Margaret Atwood - MaddAddam

“HelthWyzer must have had access to some pretty expensive fruit. I thought the peach and apple yields plummeted around then, when the big bee die-off was going on. And the plums,” she adds. “And the citrus varieties.”

“HelthWyzer was making a lot of money,” says Zeb. “Raking it in, from their vitamin pill business and the medical drugs end. So they could afford the cyber-pollinated imports. It was one of the perks of working at HelthWyzer, the fresh fruit. Only for the higher-ups, naturally.”

“Which did you find?” says Toby. “Pit-wise.”

“Peach. Two pits. She’d underlined it.”

“How did you feel about that?” Toby asks.

“About the overkill on the expensive fruit?” says Zeb. He’s dodging emotion.

“About finding out that your father wasn’t your father,” says Toby patiently. “You must have felt something.”

“Okay. I felt, I knew it ,” says Zeb. “I always like to be right, who doesn’t? Also less guilty about, you know. Frothing him to death.”

“You felt guilty about that?” says Toby. “Even if he had been your father, he was such a …”

“Yeah, I know. But still. Blood is thicker than blood. It would’ve bothered me some. The downside was the Adam end of it. I didn’t feel so good about that: all of a sudden he was no relation to me. No genetic relation, that is.”

“Did you tell him?” Toby asks.

“Nope. As far as I was concerned, I figured he was my brother. Joined at the head. We shared a lot of stuff.”

“Now I’m coming to a part you won’t like much, babe,” says Zeb.

“Because it’s about Lucerne?” says Toby. Zeb’s not stupid. He must have suspected for a long time how she’d felt about Lucerne, his live-in at the Gardeners. Lucerne the Irritating, dodger of communal weeding duties, shirker of women’s sewing groups, sufferer from frequent excuse-making headaches, whiny possessor of Zeb, neglectful mother of Ren. Lucerne the Luscious, one-time denizen of the HelthWyzer Corp, married to a top geek. Lucerne, the romantic fantasist who’d run away with the raggle-taggle Zeb because she’d seen too many movies in which beautiful women did that.

Zeb, in Lucerne’s version, had been crazed with irresistible and relentless desire for her. He’d been cross-eyed with lust when he’d spotted her in her pink negligee at the AnooYoo Spa while he was planting lumiroses in his capacity as gardener, and he’d made mad passionate love to her right there and then, on the dew-damp morning grass. Toby had heard that story many times from Lucerne herself, back at the Gardeners, and she’d liked it less every time. If she leaned over the railing and spat, she might be able to hit the very spot where Zeb and Lucerne had first rolled around on the lawn. Or near enough.

“Right,” says Zeb. “Lucerne. That’s what came next in my life. I can skip over it if you like.”

“No,” says Toby. “I’ve never heard your side of it. But Lucerne told me about the lumirose petals. How you strewed them over her pulsating body and so forth.” She tries not to sound envious, but it’s difficult. Has anyone ever strewn lumirose petals over her own pulsating body, or even thought about it? No. She lacks the temperament for petal-strewing. She would spoil the moment — “What are you doing with those silly petals?” Or she would laugh, which would be fatal. Right now she needs to shut up and hold back on the commentary or she won’t get the story.

“Yeah, well, petal-strewing comes naturally to me, I used to be in the magic biz,” says Zeb. “It distracts the attention. But some of what she told you was most likely true.”

The first time Zeb and Lucerne set eyes on each other was not at the AnooYoo Spa, however. It was in the women’s washroom that Zeb was supposed to be cleaning — was cleaning, in fact — while pawing through the detritus in the metal box for pits, whether peach or date. He hadn’t found any yet — it was before Pilar had the results of the Rev mix ’n’ match DNA test, or possibly before she could amass the necessary pits — so he was emerging from the second cubicle from the left empty-handed, pit-wise. When who should come into the Women’s Room but Lucerne.

“This was the middle of the night?” says Toby.

“Affirmative. What was she doing there? I asked myself. Either she was a robinhooder like me, in which case she was really inept because she’d got caught out of place. Or else she was having it off with some HelthWyzer exec who’d given her an access key to the building so they could flail on his fancy carpet while he was supposed to be working late at the office and she was supposed to be at the gym. Though it was late even for that.”

“Or both,” says Toby. “The having it off and the robinhooding, both.”

“Yeah. They combine well: each can provide an excuse for the other. Oh no, I wasn’t pilfering, I was only cheating on my husband. Oh no, I wasn’t cheating, I was only pilfering . But it was the first one of those, for sure. No mistaking the symptoms.”

Lucerne gave a little scream when she saw Zeb emerging from the cubicle in his impermeable gloves and his alien-from-outer-space nose cone. It wasn’t the first time that night she’d given a little scream, in his opinion: she was flushed and breathless, and what you might call dishevelled. Or maybe unbuttoned. Or, if you were being fancy, in disarray. Needless to say, she was very attractive at that moment.

Oh, needless to say, thinks Toby.

“What are you doing in the Ladies?” Lucerne said accusingly. The first rule: when caught wet-handed, accuse first. She did say Ladies, not Women’s. That was a clue in itself.

“To what?” says Toby.

“Her character. She had a pedestal complex. She wanted to be on one. Ladies was a step higher than Women.”

Zeb shoved his nose cone up onto his forehead: now he looked like a blunted rhinoceros. “I’m a Disinfector, First Rank,” he added impressively but pompously. There’s something about a gorgeous woman who’s obviously been shagging another man that brings out the pompous in a guy: it’s a wound to his ego. “What are you doing in this building ?” he counter-accused. He noted the wedding ring. Aha, he thought. Caged lioness. Needs a holiday from the tedium.

“I had some work to finish up,” Lucerne lied, as convincingly as she could. “My presence here is entirely legitimate. I have a pass.” Zeb could have called her on it, but he admired a woman who could use the word legitimate in such a fraudulent context. So he did not march her off to Security, which would have triggered a check via the spouse, and set off unpleasant repercussions for the lover, and would almost certainly have resulted — come to think of it — in Zeb himself being fired. So he let her get away with it.

“Right, okay, sorry,” he said with acceptable hangdog servility.

“Now, if you don’t mind, this is the Ladies , and I’d like some privacy, Horatio,” she said, caressing the name on his tag. She gazed deep into his eyes. It was a plea — Don’t rat me out — and also a promise: One day I’ll be yours . Not that she intended to honour that promise.

Well played, thought Zeb as he made his exit.

Thus, when he and Lucerne encountered each other for the second time, in the first flush of dawn, she barefoot and inadequately concealed in a diaphanous pink negligee, he with a phallic spade and an ardent lumirose bush in hand, right down there on the freshly sodded lawn of the just-completed AnooYoo Spa in the middle of Heritage Park, she recognized him. And she remembered that he’d once been Horatio, but was now, mysteriously — as his AnooYoo Spa grounds-keeper’s name tag had it — Atash.