The Robber Bride (64 page)

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. Kitchen-waste corn-posters 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 brown-paper 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. “Fourteen-oh-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?