The Robber Bride

Tony is playing the piano but no music comes out. Her feet don’t reach the pedals, her hands don’t span the keys, but she plays on because if she stops a terrible thing will happen. In the room is a dry burning smell, the smell of the flowers on the

G” chintz curtains. They are large pink roses, they open and close their petals, which are now like flames; already they are spreading to the wallpaper. They aren’t the flowers from her own curtains, they’ve come here from somewhere else, some place Tony can’t remember.

Her mother walks into the darkening room, the heels of her shoes ticking on the floor, wearing her maroon hat with the spotted veil. She sits down on the piano bench beside Tony; her face glimmers, obscured, its features blurring. Her leather hand, cool as mist, brushes Tony’s face, and Tony turns and holds onto her, holds on ferociously because she knows what happens next; but out of the front of her dress her mother takes an egg, an egg that smells like seaweed. If Tony can have this egg and keep it safe, the burning in the house will stop, the future can be avoided. But her mother lifts the egg up into the air, teasingly overhead, and Tony isn’t tall enough to reach it. “Poor thing, poor thing,” says her mother; or is it poor twin? Her voice is like a pigeon cooing, soothing and inexorable and infinitely mournful.

Somewhere out of sight the flowers have grown out of control and the house is on fire. Unless Tony can stop it, everything that once was will burn. The unseen flames make a fluttering sound, like ruffling feathers. A tall man is standing in the corner. It’s West, but why is he wearing those clothes, why is his hair black, why does he have a hat? There’s a suitcase beside him on the floor. He picks it up and opens it: it’s full of sharpened pencils. Reverof, he says sadly; though what he means is Farewell, because Zenia is there at the door, wound in a silk shawl with a long fringe. In her neck there’s a pinkish grey gash, as if her throat’s been cut; but as Tony watches, it opens, then closes moistly, and she can see that Zenia has gills.

But West is going, he’s putting his arm around Zenia. he’s turning his back. Outside, the taxi is waiting to take them to the snowy hill.

Tony needs to stop them. She holds out her hand once more and her mother puts the egg into it, but the egg is too hot now because of the fire and Tony drops it. It rolls onto a newspaper and breaks open, and time runs out of it, wet and dark red. There are gunshots, coming from the back of the house, and marching boots, and shouting in a foreign language. Where is her father? Frantically she looks around for him but he is nowhere to be seen, and the soldiers are already here to take her mother away.

Charis is lying in her white vine-covered bed, arms at her sides, palms open, eyes closed. Behind her eyes she is fully aware. She feels her astral body rise out of her, rise straight up and hang suspended above her like a mask lifted from a face. It too is wearing a white cotton nightgown.

How tenuously—we inhabit our bodies, she thinks. In her body of light—clear, like gelatin—she glides out through the window and across the harbour: Below her is the ferry; she swoops and follows in its wake. Around her she hears the rushing of wings. She looks, expecting seagulls, and is surprised to see a flock of chickens flying through the air.

She reaches the other shore and floats along over the city. Ahead of her is a large window, the window of a hotel. She fetches up against the glass and beats her arms for a moment, like a moth. Then the window melts like ice and she passes through.

Zenia is in here, sitting in a chair, wearing a white nightgown just like Charis’s, brushing her cloudy hair in front of the mirror. The hair twists like flames, like the branches of dark cypresses licking heavenwards, it crackles with static electricity; blue sparks play from the tips. Zenia sees Charis and motions to her, and Charis goes close and then closer, and she sees the two of them side by side in the mirror. Then Zenia’s edges dissolve like a watercolour in the rain and Charis merges into her. She slides her on like a glove, she slips into her like a flesh dress, she looks out through her eyes. What she sees is herself, herself in the mirror, herself with power. Her nightgown ripples in an invisible wind. Beneath her face are the bones, darker and darker through the glass, like an X-ray; now she can see into things, now she can change herself into energy and pass’ through solid objects. Possibly she’s dead .. It’s hard to remember. Possibly this is rebirth. She spreads the fingers of her new hands, wondering what they will do.

She drifts to the window and looks out. Down below, among the fiery lights and many lives, there’s a slow smouldering; the smell of it permeates the room. Everything burns eventually, even stone can burn. In the room behind her is the depth of outer space, where the atoms are blown like ashes, borne on the restless interstellar winds, the banished souls, atoning ...

There’s a knock at the door. She goes to open, because it will be a maid with towels. But it isn’t, it’s Billy, in striped pyjamas, his body grown older, bloated, his face raw meat. If he touches her she will fall apart like a bundle of rotted leather. It’s her new eyes doing this. She rubs and pulls at her face, trying to get out of these eyes, these dark eyes she no longer wants. But Zenia’s eyes, won’t come off; they’re stuck to her own eyes like the scales of a fish. Like smoked glass, they darken everything.

Roz is walking through the forest, through the shattered trunks and spiky undergrowth, wearing a sailor dress that is too big for her. She knows this dress isn’t hers, she never had a dress like this. Her feet are bare, and cold too; pain shoots through them, because the ground is covered with snow. There’s a track ahead of her: a red footprint, a white footprint, a red footprint. To the side there’s a clump of trees. Many people have been that way; they’ve dropped the things they were carrying, a lamp, a book, a watch, a suitcase fallen open, a leg with a shoe, a shoe with a diamond buckle. Paper money blows here and there, like candy-bar wrappers tossed away. The footprints lead in among the trees but none come out. She knows not to follow them; there’s something in there, something frightening she doesn’t want to see.

She’s safe though because here is her garden, the delphiniums drooping, black with mildew, forlorn in the snow. There are white chrysanthemums too but they aren’t planted, they’re in big cylindrical silver vases and she’s never seen them before. Nevertheless this is her house. The back window is shattered, the door swings loose but she goes in anyway, she walks through the white kitchen where nothing moves, past the table with three chairs. Dust covers everything. She’ll have to clean this up, because her mother is no longer here.

She climbs up the back stairs, her thawing feet tingling with pins and needles. The upstairs hallway is empty and silent; there is no music. Where are her children? They must be grown up, they must have gone away, they must be living elsewhere. But how can that be, how can she have grown-up children? She’s too young for that, she’s too small. There’s something wrong with time.

Then she hears the sound of the shower. Mitch must be here, which fills her with joy because he has been away so long. She wants to run inside, to greet him. Through the open bedroom door steam billows.

But she can’t go in, because a man in an overcoat is blocking her way. Orange light pours from his mouth and nostrils. He opens his coat and there is his sacred heart, orange too like a glowing jack-o’-lantern, flickering in the wind that has sprung up suddenly. He holds up his left hand to stop her. Nun, he says. Despite appearances, despite everything, she knows this man is Zenia. From the ceiling it begins to rain.

LI

It’s after dark. There’s a fine chilly drizzle, and the storefronts with their lit-up windows and the black streets with their red neon reflections have the slick, wet look that Tony associates with plastic raincoats and greased hair and freshly applied lipstick—a dubious, exciting look. Cars sizzle past, filled with strangers, going somewhere unknown. Tony walks.

The Toxique is different at night. The lights are dimmer, and squat candles in red glass holders flicker on the tables; the outfits of the waiters and waitresses are subtly more outrageous. There are a few men in suits, having dinner; businessmen, Tony guesses, though with their mistresses rather than their wives. She likes to think that such men might still have mistresses, though probably they don’t call them that. Lovers. Main squeezes. Special friends. The Toxique is where you would take a special friend, but maybe not a wife. Though how would Tony know?’ It’s not a world she moves in. There are more men in leather jackets than there are in the daytime. There’s a subdued buzz.

She checks her big-numbers wristwatch: the rock band doesn’t come on till eleven, and she hopes she’ll be out of there by then. She’s had enough noise at home; today she had to listen to a full thirty minutes of aural torture, put together by West and played to her at full volume, with considerable arm-waving and expressions of glee. “I think I’ve done it,” was West’s comment. What could she say? “That’s good,” was what she came out with. It’s an all-occasion phrase, and appeared to suffice.

Tony is the first one here. She’s never had dinner at the Toxique before, only lunch. This dinner is last-minute: Roz phoned in a state of breathlessness and said there was something she really needed to tell. At first she suggested that Tony and Charis should come over to her place, but Tony pointed out that such a thing was difficult without a car.

She’s not that keen on going to Roz’s anyway, though Roz’s twins are—in theory—favourites of hers. She used to regret not having had children, though she wasn’t sure she would have been all that good at it, considering Anthea. But being a godmother has suited her better than being a mother—for one thing it’s more intermittent—and the twins have done her proud. They have a fine glittering edge to them, and so does her other goddaughter, Augusta. None of them is what you would call self-effacing—all three would be at home on horses, riding astride, hair flying, scouring the plains, giving no quarter. Tony isn’t sure how they’ve come by their confidence, their straightahead level gazes, their humorous but remorseless mouths. They have none of the timidity that used to be so built in, for women. She hopes they will gallop through the world in style, more style than she herself has been able to scrape together. They have her blessing; but from a distance, because close up Augusta is faintly chilling—she’s so intent on success—and the twins have become gigantic; gigantic, and also careless. Tony is slightly afraid of them. They might step on her by mistake.

So it was Tony who suggested the Toxique, this time. Roz may have something to tell, but Tony has something to tell also and it’s fitting that it should be told here. She has requested their usual table, the one in the corner by the smoked mirror. From the young woman, or possibly man, who appears beside her, dressed in a black cat-suit with a wide leather stud-covered belt and five silver earrings in each ear, she orders a bottle of white wine and a bottle of Evian.

Charis arrives at the same time as the bottles, looking strangely pale. Well, thinks Tony, she always looks strangely pale, but tonight she’s even more so. “Something weird happened to me today,” she tells Tony, shedding her damp woollen sweatercoat and her fuzzy knitted hat. But this is not an unusual thing for Charis to say, so Tony merely nods and pours her a glass of Evian. Sooner or later they will get the story of the dream about shiny people sitting in trees, or the odd coincidence involving street numbers or cats that look just like other cats that used to belong to someone Charis once knew and doesn’t any more, but Tony would rather have it wait till Roz gets here. Roz is more tolerant of such intellectual wispiness, and better at changing the subject.

Roz comes in, waving and yoo-hooing and wearing a flamered trench coat and matching sou’wester, and shaking herself. “Judas Priest!” she says, pulling off her purple gloves. “Wait till you hear! You won’t believe!” Her tone is dismayed rather than jubilant.

“You saw Zenia today,” says Charis.

Roz’s mouth opens. “How did you know?” she says. “Because, so did I,” says Charis.

“And so did I,” says Tony.

Roz sits heavily down, and stares at each one of them in turn. “All right,” she says. “Tell.”

Tony waits in the lobby of the Arnold Garden Hotel, which would not have been her own hotel of choice. It’s a graceless fifties construction, cement slabs on the outside and a lot of plate glass. From her vantage point she can see out through the double doors at the back, into a patio dotted with chunky planters and with a large circular fountain off in one corner, non-functional at this time of year and overlooked by tiers of balconies with orange-painted sheet-metal railings. The postmodern awning and brass at the front is just an add-on: the essence of the Arnold Garden is those balconies. Though efforts are being made: above Tony looms a prehensile arrangem,ent of purplish dried flowers and wires and strange pods, daring the aesthetically uninitiated to call it ugly.

The patio and the fountain must be the garden part of the Arnold Garden, Tony decides; but she wonders about the Arnold. Is it Arnold as in Matthew, he of the ignorant armies dashing by night? Or Arnold as in Benedict, traitor or hero depending on point of view? Or perhaps it’s a first name, denoting some bygone city councillor, some worthy backroom fixer whose friends called him Arnie. The lobby, with its framed prints of rotund pink-coated fox-hunting Englishmen, gives no clue.

The chair Tony sits in is leathery and slippery and built for colossi. Her feet don’t touch the ground even if she moves well forward, and if she slides herself all the way back, then her knees can’t-bend over the front edge and her legs stick out stiffly like the legs of a china doll. So she has adopted a compromise—a sort of hunched curvature—but she is far from comfortable.

Also, despite her demure navy blue coat and her sensible walking shoes and her wimpy Peter Pan collar, she feels conspicuous. Her bad intentions must be sticking out all over, her. She has the sensation that she’s growing hair, little prickles of it pushing out through the skin of her legs like the quills of a porcupine, hanks of it shoving through in tufts around her ears. It’s ‘ Zenia doing this, the effort of tracking Zenia: it’s fusing her neurons, rearranging the molecules in her brain. A hairy white devil is what she’s becoming, a fanged monster. It’s a necessary transformation perhaps, because fire must be fought with fire. But every weapon is two-edged, so there will be a price to pay: Tony won’t get out of this unaltered.

In her outsized tote bag is her father’s Luger, unearthed from the box of Christmas decorations where it’s usually stored, and freshly oiled and loaded according to the instructions in the manual of forties weaponry she photocopied in the library. She took care to wear gloves while photocopying, so as not to leave fingerprints, just in case. In case they try to pin anything on her, afterwards. The gun itself is unregistered, she believes. It is after all a sort of souvenir.

Beside it is another implement. Tony has taken advantage of one of the many tool circulars littering her front lawn to purchase a cordless drill, with screwdriver attachment, at a third off. She has never used one of these before. Also, she’s never used a gun before. But there’s a first time for everything. Her initial idea was that she could use the drill to break into Zenia’s room, if necessary. Unscrew the door hinges, or something. But it occurs to her, sitting here in the lobby, that the drill too is potentially lethal, and might be put to use. If she could murder Zenia with a cordless drill, what policeman would be smart enough to figure it out?

But the actual scenario is unclear in her mind. Maybe she should shoot Zenia first and then finish her off with the drill: the other way around would be cumbersome, as she would have to sneak up behind Zenia with the drill and then turn it on, and the whirring noise would be a giveaway. She could always do an ambidextrous murder: gun in the left hand, cordless drill in the right, like the rapier-and-dagger arrangements of the late Renaissance. It’s an appealing thought.

