Kate Zambreno - Green Girl

They like it, I believe, she responds hesitantly. Sir.

He frowns, his face a placid lake that occasionally ripples in disgust. Maybe we need to mix it up a bit he hmms. Mix it up a bit? Ruth repeats. Yes, try a bit of variation in our language. Ruth does not say anything, playing with the purple tassel on the perfume bottle. He frowns again. He thinks I’m an idiot. He thinks I’m a blonde, American idiot. She mentally steels the tears from her eyes, willing her humiliation into hate.

Close-up on my muse-baby. My actress’ face is threatening to turn red, it is twisting. It is not very pretty and reflective as an ingénue is supposed to be. An ingénue is supposed to be ingenuous.

Don’t cry. Don’t cry my Ruth. Don’t cry. You look so homely when you cry.

He snatches the pink bottle away from her, tassel waving. Well, let’s try it out, hmmm? He focuses on a gaggle of American tourists, pudgy middle-aged women in pantsuits, shrieking at the vaulted ceilings. Tennessee? Ruth guesses. Texas? Tallahassee? They are like the American women arriving in Paris in Jacques Tati’s Playtime , riding up the escalator to their hotel with drooped flowers in their hats, descending the escalator with freshly restored flowers.

Good morning ladies, his stern expression relaxes into an almost amiable mask. Good morning, they twang in unison, flattered at the Englishman’s attention. I don’t know if you ladies have heard, but there’s a new product out on the market we’re quite excited about, a new fragrance by one of your own. I’m sure you’re familiar with? He says the name. Oh yes, my daughter loves her, one of them pipes up, amidst a general buzzing by the group. He smiles without teeth, nodding his head. Well, perhaps you’d like to sample her new fragrance, Desire. It’s a pretty, pastel scent, perfect for a teenager or teenagers at heart like you lovely ladies. Well, sure! Why not? Surely! they cry. He passes out sticks as Ruth helplessly squirts a wet dot of rose on each, to squeals and clucks of approval. Well that’s very nice. Perhaps I’ll get Mary for Christmas?

Let me know if you need anything else, and enjoy your stay, he concludes grandly. The little hen ladies threaten to erupt into applause, as he motions them to push off like children on their first wobbly bicycles. He turns to Ruth and raises his eyebrows, as if to say, See? Look how easy it is. Her lips stay sealed, and curve into her quick smile. When someone antagonizes Ruth, her face only registers a moment of surprise, as if slapped, but then quickly smoothes over.

Be. Better. He waves a fat forefinger at her, and sails off to terrorize Fine Jewelry.

What did that bastard do to you? The German girl, Natalie, clomps up to her. Natalie is constantly getting in trouble for abandoning her post. Ruth shakes her head, forbidding the tears.

Oh cry cry we want to see you cry. I want to squeeze my Ruth-doll so water comes out. Is that a tear? A tear the moment of truth. A tear in the fabric of the perfected surface.

She feels the gaze of the terrible girls. The tribe of slender mannequins circling in an orbit of feigned disinterestedness. Their leader is Elspeth from the Chanel counter. She is so pale as to be in constant threat of disappearing altogether, her face framed with inky black hair. White and black and cruel. The terrible girls pretend Ruth is not there, although they are always watching her, hoping that she’ll make a scene. She is subjected to their constant scrutiny. Look at her look at her my God is she going to cry such a baby has she even brushed her hair today it looks a fright. To the terrible girls Ruth does not even have a name. She is the American girl. She is merely a temporary worker, a status with which she has become intimately acquainted.

Oh, poor thing, Natalie croons. She hooks her arm through Ruth’s, her black glossy hair brushing against Ruth’s shoulder. A tear appears in the corner of Ruth’s eye. She brushes it away. Go ask Non-cy if you can take your break now. Even though she is German, Natalie is married to an Englishman and talks in a precise, breathy, English accent. She makes fun of the way Ruth occasionally still says Naaan-cy with her Midwestern accent.

Noncy is their floor supervisor, a tiny frazzled blonde who acts like any inquiry or request is just enough to send her over the edge. She is in with the terrible girls.

Ruth shakes her head no. I’m fine. She manages to squeak out. Then insistent: I am fine.

I am fine, fine, fine, fine, fine. The green girl is a liar. She wears the lie on her face. She paints on a smile.

Ruth performs her magic trick of going dead inside.

Lunch this week? Ruth is Natalie’s new pet. Yes, lunch this week, yes fine, fine. Fine. How about tomorrow? No, not tomorrow. Tomorrow I have off.

The relief of the end of the day. She can be reborn again, if there is anything left to resurrect. She hurries to the employee locker room. Her purse vomits its contents all over the gray concrete floor. I am a mess, mess, mess she thinks. Exposed tampon like a rabbit’s foot. Her lipstick capless and covered with tobacco, like a disgraced crown.

She is such a trainwreck. But that’s why we like to watch. The spectacle of the unstable girl-woman. Look at her losing it in public.

Heart beating frantic, she scoops the guts back inside.

She sees the shine of tasteful Italian loafers. Hiya Ruth! Oh, hi Olly. Fingers of red creep up on her face. Olly works in men’s neckties. Handsomish. Charming. English. There is something about him, though, something about him, something so terribly familiar…Something about his face…A certain squareness of the jaw…The fleshy underside of his lips…

It is HE who she pines for, it is HE who fills her daily thoughts, buried in between darker thoughts and lighter thoughts. It is HIM who she prays to, offering up her daily meditations. HE is her reference point for everything. She tells herself, she must forget HIM. HE is dead to her. HE has no name. She pushes HIM deep inside although HE often surfaces, on the street, suddenly in a crowd, in a stranger’s face.

Need some help. A statement, not a question. Olly crouches down besides her. He is helpful. Why is he helpful? Ruth cannot consider motive. She is otherwise occupied. HE has occupied her mind, colonized her body.

She thinks: There are strangers here who wear your face.

Yeah, thanks. The green girl is often inarticulate. Speech littered with likes. She cannot translate the depths. (Are there depths? I am still unsure of her interiority. If I prick her will thoughts rush out or just a mess of heavy confusion?)

Olly hands the purse over. It has no name, the purse. It is black with no name. It looks enough like it has a name, from far away, but up close one realizes the purse’s secret, the humiliation of its anonymity.

Good to see you Ruth.

Bye. Feather-voiced. Sending up the American blonde. She is an actress. She is playing herself. She is ready for her screen test. I can think of several blonde Hollywood actresses who could play the part well, yet I do not know their names. They are not as memorable as the classics, Marilyn or Jean, those starry creations that burned bright, died young. I think of young celebrities in the media, stalked by our eyes, the paparazzi, those magazines we read. They exist to draw attention. Aware of the whole world watching. They are green girls too. We give birth to them. Then we destroy them with our insatiable desire to have entrance into their private lives. This is them unmasked without makeup, waiting in a queue at the grocery store, blinking from a sex tape…we watch and watch.

An insight into the lives of countless young women who never knew, or may never know, any other home than the plainest of furnished rooms in a drab hotel.