The Robber Bride (68 page)

Roz sees red. She actually sees it, a red haze obscuring her eyes. It’s one thing for her to criticize Mitch, but another thing for Zenia! “You used him,” she says. “You cleaned him out, you sucked him dry, then you just threw him away! You’re responsible for his death, you know. He killed himself because of you. I don’t think you’re in any position to stand in judgment.”

“You want to know?” says Zenia. “You really want to know? After I told him it wasn’t going to work out, because he was just too besotted – shit, I could hardly breathe, he was a control freak, I had no life of my own, he wanted to know what I had for breakfast, he wanted to come into the bathroom with me every time I needed to pee, I mean it! – he practically tried to kill me! I had the marks on my neck for weeks; good thing I wasn’t too squeamish to kick him in the nuts, as hard as I could, to make him let go. Then he cried all over me; he
wanted the two of us to make some stupid suicide pact, so we could be together in death! Oh, fun! Fuck that, I told him! So don’t blame me. I wash my hands.”

Roz can’t stand hearing this, she can’t stand it! Poor Mitch, reduced to that. An abject groveller. “You could have helped him,” she said. “He needed help!” Roz could have helped him too, of course. She would have, if she’d known. Wouldn’t she?

“Don’t be a priss,” says Zenia. “You should give me a medal for getting him off your back. Mitch was a sick lech. What he wanted out of me was sexual twist – he wanted to be tied up, he wanted me to dress up in leather underwear, and other stuff, stuff he would never ask you to do because he thought you were his angel wife. Men get like that after a certain age, but this was too much. I can’t tell you the half of it, it was so ridiculous!”

“You led him on,” says Roz, who wants by this time to run out of the room. It’s too humiliating for Mitch. It shrinks him too much. It’s too painful.

“Women like you make me sick,” says Zenia angrily. “You’ve always owned things. But you didn’t own him, you know. He wasn’t your God-given
property!
You think you had rights in him? Nobody has any rights except what they can get!”

Roz takes a deep breath. Lose her temper and she loses the fight. “Maybe,” she says. “But that doesn’t alter the fact that you ate him for breakfast.”

“The trouble with you, Roz,” says Zenia, more gently, “is that you never gave the man any credit. You always saw him as a victim of women, just putty in their hands. You babied him. Did it ever occur to you that Mitch was responsible for his actions? He made his own decisions, and maybe those decisions didn’t have much to do with me, or with you either. Mitch did what he wanted to do. He took his chances.”

“You stacked the deck,” says Roz.

“Oh please,” says Zenia. “It takes two to tango. But why fight about Mitch? Mitch is dead. Let’s get back to the main issue. I have a proposition for you: perhaps, for Larry’s sake, I should leave town. Larry wouldn’t be the only reason – I’ll be frank with you, Roz, I need to leave town anyway. I’m in some danger here, so I’m asking you for old times’ sake as well. But I can’t afford it right now; I won’t hide from you that things are getting very tight. I’d go like a shot if I only had, say, a plane ticket and some pocket money.”

“You’re trying to blackmail me,” says Roz.

“Let’s not call names,” says Zenia. “I’m sure you see the logic.”

Roz hesitates. Should she buy it, should she buy Zenia off? And what if she doesn’t? What exactly is the threat? Larry is no longer a child; there’s a lot he must have guessed, about Mitch. “I don’t think so,” she says slowly. “I have a better proposition. How about you leave town anyway? I could still get you for embezzlement, you know. And there is this thing about cheque-forging.”

Zenia frowns. “Money is too important to you, Roz,” she says. “What I was really offering you was protection for yourself. Not for Larry. But you aren’t worth protecting. Here’s the real truth, then. Yes, I’m screwing Larry, but that’s just a sideshow. Larry isn’t primarily my lover, Larry is primarily my pusher. I’m surprised your inept private dick didn’t figure that out, and I’m truly surprised you haven’t figured it out yourself. You may not be pretty, but you used to be smart. Your mama’s boy has been inflating his flat little ego by doing a brisk trade in coke, the recreational yuppie drug-of-choice. He’s dealing, he’s retailing to his well-heeled friends. He’s been sampling the product pretty heavily too – you’ll be lucky if he ends up with a nose. What do you think he does at the Toxique, night after night? The place is notorious! He’s not doing it just for the money – he enjoys it! And you know what he enjoys most of all? Sneaking around behind your back! Pulling a fast one on Mom!
Like father, like son. That boy has a problem, Roz, and his problem is you!”

