Edible Woman - Margaret Atwood [117]
“I’m so glad you could all come,” Marian said. At that moment she was not at all glad. They were so excited. They were each expecting a version of Peter to walk miraculously through the door, drop to one knee and propose. What would they do when confronted with Fish and Trevor, not to mention Duncan? Moreover, what would Fish and Trevor, not to mention Duncan, do when confronted with them? She pictured two trios of screams and a mass exodus, one set through the door and one through the window. What have I done now? she thought. But she had almost ceased to believe in the existence of the three graduate students; they were becoming more and more improbable as the evening and the scotch wore on. Maybe they would just never show up.
The soap-men and their wives were filtering in. Peter had put a record on the hi-fi and the room was noisier and more crowded. Every time there was a knock on the door the three office virgins swivelled their heads towards the entrance; and every time they saw another successful and glittering wife step into the room with her sleek husband, they turned back, a little more frantic, to their drinks and their interchange of strained comments. Emmy was fiddling with one of her rhinestone earrings. Millie picked at a loose sequin on her evening-bag.
Marian, smiling and efficient, led each wife to the bedroom. The pile of coats grew higher. Peter got everybody drinks and had a number of them himself. The peanuts and potato chips and other things were circulating from hand to hand, from hand to mouth. Already the group in the living room was beginning to divide itself into the standard territories, wives on the sofa side of the room, men on the hi-fi side, an invisible no-man’s-land between. The office virgins had got stuck on the wrong side: they listened unhappily to the wives. Marian felt another pang of remorse. But she couldn’t attend to them right now, she thought: she was passing the pickled mushrooms. She wondered what was keeping Ainsley.
The door opened again, and Clara and Joe walked into the room. Behind them was Leonard Slank. Marian’s nerves twitched, and one of the cocktail mushrooms fell from the plate she was carrying, bounced along the floor, and disappeared under the hi-fi set. She set down the plate. Peter was already greeting them, shaking Len’s hand effusively. His voice was getting louder with every drink. “How the hell are you, good to see you here, god I’ve been meaning to call you up,” he was saying. Len responded with a lurch and a glazed stare.
Marian clamped her hand firmly on Clara’s coatsleeve and hustled her into the bedroom. “What’s he doing here?” she asked, rather ungraciously.
Clara took off her coat. “I hope you don’t mind us bringing him, I didn’t think you would because after all you’re old friends, but really I thought we’d better, we didn’t want him going off somewhere alone. As you can see, he’s in piss-poor shape. He turned up just after the babysitter got there and he looked really awful, he’d obviously had a lot. He told us an incoherent story about some woman he’s been having trouble with, it sounded quite serious, and he said he was afraid to go back to the apartment, I don’t know why, what could anybody do to him? So, poor thing, we’re going to keep him up in that back room on the second floor. It’s Arthur’s room really, but I’m sure Len won’t mind sharing. We both feel so sorry for him, what he needs is some nice home-loving type who’ll take care of him, he doesn’t seem to be able to cope at all.…”
“Did he say who she was?” Marian asked quickly.
“Why no,” Clara said, raising her eyebrows, “he doesn’t usually tell the names.”
“Let me get you a drink,” Marian said. She was feeling like another one herself. Of course Clara and Joe couldn’t have known who the woman was or they never would have brought Len with them. She was surprised he had even come; he must have known there