The catch is that Zenia is considerably taller than Tony, and Tony would of course be aiming for the head. Symmetrical retaliation: Zenia’s pattern has been to attack her victims at the point of most vulnerability, and the most vulnerable point is the one most prized, and Tony’s most vulnerable point is her brain. That’s how she was trapped by Zenia in the first place: that was the temptation, the bait. Tony got suckered in through her own intellectual vanity. She thought she’d found a friend who was as smart as she was. Smarter was not a category.

Tony’s love for West is her other most vulnerable point, so it stands to reason that it’s through West that Zenia will attack her now. It’s to protect West that she’s doing this, really—he would not survive another slice cut out of his heart.

She hasn’t shared her plans with Roz or Charis. Each of them is a decent person; neither would condone violence. Tony knows that she herself is not a decent person, she’s known that ever since childhood. She does act like one, most of the time, because there’s usually no reason not to, but she has another self, a more ruthless one, concealed inside her. She is not just Tony Fremont, she is also Tnomerf Ynot, queen of the barbarians, and, in theory, capable of much that Tony herself is not quite up to. Bulc egdirb! Bulc egdirb! Take no prisoners, because in order to protect the innocent, some must sacrifice their own innocence. This is one of the rules of war. Men have to do hard things, they have to do hard man-things. Hard-man things. They have to shed blood, so that others may live out their placid lives suckling their infants and rummaging in their gardens and creating unmusical music, free from guilt. Women are not usually called upon to commit such cold-blooded acts, but this does not mean they are incapable of them. Tony clenches her small teeth and invokes her left hand, and hopes that she will rise to the occasion.

In front of her face she holds the Globe and Mail, opened to the business section. She’s not reading, however: she’s watching the lobby for Zenia. Watching, and getting jittery, because it isn’t every day she does something this risky. To cut the tension, to give herself some critical distance, she folds up the paper and takes her lecture notes out of her bag. It will focus her mind to review them, it will refresh her memory: she hasn’t given this lecture since last year.

The lecture is a favourite among her students. It’s the one on the role of female camp-followers through the ages, before and after battles—their handiness as bodies-for-hire, rapees, and producers of cannon fodder, their tension-reducing, nursing, psychiatric, cooking and laundering and post-massacre looting and life-terminating skills—with a digression on venereal diseases. Rumour has it that the students’ nickname for this lecture is “Mother Courage Meets Spotted Dick,” or “Whores ‘n’ Sores”; it usually attracts a contingent of visiting engineers, who come for the visuals, because Tony has an impressive instructional film she always screens. It’s the same one the army showed to its new recruits at the time of the Second World War to promote the use of condoms, and features many a rotted-off nose and green, leaking male organ. Tony is used to the nervous laughter. Put yourself there, she will tell them. Pretend it’s you. Now: less funny?

At that time syphilis was considered to be a self-inflicted wound. Some guys used VD to get themselves invalided home. You could be court-martialled for having a dose, just as you could for shooting yourself in the foot. If the wound was the disease, then the weapon was the whore. Yet another weapon in the war of the sexes, the whore of the sexes, the raw of the sexes, the raw sexes war. A perfect palindrome.

Maybe that’s what West found so irresistible about Zenia, Tony used to think: that she was raw, that she was raw sex, whereas Tony herself was only the cooked variety. Parboiled to get the dangerous wildness out, the strong fresh-blood flavours. Zenia was gin at midnight, Tony was eggs for breakfast, and in eggcups at that. It’s not the category Tony would have preferred.

All these years Tony had refrained from asking West about Zenia. She hadn’t wanted to upset him; also she was afraid of finding out any more about Zenia’s powers of attraction, about their nature and their extent. But after the return of Zenia she couldn’t help herself. On the edge of the crisis, she had to know.

“Remember Zenia?” she asked West at dinner, two nights ago. They were having fish, a sole d la bonne femme from Tony’s

Basic French Cooking book, bought to go with her battlefieldof-Pourrieres fish platter.

West stopped chewing, just for a moment. “Of course,” he said.

“What was it?” said Tony. “What was what?” said West.

“Why you—you know. Why you went with her.” Tony felt herself tensing up all over. Instead of me, she thought. Why you abandoned me.

West shrugged, then smiled. “I don’t know,” he said. “I can’t remember. Anyway, that was a long time ago. She’s dead now” Tony knew that West knew that Zenia was far from dead. “True,” she said. “Was it the sex?”

“The sex?” said West, as if she’d just mentioned some forgotten but unimportant shopping-list item. “No, I don’t think so. Not exactly.”

“What do you mean, not exactly?” said Tony, more sharply than she should have.

“Why are we talking about this?” said West. “It doesn’t matter now”

“It matters to me,” said Tony in a small voice.

West sighed. “Zenia was frigid,” he said. “She couldn’t help it. She was sexually abused in childhood, by a Greek Orthodox priest. I felt sorry for her.”

Tony’s mouth dropped open. “Greek Orthodox?”

“Well, she was part Greek,” said West. “Greek immigrant. She couldn’t tell anyone about the priest, because nobody would have believed her. It was a very religious community:”

Tony could barely contain herself. She felt a raucous and unseemly merriment building up inside her. Frigid! So that’s what Zenia had told poor West! It does not at all accord with certain confidences Zenia once saw fit to share with Tony on the subject of sex. Sex as a huge plum pudding, a confection of rich delights, whose pleasures she would enumerate while Tony listened, shut out, nose to the glass. Tony could just see whiteknight West, dutifully huffing and puffing away, giving it his best shot, trying to save Zenia from the evil spell cast by the wicked, non-existent Greek Orthodox priest, with Zenia having the time of her life. Probably she told him she was faking orgasm to please him. Double the guilt!

It would have been a challenge for him; of course. Warm up the Ice Maiden. The first man ever to successfully explore those polar climes. But of course there was no way he could win, because Zenia’s games were always rigged.

“I never knew that,” she said. She fixed West with her large wide-open eyes, trying to look sympathetic.

“Yeah, well,” said West. “She found it really hard to talk about.”

“Why did you break up with her?” said Tony. “The second time. Why did you move out?” Now that they’d crossed the border into the never-mentioned, now that West was talking, she might as well push her advantage.

West sighed. He looked at Tony with something close to shame. “To be honest,” he said, and stopped.

“Yes?” said Tony.

“Well, to be honest, she kicked me out. She said she found me boring.”

Tony appalled herself by nearly laughing out loud. Maybe Zenia was right: from a certain point of view, West was boring. But one woman’s meat was another woman’s boredom, and West was boring in the same way children were boring, and interesting in the same way, too, and that’s what a woman like Zenia would never see. Anyway, what was true love if it couldn’t put up with a little boredom?

“Are you all right?” West asked. “Choked on a bone,” said Tony. West hung his head. “I guess I am boring,” he said.

Tony felt contrite. She was cruel for finding this funny. It wasn’t funny, because West had been deeply wounded. She got up from the table and put her arms around his neck from behind, and laid her cheek against the top of his sparsely covered head. “You aren’t at all boring,” she said. “You’re the most interesting man I’ve ever known.” This was correct, since West was in fact the only man Tony had ever known, in any way that counted.

West reached up and patted her hand. “I love you,” he said. “I love you much more than I ever loved Zenia.”

Which is all very well, thinks Tony, sitting in the lobby of the Arnold Garden Hotel, but if that’s really true, why didn’t he tell me that Zenia called? Maybe he’s already seen her. Maybe she’s already lured him into bed. Maybe her teeth are in his neck, right now; maybe she’s sucking out his life’s blood while Tony sits here in this perverse leather chair, not even knowing where to look, because Zenia could be anywhere, she could be doing anything, and so far Tony doesn’t have a clue.

This is the third hotel she’s tried out. She’s spent two other mornings hanging around in the lobbies of the Arrival and the Avenue Park, with no results whatsoever. Her only lead is the extension number, the one scribbled by West and left beside his phone, but she’s hesitated to call all the hotels and use it because she doesn’t want to alert Zenia, she wants to take her by surprise. She doesn’t want to ask for her at the desk either, because ‘ she knows in her bones that Zenia will be using a false name; and once Tony has asked, and has been told there’s no guest of that name, it would look suspicious if she were to keep on sitting in the lobby. Also she doesn’t want to be remembered by the staff, should Zenia be found later wallowing in a pool of blood. So she merely sits, trying to look like someone waiting for a business meeting.

Her theory is that Zenia—who is by habit a late riser—must at some point get out of bed, must take the elevator to the main floor, must walk through the lobby. Of course it’s not beyond Zenia to stay in bed all day or, sneak down the fire stairs, but Tony is betting on the law of averages. Sooner or later—supposing Tony is in the right hotel—Zenia will appear.

And then what? Then Tony will leap or slither out of her chair, will patter across the floor to Zenia, will chirp a greeting, will be ignored; will scuttle after Zenia as she sweeps out through the glass doors. Gasping for breath, her outmoded gun and silly cordless drill clanking together in her bag, she will catch up to Zenia as she strides along the sidewalk. “We need to talk,” Tony will blurt.

“What about?” Zenia will say. At that point she will simply walk faster, and Tony will either have to trot ridiculously or give up.

This is the nightmare scenario, just thinking about it makes Tony blush with the sense of her own future humiliation. There’s another scenario, one in which Tony is persuasive and dexterous and Zenia is taken in, one that acts out some of Tony’s more violent although hypothetical fantasies and includes a neat red hole placed competently in the exact centre of Zenia’s forehead. But at the moment Tony doesn’t have a lot of faith in it.

She isn’t having much luck concentrating on her lecture notes, so she switches back to the Globe business section and forces herself to read. Tsol Sboj Erom. Gnisolc Tnalp. This has a satisfying Slavic ring to it. That, or Finnish, or some wild-haired tribe from Planet Pluto. As Tony is savouring it she feels a hand on her shoulder.

“Tony! There you are, finally!” Tony looks up, then stifles a small rodent-like shriek: Zenia is bending over her, smiling warmly. “Why didn’t you call before? And why are you just sitting here in the lobby? I gave West the room number!”

“Well,” says Tony. Her mind scrabbles, trying to fit all this together. “He jotted it down and then lost it. You know what he’s like.” Awkwardly she disentangles herself from the leather chair, which appears to have grown suction cups.

“I told him to make you call me right away,” says Zenia. “It was just after I saw you in the Toxique. I guess you didn’t recognize me! But I called up and told him it was very important:” She’s no longer smiling: she’s beginning to assume an expression Tony recalls well, something between a frown and a wince, urgent and at the same time beset. What it means is that Zenia wants something.

Tony is alert now, on her inner toes. Her darkest suspicions are being confirmed: this is obviously a fallback story, a story Zenia and West have concocted together just in case Tony should sniff the wind, or should run across Zenia in some unlikely place such as Tony’s own bedroom. The story is that the message was for Tony, not for West. It’s a cunning story, it has Zenia’s paw-prints all over it, but West must be colluding. Things are worse than Tony thought. The rot has gone deeper.

“Come on,” says Zenia. “We’ll go up to my room; I’ll order coffee:” She takes Tony’s arm. At the same time she glances around the lobby. It’s a look of anxiety, of fear even, a look Tony is not intended to see. Or is she?

She cranes her neck, peering up at Zenia’s still-amazing face. Mentally she adds something to it: a small red X, marking the spot.

Zenia’s hotel room is unremarkable except for its largeness and its neatness. The neatness is unlike Zenia. There are no clothes in evidence, no suitcases strewn around, no cosmetic bags on the bathroom counter, as far as Tony can see in one sideways glance. It’s as if no one is living here.

Zenia sheds her black leather coat and phones for coffee, and then sits down on the flowered pastel green sofa, crossing her endless black-stockinged legs, lighting a cigarette. The dress she wears is a clinging jersey wrap, the purple of stewed blueberries. Her dark eyes are enormous, and, Tony sees now, shadowed by fatigue, but her plum-coloured smile still quirks up ironically. She seems more at ease here than in the lobby. She raises an eyebrow at Tony. “Long time no see,” she says.

Tony is at a loss. How should she play this? It would be a mistake to display her anger: that would tip Zenia off, put her on her guard. Tony shuffles her inner deck and discovers that in fact she’s not angry, not at the moment. Instead she’s intrigued, and curious. The historian in her is taking over. “Why did you pretend to die?” she says. “What was all that stuff, with the ashes and the fake lawyer?”

“The lawyer was real,” says Zenia, blowing out smoke. “He believed it too. Lawyers are so gullible.”

“And?” says Tony.

“And. I needed to disappear. Trust me, I had my reasons. It wasn’t just the money! And I had disappeared, I’d set up about six dead ends for anyone trying to track me down. But that dolt Mitch was following me around, he just wouldn’t stop. He was really messing up my life. He was so goddamn persistent! He had the money too, he hired people; not amateurs either. He would’ve found me, he was right on the verge.

“People knew that; the other people, the ones I didn’t really want to see. I was a bad girl, I did a shell game involving some armaments that turned out not to be where I’d said they’d be. I don’t recommend it—armaments types get sniffy, especially the Irish ones. They tend to be vengeful. They figured out that all they had to do was keep an eye on Mitch and sooner or later he’d dig me up. He was the one I needed to convince, so he’d quit. So he’d lay off”

“Why Beirut?” says Tony.

“If you were going to get yourself accidentally blown up back then, what better spot to pick?” says Zenia. “The place was festooned with body parts; there were hundreds they never identified.”

“You know Mitch killed himself,” says Tony. “Because of „

you. ,

Zenia sighs. “Tony, grow up,” she says. “It wasn’t because of me. I was just the excuse. You think he hadn’t been waiting for one?-All his life, I’d say.”

“Well, Roz thinks it was because of you,” says Tony lamely. “Mitch told me that sleeping with Roz was like getting into bed with a cement mixer,” says Zenia.

“That’s cruel,” says Tony.

“Just reporting,” Zenia says coolly. “Mitch was a creep. Roz is better off without him.”

