The first few rolls arrived and Josh went straight for the tempura shrimp roll wrapped in eel.
As fast as the rolls came Sarah and Josh cleaned
them from their plates. When they were finished they both felt as if they would burst. Sarah’s tongue still burned from the wasabi. She doused her taste buds with the last of the wine, reducing the fire in her mouth to a pleasant sting.
The rest of the day was spent sightseeing, window-shopping, and eating. They wandered through the Forum shops at Caesar’s Palace, pausing to watch the talking Greek statues do their once-an-hour show, before wandering through Hugo Boss, Versace, and Calvin Klein. They crossed the street to the Bellagio and wandered through the Prada store and Sarah almost succeeded in talking Josh into a $900 handbag. Hours later, hungry again, they wound up at Fleur de Lis where, just as she’d promised, Sarah got Josh to try caviar for the first time.
She ordered a two-ounce tin of beluga caviar that came with chopped shallots, egg whites, and sour cream.
“Oh, my God. This is amazing.”
“It’s eighty-five dollars an ounce so don’t fall in love.”
“Too late.” Sarah smiled and winked at Josh.
Josh chuckled and shook his head. “I guess I need to start making more money.”
“Just stick with me, kid. I’ll take you places and show you things.”
After dinner they drove back up the strip to The Venetian.
“You know what I’ve always wanted to do?” Sarah asked.
“What?”
“Ride the gondolas. I know it’s corny but I think it would be fun.”
“I’m down for it.”
“I know it’s not exactly Venice but it’s the next best thing.”
“Actually, the French Riviera is the next best thing or maybe Paris. These guys don’t even have real mustaches. I bet they don’t even speak Italian.”
“Don’t ruin it. Let’s go. It’ll be fun.”
“Buon giorno! Benvenuto, signore! Benvenuto, signora!”
The gondolier welcomed them aboard. Sarah turned and winked at Josh as if to say: “See, he does speak Italian.”
They pushed off from the little dock and began rowing toward a small walk bridge where another gondola had just passed. As they drifted out across the artificial lake, the gondolier began singing “Caro Mio Ben,” an old Italian love song.
“Isn’t this cool? He’s got a pretty good voice, huh?”
“Ask him if he knows any Prince.”
“You’re funny.” Sarah smacked him on the arm, then snuggled up against him again.
Night had fallen and the lights of the strip outshined the moon and stars. It felt like a perfect honeymoon. It was easy for Sarah to imagine that they were actually in Venice, that they weren’t in the same town they lived in every day. Sarah pulled Josh closer as she realized that the night was almost over. Tomorrow they would be going back home, back to their normal lives. Sarah hoped the nightmare was over now.
Back at the hotel, Josh and Sarah ordered a bottle of champagne from room service and crawled into bed. They clicked through channels on the TV and then settled on a prime-time special about Barack Obama. They watched it for a while, then changed the channel to
Big Love
on HBO when the president began talking about
the economy. They didn’t need any more bad news.
They sipped wine and cuddled, enjoying the warmth of each other’s body. Occasionally, they kissed. Before she fell asleep, she turned on the digital recorder and slid it under the pillow.
Once again, Sarah woke up and reached under the pillow for the recorder. Josh was still sleeping, snoring a low, rumbling lion’s purr that was somehow not the least bit unpleasant. Sarah rewound the recorder and pressed play. She sat for a long moment listening to nothing but the occasional moan and snort and the sound of rustling pillows. She was just about to turn off the recorder when she heard herself scream.
“
No! No! Noooo! Oh my God! Don’t. Don’t! Helllllllp!”
All the hairs stood up on Sarah’s skin and she sat up bolt straight in bed. Her jaw dropped and the saliva in her mouth dried up. She began to tremble all over. Her teeth chattered as a chill crawled over her. She could not move, couldn’t think.
“AAAAAaaaaaaarghhhhhhh! NOOOoooooooooo!”
It sounded like she was being murdered. Sarah rolled over and shook Josh awake.
“Josh! Josh! Oh, my God. Listen! Listen. I’m not crazy!”
