Robber Bride - Margaret Atwood [233]
As for the ads, she wants a lot of lace in them. Lace, and a wind machine, to blow the hair around for that burning-of-Charleston dramatic-crisis look. It will help to shoot the models on an angle, with the camera slanted up. Statuesque, monumental, as long as you can’t see up their nostrils, which is the problem Roz has always had with bronze heroes on horseback. She’s thought of another river name too, another colour: Athabasca. A sort of bronzed pink. Frostbite crossed with exposure. How you get in the North without sunblock.
The phone rings and Roz practically falls on it. “Harriet,” says Harriet. “It’s the Arnold Garden for sure, Room 1409. I went there myself and pretended to be a chambermaid with towels. No doubt about it.”
“Great,” says Roz, and jots down the room number.
“There’s one other thing you ought to know,” says Harriet. “Before you rush in.”
“What, where angels fear to tread?” says Roz impatiently. “What is it?”
“She appears to be having an affair, or something, with … well, with a much younger man. He’s been with her in her room almost every day, according to our source.”
Why is Harriet sounding so coy? thinks Roz. “That wouldn’t surprise me,” she says. “Zenia would rob anything, cradles included. As long as he’s rich.”
“He is,” says Harriet. “So to speak. Or he will be.” There’s a hesitation.
“Why are you telling me this?” says Roz. “I don’t care who she’s screwing!”
“You asked me to find out everything,” says Harriet reproachfully. “I don’t know quite how to put it. The young man in question appears to be your son.”
“What?” says Roz.
After hanging up, she grabs her purse and hits the elevator and then the sidewalk at a fast trot, the nearest she can get to a run, what with her wicked shoes. She makes it to the nearest Becker’s and buys three packs of du Mauriers and tears one open with trembling fingers, and lights up so fast she practically sets fire to her hair. She’ll kill Zenia, she’ll kill her! The effrontery, the brass, the consummate bad taste, to go after small helpless Larry, Larry son of Mitch, after doing away with his father! Well, as good as doing away. Pick on somebody your own size! And Larry, a sitting duck, poor baby; so lonely, so scrambled. Probably he remembers Zenia from when he was fifteen; probably he had a jerk-off crush on her, back then. Probably he thinks she’s glamorous, and warm and understanding. Zenia has a good line in the glamour and understanding department. Plus, she’ll tell him a few hard-luck stories of her own and he’ll think they’re both orphans of the storm together. Roz can’t stand it!
Smoke percolates through her, and after a while she feels a little calmer. She walks back to the office, her head sizzling slowly. What exactly, what the fuck, is she supposed to do now?
She knocks on Boyce’s door. “Boyce? Mind if I pick your brain for a minute?” she says.
Boyce stands up courteously and offers her a chair. “Ask, and it shall be given you,” he says. “God.”
“Don’t I know it,” says Roz, “but I haven’t been getting such great results from God lately, in the answer department.” She sits down, crosses her legs, and takes the cup of coffee Boyce provides. The part in his hair is so straight it’s almost painful, as if done with a knife. His tie has tiny ducks on it. “Let me put a theoretical case to you,” she says.
“I’m all ears,” says Boyce. “Is this about Oral Glues?”
“No,” says Roz. “It’s a story. Once upon a time there was a woman who was married to a guy who used to fool around.”
“Anyone I know?” says Boyce. “The guy, I mean.”
“With other women,” says Roz firmly. “Well, this woman put up with it for the sake of the kids, and anyway these things never lasted long because the other women were just wind-up sex toys, or that’s what the man kept saying. According to him our heroine was the real thing, the apple of his eyes,