Kate Zambreno - Green Girl

Staring into the dull silver of the elevator doors Agnes swirls out her red lipstick, which she strokes firmly onto her lips, back and forth, a brick the same shade as her penciled-in Marlene Dietrich eyebrows, matching her china doll moon face framed by brazenly red hair carefully flipped up. Agnes’ hair color changed with her whims, more violent seasons than the city’s monochrome. It’s my signature she would say. For someone like Agnes it was important to have a signature. How else will she remember herself?

How are the British bitches treating you at Horrids? Agnes smacks her lips together, smiling pleased at herself in the reflection. Shocking things tended to eject from that red mouth. Ruth shrugs. She is a deaf-mute.

Crouching down on her heels out of the Pandora’s bag comes large doorknockers that she fastens to each ear, plastic cherry-red the same as the sweater. She crouches down like an athlete in training (no pain no gain!). A bandage is half fallen off her ankle, revealing blood in the cotton, two identical vampire bites above her heels.

The bell sounds. The two girls crowd into the cage. First floor, going down, comes the proper and prompt reply. The sister to Ruth’s mobile phone.

Taped to the wall of the lift is today’s dinner menu, a haiku of gagging dishes steamed and stewed and breaded that kept the pace of Ruth’s week.

Dinner Menu

Curried Chicken

Mashed Peas

Stewed Aubergine

Plum Crumble and Custard

British food was the current catastrophe of Ruth’s life. She hadn’t eaten a regular meal since she arrived. As far as Ruth knew Agnes did not eat at all, except lipstick and coffee and cigarette smoke. Agnes cultivated a look of old Hollywood, starving her curvy frame into an hourglass. Ruth loved old movies too. She was nostalgic for a past in which she didn’t exist.

Agnes begins chattering about a film she has just seen. A Japanese film with bondage. And then it was so BIZ-arrre…. That is Agnes’ signature word. Everything to Agnes was BIZ-arre, the fact that Ruth said “candies” instead of “sweets” or “jellies” was BIZ-arre, and Ruth, Ruth was always BIZ-arre. Ruth thinks that the film sounds too gruesome and she wouldn’t be at all interested in seeing it, and what’s the point, since Agnes had given all the scenarios away. But she stays silent and lets her talk. Ruth tries not to encourage Agnes too much, or she’ll be taken hostage forever. But for now, trapped in the little box, she has no choice but to play her audience.

The two girls drop off their room keys in the lobby, to the mournful Algerian receptionist who Ruth shyly smiles at. The lobby is stacked with heavy wooden furniture. Lining the walls are framed photographs of royal visitors stricken with self-importance, the Queen clasping palms with her immaculate white gloves, next to a painting of the place’s dour-faced founder.

Outside, London is smeared with a wind-blown sameness. Agnes is still going on and on about the film (won’t she shut up?). Ruth isn’t listening. She is stone underneath her dark glasses. The gray day has already clouded over her thoughts. And anyway she can’t really understand most of what Agnes is saying. Ruth keeps in step with Agnes’ purposeful click-clack on the wet pavement.

For some reason Agnes had decided that they were besties, Ruth did not know why, but she did not try to resist it. She was flattered by the attention. And everyone else she had met in London was so clean and dry. Agnes was messy. There were always runs in her stockings, or her clothing was too tight, accidents of white flesh spilling over.

Agnes takes out her mobile. Her fingers begin furiously tapping out a text message while walking. She is a concert pianist manufacturing false sentiments. A novelist of nothing new.

Work today? She finally looks up. Ruth shakes her head. Reprieve, her voice squeaks again. Lucky bitch. Agnes works as a barista at one of the coffee chains on Oxford Street, her apron, filthy with brown espresso smears, usually peeking out of her purse. They are part of the demimonde in London, foreigners working humiliating jobs on the high streets where they are “girls.” Shopgirl. Coffeegirl. They are Clara Bow and Joan Crawford flap-flapping about the screen before the Handsome Rich Man (anyday!) comes and saves them from a life of soul-sucking poverty.

Ruth had visited Agnes at work once, Agnes frantic catering to a long queue of impatients, hair held back by a red scarf, plastic bangles from Topshop jangling up her plump white arm. Before the coffee shop Agnes used to work at Topshop but got sacked, for various conspiracy theories Agnes would be all too ready to divulge. Just ask.

Want to grab a pint later? Headache, Ruth begs off. Sorry.

No worries Agnes shrugs although she is pouting with those pretty red lips. You can tell she’s pouting because she doesn’t want you to forget it. She has lit a cigarette and she has stopped talking. This is her way of punishing Ruth. It’s called the silent treatment. Girls like Agnes and Ruth communicate by frozen telepathy.

Ruth now stops to light a cigarette, Agnes reluctantly stops with her, cupping pink hands. She brands Ruth’s with the end of her burning ciggie, and there is an intimacy to this. Ruth blows her smoke out into the gray air, watching it intermingle. This is to punctuate the moment, a ritualistic cease fire.

They walk down Edgware Road together. They both stop to check themselves out in the window, maybe to make sure they are still there. They walk past all the wonders of W2 kebob shops, men sucking on hookahs, video rental shops with posters of veiled mysterious eyes, jewelry stores selling rows and rows of gold chains, newsagent placard outside MAN BEATEN TO DEATH WITH CLUB (Ruth shivers), tabloids with screaming headlines a famous movie star who is getting a divorce or adopting a child from the Third World or going to rehab or something.

At night these girls lie in bed and think of celebrities, how beautiful they are, what they are doing at that very moment, what they are like in real life.

Ruth promises again to meet up with Agnes — soon soon. Agnes doesn’t walk for long not in those heels they are red and vintage as well she is already wincing she is handicapped by the cobblestones. Ideally she would take a limo everywhere or at least a cab, but she has not struck it rich, not yet, so for now she takes the train. But the town’s full of eligible bachelors.

Ruth is heading off for a little adventure on foot. She has decided to walk to Liberty. Liberty is like my Tiffany’s, she thinks. She had just seen the film in a matinee.

As Ruth crosses the road, she holds her breath and imagines a black mini-cab throttling towards her crashing into her, crushing her shin bones. Ever since she got to London she had developed a morbidity about being suddenly murdered among the masses.

Ruth walks up Oxford Street, tunneling past tourists pushing in and out of high street clothing stores, past the horns on top of Selfridges, the whiff of peanuts from the nearby vendor, moaning softly to herself. Suddenly she lets out a sharp gasp, imagining a hot knife pushing through her ribcage, as a man in a blue jacket presses against her walking by. She feels curious stares warming her.

She stumbles around, outside of herself, looking at them looking at her.

Sometime she narrates her actions inside her head in third-person. Does that make her a writer or a woman?

The blonde girl walks all nonchalant down the street, hidden by her sunglasses and wan swing of hair, presumably innocent of swivelling eyes. Zoom in, one might see a faraway look.

In the push of the crowd struck by that feeling that she is entirely outside of herself, only faintly aware that she is alive, moving through this world. Sometimes she is struck by how much she goes through life almost unconsciously. She is being swept along. She is a pale ghost.