Robert Tanenbaum: Falsely Accused

“Jesus! What the hell did you do for him?”

“I stole something back from someone who had stolen it from him. And yes, it’s a great story, and no, I’m not going to tell it to you. The point is that my financial contributions to this family have been very substantial, when you add it all up, probably more than Butch’s. So the fact that I’m not bringing in cash right at this minute has no significance. I bought this time and I’m enjoying it, without guilt, thank you. I like cooking. I like hanging out with Lucy. I like not having to deal with scumbags and assholes all day. It’s improved my disposition considerably. So you can cut out all the ‘dependent’ horseshit.”

“Oooh, she’s wailing now!” hooted Stupenagel. “But admit it! Aren’t you just the teeniest bit bored? Wouldn’t you like to be back at the D.A.?”

Marlene considered this seriously, although she understood that Ariadne was merely baiting her. Did she feel bored?

“Frankly? Yeah, sometimes. I have a brain, it wants to be used the way it was trained. But a couple of things: one, it turns out I’m not that great a D.A. I don’t mean in terms of skill or knowledge or success. All that’s fine. I mean in terms of temperament. I’m too impatient to be really happy in the legal system.” And too vindictive, thought Marlene, without saying it. “And two …” Marlene stumbled on what two was. She really shouldn’t have drunk so much wine. “Oh, right … two, if I went back to the D.A., I’d have to commute, because I can’t work for the New York D.A. anymore.”

“Like Butch,” said Stupenagel, driving to the point of the elaborate manipulation she had been carrying on for the past half hour, the goal of which was to find out why two of the most prominent prosecuting attorneys in the recent history of New York were no longer prosecuting. “And why would that be, Marlene? Why the big career change?”

Marlene laughed in spite of herself, understanding very well what was going on and, in an odd way, admiring it, and Stupenagel’s brazen awfulness. Karp already knew the story, but no one else did, and Marlene in an instant decided to tell it to Ariadne, who, although certainly the world’s least reliable confidante, was at least a woman.

“This happened,” Marlene began, “when Butch was in D.C. I was running the rape bureau. To make a long story short, Bloom essentially asked me for a proposal that would have tripled my staff and made sex crimes a really big deal. He invited me to dinner at his place to discuss the project, filled me with booze, and, I think but can’t prove, slipped a little something extra into the brandy. In any event, I passed out, and when I came to, he had my blouse unbuttoned, my tits out, my panty hose down around my kneecaps and his hand on my pussy.”

“So you fucked him,” said Stupenagel. “Then what?”

“Oh, for crying out loud, Stupe! I certainly did not fuck him.”

“You didn’t?”

“No! He tried to rape me. I mean, I assume you’re familiar with the concept?”

“Don’t be vile, Ciampi. Okay, so what did you do then?”

“ I shoved him off me and gave him a couple of good shots to the nose. He ended up in a cheesecake. I pulled myself together, got out, and puked my guts on the sidewalk.”

“I assume this was not a career-enhancing move.”

“No. In the clear light of hindsight, I should have at least tried to nail the bastard for it. But … oh, shit, the embarrassment! The head of the rape bureau charging the D.A. with attempted rape? Attempted, mind you. No pubic hair, no sperm, no proof. He would have smiled and said something like, this bitch came on to me with a ridiculous plan for her own self-aggrandizement and I turned her down and she got drunk and made this absurd accusation. Or he would have said that Butch put me up to it. But it was mostly the shame-I wasn’t thinking legal strategy at the time. I just wanted away. So, a couple of weeks after that I quit and moved down to be with Butch in Washington. Are you going to get dressed?”

Stupenagel ignored this and sucked again on the Moët, a little too vigorously, because the wine foamed and ran up her nose and down her chin. She sputtered and coughed. When she recovered, she said, “So that’s the story. God, Marlene, what a mess! Why the hell didn’t you let him pork you?”

“What!” cried Marlene. Long association with Ariadne had diminished her friend’s ability to shock her, but this last question, delivered in a matter-of-fact tone, made Marlene’s stomach churn. “I told you, the slimeball tried to rape me. Please tell me you’re not giving me that relax and enjoy it horseshit …”

“Oh, hell, Ciampi, we’re not talking about some pervert sweathog climbing through your window with a knife. This was a guy who could do you some good. What the hell does a fuck mean anyway? Lie back and think of England.”

“ You would have let him?”

“Of course!”

“I can’t fucking believe this! This is the woman who’s telling me I’m not living up to feminist ideals?”

Stupenagel uttered a dramatic sigh. “Oh, don’t be such a baby, Marlene! What’s feminism? Feminism is about getting ahead. Achieving power. And using sex, using our luscious young bodies for the pathetically few years they remain luscious to climb a little higher up the pole. Like men. You do what you have to. What, you think men don’t? Men suck ass instead of cocks, except for the ones who suck cocks too. They let their egos be ground into powder by their bosses. For years. You think that’s preferable to eight minutes of wiggling your butt and groaning?”

“You’ve done this? This is not just theoretical?”

“Marlene, darling, how do you think we went from a city reporter on an Ohio daily to the Moscow bureau of the Associated Press in four years? Journalistic brilliance? Yeah, that too …” She laughed. “But even journalistic brilliance sometimes requires that we drop our panties. Guys will tell you stuff across a pillow they’d never let go of across a desk. Besides, I like to fuck. And it clears the air. What you don’t want is some guy with a hard-on following you around, mooning. That’s annoying. It’s a pity so many of the ones who can help you happen to be little short persons.”

“Butch doesn’t,” Marlene blurted out.

“He doesn’t what? Have hard-ons?”

“No, suck ass.”

“No, I’m sure he doesn’t, which is why he doesn’t get to do the one thing he likes doing, and is better than practically anyone else in the city at, and why he’s chasing ambulances for a second-rate tort factory. Whereas I, slut that I am …” She paused, as if performing an instant analysis of her current status. Her nose wrinkled involuntarily. She took a swallow of wine and giggled. “Whereas I … have to take a whiz. Excuse me.”

Stupenagel rose with the stately, over-controlled movements of the experienced lush, threw her kimono around her shoulders, and swayed into the bedroom’s toilet, still holding the champagne.

Marlene bustled into action, irritated at Ariadne and angry at herself for letting the woman get under her skin. Again. Why do I put up with the bitch? she wondered for the ten thousandth time since her freshman year. To which she knew the answer very well, but was not disposed to think about it just then.

She went to the kitchen and began to rattle pots. “Little girls! Little girls! Come and help!” she shouted. Giggles and pounding of feet on the hardwood: Lucy Karp with Janice Chen trailing behind. Marlene took a lump of pasta dough out of the refrigerator and set up the machine. Lucy officiously supervised the process, allowing Janice to crank while she herself arranged the long, pale strands of linguine on the wooden rack. Marlene busied herself with clam sauce, keeping an eye on the children from time to time. Lucy was becoming a little Marlene: bright, pugnacious, with a tendency to boss. She had her mother’s pure bisque skin and curly dark hair; her eyes, yellowy gray and slightly tilted, were out of Odessa and points east by way of Dad.