Robber Bride - Margaret Atwood [91]
“But I did it to help you!” says Tony, aware even as she says it that her own motives will cut no ice with the authorities. (For a moment she thinks, I could simply deny I wrote the thing. But Zenia has the original, in Tony’s back-slanted handwriting. Naturally she had to copy it out in her own.)
“I know,” says Zenia. “But still. Well, maybe I’ll think differently in the morning. I’m just depressed, I’m down on myself; sometimes I feel so shitty I just want to jump off a bridge, you know? I feel like such an impostor sometimes. I feel I don’t belong here – that I’m just not good enough. Or for West, either. He’s so squeaky clean. Sometimes I’m afraid I’ll get him dirty, or break him, or something. You know the worst of it? Sometimes I want to. When I’m – you know. Under a lot of stress.”
So it’s not only Tony whose life is threatened, but West’s too. From what she’s seen of West and his unquestioning devotion, Tony is convinced that Zenia could indeed wreak havoc. One contemptuous flick of her hand could splatter him all over the sidewalk. How did Zenia get so much power without Tony noticing? Insofar as West is concerned, Tony did notice. But she trusted Zenia to use that power well. She trusted Zenia. Now both she and West are in danger, now she must save them both. “Stress?” she says faintly.
“Oh, the money thing. Tony, you wouldn’t know, it’s not something you’ve ever had to deal with. The fucking rent’s a few months behind, and the fucking landlord’s threatening to have us evicted; he says he’ll phone the university and make a stink. There’s no point in even bothering West with any of it – he’s such a baby, he just leaves all those practical things to me. If I told him how much we owe he’d go out and sell his lute, no question; I mean, what else does he have? He’d do anything for me, though it wouldn’t even make a dint, poor lamb; but he’s fond of those sacrificial gestures. I just don’t know what to do. It’s all such a burden, Tony. That’s when I get so fucking depressed!”
Tony has given Zenia money for the rent, several times already. However, she knows what Zenia will say if she mentions this. But Tony! We had to eat! You don’t know what it’s like, to be hungry. You just don’t get it! You don’t know what it’s like to have no money at all!
“How much?” she says in a cold, meticulous voice. It’s a neat piece of blackmail. She’s being bushwhacked.
“A thousand dollars would see us out of the woods,” says Zenia smoothly. A thousand dollars is a great deal of money. It will make a definite hole in Tony’s nest egg. Also it’s much more than could possibly be needed for back rent. But Zenia doesn’t beg, she doesn’t plead. She knows that Tony’s response is a foregone conclusion.
Tony gets out of bed in her polo pyjamas with blue mice in clown suits printed on them, sent to her from California by her mother, left over from when she was fourteen – her nocturnal wardrobe has not been upgraded, because who would ever see it, and one of the things she minds most about this evening in retrospect is that Zenia got a good look at her absurd pyjamas – and goes over to her desk and turns the desk lamp on, briefly, and writes the cheque. “Here,” she says, thrusting it at Zenia.
“Tony, you’re a brick,” says Zenia. “I’ll pay you back later!” Both of them know this isn’t true.
Zenia exits via the window, and Tony goes back to bed. A brick: hard, foursquare, a potential murder weapon. You could bash in quite a few skulls, with a brick. No doubt Zenia will be back later for more money, and then more. Tony has gained nothing but time.
26
Two days later West comes to McClung Hall and seeks out Tony, and asks her if she’s seen Zenia, because Zenia is gone. She’s gone from the apartment, she’s gone from the precincts of the university, she appears to be gone from the entire city, because nobody – not the bearded theatrical men, not the thin, ballet-faced, horse-maned women, and not the police, when