This is a little too close to what Tony thinks herself. She finds herself smiling; smiling, and sliding back down, back in, into that state she remembers so well. Partnership. Pal-ship. The team. “Why us, at your funeral?” says Tony.

“Window dressing,” says Zenia. “There had to be somebody there from the personal side. You know, old friends. I figured you’d all enjoy it. And anything Roz knew, Mitch would know too. She’d make sure of that! He was the one I wanted. He ducked it though. Prostrate with grief, I guess:”

“The place was crawling with men in overcoats,” says Tony. “One of them was mine,” says Zenia. “Checking up for me, to see who was there. A couple of them were from the opposition. Did you cry?”

“I’m not a cryer,” says Tony. “Charis sniffled a bit:” She’s ashamed, now, of what the three of them had said, and of how jubilant and also how mean-minded they had been.

Zenia laughs. “Charis always did have mush for brains,” she says.

There’s a knock at the door. “It’s the coffee,” says Zenia. “Would you mind going?”

It occurs to Tony that Zenia may have a few reasons for not wanting to open doors. A prickle of apprehension runs up her spine.

But it really is the coffee, delivered by a short brown-faced man. The man smiles and Tony takes the tray and scrawls a tip on the bill, and closes the door softly, and puts on the safety lock. Zenia must he protected from the forces that threaten her. Protected by Tony. Right now, in this room, with Zenia finally incarnate before her, Tony can hardly remember what she’s been doing for the past week—the way she’s been sneaking around in a state of cold fury with a gun in her purse, selfishly planning to bump off Zenia. Why would she want to do that? Why would anyone? Zenia sweeps through life like a prow, like a galleon. She’s magnificent, she’s unique. She’s the sharp edge:

“You said you needed to talk to me,” Tony says, creating an opening.

“Want some rum in your coffee? No?” says Zenia. She unscrews a small bottle from the minibar, pours herself a dollop. Then she frowns a little and lowers her voice confidentially. “Yes. I wanted to ask a favour: You’re the only one I could go to, really.”

Tony waits. She’s alarmed again. Watch it, she tells herself. She should get out of here, right now! But what harm can it do to listen? And she’s avid to find out what Zenia wants. Money, probably. Tony can always say no.

“All I need is to stay somewhere,” says Zenia. “Not here, here’s no good. With you, I thought, just for a couple of weeks.”

“Why?” says Tony.

Zenia moves her hands impatiently, scattering cigarette ashes. “Because they’re looking! Not the Irish, they’re off my track. It’s some other people. They’re not here yet, not in this city. But they’ll get around to it. They’ll hire local professionals:”

“Then why wouldn’t they try my house?” says Tony. “Wouldn’t that be the first place they’d look?”

Zenia laughs, the familiar laugh, warm and charming and reckless, and contemptuous of the idiocy of others. “The last place!” she says. “They’ve done their homework, they know you hate me! You’re the wife. I’m the ex-girlfriend. They’d never believe you’d let me in!”

“Zenia,” says Tony, “exactly who are these people and why are they after you?”

Zenia shrugs. “Standard,” she says. “I know too much:”

“Oh, come on,” says Tony. “I’m not a baby. Too much about what? And don’t say it would he healthier for me not to hear.” Zenia leans forward. She lowers her voice. “Does the name Project Babylon mean anything to you?” she says. She must know it does, she knows what line of knowledge Tony is in. “The Supergun for Iraq,” she adds.

“Gerry Bull,” says Tony. “The ballistics genius. Of course. He got murdered:”

“To put it mildly,” says Zenia. “Well.” She blows out smoke, looking at Tony in a way that is almost coy, a fan dancer’s look. “You didn’t shoot him!” says Tony, aghast. “It wasn’t you!” She can’t believe Zenia has actually killed someone. No: she can’t believe that a person sitting in front of her, in a real room, in the real world, has actually killed someone. Such things happen offstage, elsewhere; they are indigenous to the past. Here, in this California-coloured room with its mild furniture, its neutrality, they would be anachronisms.

“Not me,” says Zenia. “But I know who did.”

She’s lighting another cigarette, she’s practically chain-smoking. The air around her is grey, and Tony is slightly dizzy. “The Israelis,” she says. “Because of Iraq:”

“Not the Israelis, “ says Zenia quickly. “That’s a red herring. I was there, I was part of the setup. I was only what you might call the messenger; but you know what happens to messengers:” Tony does know. “Oh,” she says. “Oh dear.”

“My best chance,” says Zenia eagerly, “is to tell everything to some newspaper. Absolutely everything! Then there won’t be any point in killing me, right? Also I could make a buck, I won’t say that wouldn’t be welcome. But nobody’s going to believe me without proof. Don’t worry, I’ve got the proof, it’s not in this city but it’s on the way. So I figured I could just hole up with you and West until my proof comes through. I know how it’s coming, I know when. I’d be really quiet, I wouldn’t need more than a sleeping bag, I could stay upstairs, in West’s study .. :’

Tony snaps to attention. The word West cracks across her mind: that’s the key, that’s what Zenia really wants, and how does Zenia know that West has a study, and that it’s on the third floor? She’s never seen the inside of Tony’s house. Or has she?

Tony stands up. Her legs are wobbling as if she’s just been pulled back from a crumbling, cliff edge. How nearly she was taken in, again! The whole Gerry Bull story is nothing but a huge he, a custom-designed whopper. Anyone could have cobbled such a thing together just by reading Jane’s Defence Weekly and The Washington Post, and Zenia—knowing Tony’s weaknesses, her taste for new twists in weapons technology—must have done just that.

There is no vendetta, there is no them, nobody’s after Zenia but the bill collector. What she wants is to break into Tony’s castle, her armoured house, her one safe place, and extract West from it as if he were a snail. She wants him fresh and wriggling, speared on the end of her fork.

“I don’t think that will be possible,” says Tony, trying to keep her voice even. “I think I should go now”

“You don’t believe me, do you?” says Zenia. Her face has gone still. “Well, help yourself to some righteous indignation, you little snot. You always were the most awful two-faced hypocrite, Tony. A smug dog-in-the-manger prune-faced little shit with megalomaniac pretensions. You think you have some kind of an adventurous mind, but spare me! At heart you’re a coward, you hole yourself up in that bourgeois playpen of yours with your warped little battle-scars collection, you sit on poor West as if he’s your very own fresh-laid fucking egg! I bet he’s bored out of his skull, with nobody but you to stick his boring dick into! Jesus, it must be like fucking a gerbil!”

Zenia’s suave velvet cloak has dropped away; underneath is raw brutality. This is what a fist sounds like just as it smashes. Tony stands in the middle of the room, her mouth opening and closing. No sound comes out. The glass walls are closing in on her. Wildly she thinks about the gun in her purse, useless, useless: Zenia is right, she could never pull the trigger. All her wars are hypothetical: She’s incapable of real action.

But Zenia’s expression is changing now, from angry to cunning. “You know, I’ve still got that term paper, the one you., forged. The Russian slave trade, wasn’t it? Sounds like your brand of displaced sadism, all those paper dead bodies. You’re an armchair necrophiliac, you know that? You should try a real dead body some time! Maybe I’ll just pop that paper in the mail, send it to your precious History Department, stir up some shit for you, a tiny scandal! I’d like that! What price academic integrity?”

Tony feels the blunt objects whizzing past her head, the ground dissolving under her feet. The History Department would be pleased, it would be more than happy to discredit and disbar. She has colleagues but no allies. Ruin looms. Zenia is pure freewheeling malevolence; she wants wreckage, she wants scorched earth, she wants broken glass. Tony makes an effort to step back from the situation, to view it as if it’s something that happened long ago; as if she and Zenia are merely two small figures on a crumbling tapestry. But maybe this is what history is, when it’s really taking place: enraged people yelling at one another.

Forget the ceremony. Forget the dignity. Turn tail.

Tony walks unsteadily towards the door. “Goodbye,” she says, as firmly as she can; but her voice, to her own ears, sounds like a squeak. She has a moment of panic with the lock. As she scuttles out she expects to hear a feral growling, the thud of a heavy body against the door. But there’s nothing.

She goes down in the elevator with the odd sensation that she’s going up, and meanders across the lobby as if drunk, bumping into the leather furniture. There’s a bunch of men checking in at the front desk. Overcoats, briefcases, must be a convention. In front of her looms the dried flower arrangement. She reaches out, watching her left hand reaching, she breaks off a stem. Something dyed purple. She makes for the doors, but finds herself at the wrong set, the ones facing the patio and the fountain. This is not the way out. She’s disoriented, turned around in space: the visual world looks jumbled: She likes to have things clearly sorted in her head, but they are far from sorted.

She stuffs her filched sprig into her tote bag and aims for the front door, and wavers through it, and is finally outside, breathing in the cold air. There was so much smoke up there. She shakes her head, trying to clear it. It’s as if she’s been asleep.

This is not how Tony tells it to Roz and Charis, exactly. She leaves out the part about the term paper, although she conscientiously includes all the other bad things Zenia said about her. She includes the gun, which has a certain serious weight, but leaves out the cordless drill, which does not. She includes her own ignominious retreat. At the end of her account she produces the purple branch, as evidence.

“I must have been a little crazy,” she says. “To think I could actually kill her.”

“Not so crazy,” says Roz. “To want to kill her, anyway. She does that to people. You were lucky to get out of there with both eyes, is what I think:”

Yes, thinks Tony, checking”herself over. No obvious parts missing.

“Is the gun still in your purse?” Charis asks anxiously. She wouldn’t want such a dangerous object colliding with her aura. “No,” says Tony. “I went home after that, I put it back:”

“Good plan,” says Roz. “Now you go, Charis. I’ll be last.” Charis hesitates. “I don’t know whether I should tell all of it,” she says.

“Why not?” says Roz. “Tony did. I’m going to. Come on, we have no secrets!”

“Well,” says Charis, “there’s something in it you won’t like.”

“Heck, I probably won’t like any of it,” says Roz jovially. Her voice is a little too loud. Charis is reminded of the earlier Roz, the one who used to draw lipstick faces on her stomach and do the bump-and-grind, in the Common Room at McClung Hall. Maybe Roz is getting overexcited.

“It’s about Larry,” says Charis unhappily.

Roz sobers up immediately. “It’s okay, sweetie,” she says. “I’m a big girl.”

“Nobody is,” says Charis. “Not really.” She takes a deep breath.

After Zenia turned up at the Toxique that day, Charis spent about a week wondering what she should do. Or rather she knew what she should do, but she didn’t know how to go about doing it. Also she needed to fortify herself spiritually, because an’ encounter with Zenia would be no casual thing.

What she foresaw was the two of them locked in a stand-off: Zenia would be shooting out blood-red sparks of energy; her black hair would be crackling like burning fat, her eyeballs would be cerise, lit up from within like a cat’s in headlights. Charis on the other hand would be cool, upright, surrounded by a gentle glow. Around her would be drawn a circle of white chalk, to keep the evil vibrations at bay. She would raise her arms upwards, invoking the sky, and out of her would come a voice like tinkling bells: What have you done with Billy?

And Zenia, writhing and twisting and resisting, but mastered by the superiority of Charis’s positive force-field, would be compelled to tell.

Charis was not yet strong enough for this trial of strength. All by herself she might never be. She would have to borrow some weapons from her friends. No, not weapons; merely armour, because she did not see herself attacking. She didn’t want to hurt Zenia, did she? She just wanted Zenia to return stolen property: Charis’s life, the part with Billy in it. She wanted what was rightfully hers. That was all.

She went through some of the cardboard boxes in the small room upstairs, once a storeroom, then Zenia’s room, then August’s nursery and playroom, now a spare room, for guests if any. It was still August’s room really; that was where she stayed on weekend visits. In the boxes were a bunch of things Charis never used and had been meaning to recycle. She found a Christmas present from Roz—a horrifying pair of gloves, leather ones with real fur cuffs, dead animal skin, she could never wear those. From Tony she found a book, a book written by Tony herself. Four Lost Causes. It was all about war and killing, septic topics, and Charis has never been able to get into it.

She took the book and the gloves downstairs and put them on the small table under the main window in the living room—where the sunlight would shine in on them and dispel their shadow sides—and set her amethyst geode beside them, and surrounded them with dried marigold petals. To this arrangement she added, after some thought, her grandmother’s Bible, always a potent object, and a lump of earth from her garden. She meditated on this collection for twenty minutes twice a day.

What she wanted was to absorb the positive aspects of her friends, the things that were missing in herself. From Tony she wanted her mental clarity, from Roz her high-decibel metabolism and her planning abilities. And her smart mouth, because then if

Zenia started insulting Charis she would be able to think up something really neutralizing to say back. From the garden earth she wanted underground power. From the Bible, what? Her grandmother’s presence alone would do; her hands, her blue healing light. The marigold petals and the amethyst geode were to contain these various energies, and to channel them. What she had in mind was something concentrated, like a laser beam.

At work, Shanita notices that Charis is more absent-minded than usual. “Something bothering you?” she says.

“Well, sort of,” says Charis. “You want to do the cards?”

They are busy designing the interior for the new store. Or rather Shanita is designing it, and Charis is admiring the results. In the window there will be a large banner made of brown paper with the store name done on it in crayon, “like kids’ writing,” says Shanita: Scrimpers. At either end of the banner will be an enormous bow, also of brown paper, with packing-twine streamers coming out of it. “The idea is, everything needs to look totally basic,” says Shanita. “Sort of homemade. You know, affordable.” She’s going to sell the hand-rubbed maple display cabinets and have different ones made out of raw boards, with the nails showing. The orange-crate look, she calls it. “We can keep some of the rocks and herbal goop, but we’ll put that stuff at the back, not in the window. Luxury is not our middle name:” Shanita is busy ordering fresh stock items: little kits for making seedling-transplanting pots out of recycled newspaper, other kits for pasting together your own Christmas cards out of cut-up magazines, and yet other card kits involving pressed flowers and shrink wrap that you do with a hair dryer. Kitchenwaste composters with organic wooden lids are an item; also, needlepoint kits for cushion covers, with eighteenth-century flowers on them, a fortune if you buy them already made. Also coffee grinders that work by hand, beautiful wooden ones with a drawer for the ground coffee. Minor electrical kitchen items, says Shanita, are no longer the rage. Elbow grease is back. “What we need is stuff that makes stuff you’d otherwise have to pay a lot more for,” says Shanita. “Saving, is our theme. God, I know this junk backwards, been doing it all my life. Thing is, nobody ever told me what you can make out of a million rubber bands.”

