Chapter 11 - The Dressing Suite Notes She Didn't Want Read Back
I didn't want to be in that room with her. The private dressing suite off the ballroom still smelled like hairspray and warm bulbs, and the mirror ran the length of one wall so I couldn't look anywhere without seeing myself in the sequined dress folded in a plastic bag on the table between us.
Vanessa Hale sat across from me in jeans and a gray sweater, her hair pulled back in the same low bun. No magenta dress. No shoe. Her left cheek still had a faint mark. She kept touching it without realizing it.
A mediator named Carol sat at the end of the table with a legal pad. She said this wasn't a deposition. She said we were just here to talk about what happened in the hallway. She wrote everything down anyway.
Vanessa started with her hands flat on the table. "I raised it," she said. "I had the shoe in my hand and I raised it over her. I was shouting. I won't pretend I wasn't."
Carol looked up. "Raised it overhead?"
"Yes," Vanessa said. "I was angry. I didn't — I didn't bring it down on her. I didn't strike her."
I felt my arm throb under the bandage. I kept my eyes on the plastic bag because looking at her made my breathing go shallow.
Carol turned to me. "Elena, do you want to respond to that?"
I paused before I spoke. The quiet in that little room was worse than the hallway had been. "I was on the floor," I said. "Face-down on the checkered tile. There was glass everywhere. I saw her mouth open. I saw the shoe go up. I froze."
Vanessa blinked. "You didn't call out?"
"No," I said. My voice caught. "I didn't call for help sooner. I just stayed there. I froze and I didn't call out."
Saying it out loud made it real in a way the hospital report hadn't. Carol wrote it down: Elena froze, delayed call for help. I watched her pen move.
Vanessa leaned back. For a second her control slipped. "When Marcus came through those doors," she said, "I turned on him. I swung. Then I was on the floor with you. On my hands and knees in the glass."
"I remember him standing over you," I said.
"He was breathing hard," she said, and glanced at me. "Looking down. Like that."
"Yes," I said. "I was scared then."
She held my look in the mirror. "So was I."
Carol's pen stopped. Nobody said anything for a long moment. The bulbs buzzed faintly above the mirror. That was the first true thing we'd shared since Night 0 — not the gala smiles, not the staff separating us in the hallway — just that we had both been afraid when Marcus in the tuxedo stood over us and didn't move.
Vanessa shifted forward. "Elena. The foundation can't have this footage out there. You know what it looks like. Me with a shoe over you. Him pushing me down. It's — it's ugly out of context."
Carol said, "Let's keep this to facts."
"Let me just say it," Vanessa said. She didn't look at Carol. She looked at me. "If you drop the request for the video, I'll take care of your bills. Hospital, time off, whatever you need. Private. No paperwork. Just us."
My hands went cold. "You mean pay me not to see the camera footage."
"I mean help you move on," she said. "That dome camera doesn't show why anything happened. It just shows the worst ten seconds."
I stared at her reflection next to mine. Two women on the floor — that's what we'd been that night, first me in sequins with blood on my arm and hand, then her in magenta clutching her cheek. Now we were upright in chairs and she was offering me a way to stay quiet.
I took a slow breath. "No," I said. "I can't take that."
"Think about it," she said.
"I said no," I said, louder this time. "I want the full video."
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Carol wrote again, underlining something twice. She read it back softly to confirm: admission of raised shoe and shouting, denial of strike; Elena froze; both feared Marcus standing over them; private payment offered and refused.
Vanessa pressed her fingers to her cheek. She didn't argue after that. She just nodded once, and I realized her hand was shaking.
