Lauren Groff - Fates and Furies

But the girl hadn’t taken offense; she laughed. Now she opened the folder with Chollie’s photograph, address, phone number, all the details Mathilde could think of to tell her on the phone.

“I don’t know how far you’ve gotten in your research,” Mathilde said. “He was the one who started the Charles Watson Fund. You know, the investment brokerage firm. I don’t know if you know that yet. About twenty years ago, he started it when he was just a kid. Total Ponzi scheme, I’m pretty sure.”

The girl looked up, spark of interest in her face. “You invest?” she said. “Is that what this is?”

“I’m not a fucking moron,” Mathilde said.

The girl blinked and sat back. Mathilde said, “Anyway. Ponzi scheme is the way to go, and I need proof of it, but I also need more. Personal stuff. The worst you can get. You meet the guy for three seconds, and you know he has a closet full of skeletons. Possibly literal ones. He’s a fat shithead puckered-asshole sniffer and I want to flay him alive.” She smiled sunnily.

The girl considered Mathilde. She said, “I’m good enough that I can pick and choose my cases, you know.”

“Glad to hear it,” Mathilde said. “I don’t hire ninnies.”

“My only hesitation about yours is that it seems like a personal vendetta,” the girl said. “And those get sticky.”

“Oh, well. Murder’s too easy,” Mathilde said.

The girl smiled, and said, “I like a bit of spunk in a lady.”

“But I’m no lady,” Mathilde said, already tired of this strange flirtation, drinking her coffee down so that she could go.

Mathilde stood, and the girl said, “Wait.” She pulled the arms of her shirt through the sleeves and turned it around so the low collar was in the back, now crisp-looking, professional. She pulled off her shaggy wig to show brown hair, cut boyishly short. She took off the earrings, the false eyelashes. She was a different person, severe and sharp. She looked like the only female grad student at a math department mixer.

“That was some Bond-level disguisecraft,” Mathilde said. “Hilarious. I bet it usually seals the deal for you.”

“Usually,” the investigator said. She seemed abashed.

“And the boob dolphin?” Mathilde said.

“I had a stupid youth,” the girl said.

“We have all had stupid youths,” said Mathilde. “I find them delicious.” They smiled at each other across the table freckled with pollen. “All right. You’ll do,” Mathilde said.

“Honey, I’ll more than do ,” the girl said, and leaned forward and touched Mathilde’s hand just long enough to make her meaning clear.

Anger’s my meat; I sup upon myself,

And so shall starve with feeding.

Volumnia says this in Shakespeare’s Coriolanus. She — steely, controlling — is far more interesting than Coriolanus.

Alas, nobody would go to see a play called Volumnia .

THE CLOUDS HAD DESCENDED, though the day through the window gleamed with sunlight.

She was new to her Internet company. It was a dating site that would later be sold for a billion. She’d been at the gallery for three years; every morning she would take a breath on the sidewalk, shut her eyes, steel herself to walk in. All day, she’d feel Ariel looking at her. She did her job. She took care of the artists, calming them, sending them birthday gifts. “My prodigy,” Ariel would say, introducing her. “One day Mathilde will run the show.” Luanne’s face pinched every time he said so. And the day came when a jittery artist flew in from Santa Fe, and Ariel and he went out for a long dinner, and when they came back, Mathilde was still in the dark in the back office, writing catalog copy for an exhibit. She looked up, froze. Ariel was in the door, watching her. He came close, closer. He put his hands on her shoulders and began massaging. He pressed himself to her back. After so long waiting for the end, she was obscurely disappointed in his lapse of taste: an unexpectedly gross gesture, frottage. She stood, and said, “I’m done,” and walked past Luanne, who’d been watching from the front, and took all her sick leave at once and found a new job in days without ever telling Ariel she was leaving the gallery for good.

But this morning, Mathilde could not keep her eyes on her work. She begged off in her boss’s office, and he watched her go with his eyes narrowed behind his glasses, his mouth in a sour twist.

In the park, the maple leaves had a sheen to them, as if gilded at the vein. She walked so far, was so lost, that when she came home her knees felt jellied. There was a bitterness on the back of her tongue. She took a stick from the twenty-pack she kept, in her terror, beneath the towels. Pissed on it. Waited. Drank an entire Nalgene of water. Did it again and again and again, and every time the patient stick told her yes . Plus sign. You’re cooked! She shoved the wands into a bag, put the bag as deep in the trashcan as she could.

She heard Lotto come in and ran her eyes under cold water. “Hey, baby,” she called out. “How was your day?” He clattered around, talking about an audition, some mean little bit in a commercial, he didn’t even want it, it was humiliating, but he saw that boy from that television show in the late seventies, the one with the cowlick and weird ears, remember? She dried her face, finger-brushed her hair, practiced her smile until it wasn’t so ferocious. She came out, still in her coat, and said, “I’m just off to pick up a pizza,” and he said, “Mediterranean?” And she said, “Yup,” and he said, “I adore you with all the marrow in my bones.” “Me, too,” she said, with her back turned.

She closed their front door and sank down on the steps that led to the lady upstairs, lay back, her arms crossed above her eyes because what was she going to do, what was she going to do?

Mathilde became aware of a strong smell of feet. She saw on the steps beside her face a pair of battered embroidered slippers held together with string.

Bette, the upstairs neighbor, gloomed down at Mathilde. “Come along,” she said, in her prim British way.

Numb, Mathilde followed the old woman up the stairs. A cat pounced at her like a tiny clown. Apartment painstakingly clean, midcentury modern, Mathilde saw with surprise. Walls a high-gloss white. Bouquet of magnolia leaves on a table, deep green shine with a luscious brown underneath. On the mantel, three burgundy chrysanthemums burned. None of this was expected.

“Sit,” Bette said. Mathilde sat. Bette shuffled away.

Presently, the old lady came back. A cup of hot chamomile, a LU Petit Écolier Chocolat Noir. Mathilde tasted it, returning to a schoolyard, light through leaves on the dust, snap of a new cartouche in her pen.

“I can’t blame you. I never wanted a child, either,” the old woman said, looking at Mathilde down her long nose. There were crumbs on her lips.

Mathilde blinked.

“In my day, we didn’t know anything. Didn’t live in a time when there was any choice. I douched with Lysol, you see. Such ignorance. When it was my time, there was a lady over the stationery store with a thin-bladed knife. Terrible. I wanted to die. Could have, easy. Instead, I got the gift of barrenness.”

“Christ,” Mathilde said. “Have I been speaking aloud to myself?”

“No,” Bette said.

“But how did you know?” Mathilde said. “I barely know myself.”

“It’s my superpower,” Bette said. “I see it in the way a woman carries herself. Many times I have gotten myself in trouble by mentioning it when it was an unpleasant surprise. Been clear to me in your case for about two weeks.”

They sat there in the long afternoon. Mathilde watched the chrysanthemums and remembered to drink her tea only when it was lukewarm.