She’s decided to change their outfits, too: instead of the flowered pastels they’ll be wearing canvas carpenter’s aprons, in beige, and square caps made of folded brown paper. A pencil stuck behind the ear will complete the look. “Like we mean business,” says Shanita.

Despite the admiration she’s giving out, because all creativity should be supported and this is certainly creative, Charis isn’t sure she’ll fit in. It will be a tight squeeze, but she’ll have to give it a try, because what other jobs are out there, especially for her? She might not even be able to get a job filing; not that she wants one, she doesn’t consider the alphabet to be an accurate way of classifying things. If she stays she’ll have to be more forceful. though; she’ll have to seize hold. Get a grip. Actively sell. Shanita says that service and competitive pricing are the watchwords of the future. That, and keeping down the overheads. At least they don’t have debt. “Thank God I never borrowed a lot,” she says. “Banks wouldn’t lend it to me, is why.”

“Why wouldn’t they?” says Charis.

Shanita tosses her hair—worn hanging down today in a single long shining curl—and gives her a scornful glance. “Three guesses,” she says.

They take a work break in the afternoon and Shanita makes them some Lemon Refresher from their stockroom and lays out the cards for Charis. “Big event, coming up soon,” she says. “What I see is—your card is the Queen of Cups, right? It’s the High Priestess crossing you. Does this mean a thing?”

“Yes,” says Charis. “Will I win?”

“What is this win?” says Shanita, smiling at her. “That’s the first time I ever heard that word from you! Maybe it’s time you started saying it:” She peers at the cards, lays down a few more. “Looks something like winning,” she says. “Anyway, you don’t lose. But! There’s a death. Just no way around it.”

“Not Augusta!” says Charis. She’s trying to see for herself the Tower; the Queen of Swords, the Magician, the Fool. But cards are a thing she’s never been able to do.

“No, no, nowhere near her,” says Shanita. “This is an older person. Older than her, I mean. Related to you somehow, though. You are not going to see this death happen, but you’re going to be the one finding it out.”

Charis is dismayed. Billy, it must be. She will go to see Zenia, and Zenia will tell her that Billy is dead. That’s what she’s always dreaded. But it will be better than not knowing. There’s a good side to it, as well, because when it’s her own turn to make the transition and she finds herself in the dark tunnel, in the cave, on the boat, and sees the light up ahead of her, it will be Billy’s voice she will hear first. He will be the one helping her, on the other side. They will be together, and he wouldn’t be able to meet her like that if he hadn’t died first.

It helps her, to know about the High Priestess crossing her. Also it fits, because now, finally, she’s come to the chosen day, the right day to confront Zenia. She realized it as soon as she got up, as soon as she stuck her daily pin into the Bible. It picked out Revelations Seventeen, the chapter about the Great Whore: And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication: And upon her forehead was written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.

Behind Charis’s closed eyelids the form took shape, the outline—crimson around the edges, with scintillations of diamond-hard light. She couldn’t see the face; though who else could it be but Zenia?

“That’s why I thought it was such a—well, so right,” says Charis to Tony.

“That what was?” says Tony patiently.

“What you said. About Project Babylon. I mean, it couldn’t just be a coincidence, could it?”

Tony opens her mouth to say that it could be, but shuts it again because Roz has given her a nudge under the table. “Go on,” says Roz.

Charis wades through the city, breathing airborne sludge. Past the BamBoo Club with its hot-coloured Caribbean graphics, past Zephyr with its shells and crystals, a place where she usually browses, but today she pushes past it with hardly a look, past the Dragon Lady comic book shop, hurrying because she has a deadline. It’s her lunch break. She doesn’t usually take much time for lunch because lunchtime is the busiest time, but they’ve closed the store for a few days while the new counters and the brownpaper bows are being put in place, so today she can make an exception. She’s asked Shanita for an extra half-hour; she’ll make it up by staying later, some day after they’ve reopened. That will give her time to get to the Arnold Garden Hotel, to see Zenia and ask what she needs to ask, to extract the answer. Supposing Zenia is at the hotel, of course. She could always be out.

When she was getting dressed this morning, washing herself in her drafty bathroom, it occurred to Charis that although she knew the name of the hotel she didn’t know the room number. She could always go to the hotel and poke around, walk up and down the corridors feeling the doorknobs; perhaps she would be able to pick up the electrical currents by touching the metal, sense the presence of Zenia through her fingertips behind the right door. But the hotel would be full of people, and those other people would create static. She could so easily make a mistake.

Then it came to her during the ferry ride to the mainland that there was one person who would be sure to know what room Zenia was staying in. Roz’s son Larry would know, because Charis had seen the two of them go into the hotel together.

“This is the part I didn’t want to tell you,” says Charis to Roz. “That day at the Toxique? I waited in the Kafay Nwar, across the street. I saw them come out. I followed them. Zenia and Larry.”

“You followed them?” says Roz, as if somebody else has followed them too, and she knows who.

“I just wanted to ask her about Billy,” says Charis. Roz pats her hand. “Of course you did!” she says. “I saw them kissing, on the street,” says Charis, apologetically. “It’s okay, baby,” says Roz. “Don’t worry about me:”

“Charis!” says Tony, with admiration. “You’re a lot more cunning than I thought!” The idea of Charis tiptoeing around behind Zenia’s back fills her with pleasure, because it’s so unlikely. Whoever else Zenia might have suspected of shadowing her, it sure as hell wouldn’t have been Charis.

When Charis arrived at the store that morning, and after Shanita had gone out to pick up some small change from the bank, she called Roz’s house. If anyone answered at all it would be Larry, because by this time the twins would be at school and Roz would be at work. She was right, it was Larry.

“Hello, Larry, it’s Aunt Charis.” she said. She felt stupid calling herself Aunt Charis, but it was a custom Roz had begun when the kids were little and it had never been abandoned.

“Oh, hi, Aunt Charis,” said Larry. He sounded half asleep. “Mom’s at work:”

“Well, but it was you I wanted to talk to,” said Charis. “I’m looking for Zenia. You know, Zenia, maybe you remember her, from when you were little:’ (How little had Larry been? she wonders. Not that little. How much had Roz ever told him, about Zenia? She hopes not much.) “We were all at university together. I’m supposed to meet her at the Arnold Garden Hotel, but I’ve lost the room number.” This was a big lie; she felt guilty about it, and at the same time resentful towards Zenia for putting her in such a position. That was the thing about Zenia: she dragged you down to her own level.

There was a long pause. “Why ask me?” Larry said finally, guardedly.

“Oh,” said Charis, playing up her usual vagueness, “she knows what a bad memory I have! She knows I’m not the best organizer. She said if I lost it, to call you. She said you’d know. I’m sorry if I woke you up,” she added.

“That was pretty dumb of her,” said Larry. “I’m not her answering service. Why don’t you just phone the hotel?” This was strangely rude, for Larry. As a rule he was more polite.

“I would have,” said Charis, “but, you know, her last name isn’t the same as it used to be and I’m afraid I’ve forgotten the new one.” This is a guess—the new last name—but it’s the right guess. Tony once said that Zenia probably had a different name every year. Roz said, No, every month, she probably subscribed to the Name-of-the-Month Club.

“She’s in 1409,” Larry said sulkily.

“Oh, just let me write that down,” said Charis. “Fourteenoh-nine?” She wanted to sound as dithery and forgetful as possible; as much like an aging feather-brained biddy, as least like a threat. She didn’t want Larry phoning Zenia, and warning her.

The significance of the room number does not escape her. Hotels, she knows, never number the thirteenth floor, but it exists anyway. The fourteenth floor is really the thirteenth. Zenia is on the thirteenth floor. But the bad luck of that may be balanced by the good luck of nine, because nine is a Goddess number. But the bad luck will attach itself to Zenia and the good luck to Charis, because Charis is pure in heart—or she’s trying to be—and Zenia is not. Calculating in her head and clothing herself with light, Charis reaches the Arnold Garden Hotel, and walks under the intimidating awning and in through the glittering brass-trimmed glass doors as if there is nothing to it.

She stands in the lobby for a moment, catching her breath, getting her bearings. It’s not a bad lobby. Although there’s a lot of murdered-animal furniture, she’s pleased to see that there’s a sort of vegetation altarpiece as well: dried flowers. And through the plate glass doors at the back there’s a courtyard with a fountain, though the fountain isn’t turned on. She likes to see urban space moving in a more natural direction.

Then all of a sudden she has a discouraging thought. What if Zenia has no soul? There must be people like that around, because there are more humans alive on the earth right now than have ever lived, altogether, since humans began, and if souls are recycled then there must be some people alive today who didn’t get one, sort of like musical chairs. Maybe Zenia is like that: soulless. Just a sort of shell. In this case, how will Charis be able to deal with her?

This idea is paralyzing. In its grip Charis stands stock-still in’ the middle of the lobby. But she can’t turn back now. She closes her eyes and visualizes her altar, with the gloves and the earth and the Bible, calling upon its powers; then she opens them and waits for an omen. In one corner of the lobby there’s a grandfather clock. It’s almost noon. Charis watches until both hands of the clock are aligned, pointing straight up. Then she gets onto the elevator. With every floor she passes, her heart beats harder.

On the fourteenth floor, really the thirteenth, she stands outside

1409. A reddish grey light oozes out through the crack under the door, pushing her backwards with palpable force. She puts her palm against the wood of the door, which vibrates in silent menace. It’s like a train going by at a distance, or a slow explosion far away. Zenia must be in there.

Charis knocks.

After a moment—during which she can feel Zenia’s eye on her, through the glass peephole—Zenia opens the door. She’s wearing one of the hotel bathrobes, and has her hair wrapped in a towel. She must have been taking a shower. Even with the terry-cloth turban on her head she is shorter than Charis remembers. This is a relief

“I was wondering when you’d get here,” she says. “You were?” says Charis. “How did you know?”

“Larry told me you were on your way,” says Zenia. “Come in.” Her voice is flat; her face is weary. Charis is surprised at how old she looks. Maybe it’s because she isn’t wearing any makeup. If Charis didn’t know better by now than to leap to such conclusions, she would think Zenia is ill.

The room is a mess.

“Just a minute,” says Tony. “Go over that part again. You were there at noon and the room was a mess?”

“She was always messy when she lived with me, that time, on the Island,” says Charis. “She never helped with the dishes or anything.”

“But when I was there earlier, everything was really neat,” says Tony. “The bed was made. Everything.”

“Well, it wasn’t,” says Charis. “There were pillows on the floor, the bed was a wreck. Dirty coffee cups, potato chips, clothes lying around. There was broken glass on the coffee table, the rug too. It was like there’d been a party all night.”

“You sure it was the same room?” says Tony. “Maybe she lost her temper and smashed a few glasses:”

“She must have gone back to bed,” says Roz. “After you left.” They all consider that. Charis goes on:

The room is a mess. The flowered drapes are pulled half shut, as if they’ve been closed recently against the light. Zenia steps over the items strewn on the floor, sits down on the sofa, and picks up a cigarette from the dozen or so that are scattered around in the broken glass on the coffee table: “I know I shouldri’t smoke,” she murmurs, as if to herself, “but it hardly matters, now. Sit down, Charis. I’m glad you’ve come.”

Charis sits down in the armchair. This is not the charged confrontation she’s been imagining. Zenia isn’t trying to evade her; if anything, she seems mildly pleased that Charis is here. Charis reminds herself that what she needs is to find out about Billy, where he is, whether he’s alive or dead. But it’s hard to concentrate on Billy; she can scarcely remember what Billy used to look like, whereas Zenia is sitting right here in the room. It’s so strange to see her in the flesh, at last.

Now she’s smiling wanly. “You were so good to me,” she says. “I’ve always meant to apologize for going away like that, without saying goodbye. It was very thoughtless of me. But I was too dependent on you, I was letting you try to cure me instead of putting the energy into it myself I just needed to get off somewhere, be alone so I could focus. It was—well, I got a sort of message, you know?”

Charis is amazed. Maybe she’s been misjudging Zenia, all these years. Or maybe Zenia has changed. People can change, they can choose, they can transform themselves. It’s a deep belief of hers. She isn’t sure what to think.

“You didn’t really have cancer,” she says finally. She doesn’t intend it as an accusation. Only she needs to be sure.

“No,” says Zenia. “Not ‘exactly. I was sick, though. It was a spiritual illness. And I’m sick now” She pauses, but when Charis doesn’t ask, she says, “That’s why I’m back here—for the health care system. I couldn’t afford treatment anywhere else. They’ve told me I’m dying. They’ve given me six months.”

“Oh, that’s too bad,” says Charis. She’s looking at Zenia’s edges, to see what colour her light is, but she’s not getting a reading. “Is it cancer?”

“I don’t know if I should tell you,” says Zenia

“It’s okay,” says Charis, because what if Zenia is telling the truth, this time? What if she really is dying? She does have a greyish tinge, around the eyes. The least Charis can do is listen:

“Well, actually, I’ve got AIDS,” says Zenia and sighs. “It’s really stupid. I had a bad habit, a few years back. I got it off a dirty needle.”

Charis gasps. This is terrible! What about Larry-then? Win he get AIDS, too? Roz! Roz! Come quickly! But what could Roz do?

“I wouldn’t mind spending a little time, somewhere peaceful,” says Zenia. ‘Just to get my head in order, before, you know. Some place like the Island:’

Charis feels the familiar tug, the old temptation. Maybe there’s no hope for Zenia’s body, but the body isn’t the only factor. She could have Zenia over to stay with her, the way she did before. She could help her to move towards the transition, she could put light around her, they could meditate together ...

