My Dark Knight

by Virgini Bellarica

  “That’s what I thought. I mean, yes, that’s what happened afterwards when he found me, but before that I can’t be sure what took place. At the time it was just a blank. I’d blacked-out.”

  “So now it’s all coming back to you? What triggered the memory?”

  “I don’t know – my upcoming marriage, the #MeToo movement all over social media, all that talk we had about being honest with Max and...this color...electric-blue...Prince was given an electric-blue collar, and it must have just made something click – I remembered this skirt I had that was also electric-blue. I wore it that night. Something about remembering that color must have activated a part of my brain that had been shut off all that time.”

  “So then what happened after the third guy came through the door?”

  “That’s what I can’t remember.”

  “You said your body was practically numb? Like a rag doll with no strength in your muscles?”

  “Yes. I remember that clearly. I had no strength to move – I must have been really inebriated.”

  “Sounds like a lot more than just tequila to me.”

  “But I didn’t smoke any weed or anything, I wasn’t stoned.”

  “Sounds to me as if you’d been slipped some Ecstasy or something, maybe even Rohypnol or Valium.”

  “Ecstasy?”

  “I took it once. Big mistake. Well, a lot of people were doing it then, it was all the rage – I thought it would be a laugh. I remember being exactly like that, like a flopsy marionette. I couldn’t move a muscle. Everybody else was dancing all night, but with me it had the opposite effect. I spent the night with this guy who I thought was God’s gift to the human race but when I woke up the next morning I was horrified. HORR. IF. IED.”

  The way Emma tells me this with her exaggerated British accent makes me chuckle. Comic relief from a serious subject.

  “That’s why it’s called Ecstasy,” she goes on. “People are convinced they’re madly in love. You see everything with rose-tinted glasses while you’re high. But actually, those bastards probably gave you Valium or something. These types of drugs affect everyone differently but mixed with all those shots of tequila? You wouldn’t have stood a chance, Arielle.”

  I twiddle my hair in thought, retracing my nightmare. “Maybe you’re right...in the dream one of them said something like...what was it? Like...‘It’s really taking effect now.’ You think they spiked my drink?”

  “Hey, it happens all the time at colleges and parties, that’s one of the reasons they call it ‘date rape.’ I bet they slipped something in your drink. It can cause retrograde amnesia, which is obviously what happened to you. I mean, it’s common for people to wake up the next morning without any memory of huge chunks of the night before. It’s really rife in Britain with all this binge drinking going on with young girls. There are so many cases of fake taxi drivers raping them – you know, they get into a car thinking they’re going home and end up being violated. Some even murdered. But I’m digressing – what happened to you was a classic case of date rape. Even if you had gone to the doctor for a test the next day, a lot of these date rape drugs don’t even show up in urine samples.”

  “How d’you know all this?”

  “It was part of my training. Date rape is way more common than people think, and it usually goes unreported – but often it’s revealed years later in therapy sessions. Like with incestual rape, people often don’t want to admit to themselves that they were abused, let alone confide in someone else – it can take years to resurface sometimes. Or like with you, the victim genuinely forgets about it – blocks it out and something triggers the memory years later. It could be a smell, a word, a movie or book – in your case it was a color that was the trigger reminding you of that skirt and everything that followed.”

  “The truth is, though, I asked for it, Emma. I was dancing around in that little skirt, coming on to them, flirting like crazy. And I agreed to go back to their place – they didn’t force me. I was even looking forward to having a kind of threesome. At first it seemed like a great idea.”

  “Oh so you think you asked to be basically, gang raped? This was not your fault, Arielle. This was not your fault. Do you hear me?”

  “I felt so ashamed at the time and I still feel ashamed even speaking about it now.”

  “You and every other person who ever gets raped. It’s classic – the victim feels like somehow it was their fault and they were asking for it. Their lipstick was too bright, the skirt too short, they shouldn’t have worn high heels that evening – they should never have got into that car. They shouldn’t have smiled. The list goes on.”

