The Robber Bride (63 page)

“Why did you break up with her?” said Tony. “The second time. Why did you move out?” Now that they’d crossed the border into the never-mentioned, now that West was talking, she might as well push her advantage.

West sighed. He looked at Tony with something close to shame. “To be honest,” he said, and stopped.

“Yes?” said Tony.

“Well, to be honest, she kicked me out. She said she found me boring.”

Tony appalled herself by nearly laughing out loud. Maybe Zenia was right: from a certain point of view, West
was
boring. But one woman’s meat was another woman’s boredom, and West was boring in the same way children were boring, and interesting in the same way,
too, and that’s what a woman like Zenia would never see. Anyway, what was true love if it couldn’t put up with a little boredom?

“Are you all right?” West asked.

“Choked on a bone,” said Tony.

West hung his head. “I guess I am boring,” he said.

Tony felt contrite. She was cruel for finding this funny. It wasn’t funny, because West had been deeply wounded. She got up from the table and put her arms around his neck from behind, and laid her cheek against the top of his sparsely covered head. “You aren’t at all boring,” she said. “You’re the most interesting man I’ve ever known.” This was correct, since West was in fact the only man Tony had ever known, in any way that counted.

West reached up and patted her hand. “I love you,” he said. “I love you much more than I ever loved Zenia.”

Which is all very well, thinks Tony, sitting in the lobby of the Arnold Garden Hotel, but if that’s really true, why didn’t he tell me that Zenia called? Maybe he’s already seen her. Maybe she’s already lured him into bed. Maybe her teeth are in his neck, right now; maybe she’s sucking out his life’s blood while Tony sits here in this perverse leather chair, not even knowing where to look, because Zenia could be anywhere, she could be doing anything, and so far Tony doesn’t have a clue.

This is the third hotel she’s tried out. She’s spent two other mornings hanging around in the lobbies of the Arrival and the Avenue Park, with no results whatsoever. Her only lead is the extension number, the one scribbled by West and left beside his phone, but she’s hesitated to call all the hotels and use it because she doesn’t want to alert Zenia, she wants to take her by surprise. She doesn’t want to ask for her at the desk either, because she knows in her bones that Zenia will be using a false name; and once Tony has
asked, and has been told there’s no guest of that name, it would look suspicious if she were to keep on sitting in the lobby. Also she doesn’t want to be remembered by the staff, should Zenia be found later wallowing in a pool of blood. So she merely sits, trying to look like someone waiting for a business meeting.

Her theory is that Zenia – who is by habit a late riser – must at some point get out of bed, must take the elevator to the main floor, must walk through the lobby. Of course it’s not beyond Zenia to stay in bed all day or sneak down the fire stairs, but Tony is betting on the law of averages. Sooner or later – supposing Tony is in the right hotel – Zenia will appear.

And then what? Then Tony will leap or slither out of her chair, will patter across the floor to Zenia, will chirp a greeting, will be ignored; will scuttle after Zenia as she sweeps out through the glass doors. Gasping for breath, her outmoded gun and silly cordless drill clanking together in her bag, she will catch up to Zenia as she strides along the sidewalk. “We need to talk,” Tony will blurt.

“What about?” Zenia will say. At that point she will simply walk faster, and Tony will either have to trot ridiculously or give up.

This is the nightmare scenario. Just thinking about it makes Tony blush with the sense of her own future humiliation. There’s another scenario, one in which Tony is persuasive and dexterous and Zenia is taken in, one that acts out some of Tony’s more violent although hypothetical fantasies and includes a neat red hole placed competently in the exact centre of Zenia’s forehead. But at the moment Tony doesn’t have a lot of faith in it.

She isn’t having much luck concentrating on her lecture notes, so she switches back to the
Globe
business section and forces herself to read.
Tsol Sboj Erom. Gnisolc Tnalp
. This has a satisfying Slavic ring to it. That, or Finnish, or some wild-haired tribe from Planet Pluto. As Tony is savouring it she feels a hand on her shoulder.

“Tony! There you are, finally!” Tony looks up, then stifles a small rodent-like shriek: Zenia is bending over her, smiling warmly. “Why didn’t you call before? And why are you just sitting here in the lobby? I gave West the room number!”

“Well,” says Tony. Her mind scrabbles, trying to fit all this together. “He jotted it down and then lost it. You know what he’s like.” Awkwardly she disentangles herself from the leather chair, which appears to have grown suction cups.