Sarah shook him until his eyelids flew open and he rubbed the sleep from his eyes, trying to orient himself and give her his full attention. She held the recorder out to him, pressing it up against his ear as he struggled up from sleep. Just then she heard the unmistakable sound of Josh’s voice come over the recorder.
“Shhhhh. Baby, you’re having a dream. Go back to sleep.”
Sarah wilted.
“A dream?”
“You woke up screaming in the middle of the night. You said you were being attacked.”
“A dream?”
It should have been a relief but somehow it made her feel like an idiot. She tossed the covers aside, ran into the bathroom, and shut the door. This time, she didn’t make it into the shower before the tears came.
Sarah sat in the bottom of the tub letting the water strike the top of her head and run down her face. She didn’t know how long she’d been sitting there when she slowly began to feel another emotion come over her, relief. If it was all a dream, then that meant she had not been raped. It also meant she owed the neighbor an apology. Her relief was short-lived however.
Through the sound of the shower, Sarah heard Josh knocking on the door. They were gentle, cautious knocks, Josh checking to see if she was okay.
“I’m all right. I just feel a little silly. I’ll be out in a minute,” Sarah called out.
Josh knocked again.
Sarah turned off the shower and stepped out of the tub.
“I’ll be out in a minute.”
“I think you need to come out now. You’ve got a call. It’s the detective.”
Sarah wrapped a towel around her head and another around her waist. She stepped out of the bathroom and the moment she opened the door and saw her husband’s face, she knew there was something wrong.
“They found semen,” he said.
Sarah’s expression asked the question that froze on her lips.
Josh shook his head and dropped the phone into her hand.
“It’s not mine.”
Sarah couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She lifted the phone to her ear, still staring at Josh.
“Hello?”
“Mrs. Lincoln?”
“Yes?”
“This is Detective Trina Lassiter. I met you at the hospital on Friday.”
“Yes?”
“I wanted to let you know that we got the lab results back. They tested positive for seminal fluid.”
“Wh-where? Where did they find it?”
“Everywhere.”
“Wh-what do you mean everywhere?”
“Mrs. Lincoln, we found traces of semen in your rectum, in your vagina, in your mouth. It was everywhere.”
Sarah shook her head in disbelief, her mouth still hanging open in shock, stupefied by what she was hearing.
“D-did they test it against my husband’s?”
“Yes, we did. Unfortunately, your husband’s semen was a negative match.”
Sarah felt her stomach drop as if she were back on one of the roller coasters. Her vision narrowed to a pinpoint. She dropped to her knees and began regurgitating violently.
“How is that possible? Th-they said there were no signs of rape. How is it possible? It was him! It was Dale. I know it was him.”
Sarah picked up the phone again.
“What about the drugs? Did they find anything in my blood?”
“No signs of any barbiturates or narcotics. No sign of hallucinogenics either.”
“Did they check for roofies? What about GHB or ketamine?”
“They ran a full toxicology screen. There was nothing but estrogen and alcohol. Look, the mind is a funny thing. You might be blocking it out. That could be why you don’t remember.”
“I want him arrested. I want my neighbor put in jail.”
“Are you sure it was him?”
“I remember him. I can see his face as clear as day.”
“When I spoke to you before you weren’t certain you’d actually been raped.”
“But now we know. We have his semen.”
“I’m still not certain that I can get a warrant to compel him to give us a DNA sample. Not with the evidence we have. I don’t know if your statement would convince a judge.”
“Wh-what? Well, what am I supposed to do?”
“I’ll come to your house, we’ll go over your statement again, and I’ll talk with your neighbor. Are you at home now?”
“No, we’ve been sleeping in a hotel room. I couldn’t stand to stay in that house.”
“I could meet you at your hotel. Where are you staying?”
“Hollywood Galaxy. Room 1912.”
“I’m going to question your neighbor first. I want to see if he’d be willing to give us a DNA sample vol
untarily. Will you be staying at the hotel a few more days or will you be returning home?”
“I’m not sure. I’ll have to ask my husband.”
Sarah hung up the phone and stared out the hotel window.
They found semen. Everywhere.
Josh was on his knees scrubbing the floor where she’d vomited with a bath towel. He didn’t look up when he spoke to her. He just kept scrubbing.
“How is that possible, Sarah? They didn’t find any drugs in your system. They didn’t find any bruising. Anywhere!”