Roz has gone limp. She doesn’t want to believe any of this, but parts of it ring true. She remembers the envelope of white powder she found, she remembers Larry’s secrecies, the blanks in his life that she can’t fill in, and her fear comes flooding back, with a big helping of guilt added in. Has she been overprotective? Is Larry trying to escape from her? Is she a devouring mother? Worse: is Larry a hopeless addict?

“So I’d think twice, if I were you,” says Zenia. “Because if you won’t pay for information, there are people who will. I think it would make a nice headline, don’t you?
Son of Prominent Citizen Jailed in Hotel Drug Bust
. Nothing would be easier for me to arrange. Larry trusts me. He thinks I need him. All I have to do is whistle and your sonny-boy comes running with his pockets full. He’s really cute, you know. He’s got cute buns. He’ll be appreciated in the slammer. What do they give them now? Ten years?”

Roz is stupefied; she can’t take it all in. She gets up out of her chair and walks to the window, to the French doors leading onto the balcony. From here she can see a new-moon sliver of the fountain, down below. It hasn’t been drained yet; brown dead leaves are floating in it. Most likely the hotel has a staff shortage, because of the Recession. “I need to talk to him,” she says.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” says Zenia. “He’ll panic, he’ll do something rash. He’s an amateur, he’ll give himself away. And right now he owes his suppliers quite a lot of money. I know who they are and they aren’t nice people. They won’t like it if he flushes the stuff down the toilet. They won’t get paid, and as a rule they react badly to that. They don’t like it either if people get caught and then talk about them. They don’t fool around. Your boy Larry could get his fingers burned. Actually, he could end up in a ditch somewhere, minus a few parts.”

This can’t be happening, thinks Roz. Sweet, serious Larry, in his boy’s room with the school trophies and the pictures of boats? Zenia is a liar, she reminds herself. But she can’t afford to dismiss her story, because what if – for once – it’s true?

The thought of Larry dead is too much to bear. She would never survive it. This thought is lodged like a splinter of ice in her heart; at the same time she feels as if she’s been teleported into some horrible daytime soap, with hidden iniquities and sinister intrigues and bad camera angles.

She could sneak up behind Zenia, bop her on the head with a lamp or something. Tie her up with pantyhose. Make it look like a sex killing. She’s read enough trashy novels like that, and God knows it would be plausible, it’s just the kind of sordid ending a woman like Zenia deserves. She populates the room with detectives, cigar-smoking detectives dusting the furniture for fingerprints, fingerprints she will have taken care to wipe away.…

“I don’t have my chequebook with me,” she says. “It’ll have to be tomorrow.”

“Make it cash,” says Zenia. “Fifty thousand, and that’s a bargain; if it wasn’t a recession I’d ask double. Small old bills, please; you can send it by courier, before noon. Not here though, I’ll call you in the morning and tell you where. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m in a bit of a hurry.”

Roz takes the elevator down. All of a sudden she has a crashing headache, and on top of that she feels ill. It’s the fear and anger, churning around inside her like a salmonella dinner.
So, God, is this my fault or what? Is this the double-cross I have to bear? So you gave with one hand and now you’re taking away with the other? Or maybe you think it’s a joke!
It occurs to her, not for the first time, that if everything is part of the Divine Plan then God must have one heck of a warped sense of humour.

54

“W
hat’re you going to do?” says Tony.

“Pay up,” says Roz. “What are my options? Anyway, it’s only money.”

“You could talk to Larry,” says Tony. “After all, Zenia lies her head off. She could be making it all up.”

“First I’ll pay,” says Roz. “Then Zenia will take a plane. Then I’ll talk to Larry.” It strikes her that Tony doesn’t always get it, about kids. Even five per cent true would be too much; she can’t take the risk.

“But what are we going to do about
her?”
says Charis.

“About Zenia?” says Roz. “After tomorrow she’ll be somewhere else. Personally I would like her permanently removed, like a wart. But I don’t see that happening.” She’s lighting another cigarette, from the candle in its red glass holder. Charis gives a timid cough and flaps a hand at the smoke.

“I don’t see,” says Tony slowly, “that there’s anything we
can
do about her. We can’t make her vanish. Even if she does go, she’ll be
back if she wants to come back. She’s a given. She’s just
there
, like the weather.”

