Robber Bride - Margaret Atwood [16]
“Yeah,” says Roz. “Lawyer, my fanny.”
“He looked like a lawyer,” says Charis.
“He looked too much like a lawyer,” says Roz. “Face it, we were had. It was one of her numbers.”
They’re whispering, like conspirators. Why? thinks Tony. We have nothing to hide. We should march up to her and demand – what? How she could have the brass-plated nerve to still be alive?
They ought to go on talking, pretending they don’t see her. Instead they’re gazing at the tabletop, where the remains of their Assorted Sorbets have melted in pink and raspberry smears, floating on the white plates like the evidence of a shark attack. They feel caught out, they feel trapped, they feel guilty. It should be Zenia who feels like that.
But Zenia strides past their table as if they aren’t there, as if nobody is. Tony senses them all fading in the glare that spreads out from her. The perfume she’s wearing is unrecognizable: something dense and murky, sullen and ominous. The smell of scorched earth. She goes to the back of the room and sits down, and lights a cigarette and stares above their heads, out the window.
“Tony, what’s she doing?” Roz whispers. Tony is the only one with a clear view of Zenia.
“Smoking,” says Tony. “Waiting for someone.”
“But what’s she doing here?” says Roz.
“Slumming,” says Tony. “The same as us.”
“I don’t believe this,” says Charis plaintively. “I liked this day until now.”
“No, no,” says Roz. “I mean this city. Shit, I mean this entire country. She’s burnt all her bridges. What’s left for her?”
“I don’t want to talk about her,” says Tony.
“I don’t even want to think about her,” says Charis. “I don’t want her messing up my head.”
But there is no hope of thinking about anything else.
Zenia is as beautiful as ever. She’s wearing black, a tight outfit with a scoop neck that shows the tops of her breasts. She looks, as always, like a photo, a high-fashion photo done with hot light so that all freckles and wrinkles are bleached out and only the basic features remain: in her case, the full red-purple mouth, disdainful and sad; the huge deep eyes, the finely arched eyebrows, the high cheekbones tinged with terracotta. And her hair, a dense cloud of it, blown around her head by the imperceptible wind that accompanies her everywhere, moulding her clothes against her body, fitfully moving the dark tendrils around her forehead, filling the air near her with the sound of rustling. In the midst of this unseen commotion she sits unmoving, as still as if she were carved. Waves of ill will flow out of her like cosmic radiation.
Or this is what Tony sees. It’s an exaggeration, of course; it’s overdone. But these are the emotions that Zenia mostly inspires: overdone emotions.
“Let’s leave,” says Charis.
“Don’t let her frighten you,” says Tony, as if to herself.
“It’s not fear,” says Charis. “She makes me sick. She makes me sick of myself.”
Roz says, reflectively, “She does have that effect.”
The two others gather their purses and begin the ritual of dividing up the bill. Tony is still looking at Zenia. It’s true she’s as beautiful as ever; but now Tony can detect a slight powdery dullness, like the bloom on a grape – a slight contracting of the pores, a shrinkage, as if some of the juice has been sucked out from under her skin. Tony finds this reassuring: Zenia is mortal after all, like the rest of them.
Zenia blows out smoke, lowers her gaze. She stares at Tony. She stares right through her. But she sees her all right. She sees all three of them. She knows how they feel. She’s enjoying it.
Tony stops looking. Her heart inside her is cold and dense, packed together like a snowball. At the same time she’s excited, tense, as if waiting for a short word, a command, clipped and deadly. Forward! Charge! Fire! Or something of the sort.
But also she’s tired. Maybe she no longer has the energy for Zenia. She may not be up to her, this time. Not that she ever has been.
She focuses on the slick red tabletop, the black ashtray with its crumpled butts. The