“I don’t know.”
“How can you not remember someone cumming in your ass? How the hell do you expect me to believe that? How do you think that makes me feel?”
A sudden rage came rushing through Sarah and it was all she could do to control it. She didn’t want to let this thing, whatever it was, tear her and Josh apart. But she couldn’t stand the thought of Josh questioning her about something like this.
How fucking dare he?
“How it makes
you
feel? Are you fucking kidding me? Do you know how selfish, how fucking insensitive that sounds? I was fucking raped! It wasn’t you who they found a stranger’s semen in, Josh. It’s me getting violated every night by Lord knows who!”
Josh shook his head and let out a sharp exhalation of breath that almost sounded like a chuckle.
“I’m sorry. I am. I just don’t know what you expect from me. I mean, look at it through my eyes. You can’t even explain what the hell is going on. All I know for a fact is that someone else’s semen was inside my wife.”
Josh threw the towel on the floor and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. He looked away from Sarah,
still refusing to make eye contact. Sarah knelt down and put an arm around him. She was still angry but her instinct was still to comfort him, to try to make everything okay.
“I don’t know. I don’t know what’s happening to me.”
Josh picked up the towel and started scrubbing the carpet again.
“So what happens next? What happens if Dale’s DNA is a match with the semen they found? Are they going to arrest him? I mean, you’ll get ripped apart on a stand. They’ll say it was consensual. It’ll be your word against his and you don’t have a shred of proof. He’ll say you two were having an affair or something.”
“Is that what you think?”
Josh was still not looking at her. He had soiled three towels and was reaching for a fourth. He squirted shower gel onto the floor and continued rubbing the carpet with the fresh towel.
Sarah took her arm from around his shoulders and stood up, both hands on her hips, feeling that rage boiling inside her again, wanting to explode. She felt the urge to kick Josh in the back of his head. Instead, she took a deep breath and knelt back down beside him.
“Look at me, Josh. Is that what you think?”
Josh still did not turn his head toward her when he spoke. She put a hand on his cheek to try to turn his head to face her but he jerked his head away and continued staring at the vomit stain on the floor.
“I don’t know what to think. I don’t know. I mean, you don’t remember, and I have heard of people getting raped and blocking it out. I know it happens. And with the sliding-door lock busted I suppose someone could have come in the house. But I was home. I was
home, Sarah! It’s just not possible that we’re both blocking it out. It’s not possible that someone broke in while I was asleep, fucked you and ejaculated in you, then got it up again and fucked you in your ass, ejaculated again, then got it up a third time and came in your mouth, all while I was snoring beside you. How could that be possible?”
Sarah shook her head. Her rage turned to a deep sadness. Josh was right. There was no reason for him to believe her. She wouldn’t have believed him if the tables were turned. Whatever was happening to her was about to destroy her marriage. It was rapidly eroding the trust she shared with her husband and she knew that once the trust went the love was next. Tears were streaming down her face. She began to dry heave.
“I don’t know!”
Josh punched his fist into the floor and Sarah jumped. For a moment she was afraid he was going to hit her. It was the first time she’d ever found herself afraid of her husband and she immediately felt guilty for it. Josh was big but he’d never been a bully. He was usually gentle and sensitive. This, however, was uncharted territory. She’d never before given him a reason to question her loyalty. Still, Josh was mild and nonconfrontational by nature unless he felt like he was being deliberately provoked. Attacking a woman just wasn’t in him. Sarah thought about Josh storming out of the house with a gun in his hand when she’d first told him that she thought she had been raped. He had been fully planning on killing their neighbor. Sarah wondered if she really knew her husband as well as she thought she did.
“It’s not possible, Sarah! It’s just not fucking possible!”
“So you think I cheated on you?”
“Maybe it was a date rape or something and you felt
guilty about it and so you invented this whole thing. Maybe you blocked that out and you really believe that this whole fantasy is true. Maybe you sleepwalked across the street and fucked the neighbor in your sleep. I don’t fucking know, Sarah, but you’re a sex addict, a goddamn nymphomaniac or something! I know I can’t satisfy you. So why wouldn’t you be getting it somewhere else?”