  “The worst thing is that I suddenly feel repelled by sex – the repulsive details are all flooding back and I feel grossed out.”

  “That’s why you need to tell Max about what happened.”

  “But you said–”

  “Arielle, that’s when I thought this was about a fun, wild night out during your university years – something he really didn’t need to know about. But this? This is affecting your relationship. This is a whole different kettle of fish. It was rape. Just because it happened ages ago doesn’t make it any less serious.”

  “He might think it was my fault.”

  “I doubt it very much. We all have a past – we’ve all done crazy things. This was at college, for fuck’s sake.”

  “Just yesterday he said how he couldn’t imagine me ever having been promiscuous or wild – he thinks I was perfect.”

  “Well, wakey, wakey, Max Knight, you are engaged to be married to a mere mortal! Arielle, if he can’t stomach what happened to you and if he can’t deal with it in an adult way then you really shouldn’t be marrying him anyway. Listen, Amy says my time is up and I don’t like breaking promises. Call me tomorrow and we’ll finish this conversation. It’s good you’re letting it all out, anyway.”

  “Bye. Thanks, Emma, thanks for listening. Say thank you to Amy for being so generous with her mom’s time.”

  “Please, stop making yourself sound like a bore. Of course I’m listening, This shit is serious, and you need to sort through it. We’ll talk tomorrow. Love you, and thank you for trusting me with all this, I know it’s painful.”

  I get out my iPad and look up the words online that Emma mentioned, ‘retrograde amnesia.’ I always thought that was a nifty trick they used in soap operas but never could have imagined it would happen to anyone in real life – to totally blank something out. At least, not unless you’ve had some sort of physical head trauma from a car accident or something. Although, I understand now that it was trauma, only mental.

  If I’d remembered the course of events at the time, I could have defended myself – Brad would have seen me in a different light, not as some complete slut with no morals at all. Not that having a threesome is wrong, no. But I was going steady with him. The fact that he admitted he had slept with Alicia didn’t let me off the hook. I broke his heart, he said. Broke his trust in me. Maybe we would still be together now if that hadn’t happened. But then I’m glad we aren’t. I wouldn’t have met Max.

  I take a deep breath and try to stop the self-blame flooding over me. It’s true what Max said, that you have to accept your mistakes, the good and bad, because they define who you are as a person. Perhaps if that had never happened with the footballers I wouldn’t be with Max today. Who knows which path would have been the ‘right’ one. Are our lives destined by fate, or does every single choice we make offer a gamut of possibilities, like a CD with several different tracks? I chose that song, All I Wanna Do Is Have Some Fun...and that’s where it led me that night.

  I am mulling all this over and thinking about a light dinner in tonight at the hotel restaurant, when my cell rings. It’s Valentina.

  Her smoky voice sounds languid and rich. She doesn’t even say ‘Hi, Arielle’ but begins, “All we ever do is work, you and I. I think we should just hang out this evening together.”

  I’m taken aback. “Well, I–”


  Her voice is almost a whisper. “Actually, I’m cheating. I’m already here – down in the lobby – thought I’d take a chance.”

  “Wow, Valentina, what if I’d been busy?”

  “I figured you’d be free. I’m on my way up to your room.”

  When I open the door a few minutes later, I’m stunned. It’s like action replay, except the seductive person standing before me uninvited is not Max but Valentina. She stands there dressed in a clingy, silky dress – almost see-through – her nipples erect, her cascading, dark hair wild and untamed about her shoulders. She’s holding a chilled bottle of Dom Pérignon and some pink roses. Déjà-vu. Except, she also holds a glass vase for the flowers.

  It plops out of my mouth, “You look pretty,” I say. My eyes fall on the roses. “These are for me?”

  “No, they’re for your alter ego, the Arielle who takes work way too seriously, the Arielle who needs a little sweetening up.”

  I try to stifle a grin. It’s true, we’ve been working non-stop on the script and not spoken about anything else. “Come in, Valentina – sorry, it’s a little messy, I was just choosing something to wear. I always end up rooting through every piece of clothing I have, never knowing what to put on. I thought I’d go downstairs and eat in the hotel restaurant – the food’s great here –join me if you like.”

