The dim ceiling light flickers in a steel cage above the bathroom stall. The toilet is lidless and seatless—just a wet, open mouth ringed in stained porcelain lips.
Of course, Dario is in the McKinley Park women’s bathroom with me. He stayed at my side from the car, past the swing set, and through the door of the little brick building that clearly says “WOMEN” beneath the silhouette of the figure in a dress. There was no one around to tell him the men’s room was on the other side of the building, so here we are.
Forty-five minutes later, in the second-farthest stall from the door. I don’t know why I thought he’d let me sit in here alone for an hour, waiting where he can’t see me.
If I’m being honest with myself, I’m glad that last bit of my plan failed. I’d rather have him near me than anyone, as long as he stays quiet and lets me do the talking.
We haven’t said a word or made a sound in all this time. I’m jumping out of my skin. Dario’s patience is awe-inspiring. The beauty of his posture—heels against the side of the toilet, arms crossed, back against the wall—is enthralling. He doesn’t move from his tensed position to relieve the pressure on his knees. He crosses his ankles once, soundlessly, never touching the floor or exposing his presence.
The only active thing he does in that time is stare at me, head to toe, as if doing some kind of math. Not a word though. Not a sound.
It’s midday of midweek, so the park is populated with kids too young for school, their nannies, and their parents. Mostly women, mostly mothers. They gather in small groups, clutching paper coffee cups and metal water bottles. Except one group of young women who come together. They meet on the corner of First and 10th with their children every third Thursday.
I don’t have children, so I don’t go, but Denise told me she sometimes leaves the kids with the other mothers, gets in the last stall, and just sits there for as long as she wants.
When anyone comes into the bathroom, Dario looks for my reaction. Kids. Women. Girls. I shake my head. There’s a water fight when a group comes in to fill up balloons. No. A woman shoos them back outside. No. Another woman comes in muttering. Rattles the door. Dario puts his finger over his lips. I shake my head. Teenagers skipping school, giggling. No. A toddler looking for his mother. No.
In this series of snapshots, we hear slices of life in Manhattan, but not Denise.
I look at Dario and tap my wrist. He finds a way to shrug without moving his shoulders as if to say, “I’ll stand here in this bathroom, wedged between a toilet and a wall, with you as long as I need to.”
I mouth the words, “What if I’m wrong?” without adding all the things I could be wrong about. The time. The date. I’m counting on my friend’s life to be the same, and what if it’s not?
Dario shakes his head. He won’t be moved. I know that much. His trust in me is nice, but what if it’s misplaced?
I wipe my palms on my pants.
“Matty! You have to wait for me and Auntie Clara!”
A babble of little-boy sounds follow. Then a hearty adult snort, right from the sinuses.
Allergies.
Dario’s gaze goes from my knees to my eyes—from seduction to question.
Yes.
That’s Denise and her little son, Matty. Aunt Clara is there to make sure the mothers aren’t left alone too long. Public parks are dangerous, after all.
“Pee-pee!” Matty rushes into the farthest stall, next to where Dario and I are, and slaps the door shut. “Me-self! Me-self!”
“All right,” Denise says, giving her son what she can’t have for herself. “Just put the pee into the bowl, okay, sweetheart?”
“Kaykay!”
“Lock the door like I showed you.”
Metal clicks. Through the crack, I see her. She looks as tired as she sounds. When she leans against the stall door, our stall shakes. Fabric rustles. Water hits water.
“Good boy.” Denise faces the floor, arms crossed, arms closed.
I wish I could hug her, but all I can do is silently beg her to take ten minutes for herself.
“Ball now!” Matty cries.
His mother recites all the things he has to do before he can play ball, and it seems like he does them, until it’s time to wash his hands.
“Matty! You have to…”
And her voice is gone in the chase. I look at Dario, eyes wide.
Did we lose her? Will she come back to wash his hands or give up and let him play ball?
Again, Dario puts his finger to his lips.
Men are the most patient predators in the animal kingdom, and Dario Lucari is at the apex.
But me? I’ve been patient enough. She was right there, and instead of whispering her name or showing my face, I let her go.
I put my hand on the little silver lock, ready to get out, when Dario leaps from his perch and pushes me against the door, his hand over my mouth.
“Not yet.” The words are spoken as loud as a breeze, with a body tensed against mine and eyes that remain in a state of peace.
He moved so quickly and pinned me so accurately, I don’t have a choice but to heed him. The confidence in his eyes and arms. The unbroken line between his intentions and his actions.
“Like, a minute!” Denise calls from outside. “He’s fine as long as he has the ball.”
There’s a pause. Dario lets me go and gets back on his perch.
“There’s no other way out,” she says, closer. “Like always.”
