Alissa Nutting - Tampa

There was nothing to do but cover my ears and begin making a high-pitched scream. I continued until my throat gave out and the detective, shaking his head, reminded me my dramatics were being filmed, then I caught my breath and began to scream more. Soon there was a sharp knock on the door that presumably increased in urgency upon hearing my distress. I didn’t quit screaming entirely; instead I lowered the volume to a trillish shriek and waited to see who’d enter. Had Ford finally learned I was being interrogated and arrived to take me home? I resolved to bed him vigorously and without complaint the moment we got to the house; perhaps, if my sense of gratitude had not fully dissipated upon arrival, I would even fellate him—there didn’t have to be anything sexual about it. It would simply be reciprocal appreciation for his getting me out of this most uncomfortable pinch.

But it was not Ford. Instead a man wearing a suit who looked very awkward wearing a suit stood in the doorway; he had a flat-top and a straight bristly mustache, and appeared to be somewhat bowlegged. “I’m Mrs. Price’s attorney,” he called across my low wail. “This interview is over.”

With that, I closed my mouth completely.

Though the lawyer was a concession on behalf of Ford’s family—he’d represent me during the trial and also through a speedy divorce—he wasn’t free: I had to make a public apology that both glorified my husband and portrayed my grief and shame over hurting such a good man. If I could manage to weep, the attorney explained, Ford’s family would give me a bonus of roughly $15,000 for personal expenses during the trial to do with as I wished. “You can keep your car,” he said succinctly. I was in awe of the fact that no matter how radically the muscles around his mouth moved as he enunciated, his stolid mustache didn’t once squirm; it seemed not to be attached to his face so much as constantly hovering a half inch in front of it. “They’ll have all your possessions in the home packaged and moved to a studio apartment that will be paid for until your trial if they deem your set bail is reasonable and decide to pay. If your bail is exorbitant, these items will be moved to a paid storage facility until your release. In exchange for these conditions, you will agree to never publicly speak ill of Ford Price, nor imply that he was responsible, either directly or indirectly, for your actions. Do you accept these terms?”

My mind was swimming at the immediate plummet of socio-economic class I’d just sustained—having never planned on getting caught, I certainly hadn’t put much thought into the adultery clause of our prenuptial agreement. But I knew I didn’t have time to mourn financial affairs at present; more important was staying out of jail, away from the cloying paws of stinking adult women. “What do they mean, ‘reasonable’?” I asked. “What’s the most they’ll pay?”

He was honest. “Henry didn’t tell me.” A check of his watch revealed that it was now past two o’clock in the morning.

“I didn’t think the news would travel so quickly,” I muttered. Was the situation with Ford now hopeless? Perhaps his hearty reserves of denial were still pliable; if it was media attention he was so concerned about, maybe after the trial we could move overseas. In my head I fashioned a fantasy where Ford wanted desperately to come save me but his family was forbidding it. Was it so implausible that Ford might be able to come to a peaceful acceptance of my more inconvenient cravings, just as I had in deciding to live with him and agreeing to play the part of wife? “Did you see Ford tonight?” I asked. “Did he ask about me?”

The attorney, who went by Dennis but whose actual first name was Maximilian, stared at me blankly. “I only spoke to Henry.”

I’d never had much of a relationship with Ford’s father. The first time I met him, he was polite until we had a moment alone. Then he stared at my body as though he was making a scrutinized inspection of something he’d custom-ordered. “You know,” he’d said, “I’ve built a sixty-million-dollar company from the ground up and I still don’t have a trophy wife—you’ve met Margery. Ford can barely wipe his own ass and he’s got you on his arm.” He’d shaken his head, then removed a cigar from his pocket, licked around its end in an obscene way. His enormous pink tongue had looked like some invertebrate coming out of a shell.

I directed my attention back to Dennis. Though I hardly looked my best, I wanted him to care very personally whether or not my case succeeded. Taking his hands into my own—a move he found awkward; his fingers went limp and he stared down at them, spreading his fingers willfully apart as though he was testing out a prosthetic for the very first time—I stressed that I could not go to prison. The thought of having to do the things I’d done with Ford and Buck all over again with gruff women, but this time for nothing—no payoff of getting to live in luxury or gain increased access to pubescent sons—was too sickening to bear. Instead I’d have to perform morbid sexual acts just to avoid getting beaten up, or to get beaten up less. Not to mention that the environment would serve as a pressure cooker, mercilessly aging me; I’d emerge from lockup malnourished and sickly, with brittle hair, gray skin and fully pleated crow’s-feet around my eyes. For the first time in my life I wondered if I could be capable of suicide. “I’d be an unfair target,” I pointed out to him. “People who look like me don’t go to jail.” I realized that for once I wasn’t just attempting to be a bewildered younger woman looking toward an older man for guidance; I was truly frightened and needed his help.

“You are unusually attractive.” His voice had a tone of robotic assessment that made me wonder if his mustache was in fact a life-like series of tiny brown wires. “I can argue your appearance might put you at risk for increased sexual violence. You’re safe tonight; you’ll be alone in a holding cell until your bail hearing tomorrow morning.”

“No!” I gripped his arm with great force, as though the door might burst open any moment with a hurricane-force wind sent to deliver me to my cell. I imagined lying down on the hard cot and eventually masturbating, despite my best interests, in order to feel something besides terminal fear. Guards would walk by and shine their flashlights on my moving pelvis; surrounding inmates would see it all and yell out promises to quell my urges through a series of impending rapes.

Dennis let out a long sigh and opened his briefcase. He brought out not a tape recorder or legal notepad but a bottle of what I assumed were stimulant pills; he popped two without water and moved his neck from side to side to crack it. “If you want to do this now, have at it, I guess.” The Prices were paying by the hour; I suppose he was willing to be patient.

We spoke until morning, by which point Dennis’s eyes seemed to have widened and set with a gelatin of wariness. Although every window inside the consultation room was firmly shut, by the time I finished telling my version of events, his hair looked blown back slightly at the roots.

“All right,” he said. Two crescent moons of perspiration, admirable in their convergent symmetry, had appeared beneath the underarms of his blue button-up shirt. “We can do this.” He clicked his pen as though to begin writing, but soon clicked it again, deciding against it, and set it back down on the table. “Though it probably would’ve been better if I hadn’t heard over half of that.” This was almost enough to make me laugh—all in all, I’d barely told him anything scandalous. “I recommend you get a shower in before the bail hearing,” he advised. A few trace smears of Boyd’s blood upon my collarbone were visible above the zipper of my orange jumpsuit; Dennis stood and pointed at them. “The kid’s okay, by the way. Boyd. Needed a lot of stitches and bled like hell. He’s all right but his mom’s already stirring up shit with the media.” Though I’d never even seen a picture of her, I imagined her to be a thin, fierce woman whose affinity for cardigans and other modest clothing took precedence over Florida’s warm climate. Would she hold a Bible beneath her arm when she spoke to the cameras?