  “I love this place,” she says in her husky voice – “so romantic. Let’s open the champagne while it’s still cold. Oh look, you have a balcony, how lovely.” She steps onto the balcony and surveys the ocean view. The breeze blows her dress revealing the outline of her thighs and ass. No underwear. Another thing she and Max have in common. Oops, maybe we won’t be dining downstairs after all; her dress is no better than a negligee. Unless I lend her a pair of my panties. No, far too intimate, perhaps room service is a better idea.

  I fill up the vase Valentina brought with water and place the flowers inside and then grab a couple of flute glasses by the mini-bar. “Thanks so much for the roses, they’re beautiful.”

  “The rule is – this evening we won’t mention the film, is that a deal?”

  “It’s a deal,” I agree. I look at her, my eye like a camera and know that this woman is on her way to movie stardom. It’s obvious. Her beauty is breathtaking. Her skin’s olive-colored but flawless, an advantage these days with high definition cameras showing up every blemish. Her eyes flick up at the corners and her dark lashes are like frames making the green greener, the flecks of gold more pronounced.

  She pops open the cork and some of the champagne bubbles over. She licks her fingers, her tongue slowly rimming her top lip. It’s as if she and Max are twins; their mannerisms are the same. Am I in the middle of a soap opera? First this retrograde amnesia business and now this. Am I about to discover that Max’s mother gave up one of her babies for adoption and Max and Valentina are long-lost brother and sister? She and I have been working so hard on the script, I haven’t had a moment to really observe this woman, but everything about her fascinates me, mostly because she reminds me of him.

  We clink glasses and make a toast to the success of the film but burst out laughing simultaneously when it occurs to us that we’ve both broken our rule to not mention it this evening. She tells me about her hybrid upbringing, that she was born in Chicago but then moved to Spain when she was six, raised in Madrid by her single mom, who had at that point divorced her father, an American. She spent her summer vacations with her grandparents in Mallorca. She returned to the States when she was sixteen and modeled in New York, before landing a commercial and an agent. Little by little, she found her way into the theatre, although it was a slow progression. Finally, she got the part that won her the Tony Award, and things have been going skyward from there.

  She takes another sip of champagne. “The problem is I still have my Spanish accent – it’s hard to shake off one hundred percent.”

  “But it hasn’t harmed your career up until now, has it? I mean, people love an accent, it makes you exotic.”

  “So far I’ve been lucky, but I want to be in the same league as the ‘A’ list actresses.”

  Tough, I think. Trying to compete with the best of the best. “Well you can have elocution lessons. There must be so many voice coaches in LA. I like your accent, though. I think it would be a shame to lose it completely.”

  She puts her hand on my thigh. “You do?”

  “Yes, I think European accents are sexy.”

  “Well, I suppose you would, Arielle. Tell me about your husband-to-be. Is he really as hot as he looks?”

  “I thought you were gay,” I reply with suspicion. Keep away from him, femme-fatale!

  “I am. But you know what turns me on? Lying in bed with my girlfriend and watching a man fuck a woman in a porno movie. Seeing a big, hard, thick cock stretch open up a sweet tender pussy and fuck her. Or even two guys together making out.”

  I’m feeling the effects of the champagne and I laugh.

  “Why’s that funny? Didn’t you know that’s a lesbian fantasy? A lot of us still love to imagine big cocks, but we want to be once-removed from them, if you see what I mean.” Valentina picks up the hotel phone and nonchalantly dials room service. “Hi, can you bring us an ice-cold bottle of Dom Pérignon and some sandwiches? A mixture of snacks, I don’t care, a mixture of vegetarian and whatever. Thanks.”

  My eyes widen. So cocky! She didn’t even ask me.

  “It’s on me,” she lets me know. “Now, where were we? Yes, big, huge, throbbing cocks.”