“I told him to
make
you call me
right away,”
says Zenia. “It was just after I saw you in the Toxique. I guess you didn’t recognize me! But I called up and told him it was very important.” She’s no longer smiling: she’s beginning to assume an expression Tony recalls well, something between a frown and a wince, urgent and at the same time beset. What it means is that Zenia wants something.

Tony is alert now, on her inner toes. Her darkest suspicions are being confirmed: this is obviously a fallback story, a story Zenia and West have concocted together just in case Tony should sniff the wind, or should run across Zenia in some unlikely place such as Tony’s own bedroom. The story is that the message was for Tony, not for West. It’s a cunning story, it has Zenia’s paw-prints all over it, but West must be colluding. Things are worse than Tony thought. The rot has gone deeper.

“Come on,” says Zenia. “We’ll go up to my room; I’ll order coffee.” She takes Tony’s arm. At the same time she glances around the lobby. It’s a look of anxiety, of fear even, a look Tony is not intended to see. Or is she?

She cranes her neck, peering up at Zenia’s still-amazing face. Mentally she adds something to it: a small red X, marking the spot.

Zenia’s hotel room is unremarkable except for its largeness and its neatness. The neatness is unlike Zenia. There are no clothes in evidence, no suitcases strewn around, no cosmetic bags on the bathroom
counter, as far as Tony can see in one sideways glance. It’s as if no one is living here.

Zenia sheds her black leather coat and phones for coffee, and then sits down on the flowered pastel green sofa, crossing her endless black-stockinged legs, lighting a cigarette. The dress she wears is a clinging jersey wrap, the purple of stewed blueberries. Her dark eyes are enormous, and, Tony sees now, shadowed by fatigue, but her plum-coloured smile still quirks up ironically. She seems more at ease here than in the lobby. She raises an eyebrow at Tony. “Long time no see,” she says.

Tony is at a loss. How should she play this? It would be a mistake to display her anger: that would tip Zenia off, put her on her guard. Tony shuffles her inner deck and discovers that in fact she’s not angry, not at the moment. Instead she’s intrigued, and curious. The historian in her is taking over. “Why did you pretend to die?” she says. “What was all that stuff, with the ashes and the fake lawyer?”

“The lawyer was real,” says Zenia, blowing out smoke. “He believed it too. Lawyers are so gullible.”

“And?” says Tony.

“And, I needed to disappear. Trust me, I had my reasons. It wasn’t just the money! And I
had
disappeared, I’d set up about six dead ends for anyone trying to track me down. But that dolt Mitch was following me around, he just wouldn’t stop. He was really messing up my life. He was so goddamn persistent! He had the money too, he hired people; not amateurs either. He would’ve found me, he was right on the verge.

“People knew that; the other people, the ones I didn’t really want to see. I was a bad girl, I did a shell game involving some armaments that turned out not to be where I’d said they’d be. I don’t recommend it – armaments types get sniffy, especially the Irish ones. They tend to be vengeful. They figured out that all they had to do was
keep an eye on Mitch and sooner or later he’d dig me up. He was the one I needed to convince, so he’d quit. So he’d lay off.”

“Why Beirut?” says Tony.

“If you were going to get yourself accidentally blown up back then, what better spot to pick?” says Zenia. “The place was festooned with body parts; there were hundreds they never identified.”

“You know Mitch killed himself,” says Tony. “Because of you.”

Zenia sighs. “Tony, grow up,” she says. “It wasn’t
because
of me. I was just the excuse. You think he hadn’t been waiting for one? All his life, I’d say.”

“Well, Roz thinks it was because of you,” says Tony lamely.

“Mitch told me that sleeping with Roz was like getting into bed with a cement mixer,” says Zenia.

“That’s cruel,” says Tony.

“Just reporting,” Zenia says coolly. “Mitch was a creep. Roz is better off without him.”

This is a little too close to what Tony thinks herself. She finds herself smiling; smiling, and sliding back down, back in, into that state she remembers so well. Partnership. Pal-ship. The team.

“Why us, at your funeral?” says Tony.

“Window dressing,” says Zenia. “There had to be somebody there from the personal side. You know, old friends. I figured you’d all enjoy it. And anything Roz knew, Mitch would know too. She’d make sure of that! He was the one I wanted. He ducked it though. Prostrate with grief, I guess.”

“The place was crawling with men in overcoats,” says Tony.