“On Monday, I thought you fell into the toilet and we were going to have to pull you out of the sewer in the middle of 14th Street,” an older woman says. That’d be her Aunt Clara. “By the time you came out, all the bread was set out to rise and you hadn’t done a bit of kneading.”
She shuffles in front of the stall next to us. Empty. I scoot to put my back to the toilet. Her shadow shows her bending to look for my feet. She’ll see them, but not Dario’s. I look up at him, a hawk on the roof’s edge. He smirks at me.
The third door swings and clicks against the wall.
“Take your monthly constitutional,” Aunt Clara says with the hint of jokey commiseration. “But don’t take your time. I’ll be outside to make sure there are no unwanted visitors.” She makes the banal description sound vile and frightening.
Denise chirps gratitude and locks the door. Her aunt Clara goes outside with the kids.
Dario’s nod is more than a sign to begin. He’s telling me I can do this. He’s with me the whole way.
I take a damp, folded note from my pocket. Its corners are darkened from half an hour in my hand. I’m supposed to hand her the tiny square under the stall, but in this last minute, I realize that’s not the best way to do this.
I unfold it while Denise pulls down her pants. On one side is a phone number Dario set up to forward to him. On the other is a greeting.
HI, STINKPANTS. IT’S SARAH.
When her second baby was so big she got a fistula, I helped her with her chores and called her stinkpants. I was a casually unkind, nasty bitch. I don’t like using the name now, but it’s a way for her to know it’s me before she sees me.
Dario watches as I read it. Does he approve of the cruelty? Does he even see it?
While Denise pees, he folds one hand over the other and knots his brow. A question or confirmation about unfolding the note. I nod. It’s fine. It’s better. I’ve decided. And in response, he nods and folds his arms, accepting my decision without further inquiry.
Good. I don’t want to be told what to do right now.
The pee noises stop. Denise snorts. There’s no rustle of clothing. No rattle of toilet paper. She’s staying in the quiet to think. I look to Dario for strength, and with a simple, confident nod, he gives it to me.
Reaching down, I pass the note under the stall, insult up.
Nothing happens.
Time passes. Too much time. Maybe three seconds with Mississippis in between. Then I feel the paper slip from my fingertips. I don’t expect silence, but that’s what I get. My attention on the space under the stall, I reach for Dario and catch the hardness of his forearm. He puts his hand over mine, and I finally breathe enough to use half my voice.
“Denise?”
“You’re dead.”
Is that what they’re telling everyone? Jesus. Was there a funeral? What did Daddy and Massimo say over the closed casket?
Or maybe she means I’m dead to her.
“I’m here.” I rub my palms on my pants again. I’m going to need a stain remover to get the sweat out of them. “Remember when Marco Junior was a baby? And you gave him rice cereal for the first time? And he went crazy? Grabbing for the bowl with these little arms he didn’t know how to use?”
Her response is to pull up her pants and flush. I expect her to say something, ask a question, express excitement. I don’t expect the stall’s wall to rattle, then hear her gasp from above me. She looks over the top, pressing the note in a triangle halfway over the edge.
“Hi,” I say. Even wide-eyed, staring at the man wedged between the toilet and the opposite wall, her face is like a letter from home. “He’s okay.”
She tears her attention from Dario and puts it on me. “Is this him? The one who did it?”
“Yes.” I put my fingers on the wall, ready to climb to her. She looks back at Dario, grinding her jaw. I realize too late what she’s about to do. “He’s okay. He didn’t harm me. I promise he won’t hurt you.”
With a sharp kkst from her throat, a glob of spit flies across the space and lands on Dario’s chin and chest. I suck in a breath, but in those first moments, he doesn’t move.
“Good thing we checked for toilet paper.” He gets down with fluid, catlike grace and reaches for the paper.
“You animal.”
He wipes his face and shirt. She can insult him all day long and he won’t react. This next part is mine.
“Denise.” I get up on the toilet to talk to her face to face over the stall’s rickety wall. “Listen to me.”
“Why should I?”
“Please.” Something about my plea breaks her, and her rage turns to despair.
“Oh, Sarah, I miss you so much.”
“I miss you too.”
“Come home. Please. Kick him in the balls and come home.”
I’m not coming home. Not today. Not ever.
“Denise. You haven’t screamed for your aunt. You haven’t run away. Why not?”
“Maybe I will.”
“A part of you trusts me… and that part of you, it’s the part that always knew Marco was bad for you.”
Her eyes narrow. Years of defending him for her own peace of mind won’t let the slight meet the truth. I’ve overplayed my hand.
“We’ll leave you alone,” I say. “But we want to know… has Aunt Clara mentioned seeing Dafne Tamberi? Our teacher from the lower grades?”
“Why are you asking?”
This is as good as a yes, and I’m formulating my next question when Dario cuts in.
