Robber Bride - Margaret Atwood [64]
As time went on, however, she began thinking about the rest of his life. She found herself wondering what he ate for dinner, and even breakfast. She assumed he lived with other men, or boys, because he’d told her about a guy he knew who could set fire to his own farts. He didn’t tell her this in a sniggering way, but regretfully somehow. “Imagine having that engraved on your tombstone,” he said. Tony recognized the fart-lighting as a variant of the more sedate tricks that went on in McClung Hall with the eggs and lipstick faces, and postulated a men’s residence. But she didn’t ask.
When West appeared, he said Hi. When he disappeared, he said See you. Tony never knew when either of these things was going to happen.
In this fashion they reached November. Tony and West were sitting in a beer parlour called Montgomery’s Inn, after one of the skirmishes of the 1837 Rebellion in Upper Canada, which, in Tony’s opinion, should have gone the other way, but had been lost through stupidity and panic. Tony was licking the foam off the top of her draft beer as usual, when West said something surprising. He said he was having a party.
What he actually said was we. And he didn’t say party, he said bash.
Bash was an odd word, coming from West. Tony did not think of West as a violent person, and bash was harsh, a body-blow term. He sounded as if he were quoting someone.
“A bash?” Tony said uncertainly. “I don’t know.” She had heard the girls in the residence talking about bashes. They took place at men’s fraternities, and frequently ended with people being sick – men mostly, but sometimes girls too, either at the fraternity itself or later, in one of the McClung washrooms.
“I think you should come,” said West, gazing at her benevolently with his blue eyes. “I think you’re looking pale.”
“This is the colour I am,” said Tony defensively. She was taken aback by the sudden concern for her health on West’s part. It seemed too polite; although, in contradiction to his offhand and sullen clothing, he always opened doors. She wasn’t used to such concern from him, or from anyone else. She found it alarming, as if he had touched her.
“Well,” said West, “I think you should get out more.”
“Out?” said Tony. She was confused: what did he mean by out?
“You know,” said West. “Meet people.”
There was something almost sly about the way he said this, as if he were concealing a more devious purpose. It occurred to her that he might be trying to set her up with some man, out of misplaced solicitude, the way Roz might. Toinette! There’s someone I want you to meet! Roz would say, and Tony would sidestep and evade.
Now she said, “But I wouldn’t know anyone there.”
“You’d know me,” said West. “And you could meet the others.”
Tony didn’t say she did not want to meet any more people. It would have sounded too strange. Instead she let West write down the address for her, on a corner of paper torn from his Rise of the Renaissance textbook. He didn’t say he would pick her up, so at least it wasn’t a date. Tony couldn’t have handled a date with anyone, much less West. She couldn’t have handled the implications, or the hope. Hope of that kind might unbalance her. She didn’t want to get involved, with anyone, underlined, full stop.
The bash is up two flights of stairs, in a narrow asphalt-shingled building far downtown that forms part of a row of cut-price and army surplus stores, and fronts on the railway tracks. The stairs are steep; Tony climbs them one step at a time, helping herself up by the banister. The door at the top is open; smoke and noise are billowing out through the doorway. Tony wonders whether to knock, decides against it on the grounds that no one would hear her, and goes in.
Right away she wishes she hadn’t, because the room is thick with people, and they are the kind of people who, taken en masse, are most likely to frighten her, or at least make her very uneasy. Most of the women have straight hair, worn long in a ballerina ponytail or wound into austere buns. They have black stockings and black skirts and black tops, and no lipstick;