“One of them was mine,” says Zenia. “Checking up for me, to see who was there. A couple of them were from the opposition. Did you cry?”

“I’m not a cryer,” says Tony. “Charis sniffled a bit.” She’s ashamed, now, of what the three of them had said, and of how jubilant and also how mean-minded they had been.

Zenia laughs. “Charis always did have mush for brains,” she says.

There’s a knock at the door. “It’s the coffee,” says Zenia. “Would you mind going?”

It occurs to Tony that Zenia may have a few reasons for not wanting to open doors. A prickle of apprehension runs up her spine.

But it really is the coffee, delivered by a short brown-faced man. The man smiles and Tony takes the tray and scrawls a tip on the bill, and closes the door softly, and puts on the safety lock. Zenia must be protected from the forces that threaten her. Protected by Tony. Right now, in this room, with Zenia finally incarnate before her, Tony can hardly remember what she’s been doing for the past week – the way she’s been sneaking around in a state of cold fury with a gun in her purse, selfishly planning to bump off Zenia. Why would she want to do that? Why would anyone? Zenia sweeps through life like a prow, like a galleon. She’s magnificent, she’s unique. She’s the sharp edge.

“You said you needed to talk to me,” Tony says, creating an opening.

“Want some rum in your coffee? No?” says Zenia. She unscrews a small bottle from the mini-bar, pours herself a dollop. Then she frowns a little and lowers her voice confidentially. “Yes. I wanted to ask a favour. You’re the only one I could go to, really.”

Tony waits. She’s alarmed again.
Watch it
, she tells herself. She should get out of here, right now! But what harm can it do to listen? And she’s avid to find out what Zenia wants. Money, probably. Tony can always say no.

“All I need is to stay somewhere,” says Zenia. “Not here, here’s no good. With you, I thought. Just for a couple of weeks.”

“Why?” says Tony.

Zenia moves her hands impatiently, scattering cigarette ashes. “Because they’re looking! Not the Irish, they’re off my track. It’s
some other people. They’re not here yet, not in this city. But they’ll get around to it. They’ll hire local professionals.”

“Then why wouldn’t they try my house?” says Tony. “Wouldn’t that be the first place they’d look?”

Zenia laughs, the familiar laugh, warm and charming and reckless, and contemptuous of the idiocy of others. “The
last
place!” she says. “They’ve done their homework, they know you hate me! You’re the wife, I’m the ex-girlfriend. They’d never believe you’d let me in!”

“Zenia,” says Tony, “exactly who are these people and why are they after you?”

Zenia shrugs. “Standard,” she says. “I know too much.”

“Oh, come on,” says Tony. “I’m not a baby. Too much about what? And don’t say it would be healthier for me not to hear.”

Zenia leans forward. She lowers her voice. “Does the name Project Babylon mean anything to you?” she says. She must know it does, she knows what line of knowledge Tony is in. “The Supergun for Iraq,” she adds.

“Gerry Bull,” says Tony. “The ballistics genius. Of course. He got murdered.”

“To put it mildly,” says Zenia. “Well.” She blows out smoke, looking at Tony in a way that is almost coy, a fan dancer’s look.

“You didn’t shoot him!” says Tony, aghast. “It wasn’t you!” She can’t believe Zenia has actually killed someone. No: she can’t believe that a person sitting in front of her, in a real room, in the real world, has actually killed someone. Such things happen offstage, elsewhere; they are indigenous to the past. Here, in this Californiacoloured room with its mild furniture, its neutrality, they would be anachronisms.

“Not me,” says Zenia. “But I know who did.”

She’s lighting another cigarette, she’s practically chain-smoking. The air around her is grey, and Tony is slightly dizzy. “The Israelis,” she says. “Because of Iraq.”

“Not the Israelis,” says Zenia quickly. “That’s a red herring. I was there, I was part of the set-up. I was only what you might call the messenger; but you know what happens to messengers.”

Tony does know. “Oh,” she says. “Oh dear.”

“My best chance,” says Zenia eagerly, “is to tell everything to some newspaper. Absolutely everything! Then there won’t be any point in killing me, right? Also I could make a buck, I won’t say that wouldn’t be welcome. But nobody’s going to believe me without proof. Don’t worry, I’ve got the proof; it’s not in this city but it’s on the way. So I figured I could just hole up with you and West until my proof comes through. I know how it’s coming, I know when. I’d be really quiet, I wouldn’t need more than a sleeping bag, I could stay upstairs, in West’s study.…”