“Where? What floor?”
She shoots him a look. “What’s it to you?” Her attention turns back to me. “And you should be ashamed, standing here with him while she’s barely alive from what he did.”
She spits out the last syllable. Of course, her aunt told her Dario was the one who hurt Dafne, because that’s what she would have been told. The important thing is that Clara was told something, which confirms the clinic has her.
An instant of amplified sound forces us both to turn toward Dario standing beneath us, phone in hand. The noise is gone too quickly to identify, but I can still see—and I’ll never forget the video he just muted.
“Dario,” I say. “Don’t.”
He’s not going to listen to me. She accused him of what the Colonia did, and he’s not going to leave this bathroom without countering it.
“Denise.” I shift close enough to her to block out Dario. “What floor does Aunt Clara work on? Just tell us that.”
Her eyes scan mine, left to right. She snorts, then her gaze moves over my shoulder.
Dario’s holding up his phone, and Denise can’t take her eyes off the screen.
“Denise.” I put my hand on her arm.
She lets go of the sweat-stained note, letting it drift to the floor.
“This is who did it,” Dario hisses. “Now where is she?”
Denise’s lips go slack, as if watching this monstrosity is taking up the energy her body needs to breathe, to swallow, to answer his question.
“Dario,” I whisper. “Turn it off.”
He doesn’t move it away or stop it.
“You need to tell us or find out.”
She’ll need the number on the note. I get down to retrieve it, but as I stand back up, Denise reaches for the phone’s glass. It seems like she’s going to touch it. Maybe play the video again. That’s how she gets close enough to grab it right out of his hand.
“No!” Dario shouts.
Denise jumps down and unlatches the door. Then Dario. He’s going to catch her.
But Aunt Clara’s voice echoes in the small chamber. “Denise?”
“I’m right here.”
Dario puts his back to the door, looking up, mouthing the word fuck over and over.
Through the crack, I see my friend putting the phone in her back pocket. She and her aunt Clara walk out, and Dario finally finds his voice.
“Fuck!”
Dario curses all the way to the car. Once we’re both safe inside, he holds out his hand to me. “Your phone.”
I give it to him, and he makes a call.
“Thank fucking God that fucking house is locked down or we’d have to fucki—Tam.”
As he talks to Tamara, he seems so cut off from me it’s unbearable. After what just happened, seeing Denise, showing her the video, knowing how painful it was for me to see, watching her face fall—it must have been ten times more painful for her.
I hear Dario tell Tamara what to do about his phone and I see his rage at himself, but it’s all through a filter of the memory of that bathroom stall.
“…erase everything. And the lock screen…”
“Don’t,” I say.
Denise resisted helping us, but for how long? She can’t unsee what her people—our people—did. Her own husband.
“…shouldn’t even have a keyboard…”
“Unlock it. Dario.”
“What?” He stops himself mid-sentence to look at me as if I’ve lost my sense.
“If unlock it means she can see it… she needs to look at that video as many times as she has to. She might put it away and never look at it again. Or she might show people inside. Think of what that would do? A mass waking. Then she’ll help us get Dafne out.” I pause to check his reaction. All he does is blink, and it’s all I need. “Leave the video. Can the forwarding number be somewhere?”
“In the contacts,” Tamara is barely audible from his phone. “It’s not a bad idea.”
“Can you make it so when she calls it, it comes to my phone?” I say it loudly to make sure she hears me.
“Fuck, Sarah,” Dario mumbles.
“Yes.” Tamara’s voice is definite. “Dario?”
“She’s going to hang up if it’s you. If it’s me, she’ll talk.” I put both hands on his thigh and lean closer to him, pleading. “She has liberation in her back pocket.”
He thinks. From a thousand miles away, Tamara asks if he’s still there.
And though he doesn’t answer, I can tell he’s still here. The invisible wall that seemed to separate us is gone. He is one hundred percent in this car with me.
“If she’s caught with it,” he says, “and they punish her, that’ll be on us.”
Us.
I’ve dreamed of sharing a home with a man. Children. Old age. Sharing responsibility isn’t a dream come true, because I never dared imagine it was possible, or that it would be this fulfilling.
“She’s smart.” I put my hand on his. We are connected. I am here with him, anchored in the storm. “She’ll be fine. And if she’s not, she’ll call me, and I can ask about Dafne.”
He shakes his head, but I know it’s not about Denise. He’s denying something deeper and more personal.
“Tamara,” he barks toward the phone. “Do it.” When he hangs up, his head drops back.
“I know.”
He squeezes my hand but looks out the windshield to a place far away, rubbing his chin with his thumb. “I just want to be with you, and I’m so tired of the rest of it.”
“I’m with you.”
He puts the car into drive. “I’m getting you home, then I have to pick something up.”