“Or maybe I’ll just check myself out,” says Zenia softly. “Pills or something. I’m doomed anyway. I mean, why wait around?” In Charis’s throat the familiar sentiments bubble up. Oh no, you must try, you must try for the positive ... She opens her mouth to issue the invitation, Yes, come, but something stops her. It’s the look Zenia is giving her: an intent look, head on one side. A bird eyeing a worm.

“Why did you pretend to me, about the cancer?” she says. Zenia laughs. She sits up briskly. She must know that she’s lost, she must know that Charis won’t believe her, about having AIDS. “Okay,” she says. “We might as well get this over. Let’s just say I wanted you to let me into your house, and it seemed the quickest way.”

“That was mean,” says Charis. “I believed you! I was very concerned about you! I tried to save you!”

“Yes,” says Zenia cheerfully. “But don’t worry, I suffered too. If I’d had to drink one more glass of that foul cabbage juice it would’ve finished me off. You know what I did when I hit the mainland? First chance I got, I went out and had a big plate of fries and a nice raw juicy steak. I would’ve inhaled it, I was so starved for red meat!”

“But you really were sick, with something,” Charis says hopefully. Auras don’t lie, and Zenia’s was diseased. Also, she doesn’t want to think that every single one of those vegetables went to waste.

“There’s a trick you ought to know about,” says Zenia. “Just cut out all the vitamin C from your diet and you get the early symptoms of scurvy. Nobody’s expecting scurvy, not in the twentieth century, so they don’t spot it:”

“But I fed you lots of vitamin C!” says Charis.

“Try sticking your finger down your throat,” says Zenia. “Works wonders.”

“But why?” says Charis helplessly. ‘Why did you?” She feels so defrauded—defrauded of her own goodness, her own willingness to be of service. Such a fool.

“Because of Billy, naturally,” Zenia says. “Nothing personal, you were merely the means I wanted to get close to him.”

“Because you were in love with him?” says Charis. At least that would be understandable, at least there would be something positive about it, because love is a positive force. She can understand being in love with Billy.

Zenia laughs. “You are such a dipstick romantic,” she says. “By your age you ought to know better. No, I was not in love with Billy, though the sex was fun:”

“Fun?” says Charis. In her experience, sex was never fun. It was either nothing, or it was painful; or it was overwhelming, it put you at risk; which is why she’s avoided it all these years. But not fun.

“Yeah, it may come as a surprise,” says Zenia, “that some people think it’s fun. Not you, I realize that. From what Billy said, you wouldn’t know fun ifyou fell over it. He was so hungry for a little good sex that he jumped me almost as soon as I walked into that pathetic shack of yours. What do you think we were doing when you were over on the mainland teaching that tedious yoga class? Or when you were downstairs cooking our breakfasts, or outside feeding those brain-damaged hens?”

Charis knows she must not cry. Zenia may have been sex, but Charis was love, for Billy. “Billy loved me,” she says uncertainly. Zenia smiles. Her energy level is up now, her body’s humming like a broken toaster. “Billy didn’t love you,” she says. “Wake up! You were a free meal-ticket! He was eating off you even though he had money of his own; he was peddling hash, but I guess that one went right past you. He thought you were a cow, if you must know. He thought you were so stupid you’d give birth to an idiot. He thought you were a stunned cunt, to be exact.”

“Billy would never say a thing like that,” says Charis. She feels as if a net of hot sharp wires is being pulled tight around her, the hairline burns cutting into her skin.

“He thought having sex with you was like porking a turnip,” Zenia goes on relentlessly. “Now listen to me, Charis. This is for your own good. I know you, and I can guess how you’ve been spending your time. Dressing up in hair shirts. Playing hermits. Mooning around after Billy. He’s just an excuse for you; he lets you avoid your life. Give him up. Forget about him.”

“I can’t forget about him,” says Charis in a tiny voice. How can she just sit here and let Zenia tear Billy to shreds? The memory of Billy. If that goes, what does she have left of all that time? Nothing. A void.

“Read my lips, he wasn’t worth it,” says Zenia. She sounds exasperated. “You know what I was really there for? To turn him around. And, believe me, he was easy to turn.”

“Turn?” says Charis. She can hardly concentrate; she feels as if she’s being slapped in the face, on one side of the face and then the other. Turn the other cheek. But how often?

“Turn, as in turncoat,” says Zenia, explaining as if to a child. “Billy turned informer. He went back to the States and ratted on all his incendiary-minded little friends, the ones who were still there:”

,

“I don’t believe you,” says Charis.

“I don’t care whether you believe me or not,” says Zenia. “It’s true, all the same. He traded his pals in to get himself off the hook and make a bit of cash. They paid him off with a new identity and a sordid little job as a third-rate spy. He wasn’t very good at it, though. Last time I ran into him, in Baltimore or somewhere, he was pretty disillusioned. A broken-down acidhead and whining drunk, and bald as well:”

“You did that to him,” Charis whispers. “You ruined him.” Golden Billy.

“Bullshit,” says Zenia. “That’s what he said, but I hardly twisted his arm! I just told him the choices. Billy’s choice was either that, or something quite a lot worse. In the real world most people choose to save their own skins. It’s something you can count on, nine times out of ten.”

“You were with the Mounties,” says Charis. This is the hardest thing to believe—it’s so incongruous. Zenia on the side of law and order.

“Not quite,” says Zenia. “I’ve always been a free agent. Billy was just a sort of opportunity I saw. Those sanctimonious liberal help-a-dodger groups were infiltrated up to their armpits, and I had connections so I got a peek at the files. I remembered you from McClung Hall—they had a file on you, too, you know, though I told them why waste the paper, not to mention the taxpayers’ hard-earned money, it was like having a file on ajar of jelly—and I was counting on it that you’d remember me. It wasn’t hard to get myself a black eye and turn up in your yoga class. Hell, you did the rest! Now, if you don’t mind, I have to get dressed, I’ve got things to do. Billy lives in Washington, by the way. If you want to stage a joyful reunion with him and his long-lost daughter, I’d be happy to give you his address:’

“I don’t think so,” says Charis. Her legs are shaking; she’s afraid, for a minute, to stand up. Billy lies shattered in her head. Wipe the tape, she tells herself, but the tape won’t wipe. She realizes that she has no weapons, no weapons that will work against Zenia. All Charis has on her side is a wish to be good, and goodness is an absence, it’s the absence of evil; whereas Zenia has the real story.

Zenia shrugs. “Up to you,” she says. “If I were you, I’d scratch him right off my list.”

“I don’t think I can,” says Charis.

“Suit yourself,” says Zenia. She stands up and walks to the closet and starts checking through her dresses.

There is one more thing Charis wants to know, and she summons all of her strength to ask it. “Why did you kill my chickens?” she says. “They weren’t hurting anyone:”

“I did not kill your fucking chickens,” says Zenia, turning around. She sounds amused. “Billy killed them. He enjoyed—doing it, too. Tiptoed out before dawn when you were still in dreamland, and slit their throats with the bread knife. Said it was doing them a favour, the way you kept them in that filthy hen slum of yours. But the truth is, he hated them. Not only that, he had a good laugh, thinking about you going into the henhouse and finding them: Sort of like a practical joke. He got a kick out of that.”

Inside Charis, something breaks. Rage takes her over. She wants to squeeze Zenia, squeeze her and squeeze her by the neck until Charis’s life, her own life that she has imagined, all of the good things about her life that Zenia has drunk, come welling out like water from a sponge. The violence of her own reaction dismays her but she’s lost control. She feels her body filled and surrounded with a white-hot light; wings of flame shoot out from her.

Then she is over behind the flowered drapes, near the door to the balcony, outside her own body, watching. The body stands there. Someone else is in charge of it now. It’s Karen. Charis can see her, a dark core, a shadow, with long raggedy hair, grown big now, grown huge. She’s been waiting all the time, all these years, for a moment like this, a moment when she could get back into Charis’s body and use it to murder. She moves Charis’s hands towards Zenia, her hands that flicker with a blue light; she is irresistibly strong, she rushes at Zenia like a silent wind, she pushes her backwards, right through the balcony door, and broken glass scatters like ice. Zenia is purple and red and flashing like jewels but she is no match for shadowy Karen. She lifts Zenia up—Zenia is light, she’s hollow, she’s riddled with disease and rotten, she’s insubstantial as paper—and throws her over the balcony railing; she watches her flutter down, down from the tower, and hit the edge of the fountain, and burst like an old squash. Hidden behind the flowered drapes, Charis calls plaintively: No! No! Not bloodshed, not the dogs eating the pieces in the courtyard, she doesn’t want that. Does she?

“Anyway, it’s all ancient history,” says Zenia conversationally. Charis is back in her own body, she’s in control of it, she’s moving it towards the door. Nothing has happened after all. Surely nothing has happened. She turns and looks at Zenia. Black lines are radiating out from her, like the filaments of a spider web. No. Black lines are converging on her, targeting her; soon she will be ensnarled. In the centre of them her soul flutters, a pale moth. She does have a soul after all.

Charis gathers up all her strength, all her inner light; she calls on it for what she has to do, because it will take a lot of effort. Whatever Zenia has done, however evil she has been, she needs help. She needs help from Charis, on the spiritual plane.

Charis’s mouth opens. “I forgive you,” is what she hears herself saying.

Zenia laughs angrily. “Who do you think you are?” she says. “Why should I give a flying fuck whether you forgive me or not? Stuff your forgiveness! Get a man! Get a life!”

Charis sees her life the way Zenia must see it: an empty cardboard box, overturned by the side of the road, with nobody in it. Nobody worth mentioning. This is somehow the most hurtful thing of all.

She invokes her amethyst geode, closes her eyes, sees crystal. “I have a life,” she says. She straightens her shoulders and turns the doorknob, holding back tears.

Not until she is walking unsteadily across the lobby towards the front door does it cross Charis’s mind that maybe Zenia was lying. Maybe she was lying about Billy, about the chickens, about everything. She has lied to Charis before, and just as convincingly. Why wouldn’t she be doing it now?

LIII

Roz leans sideways and gives Charis a one-armed hug. “Of course she was lying,” she says. “Billy wouldn’t say such a thing.” What does she know from Billy? Not a shred, she never met him, but she’s willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, because what does it cost, and anyway she wants to lighten things up. “Zenia’s just malicious. She says stuff like that just for the heck of it. She only wanted to bother you:”

“But why?” says Charis, on the verge of tears. “Why would she, why did she say that? She was so negative. It really hurt. Now I don’t know what to think.”

—V’rs okay, babe,” says Roz, giving Charis another squeeze. “The heck with her! We won’t invite her to our birthday parties; will we?”

“For heaven’s sake,” says Tony, because Roz always goes too far and Tony is finding this scene much too infantile for her taste. “This is critical!”

“Yes,” says Roz, getting a grip, “I know it is.”

“I do have a life,” says Charis, blinking wet eyes.

“You have a rich inner life,” says Tony firmly. “More than most:” She digs into her bag, finds a crumpled tissue, hands it to Charis. Charis blows her nose.

“Now, here’s me,” says Roz. “Ms. Mature Fuller Figure meets the Queen of the Night. On the enjoyment scale, it didn’t get ten out of ten.”

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.”

“With other women,” says Roz firmly. “Well, this woman put up with it for the sake of the kids, and anyway these things never lasted long because the other women were just wind-up sex toys, or that’s what the man kept saying. According to him our heroine was the real thing, the apple of his eyes, the fire in his fireplace, and so on. Then one day, along comes this bimbo—excuse me, this person about the same age as the woman in question, only, I have to admit it, quite a lot better-looking; though between you and me and the doorpost her tits were fake.”

“She walks in beaury, like the blight,” says Boyce with sympathy. “Byron:”

“Exactly,” says Roz. “She was smart, as well, but if she was a guy you’d have to call her a prick. I mean, there is no female name for it, because bitch doesn’t even begin to cover it! She tells some story about being a half-Jewish war orphan rescued from the Nazis, and our heroine, who is all heart, falls for it and gets her a job; and Ms. Dirigible-chest pretends to be our pal’s grateful buddy, and gives the husband the cold shoulder, implying by her body language that she finds him less attractive than a lawn dwarf; which turned out to be the ultimate truth, in the end.

“Meanwhile our two girl chums have a lot of cosy networking lunches together, discussing world affairs and the state of the business. Then the lady starts having it off with Mr. Susceptible, behind Ms. Numskull’s back. For Ms. Lollapalooza it’s just a thing—worse, a tactic—but for him it’s the real item, the grand passion at last. I don’t know how she did it, but she did. Considering it was him, and thousands before her had failed, she was nothing short of brilliant:”

“Genius is an infinite capacity for causing pain,” says Boyce sombrely.

“Right,” says Roz. “So she cons everyone into putting her in charge of the business in question, which is a medium-hefty enterprise, and before you know it she’s moved in with Mr. Sticky Fingers, and they’re living together in the Designer Lovenest of the Year, leaving the wee missus to gnaw her stricken little heart out, which she does. But passion wanes, on Vampira’s part, not his, when he finds out she’s been having nooners with some stud on a motorcycle and fusses up about it. So she forges a few cheques—using his signature, copied no doubt from countless drool-covered mash notes—and disappears with the cash. Does that cool his ardour? Do chickens have tits? He goes raving off after her as if his pants were plugged into the light socket.”

“I know the plot,” says Boyce. “Happens in all walks of life.”

“Ms. Lightfmgers disappears,” says Roz, “but next thing you know, she turns up in a metal soup can. Seems she’s met with a nasty accident, and now she’s cat food. She gets planted in the cemetery, not that I—not that my friend shed any tears—and Mr. Sorrowful comes creeping back to wee wifey, who stands on her hind legs and refuses to take him in. Well, can you blame her? I mean, enough is enough. So, instead of getting his head shrunk, which was long overdue, or picking up some new little sex gadget, as he has done many times before, what does he do? He’s dying of love, not for Mrs. Domestic but for Ms. Fiery Loins. So he goes out on his boat in a hurricane and gets himself drowned. Maybe he even jumped. Who knows?”