  Cock...the word brings unwelcome images to my brain, and I feel my eyes well with tears. The needle-dick memories flash back, and a recollection of that third guy who came into the room envelops me like a blanket smothering me to suffocation. He was fat, sweaty, his penis repulsive; I remember him struggling with a condom...I cover my face with my hands in disgust – the twisting agony of what happened wrenching memories out of my body...I start hyperventilating again, my breath short. I try to suck in a lungful of air.

  Valentina steadies my shaking shoulders. “Arielle, what the hell’s wrong?”

  And it all comes gushing out; the whole story from beginning to end. I reveal everything to her. I’m in tears now, the memories of what happened to me thick with sordid details. The faces of the guys, how they held me down, how their repulsive dicks poked and prodded as if I were nothing more than an orifice.

  “The one with the fat, flaccid walnut of a penis couldn’t even get it up – it made him angry,” I wail in between sobs.

  Valentina is holding me in her arms. “That’s right, Arielle – let it all out.”

  “He felt humiliated in front of his friends. There were more. I can’t remember how many...but there were more. I puked up – that’s when they finally left me alone. They left me there covered in vomit and semen and—”

  She holds my trembling body close against her. “Now, now, my beautiful Arielle, they can’t hurt you anymore.”

  Room service arrives, and I pick at the food, hardly being able to swallow. Telling Valentina all this was the last thing I wanted to do. So unprofessional, mixing my private life with a work situation. I should never have agreed to allow her into my hotel room, letting her look into my heart and soul. I’ve been an idiot.

  I sit up straight and try to compose myself, but I feel exhausted, spent, all my energy sucked out of me.

  I don’t protest when she takes control and says, “I’m going to run you a bath, Arielle, and you can just lie back and relax. Think of lovely things. Any time you have a nasty image in your mind, replace it with this bunch of pink roses.”

  The bath is just what I need. I recline my head back, unwinding in the hot bubbly water and do as Valentina tells me. I picture the pink roses climbing up the stone walls at Max’s house in Provence and the scent of lavender, the intense purple-blue of the fields, the white butterflies fluttering about like confetti. I remember the buttery croissant I ate for breakfast, the taste of homemade cherry preserve – from the cherry trees
in his garden.

  Valentina puts on some music – Woman by Neneh Cherry – a powerful song. I close my eyes. It’s healthy that all the bad memories have resurfaced, but now they can go back where they came from, six feet under where they belong. It’s done. It’s over – I don’t want the past taking over my perfect world, screwing up my life.

  My lids are shut tight when I feel the bath water ripple. I open them and see two smooth, golden legs in the tub. Valentina is joining me. This is not what I planned!

  “Scoot over,” she says, slipping herself behind me before I have a chance to object. She eases her slim body to the back of the tub and maneuvers around me so I have no choice but to lean on her, my back pressed against her breasts, her legs splayed open on either side of me. Double déjà-vu! But this time with her, not Max.

  “Use me as a cushion. Just relax,” she says soothingly, pulling my shoulders back.

  I’m too tired to disagree. I lean against her. She begins to lather my back with a delicious-smelling body wash as she sings along to the song...about being a woman’s world. Her hands are firm but soft as she massages my shoulders with her fingertips, kneading out the knots – the stress.

  “This feels good,” I tell her, realizing it’s past the point of protesting. Anyway, who cares? What’s the worst that can happen? Max said himself he wouldn’t mind. She’s a woman – she can’t hurt me. A little rubdown can’t be a bad thing.

  She continues with this wonderful massage for a good ten minutes. I’m like putty in her agile hands. Then her fingers run themselves from my shoulders to my front and tantalizingly across my breasts. She isn’t touching the nipples, just circling around and around – all part of her skillful massage. But my body does things my conscience can’t control: my nipples pucker and to my surprise I’m silently begging for her to tweak them – the massage has got me really turned-on. I don’t want her to know, but she senses something as her hands graze across each nipple. I feel a shooting desire connect the pulse with my core and my clit starts to throb. She begins to flutter her fingers on my nipples, and I can’t help it – a little moan escapes my lips and I lean back closer against her. Uh oh, that’s done it.