Margaret Atwood - The Robber Bride

Roz is in her office, pacing, pacing. On her desk is a stack of files, project files and charitable-donation files both, the Livers, the Kidneys, the Lungs, and the Hearts all clamouring for attention, not to mention the Bag Ladies and the Battered Wives, but they will all have to wait, because in order to give you have to make, it doesn’t grow on trees. She’s supposed to be thinking about the Rubicon project, as presented by Lookmakers:° Lipsticks for the Nineties is the concept they’re proposing; which Boyce says translates as Oral Glues for Nonagenarians. But Roz can’t get her teeth into it, she’s too preoccupied. Preoccupied? Frenzied! Her body’s a hormone-fuelled swelter, the inside of her head’s like a car wash, all those brushes whirring around, suds flying, vision obscured. Zenia’s on the prowl, and God knows where! She might be climbing up the side of this building even now, with suckers attached to the bottoms of her feet like a fly.

Roz has eaten all the Mozart Balls, she’s smoked every single cigarette, and one of Boyce’s drawbacks, his only one really, is that he doesn’t smoke, so she can’t bum a fag off him, oops, pardon the pun; his lungs at any rate are pure as the driven. Maybe the new downstairs receptionist—Mitzi, Bambi?—might have a pack tucked away; she could call down, but how demeaning, Ms. Boss clawing the walls for a cig.

She doesn’t want to leave the building right now, because it’s about time for Harriet the detective to call. Roz has asked her to call every afternoon at three to fill her in on progress. “We’re narrowing it down,” was all Harriet said for the first few days. But yesterday she said, “There’s two possibilities. One’s at the King Eddie, the other one’s at the Arnold Garden. The people we’ve been able to—the people who have kindly agreed to identify the photo—each one of them is sure it’s got to be her.”

“What makes you think you have to choose?” said Roz. “Pardon?” said Harriet.

“Bet you anything she’s got rooms at both of those hotels,” said Roz. “It would be just like her! Two names, two rooms.” All foxes dig back doors. “What’re the room numbers?”

“Let us do a little more checking,” said Harriet cautiously. “I’ll let you know” She could evidently visualize an undesirable situation: Roz barging into some stranger’s room, hurling furniture and accusations and breathing fire, and Harriet getting hit with a lawsuit for having given her the wrong room number. ‘

So now Roz is on tenterhooks, whatever those are. Something her mother knew about, because it was her expression. She makes a mental note to ask Boyce about it, and shakes herself, and sits down at her desk, and opens up the Lipsticks for the Nineties file that Boyce has annotated for her. She likes the business plan, she likes the projections; but Boyce is right, the name itself is wrong, because they’ll want to expand the line beyond lipsticks: An eye shadow that would also shrink puffy hds would be a breakthrough, she’d buy that, and if she would buy a thing it’s a cinch that a lot of other women would, as well, if the price is right. For another thing, the Nineties has to go. The nineties have not been great news so far, even though there’s only been a year of them, so why underline the fact that everyone’s stuck in them?

No, Roz is agreed—reading Boyce’s tidy notes in the margins of the proposal, he has real talent, that boy—that they should opt for time travel, some history, the big H, via the river names tiein. Women always find it easier to visualize themselves as having a romantic fling of it in some other age, an age before flush toilets and jacuzzis and electric coffee grinders, an age in which a bunch of tubercular, prematurely wrinkled servants would have had to wash the men’s undershorts, if any, by hand, and empty the slop pots and heat up. the water in big cauldrons, in filthy ratinfested kitchens, and trample the coffee beans underfoot like grapes. Give Roz appliances any day. Appliances with warranties, and dependable household help that comes in twice a week.

As for the ads, she wants a lot of lace in them. Lace, and a wind machine, to blow the hair around for that burning-ofCharleston dramatic-crisis look. It will help to shoot the models on an angle, with the camera slanted up. Statuesque, monumental, as long as you can’t see up their nostrils, which is the problem Roz has always had with bronze heroes on horseback. She’s thought of another river name too, another colour: Athabasca. A sort of bronzed pink. Frostbite crossed with exposure. How you get in the North without sunblock.

The phone rings and Roz practically falls on it. “Harriet,” says Harriet. “It’s the Arnold Garden for sure, Room 1409. I went there myself and pretended to be a chambermaid with towels. No doubt about it.”

“Great,” says Roz, and jots down the room number. “There’s one other thing you ought to know,” says Harriet. “Before you rush in:”

“What, where angels fear to tread?” says Roz impatiently. “What is it?”

“She appears to be having an affair, or something, with ... well, with a much younger man. He’s been with her in her room almost every day, according to our source:”

Why is Harriet sounding so coy? thinks Roz. “That wouldn’t surprise me,” she says. “Zenia would rob anything, cradles included. As long as he’s rich:”

“He is,” says Harriet. “So to speak. Or he will be:” There’s a hesitation.

“Why are you telling me this?” says Roz. “I don’t care who she’s screwing!”

“You asked me to find out everything,” says Harriet reproachfully. “I don’t know quite how to put it. The young man in question appears to be your son:’

“What?” says Roz.

After hanging up, she grabs her purse and hits the elevator and then the sidewalk at a fast trot, the nearest she can get to a run, what with her wicked shoes. She makes it to the nearest Becker’s and buys three packs of du Mauriers and tears one open with trembling fingers, and lights up so fast she practically sets fire to her hair. She’ll kill Zenia, she’ll kill her! The effrontery, the brass, the consummate had taste, to go after small helpless Larry Larry son of Mitch, after doing away with his father! Well, as good as doing away. Pick on somebody your own size! And Larry, a sitting duck, poor baby; so lonely, so scrambled. Probably he remembers Zenia from when he was fifteen; probably he had a jerk-off crush on her, back then. Probably he thinks she’s glamorous, and warm and understanding. Zenia has a good line in the glamour and understanding department. Plus, she’ll tell him a few hard-luck stories of her own and he’ll think they’re both orphans of the storm together. Roz can’t stand it!

Smoke percolates through her, and after a while she feels a little calmer. She walks back to the office, her head sizzling slowly. What exactly, what the fuck, is she supposed to do now? She knocks on Boyce’s door. “Boyce? Mind if I pick your brain for a minute?” she says.

Boyce stands up courteously and offers her a chair. “Ask, and it shall be given you,” he says. “God.”

“Don’t I know it,” says Roz, “but I haven’t been getting such great results from God lately, in the answer department.” She sits down, crosses her legs, and takes the cup of coffee Boyce provides. The part in his hair is so straight it’s almost painful, as if done with a knife. His tie has tiny ducks on it. “Let me put a theoretical case to you,” she says.

“I’m all ears,” says Boyce. “Is this about Oral Glues?”

“No,” says Roz. “It’s a story. Once upon a time there was a woman who was married to a guy who used to fool around:”

“Anyone I know?” says Boyce. “The guy, I mean.”