“A waste,” says Boyce. “Bodies are so much nicer alive:”

“There’s more,” says Roz. “It turns out this woman wasn’t dead after all. She was just fooling. She turns up again, and this time she gets her hooks into the only son—the one and only well-beloved son—I mean, can you imagine? She must be fifty! She gets her hooks into the son of the woman she ripped off and the man she as good as killed!”

“This is turgid,” Boyce murmurs.

“Listen, I didn’t write the plot,” says Roz. “I’m just telling you, and a literary criticism I don’t need. What I want to know is—what would you do?”

“You’re asking me?” Boyce says. “What would I do? First, I’d make sure she was really a woman. It could be a man in a dress:”

“Boyce, this is serious,” says IZoz.

“I am serious,” says Boyce. “But what you really mean is, what should you do. Right?”

“In a word,” says Roz.

“Obsession is the better part of valour,” says Boyce:’”Shakespeare.”

“Meaning?”

“You’ll have to go and see her,” Boyce sighs. “Have it out. Oh Roz, thou art sick. Have a scene. Shout and yell. Tell her what you think of her. Clear the, air; believe me, it’s necessary. Otherwise, the invisible worm that flies in the storm will find out thy bed of crimson joy, and its dark secret love will thy life destroy. Blake.”

“I guess so,” says Roz. “I just don’t trust myself, is all. Boyce, what is a tenterhook?”

“A wooden frame covered with hooks, on which cloth was stretched for drying,” says Boyce.

“Not a lot of help,” says Roz. “Though true,” says Boyce.

Roz sets out for the Arnold Garden Hotel. She takes a taxi because she’s too keyed up to drive. She doesn’t even need to ask at the desk, which is clogged with what look to her like travelling salesmen; she just quick-steps through the deplorable lobby, with its tawdry retro leather sofas and Canadian Woman spraypaint-it-yourself tacky flower arrangement circa 1984, and the view of the tatty little patio and City Hall Modern cement fountain visible through the glass doors, this is to garden as prepackaged microwave meals are to food, and straight into the plastic-leather-padded elevator.

All the time she’s rehearsing: Wasn’t one enough? You gonna kill my son, too? Get your claws o my child! She feels like a tigress, defending her young. Or this is what tigresses are rumoured to do. I’ll huff and I’ll puff, she roars inwardly, and I’ll blow your house down!

Except that Zenia was never much of a one for houses. Only for breaking into them.

At the back of her mind is another scenario: what happens when Larry finds out what she’s done? He is, after all, twentytwo. That’s well over the age of consent. If he wants to screw cheerleaders or St. Bernard dogs or aging vamps like Zenia, what business is it, really, of hers? She pictures his glance of patient, exasperated contempt, and flinches.

Knock, knock, knock, she goes on Zenia’s door. Just making a noise recoups her strength. Open up, you pig, you sow, and let me in!

And clickety-clack, here comes somebody. The door opens a crack. It’s on the chain. “Who is it?” says the smoky voice of Zenia.

“It’s me,” says Roz. “It’s Roz. You might as well let me in, because if you don’t I’m just going to stand here and scream.” Zenia opens the door. She’s dressed to go out, in the same low-cut black dress that Roz remembers from the Toxique. Her face is made up, her hair is loose, waving and coiling and uncoiling itself in restless tendrils around her head. There’s a suitcase open on the bed.

“A suitcase?” says Tony. “I didn’t see any suitcases:”

“Me neither,” says Charis. “Was the room tidy?”

“Fairly tidy,” says Roz. “But this was later in the afternoon. After you were there. Most likely the maid had come:”

“What was in the suitcase?” says Tony. “Was she packing? Maybe she’s planning to leave:”

“It was empty,” says Roz. “I looked.”

“Roz!” says Zenia. “What a surprise! Come on in—you’re looking terrific!”

Roz knows she is not looking terrific: anyway, looking terrific is what people say about women her age who are not actually dead. Zenia, on the other hand, really is looking terrific. Doesn’t she ever age? thinks Roz bitterly. What kind of blood does she drink? Just one wrinkle, just a little one, God; would it be so hard? Tell me again—why do the wicked prosper?

Roz does not beat about the bush. “What do you think you’re up to, having a thing with Larry?” she says. “Don’t you have any, any scruples at all?”

Zenia looks at her. “A thing? What a delicious idea! Did he tell you that?”

“He’s been seen, going into your hotel room. More than once,” says Roz.

Zenia smiles gently. “Seen? Don’t tell me you’ve got that Hungarian following me around again. Roz, why don’t you sit down? Have a drink or something. I never had anything against you personally.” She herself sits demurely down on the flowered sofa, as if there’s nothing at all going on; as if they’re two respectable matrons about to have afternoon tea. “Believe me, Roz. My feelings for Larry are only maternal:”

“What do you mean, maternal?” says Roz. She feels stupid standing up, so she sits in the matching chair. Zenia is hunting for her cigarettes. She—finds the pack, shakes it: empty. “Have one of mine,” says Roz reluctantly.

“Thanks,” says Zenia. “I ran into him by accident, in the Toxique. He remembered me—well, he would, he was—what? fifteen? He wanted to talk to me about his father. So touching! You really haven’t been very forthcoming on that subject with him, have you, Roz? A boy needs to know something about his father; something.good. Don’t you think?”

“So, what exactly have you been telling him?” says Roz suspiciously.

“Nothing but the best,” says Zenia. She lowers her eyes modestly. “I think it’s sometimes in everyone’s best interests to bend the truth a little, don’t you? It doesn’t cost me anything, and poor Larry does seem to want a father he can look up to.”

Roz can hardly believe what she’s hearing. In fact she doesn’t believe it. There must be more, and there is. “Of course, if this situation goes on much longer it might become more complicated,” says Zenia. “I might forget, and tell a little too much of the truth. About what a twisted jerk poor Larry’s father really was.

‘

Roz sees red. She actually sees it, a red haze obscuring her eyes. It’s one thing for her to criticize Mitch, but another thing for Zenia! “You used hirn,” she says. “You cleaned him out, you sucked him dry, then you just threw him away! You’re responsible for his death, you know. He killed himself because of you. I don’t think you’re in any position to stand in judgment.”

“You want to know?” says Zenia. “You really want to know? After I told him it wasn’t going to work out, because he was just too besotted—shit, I could hardly breathe, he was a control freak, I had no life of my own, he wanted to know what I had for breakfast, he wanted to come into the bathroom with me every time I needed to pee, I mean it!—he practically tried to kill me! I had the marks on my neck for weeks; good thing I wasn’t too squeamish to kick him in the nuts, as hard as I could, to make him let go. Then he cried all over me; he wanted the two of us to make some stupid suicide pact, so we could be together in death! Oh, fun! Fuck that, I told him! So don’t blame me. I wash my hands:’

Roz can’t stand hearing this, she can’t stand it! Poor Mitch, reduced to that. An abject groveller.—“You could have helped him,” she said. “He needed help!” Roz could have helped him too, of course. She would have, if she’d known. Wouldn’t she?

“Don’t be a priss,” says Zenia. “You should give me a medal for getting him off your back. Mitch was a sick lech. What he wanted out of me was sexual twist—he wanted to be tied up, he wanted me to dress up in leather underwear, and other stuff, stuff he would never ask you to do because he thought you were his angel wife. Men get like that after a certain age, but this was too much. I can’t tell you the half of it, it was so ridiculous!”

“You led him on,” says Roz, who wants by this time to run out of the room. It’s too humiliating for Mitch. It shrinks him too much. It’s too painful.

“Women like you make me sick,” says Zenia angrily. “You’ve always owned things. But you didn’t own him, you know. He wasn’t your God-given property! You think you had rights in him’ Nobody has any rights except what they can get!”

Roz takes a deep breath. Lose her temper and she loses the fight. “Maybe,” she says. “But that doesn’t alter the fact that you ate him for breakfast:”

“The trouble with you, Roz,” says Zenia, more gently, “is that you never gave the man any credit. You always saw him as a victim of women, just putty in their hands. You babied him.

Did it ever occur to you that Mitch was responsible for his actions? He made his own decisions, and maybe those decisions didn’t have much to do with me, or with you either. Mitch did what he wanted to do. He took his chances.”

“You stacked the deck,” says Roz.

“Oh please,” says Zenia. “It takes two to tango. But why fight about Mitch? Mitch is dead. Let’s get back to the main issue. I have a proposition for you: perhaps, for Larry’s sake, I should leave town. Larry wouldn’t be the only reason—I’ll be frank with you, Roz, I need to leave town anyway. I’m in some danger here, so I’m asking you for old times’ sake as well. But I can’t afford it right now; I won’t hide from you that things are getting very tight. I’d go like a shot if I only had, say, a plane ticket and some pocket money.”

“You’re trying to blackmail me,” says Roz.

“Let’s not call names,” says Zenia. “I’m sure you see the logic.”

Roz hesitates. Should she buy it, should she buy Zenia off? And what if she doesn’t? What exactly is the threat? Larry is no longer a child; there’s a lot he must have guessed, about Mitch. “I don’t think so,” she says slowly. “I have a better proposition. How about you leave town anyway? I could still get you for embezzlement, you know. And there is this thing about chequeforging.”

Zenia frowns. “Money is too important to you, Roz:’ she says. “What I was really offering you was protection for yourself. Not for Larry. But you aren’t worth protecting. Here’s the real truth, then. Yes, I’m screwing Larry, but that’s just a sideshow. Larry isn’t primarily my lover, Larry is primarily my pusher. I’m surprised your inept private dick didn’t figure that out, and I’m truly surprised you haven’t figured it out yourself. You may not be pretty, but you used to be smart. Your mama’s boy has been inflating his flat little ego by doing a brisk trade in coke, the recreational yuppie drug-of-choice. He’s dealing, he’s retailing to his well-heeled friends. He’s been sampling the product pretty heavily too—you’ll be lucky if he ends up with a nose. What do you think he does at the Toxique, night after night? The place is notorious! He’s not doing it just for the money—he enjoys it! And you know what he enjoys most of all? Sneaking around behind your back! Pulling a fast one on Mom! Like father, like son. That boy has a problem, Roz, and his problem is you!”

Roz has gone limp. She doesn’t want to believe any of this, but parts of it ring true. She remembers the envelope of white powder she found, she remembers Larry’s secrecies, the blanks in his life that she can’t fill in, and her fear comes flooding back, with a big helping of guilt added in. Has she been overprotective? Is Larry trying to escape from her? Is she a devouring mother? Worse: is Larry a hopeless addict?

“So I’d think twice, if I were you,” says Zenia. “Because if you won’t pay for information, there are people who will. I think it would make a nice headline, don’t you? Son of Prominent Citizen jailed in Hotel Drug Bust. Nothing would be easier for me to arrange. Larry trusts me. He thinks I need him. All I have to do is whistle and your sonny-boy comes running with his pockets full. He’s really cute, you know. He’s got cute buns. He’ll be appreciated in the slammer. What do they give them now? Ten years?”

Roz is stupefied; she can’t take it all in. She gets up out of her chair and walks to the window, to the French doors leading onto the balcony. From here she can see a new-moon sliver of the fountain, down below. It hasn’t been drained yet; brown dead leaves are floating in it. Most likely the hotel has a staff shortage, because of the Recession. “I need to talk to him,” she says.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” says Zenia. “He’ll panic, he’ll do something rash. He’s an amateur, he’ll give himself away. And right now he owes his suppliers quite a lot of money. I know who they are and they aren’t nice people. They won’t like it if he flushes the stuff down the toilet. They won’t get paid, and as a rule they react badly to that. They don’t like it either if people get caught and then talk about them. They don’t fool around. Your boy Larry could get his fingers burned. Actually, he could end up in a ditch somewhere, minus a few parts:’

This can’t be happening, thinks Roz. Sweet, serious Larry, in his boy’s room with the school trophies and the pictures of boats? Zenia is a liar, she reminds herself. But she can’t afford to dismiss her story, because what if—for once—it’s true? ,

The thought of Larry dead is too much to bear. She would never survive it. This thought is lodged like a splinter of ice in her heart; at the same time she feels as if she’s been teleported into some horrible daytime soap, with hidden iniquities and sinister intrigues and bad camera angles.

She could sneak up behind Zenia, bop her on the head with a lamp or something. Tie her up with pantyhose. Make it look like a sex killing. She’s read enough trashy novels like that, and God knows it would be plausible, it’s just the kind of sordid ending a woman like Zenia deserves. She populates the room with detectives; cigar-smoking detectives dusting the furniture for fingerprints, fingerprints she will have taken care to wipe away ...

“I don’t have my chequebook with me,” she says. “It’ll have to be tomorrow”

“Make it cash,” says Zenia. “Fifty thousand, and that’s a bargain; if it wasn’t a recession I’d ask double. Small old bills, please; you can send it by courier, before noon. Not here though, I’ll call you in the morning and tell you where. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m in a bit of a hurry.”

Roz takes the elevator down. All of a sudden she has a crashing headache, and on top of that she feels ill. It’s the fear and anger, churning around inside her like a salmonella dinner. So, God, is this my fault or what? Is this the double-cross I have to bear? So you gave with one hand and now you’re taking away with the other? Or maybe you think it’s a joke! It occurs to her, not for the first time, that if everything is part of the Divine Plan then God must have one heck of a warped sense of humour.

LIv

“What’re you going to do?” says Tony.

“Pay up,” says Roz. “What are my options? Anyway, it’s only money.”

“You could talk to Larry,” says Tony. “After all, Zenia lies her head off. She could be making it all up.”

“First I’ll pay,” says Roz. “Then Zenia will take a plane. Then I’ll talk to Larry. “ It strikes her that Tony doesn’t always get it, about kids. Even five per cent true would be too much; she can’t take the risk.

