Robber Bride - Margaret Atwood [220]
“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.