envelope, making it easier for the rest of us.”
Maggie looked at Jane over the newspaper, a slight smile on her face.
“I didn’t know you were such an admirer.”
“Oh, please ...”
They spent a leisurely time after breakfast reading the papers on the porch, drinking coffee and relating to each other news stories of interest. It was almost eleven when they went upstairs to dress for the day. Maggie sat at the computer and switched it on. Jane looked in her dresser for something to wear. She took off her robe and draped it over a chair.
Praise Her, Praise Diana Page 22