“But what are we going to do about her?” says Charis. “About Zenia?” says Roz. “After tomorrow she’ll be somewhere else. Personally I would like her permanently removed, like a wart. But I don’t see that happening.” She’s lighting another cigarette, from the candle in its red glass holder. Charis gives a timid cough and flaps a hand at the smoke.

“I don’t see,” says Tony slowly, “that there’s anything we can’ do about her. We can’t make her vanish. Even if she does go, she’ll be back if she wants to come back. She’s a given. She’s just there, like the weather.

“Maybe we should give thanks,” says Charis. “And ask for help:” Roz laughs. “Thanks for what? Thank you, God, for creating Zenia? Only next time don’t bother?”

“No,” says Charis. “Because she’s going away, and we’re still all right. Aren’t we? None of us gave in:” She’s not sure exactly how to put it. What she means is, they were tempted, each one of them, but they didn’t succumb. Succumbing would have been killing Zenia, either physically or spiritually. And killing Zenia would have meant turning into Zenia. Another way of succumbing would be believing her, letting her in the door, letting her take them in, letting her tear them apart. They did get torn apart some, but that was because they didn’t do what Zenia wanted. “What I mean is ...”

“I think I know what you mean,” says Tony.

“Right,” says Roz. “So, let’s give thanks. I’m always in favour of that. Who’re we thanking and what do we do?”

“A libation,” says Charis. “We’ve got everything here for it, even the candle.” She lifts her wineglass, in which there’s an inch of white wine left, and pours a thimbleful onto the pink remains of her Assorted Sorbets. Then she bows her head and closes her eyes briefly. “I asked for help,” she says. “For all of us. Now you.” She also asked for forgiveness, for all of them too. She feels this is right, but she can’t say why, so she doesn’t mention it.

“I’m not sure about this,” says Roz. She can see the need for a celebration, touch wood it’s not premature, but she’d like to know which God is being invoked here—or rather which version of God—so she can guard against lightning strikes by any of the others. But she pours. So does Tony, smiling a little tensely, her bite-your-tongue smile. If this were three hundred years ago, she thinks, we’d all be burned at the stake. Zenia first, though. Without a doubt, Zenia first.

“That’s all?” she says.

“I like to sprinkle a little salt, into the candle flame,” says Charis, sprinkling it.

“I just hope nobody’s watching,” says Roz. “I mean, how long before we are three genuine certified batty old crones?” She’s feeling slightly light-headed; maybe it’s the codeine pills she took for her headache.

“Don’t look now,” says Tony.

“Crones is not so bad,” says Charis. “Age is just attitude.” She’s staring dreamily at the candle.

“Tell that to my gynecologist, “ says Roz. “You just want to be a crone so you can mix potions.”

“She already mixes them,” says Tony.

Suddenly Charis sits up straight in her chair. Her eyes widen. Her hand goes over her mouth.

“Charis?” says Roz. “What is it, sweetie?”

“Oh my God,” says Charis.

“Is she choking?” says Tony. Possibly Charis is having a heart attack, or a fit of some kind. “Hit her on the back!”

“No, no,” says Charis. “It’s Zenia! She’s dead!”

“What?” says Roz.

“How do you know?” says Tony.

“I saw it in the candle,” says Charis. “I saw her falling. She was falling, into water. I saw it! She’s dead:” Charis begins to cry. “Honey, are you sure that wasn’t just wishful thinking?” says Roz gently. But Charis is too absorbed in her grief to hear.

“Come on,” says Tony. “We’ll go to the hotel. We’ll check. Otherwise,” she says to Roz, over the top of Charis’s head, which is bowed into her hands now and swaying back and forth, “none of us is going to get a decent night’s sleep:” This is true: Charis will worry about Zenia being dead, and Tony and Roz will worry about Charis. It’s worth a short car ride to avoid that.

As they get their coats on, as Roz settles the bill, Charis continues to sob quietly. Partly it’s the shock; the whole day has been a shock, and this an even bigger shock. But partly it’s because she saw more than she’s told. She didn’t only see Zenia falling, a dark shape turning over and over, the hair spreading like feathers, the rainbow of her life twisting up out of her like grey gauze, Zenia shrinking to blackout. She also saw someone pushing her. Someone pushed Zenia, over the edge.

Although she couldn’t see it clearly, she thinks she knows who that person was. It was Karen, who was left behind somehow; who stayed hidden in Zenia’s room; who waited until Zenia had opened the door onto the balcony and then came up behind her and shoved her off. Karen has murdered Zenia, and it’s Charis’s fault for holding Karen away, separate from herself, for trying to keep her outside, for not taking her in, and Charis’s tears are tears of guilt.

That is just one way of putting it, of course. What Charis means, she explains to herself, is that she wished Zenia dead. And now Zenia is dead. A spiritual act and a physical one are the same, from the moral point of view. Karen-Charis is a murderer. She has blood on her hands. She’s unclean.

They go in Roz’s car, the smaller one. There is some delay while Roz tries to find someone to park the car; as Roz complains to the man who is finally provided, the Arnold Garden is not exactly Johnny-on-the-spot when it comes to service. Then the three of them walk into the lobby. Charis has pulled herself together by now, and Tony has a steadying hand on her arm. “She’s in the fountain,” Charis whispers.

“Shh,” says Tony. “We’ll see in a minute. Let Roz do the talking.”

“I was here this afternoon, checking out your hotel as a convention possibility, and I think I left my gloves,” says Roz. She’s decided it would he a mistake to say they are looking for Zenia, on the outside chance that Charis may be right; not that Roz believes it for an instant, but still. Anyway, if they call the room and there’s no answer, what would it prove? Nothing about death. Zenia could have checked out.

“Who were you talking to?” says the woman behind the counter.

“Oh, this was just preliminary,” says Roz. “I think I left them out there in the courtyard. On the edge of the fountain:”

“We keep that door locked at this time of year,” says the woman.

“Well, it wasn’t locked this afternoon,” says Roz belligerently, “so I just had a look around. It’s such a nice patio for cocktails, out by the fountain, is what I thought. That would be in June. Here’s my card:’

The card has an improving effect. “All right, Ms. Andrews, I’ll have that unlocked for you right away,” says the woman. “As a matter of fact we often use it for cocktails. We could do a buffet lunch out there for you, too; in the summer there’s tables:” She motions to the concierge.

“And could you have the outside lights turned on?” says Roz. “I might have dropped my gloves in the fountain. Or they could’ve blown in:”

Roz’s idea is to have the whole place lit up like a Christmas tree so Charis will be able to see as plain as day that Zenia is nowhere in view. The three of them go out through the glass patio door and stand together, waiting for illumination. “It’s all right, honey, there’s nothing,” Roz whispers to Charis.

But when the lights go on, big floodlights from above and also from under the water, there is Zenia, floating face down among the dead leaves, her hair spread out like seaweed.

“My God,” Tony whispers. Roz stifles a scream. Charis doesn’t make a sound. Time has folded in upon itself, the prophecy has come true. But there are no dogs. Then it comes to her. We are the dogs, licking her blood. In the courtyard, the Jezebel blood. She thinks she is going to be sick.

“Don’t touch her,” says Tony, but Charis needs to. She reaches forward, reaches down and tugs, and Zenia revolves slowly, and looks straight at them with her white mermaid eyes.

Lv

She isn’t really looking though, because she can’t. Her eyes are rolled back into her head: that’s why they’re blank, like fish eyes. She’s been dead for several hours, or at least that’s what the police say when they arrive.

The hotel people are very worried. A dead woman in their fountain is not the kind of publicity they need, especially with business down the way it is. They seem to think it’s all Roz’s fault for suggesting that the lights be turned on, as if this is what caused Zenia to materialize in the fountain. But as Roz points out to the concierge, daylight would have been worse: hotel guests would be having breakfast in their rooms, going out, on the balcony for a little fresh air and a cigarette, looking down, and you can imagine the uproar then.

Because they were the ones who found the body, Tony and Roz and Charis have to wait around. They have to answer questions. Roz grabs hold of the conversation and quickly sticks in her story about the gloves; it would not be at all wise to tell the police that they’d rushed over to the Arnold Garden Hotel because Charis saw a vision while staring into a candle. Roz has read enough detective novels to know that such a story would immediately cast suspicion on Charis. Not only would the police think she’s a nutbar—well, objectively speaking, Roz can see it—but they’d also think she’s a nutbar capable of shoving Zenia off the balcony herself, and then having amnesia, followed by an attack of psychedelic vision-producing guilt.

At the back of Roz’s mind there’s a sliver of suspicion: maybe they’d be right. There was enough time for Charis to come back to the hotel before turning up at the Toxique for dinner. She could have done it. So could Tony, who has been frank about her murderous intentions. So could Roz herself, for that matter. No doubt the fingerprints of the three of them are all over the room.

Maybe it was someone they don’t even know, some stranger, one of those pursuing gunrunners or whatever, in that yarn Zenia fobbed off on Tony. But Roz doesn’t credit that. Instead, there’s a worse possibility, much worse: it might have been Larry. If what Zenia said was true, he would have had a good motive.

He was never a violent child, he would walk away from the other kids rather than argue; but Zenia could have threatened him in some way. She could have tried to blackmail him. He could have been on drugs. What does Roz really know about Larry, now that he’s grown up? She needs to get home as soon as possible and find out what he’s been up to.

Tony has dragged Charis off to one side to keep her out of harm’s way. She just hopes Charis will shut up about her vision, which—Tony has to admit—was accurate enough, though somewhat after the fact. But what really happened? Tony counts the possibilities: Zenia fell, Zenia jumped, Zenia was pushed. Accident, suicide, murder. Tony inclines towards the third: Zenia was killed—surely—by person or persons unknown. Tony’s glad she took her gun home, in case there are bullet holes, although she didn’t see any. She doesn’t think Charis could have done it, because Charis wouldn’t hurt a fly—it being her belief that flies might be inhabited by someone related to you in a previous life—but she’s not that sure about Roz. Roz has a temper, and can be impetuous.

“Did anyone know this woman?” says the policeman. The three of them glance at one another. “Yes,” says Tony. “We all came to see her, earlier today,” says Roz.

Charis starts to cry. “We were her best friends,” she says. Which, thinks Tony, is news to her. But it will have to do for now.

Roz drives Charis to the ferry terminal, and then she drives Tony home. Tony goes up the stairs to West’s study, where he’s plugged into two of his machines via the earphones. She turns off his switch.

“Did Zenia.call here?” she says. “What?” says West. ‘Tony, what is it?”

“This is important,” says Tony. She knows she’s sounding fierce but she can’t help it. “Have you been talking to Zenia?

Has she been here?” She finds the idea of Zenia rolling around on the carpet with West among the synthesizers highly distasteful. No: unbearable.

Maybe, she thinks, West did it. Maybe he went over to Zenia’s hotel room to beg and plead, hoping to run off with her again, and Zenia laughed at him, and West lost it and heaved her off the balcony. If that’s what happened Tony wants to know. She wants to know so she can shield West, think up a watertight alibi for him, save him from himself.

“Oh, yeah,” says West. “She did call, I don’t know—a week ago. But I didn’t talk to her, she just left a message on the machine.”

“What did it say?” says Tony. “Why didn’t you tell me? What did she want?”

“Maybe I should’ve mentioned it,” says West. “But I didn’t want you to get hurt. I mean, we both thought she was dead. I guess I would’ve liked her to stay that way.”

“Really?” says Tony.

“She didn’t want to talk to me,” says West, as if he knows what Tony’s been thinking. ‘‘She wanted you. If I’d had her on the phone in person I would’ve told her to forget it; I knew you wouldn’t want to see her. I did jot it down—where she was staying—but after I thought things over, I threw it out. She’s always been bad news.”

Tony feels herself softening. “I saw her, though,” she says. “I saw her this afternoon. She seemed to know that your study’s on the third floor. How would she know that, if she’s never been here?”

West smiles. “It’s on my answering machine. ‘Third floor, Headwinds: Remember?”

By this time he’s unwired and standing up. Tony goes over to him and he folds himself up like a bridge chair and wraps his knotted-rope arms around her, and kisses her on the forehead. “I like it that you’re jealous,” he says, “but you don’t need to be. She’s nothing, any more:”

Little does he know, thinks Tony. Or else he does know and he’s pretending not to. Squashed up against his torso, she takes a sniff of him, to see if he’s been drinking a lot. If he has, it will be a dead giveaway. But there’s nothing besides the usual mild scent of beer. “Zenia is dead,” she tells West solemnly.

“Oh, Tony,” says West. “Again? I’m really sorry.” He rocks her to and fro as if she’s the one who needs to be consoled, and not him at all.

When Charis gets back to her house, still shaky but under control, there’s a light on in the kitchen. It’s Augusta, taking a long weekend break, paying a visit. Charis is glad to see her, though she wishes she’d had time to tidy up first. She notes that Augusta has washed the dishes from the last couple of days and has done away with a couple of major spider webs, though she’s known better than to disassemble Charis’s meditational altar. She has noted it, however.

“Mom,” she says, after Charis has greeted her and has put on the kettle for bedtime tea, “what’s this chunk of stone and this pile of dirt and leaves doing on the living-room table?”

“It’s a meditation,” says Charis.

“Christ;” Augusta mutters. “Can’t you put it somewhere else?”

“August,” says Charis, a little tersely, “it’s my meditation, and it’s my house.”

“Don’t snap at me!” says August. “And Mom, it’s Augusta. That’s my name now”

Charis knows this. She knows she should respect August’s new name, because everyone has a right to rename herself according to her inner direction. But she chose August’s original name with such love and care. She gave it to her, it was a gift. It’s hard for her to let it go.

“I’ll make you some muffins,” she says, attempting to conciliate. “Tomorrow. The ones with the sunflower seeds. You always liked those.”

“You don’t have to keep giving me stuff, Mom,” says Augusta, in an oddly grown-up voice. “I love you anyway.” Charis feels her eyes watering. Augusta hasn’t said anything this affectionate for some time. And she does find it difficult to believe—that a person would love her even when she isn’t trying. Trying to figure out what other people need, trying to be worthy. “It’s just, I worry about you,” she says. “About your health.” This isn’t really the part of Augusta that worries her, but it stands in for the other, more spiritual things. Though health is a spiritual thing too.