“Maybe we should give thanks,” says Charis. “And ask for help.”

Roz laughs. “Thanks for what?
Thank you, God, for creating Zenia? Only next time don’t bother?”

“No,” says Charis. “Because she’s going away, and we’re still all right. Aren’t we? None of us gave in.” She’s not sure exactly how to put it. What she means is, they were tempted, each one of them, but they didn’t succumb. Succumbing would have been killing Zenia, either physically or spiritually. And killing Zenia would have meant turning into Zenia. Another way of succumbing would be believing her, letting her in the door, letting her take them in, letting her tear them apart. They did get torn apart some, but that was because they didn’t do what Zenia wanted. “What I mean is.…”

“I think I know what you mean,” says Tony.

“Right,” says Roz. “So, let’s give thanks. I’m always in favour of that. Who’re we thanking and what do we do?”

“A libation,” says Charis. “We’ve got everything here for it, even the candle.” She lifts her wineglass, in which there’s an inch of white wine left, and pours a thimbleful onto the pink remains of her Assorted Sorbets. Then she bows her head and closes her eyes briefly. “I asked for help,” she says. “For all of us. Now you.” She also asked for forgiveness, for all of them too. She feels this is right, but she can’t say why, so she doesn’t mention it.

“I’m not sure about this,” says Roz. She can see the need for a celebration, touch wood it’s not premature, but she’d like to know which God is being invoked here – or rather which version of God – so she can guard against lightning strikes by any of the others. But she pours. So does Tony, smiling a little tensely, her bite-your-tongue smile. If this were three hundred years ago, she thinks, we’d all be burned at the stake. Zenia first, though. Without a doubt, Zenia first.

“That’s all?” she says.

“I like to sprinkle a little salt, into the candle flame,” says Charis, sprinkling it.

“I just hope nobody’s watching,” says Roz. “I mean, how long before we are three genuine certified batty old crones?” She’s feeling slightly light-headed; maybe it’s the codeine pills she took for her headache.

“Don’t look now,” says Tony.

“Crones is not so bad,” says Charis. “Age is just attitude.” She’s staring dreamily at the candle.

“Tell that to my gynecologist,” says Roz. “You just want to be a crone so you can mix potions.”

“She already mixes them,” says Tony.

Suddenly Charis sits up straight in her chair. Her eyes widen. Her hand goes over her mouth.

“Charis?” says Roz. “What is it, sweetie?”

“Oh my God,” says Charis.

“Is she choking?” says Tony. Possibly Charis is having a heart attack, or a fit of some kind. “Hit her on the back!”

“No, no,” says Charis. “It’s Zenia! She’s dead!”

“What?” says Roz.

“How do you know?” says Tony.

“I saw it in the candle,” says Charis. “I saw her falling. She was falling, into water. I saw it! She’s dead.” Charis begins to cry.

“Honey, are you sure that wasn’t just wishful thinking?” says Roz gently. But Charis is too absorbed in her grief to hear.

“Come on,” says Tony. “We’ll go to the hotel. We’ll check. Otherwise,” she says to Roz, over the top of Charis’s head, which is bowed into her hands now and swaying back and forth, “none of us is going to get a decent night’s sleep.” This is true: Charis will worry about Zenia being dead, and Tony and Roz will worry about Charis. It’s worth a short car ride to avoid that.

As they get their coats on, as Roz settles the bill, Charis continues to sob quietly. Partly it’s the shock; the whole day has been a shock, and this an even bigger shock. But partly it’s because she saw more than she’s told. She didn’t only see Zenia falling, a dark shape turning over and over, the hair spreading like feathers, the rainbow of her life twisting up out of her like grey gauze, Zenia shrinking to blackout. She also saw someone pushing her. Someone pushed Zenia, over the edge.

Although she couldn’t see it clearly, she thinks she knows who that person was. It was Karen, who was left behind somehow; who stayed hidden in Zenia’s room; who waited until Zenia had opened the door onto the balcony and then came up behind her and shoved her off. Karen has murdered Zenia, and it’s Charis’s fault for holding Karen away, separate from herself, for trying to keep her outside, for not taking her in, and Charis’s tears are tears of guilt.

That is just one way of putting it, of course. What Charis means, she explains to herself, is that she wished Zenia dead. And now Zenia is dead. A spiritual act and a physical one are the same, from the moral point of view. Karen-Charis is a murderer. She has blood on her hands. She’s unclean.