Chapter 23 1957
Finally the noises Bob is making in the library end. Calliope’s pumps tap across the floor. Before she opens the door, she says, “I have the part.” It’s not a question.
Bob’s voice is relaxed. “You do.”
The door shuts.
The ziiiiiiiip sounds again. Metal clangs, the sofa yawns.
Footsteps. Not walking toward the door, but coming closer to where Aria is hiding.
She scrambles deeper under the chair. Please make a hole for me to fall into, she begs the Marmont. Please.
But the chateau doesn’t do that. Because what happens next won’t be what anyone expects.
People see Aria trailing Calliope and Flitter and think she’s the kid who isn’t too bright—the one who wants to keep up, but who never will. But the Marmont knows that Aria isn’t slow or stupid; she’s a young lady who will either get the world she gives into or the world she fights for.
Right now in the library, the two paths leading toward those two different futures are waiting.
The Marmont holds its curtains closed and lets out not a breath as Bob reaches down for Aria’s wrists and pulls her out from under the chair.
“Lucky for you, I’m not interested in little girls,” he says. “Except insofar as I see them creeping around, watching me. I put on that show for you. I’m sure it will keep you quiet.”
He lets go of her wrists and walks away.
If the Marmont had a heart it would break over what Aria thinks next: I’m lucky. Lucky that he only touched my wrists.
Too many women convince themselves that they’re lucky, make themselves believe that what happened to them isn’t assault.
So the Marmont stops waiting. It wriggles its bedrock so that paintings fall off walls and the piano in the lobby plays an E minor chord and there’s a tidal wave in the pool and everyone stops, silent, thinking of the ghost in the turret.
In that silence, the camera whirs louder and louder so that it sounds like a voice telling Aria that if her parents had lived and she’d stayed in Manhattan, then what happened to Calliope tonight would have happened anyway. But nobody would have known about it.
Except now, Aria does.
And so…
Fight, the camera insists. Fight.