“No kidding,” says Augusta. “Every time I come home you try to stuff me full of veggie burgers. I’m nineteen, Mom, I take care of myself, I eat balanced meals! Why can’t we just have fun? Go for a walk or something.”

It’s unusual for Augusta to want to spend time with Charis. Maybe Augusta isn’t totally hard, not lacquered and shiny all the way through. Maybe she has a soft spot. Maybe she is part Charis, after all.

“Did you mind a lot, not having a father?” Charis asks. “When you were little?” She’s been on the verge of asking this for a long time, although she’s feared the answer because surely it was her fault that Billy had left. If he’d run away it was her fault for not being appealing enough to keep him, if he’d been kidnapped it was her fault for not taking better care of him: Now, though, she has some other possible views of Billy. Whether Zenia was lying or not, maybe it’s just as well Billy didn’t stick around.

“I wish you’d stop feeling so guilty,” says Augusta. “Maybe I minded when I was small, but look around you, Mom, this is the twentieth century! Fathers come and go—a lot of the kids on the Island didn’t have them. I know some people with three or four fathers! I mean, it could have been worse, right?”

Charis looks at Augusta and sees the light around her. It’s a light that’s hard like a mineral and also soft, a glow like the luminosity of a pearl. Inside the layers of light, right at the centre of Augusta, there’s a small wound. It belongs to Augusta, not to Charis; it’s for Augusta to heal.

Charis feels absolved. She puts her hands on Augusta’s shoulders, gently so Augusta will not feel seized, and kisses her on the forehead.

Before she goes to bed, Charis does a meditation on Zenia. She needs to do this, because although she has often thought about Zenia in relation to herself, or to Billy, or even to Tony and Roz, she has never truly considered what Zenia was in and by herself the Zenia-ness of Zenia. She has no object, nothing belonging to Zenia, to focus on, so instead she turns off the lights in the living room and stares out the window, into the darkness, towards the lake. Zenia was sent into her life—was chosen by her—to teach her something. Charis doesn’t know what it was yet, but in time she will uncover it.

She can see Zenia clearly, Zenia lying in the fountain, with her cloudy hair floating. As she watches, time reverses itself and life flows back into Zenia, and she lifts out of the water and flies backwards like a huge bird, up onto the orange balcony. But Charis can’t hold her there, and she falls again; falls down, turning slowly, into her own future. Her future as a dead person, as a person not yet born.

Charis wonders whether Zenia will come back as a human being or as something else. Perhaps the soul breaks up as the body does, and only parts of it are reborn, a fragment here, a fragment there. Perhaps many people will soon be born with a fragment of Zenia in them. But Charis would rather think of her whole.

After a while she turns out the other downstairs lights and goes upstairs. Just before she climbs into her vine-covered bed, she gets out her notebook with the lavender paper and her pen with the green ink, and writes: Zenia has returned to the Light.

She hopes this is so. She hopes that Zenia is not still hovering around, alone and lost, somewhere out there in the night.

After Roz takes Tony home she goes home herself, as fast as she can because she’s worried sick, what if there’s cocaine stashed all over her house, tucked into the tea leaves or the cookie jar in little plastic bags, what if she finds the place full of sniffer dogs and men named Dwayne, who will address her as ma’am and say they are just doing their jobs? She even runs a red light, not a thing she normally does, although everyone else seems to these days. She shucks her coat in the hall, kicks off her shoes, and goes on the hunt for Larry.

The twins are in the family room, watching a rerun of Star Trek.

“Greetings, Earthmom,” says Paula.

“Maybe she isn’t Mom,” says Erin. “Maybe she’s a Replicant. “Hi, kids,” says Roz. “It’s way past your bedtime! Where’s Larry?”

“Erla’s done our homework,” says Erin. “This is our reward:”

“Mom, what’s wrong?” says Paula. “You look like shit.”

“It’s old age,” says Roz. “Is he home?”

“He’s in the kitchen,” says Erin. “We think:”

“Eating bread and honey,” says Paula.

“That’s the Queen, stupid,” says Erin. They giggle.

Larry is sitting on one of the high stools, at the kitchen counter, wearing jeans and a black T-shirt and bare feet, and drinking a bottle of beer. Across from him on another high stool is Boyce, neat in his suit; he’s got a beer, too. When Roz walks into the room they both look up. They both seem equally anxious.

“Hi, Boyce,” says Roz. “What a surprise! Is something wrong at the office?”

“Good evening, Ms. Andrews,” says Boyce. “Not at the office, no:”

“I have something to discuss with Larry, “ says Roz. “If you don’t mind, Boyce:”

“I think Boyce should stay,” says Larry. He looks dejected, as if he’s failed an exam: there must be something to Zenia’s story. But what’s Boyce got to do with it?

“Larry, I’m concerned,” says Roz. “What are you into with Zenia?”

“Who?” Larry says, too innocently. “I need to know,” says Roz.

“I dream of Zenia in her light brown lair,” Boyce murmurs as if to himself.

“She told you?” says Larry.

“About the drugs?” says Roz. “Oh God, it’s true! If you’ve got any drugs in this house, I want them out of here, right now! So you were having a thing with her!”

“Thing?” says Larry.

“Thing, fling, whatever,” says Roz. “Holy Moly, don’t you know how old she was? Don’t you know how vicious she was? Don’t you know what she did to your father?”

“Thing?” says Boyce. “I don’t think so.”

“What drugs?” says Larry.

“It was only a few times,” says Boyce. “He was experimenting. My nose aches, and a drowsy numbness pains my sense. Keats. He’s given it up, as of now—right, Larry?”

“Then you weren’t her dealer?” says Roz. “Mom, it was the other way around,” says Larry.

“But Charis saw you kissing her, right out on the street!” says Roz. She feels very weird, talking this way to her own son. She feels like a snoopy old crock.

“Kissing?” says Larry. “I never kissed her. She was whispering in my ear. She was telling me that we were being followed around by this deranged older woman. Maybe it looked like kissing, to Aunt Charis, because that woman was definitely her.”

“Not kissing, but hissing,” says Boyce. “Like ‘not waving but drowning.’ Stevie Smith.”

“Boyce, shut up for a minute,” says Larry irritably. They seem to know each other quite a lot better than Roz has assumed. She’s thought they’d just met the one time, at the Father-Daughter Dance, and then a few nods at the office, as Larry came and went. Apparently not.

“But you went to her hotel room a lot,” says Roz. “I know it for a fact!”

“It’s not what you think,” says Larry.

“You realize she’s dead?” Roz says, playing her ace. “I just came from there, they just fished her out of the fountain!”

“Dead?” says Boyce. “,’Of what? A self-inflicted snakebite?”

“Who knows?” says Roz. “Maybe somebody threw her off the balcony.”

“Maybe she jumped,” says Boyce. “When lovely woman stoops to folly, and finds too late that men betray, they jump off balconies.”

“I just hope to God you had nothing to do with it,” says Roz; to Larry.

Boyce says quickly, “He couldn’t have, he was nowhere near her tonight. He was with me.”

“I was trying to talk her out of it,” says Larry. “She wanted money. I didn’t have enough, and I could hardly ask you for some.

„

“Talk her out of what? Money for what?” says Roz. She’s almost yelling.

“For not telling you,” says Larry miserably. “I thought I could keep it secret. I didn’t want to make things any worse—I thought you’d been upset enough, because of Dad, and everything.”

“Judas Priest; for not telling me what?” shouts Roz. “You’ll be the death of me!” She sounds exactly like her own mother. All the same, so sweet, Larry trying to protect her. He doesn’t want to come home and find her flopping around on the kitchen floor, the way he did before. “Boyce,” she says, more gently, “have you got a cigarette?”

Boyce, ever prepared, hands her the package and flicks his lighter for her. “I think it’s time,” he says to Larry.

Larry gulps, stares at the floor, looks resigned. “Mom,” he says, gay.”

Roz feels her eyes bugging out like those of a strangled rabbit. Why didn’t she see, why couldn’t she tell, what’s the matter with her anyway? Nicotine grabs at her lungs, she really must quit, and then she coughs, and smoke billows from her mouth, and maybe she’s about to have a premature heart attack! That’s what she’ll do, fall to the floor in a heap and let everyone else deal with this, because it’s way beyond her.

But she sees the distress in Larry’s eyes, and the appeal. No, she can handle it, if she can bite her tongue hard enough. It’s just that she wasn’t prepared. What’s the right thing to say? I love you anyway? You’re still my son? What about my grandchildren?

“But all those bimbos you put me through!” is what she comes out with. She’s got it now: he was trying to please her. Trying to bring home a woman, like some kind of dutiful exam certificate, to show Mom. To show he’d passed.

“A man can but do his best,” says Boyce. “Walter Scott.”

“What about the twins?” Roz whispers. They are at a formative stage; how will she tell them?

“Oh, the twins know,” says Larry, relieved that he’s got at least one corner covered. “They worked it out pretty fast. They say it’s cool.” That figures, thinks Roz: for them, the fences once so firmly in place around the gender corrals are just a bunch of rusty old wire.

“Think of it this way,” says Boyce affectionately. “You’re not losing a son, you’re gaining a son:’

“I’ve decided to go to law school,” says Larry. Now that the worst is over and Roz hasn’t croaked or burst, he looks relieved. “We want you to help us decorate our apartment:”

“Sweetie,” says Roz, taking a deep breath, I’d be glad to.” It’s not that she’s prejudiced, and her own marriage wasn’t such a terrific argument for heterosexuality, and neither was Mitch, and she just wants Larry to be happy, and if this is how he plans to do it, fine, and maybe Boyce will be a good influence and make him pick his clothes up off the floor and keep him out of trouble; but it’s been a long day. Tomorrow she’ll be genuinely warm and accepting. For tonight, hypocrisy will have to do.

“Ms. Andrews, you’re the glass of fashion and the mould of form,” says Boyce.

Roz spreads her hands wide, raises her shoulders, pulls down the, corners of her mouth. “Tell me,” she says. “What are my options?”

Men in overcoats come to visit. They want to know a lot of things about Zenia. Which of her three passports is real, if any. Where she actually came from. What she was doing.

Tony is informative, Charis vague; Roz is careful, because she doesn’t want Larry involved. But she needn’t have worried, because none of these men seems to be the least interested in Larry. What they are interested in is Zenia’s two packed suitcases, left neatly on the bed, one of them with eleven little plastic bags of white powder in them, or so they say. A twelfth bag was open, beside the phone. Not nose candy either: heroin, and ninety per cent pure. They look out from their immobile faces, their eyes like intelligent pebbles, watching for twinges, for hints of guilty knowledge.

They are also interested in the needle found on the balcony, they continue, and. in the fact that Zenia died of an overdose before even hitting the water. Could she have been trying the stuff out, without knowing the unusual strength of what she was buying, or selling? There were track marks on her left arm, although they looked old. According to the overcoats, there have been more and more overdoses like that; someone is flooding the market with high-octane product, and even the experienced aren’t prepared.

There were nobody’s fingerprints on the needle, except Zenia’s, they tell her. As for her swan dive into the fountain, she could have fallen. She was a tall woman, and the sheet-metal balcony railings were really too low for safety; standards should be improved. Such a thing is possible. If she’d been leaning over. On the other hand, the heroin could have been a plant. It might have been murder.

Or it might have been suicide, Tony tells them. She would like them to believe this. She tells them that Zenia may not have been a well person.

Of course, say the men in overcoats politely. We know about that. We found the prescriptions in her suitcase, we traced the doctor. Seems she had a fake health card as well as some fake passports, but the disease itself was real enough. Six months to live: ovarian cancer. But there was no suicide note.

Tony tells them there wouldn’t have been: Zenia was not really the note-writing kind.

The men in overcoats look at her, their small eyes glinting with scepticism. They don’t buy any of these theories, but they don’t have another one, not one that holds water.

Tony sees how it will be: Zenia will prove too smart for the men in overcoats. She will outfox them, just as she’s always outfoxed everyone else. She finds herself being pleased about this, elated even, as if her faith in Zenia—a faith she didn’t realize she had—is being vindicated. Let them sweat! Why should everyone know everything? It’s not as if there are no precedents: history teems with people who died in unclear ways.

Still, she feels honour-bound to report the conversation about Gerry Bull and Project Babylon, although it’s not merely honour that impels her: she hopes very much that if Zenia was murdered it was by professionals, rather than by anyone she knows. The men tell her they are retracing Zenia’s steps, as best they can, via her plane tickets; she has certainly been in some very odd places in the last little while. But there’s nothing conclusive. They shake hands and depart, asking Tony to call them if she hears anything else. She says she will.

She’s left facing the unlikely possibility that all three of Zenia’s most recent stories—or parts of them, at least—may have been true. What if Zenia’s cries for help really were cries for help, this time?

After the police are finished there is a cremation. Roz pays for it, because when she tracks down the lawyer, the one who arranged Zenia’s funeral the first time around, he is quite annoyed. He takes it as a personal slight that Zenia has chosen to be alive all this time without consulting him about it. Her will was probated the first time around, not that there was anything to probate because she didn’t leave an estate, only a small bequest to an orphanage near Waterloo that turned out not to exist any more, and on top of that he never got paid. So what do they expect from him?

“Nothing,” says Roz. “It will all be taken care of.”

“Well, what about it?” she says to Tony and Charis. “Looks like we got left holding the sack. She doesn’t seem to have any relatives.”

“Except us,” says Charis.

Tony sees no point in contradicting her, because it is Charis’s belief that everyone is related to everyone else through some kind of invisible root system. She says she will take charge of the ashes until the three of them can figure out something more suitable. She puts the canister with Zenia in it down in the cellar, in her box of Christmas tree decorations, wrapped up in red tissue paper, beside the gun: She doesn’t tell West it is there, because this is a female matter.