It was the middle of the night, and Alison was wide-awake. The initial exhaustion had worn off. She kept thinking about Gil, out there, somewhere. Who knew if he was alive, and if he was, whether he’d decide to stick to their agreement? She had known it was a long shot when she struck the bargain, and now it felt even stupider. Why had he even entertained the idea of a deal? What was he afraid of? The tapes didn’t prove anything conclusively; Christine had been clear about that on the phone, but she hadn’t seen them yet; she was going off only what Alison had told her.
She sighed, turned on the light. She knew she wouldn’t sleep until she’d checked. She opened her laptop, which she’d managed to hide from the police when they’d found her, stuffing it up her shirt. She clicked on the first file, tried not to flinch or turn away, pretended it was someone else on the bed, someone else in that moment, someone who wasn’t her.
Why did Simone want her to watch these? What was it that Gil seemed relieved she had missed? She didn’t know if she wanted to know. But it had seemed incredibly important to him, so it was important to her. She clicked through them one by one, watched herself over and over again, felt the same numbness in her body now as she had when these tapes were created. It was nauseating, but she pushed through it. Another file. Another scene. She didn’t feel any recognition this time; when she saw herself on the screen, she couldn’t place this one.
She was fall-down drunk. She fell down, Gil picked her up, she swayed a little, she laughed at something he whispered into her ear, she began to take her clothes off, fell over stepping out of her skirt. Her mouth wide with laughter, she said something; the silence of the tape didn’t reveal it, but she sees him stiffen, sees the way he readies his body for the fight.
When he hits her, Alison flinches in her bed, flinches as if the punch is landing on her stomach, in this moment. Why doesn’t she remember any of it? He hauls her up, tosses her on the bed, takes off the rest of her clothes, rips them, tears the underpants in two. She can see she is crying. She can feel she is crying. He is holding her down; his hand is on her throat. Her eyes go wide; her eyes go stone. He shakes her. He shakes her and shakes her and then he slaps her, and she doesn’t respond. She’s not there. She’s not breathing, because he’s putting his mouth on hers now, he’s performing CPR, he’s pressing his hands into the spot on her chest that’s supposed to wake you back up. It doesn’t. It doesn’t. Then it does.
She gasps in the air in big gulps; he’s crying now, he’s kissing her, he’s holding her face in his hands as if he didn’t cause the situation in the first place. Alison doesn’t have any memory of this. She never would have known.
But there is the tape. There is a record. Gil made this one mistake. Simone knew he wouldn’t be able to wriggle away from this one. This, Alison thought, must have been how Simone planned to set them free. But now, with Gil missing, and Simone dead, was it worth anything at all? It occurred to Alison that if it was nothing else, it was an insurance policy. He wouldn’t touch her while she had it, and that was a big deal.
She was flooded with gratitude for a woman she’d never known. It was a wild feeling. Like static electricity on a crowded tram on a winter day. She turned off the tape. She didn’t want to see it ever again. An emptiness engulfed her, like a black hole opening up in the universe and swallowing her whole.
She thought of Gil, down at the bottom of the slender ravine, looking like death. She could have tried to help him, could have done so many things differently. She laughed before she realized the air had escaped from her mouth. Everything felt so ridiculous. This was not who she was. This was not who she wanted anyone to ever know her as.