"They're fine."
"Total recovery?"
"It looks that way."
"I wonder why she healed you after all this time?"
"I don't care. I'm just grateful."
"Zabrina said she saw you out walking."
"I go to see Luman every couple of days. He's got it into his head that we should collaborate on a book when I'm finished with this."
"About what?"
"Madhouses."
"What a bright little sunbeam he is. Ah! I know! This is Alice." She tossed the book of matches into the air and caught it again. "Alice the blonde. She lives in Raleigh."
"That's a very dirty look you've got in your eyes," I observed.
"Alice is adorable. I mean, really… sumptuous." She picked a piece of tobacco from her teeth. "You should come out with me one of these days. We'll go drinking. I can introduce you to the girls."
"I think I'd be uncomfortable."
"Why? Nobody's going to make a pass at you, not in an all-girl bar."
"I couldn't."
"You will." She pointed the wet end of her cigar at me. "I'm going to get you out enjoying yourself." She pocketed the book of matches. "Maybe I'll introduce you to Alice."
Of course she left me in a stew of insecurity. My mood now perfectly foul, I retired to the kitchen, to eat my sorrows away. It was a little before one in the morning; Dwight had long since retired to bed. L'Enfant was quiet. It was a little stuffy, so I opened the windows over the sink. There was a light breeze, which was very welcome, and I stood at the sink for a few moments to let it cool my face. Then I went to the refrigerator and began to prepare a glutton's sandwich: several slices of baked ham, slathered with mustard, some strips of braised aubergine, half a dozen sweet cherry tomatoes, sliced, and a dash of olive oil, all pressed between two slices of freshly cut rye bread.
Feeding my face put everything in context for me. What was I hanging on Marietta's opinion for? She was no great literary critic. This was my book, my ideas, my vision. And if she didn't like it, that was fine by me. Her opinion was a complete irrelevancy. I didn't just think all of this, I talked it through to myself, a mustardy mingling of words and ham.
"Whatever are you chattering about?"
I stopped talking, and looked over my shoulder. There, filling the doorway from side to side, was Zabrina. She was dressed in a tent of a nightgown, her face, upon which she usually puts a little paint and powder, ruddily raw. She had tiny eyes, and a wide thin-lipped mouth; Marietta called her a beady, fat frog once, in a moment of anger, and-cruel though the description may be-it fits. The only glamorous attribute she has is her hair, which is a deep, luxurious orange, and which she's grown to waist length. Tonight she had it untied and it fell about her shoulders and upper body like a cape.
"I haven't seen you in a long while," I said to her.
"You've seen me," she said, in that odd, breathy voice of hers. "We just haven't spoken."
I was about to say-that's because you always rush away-:but I held my tongue. She was a nervous creature. One wrong word and she'd be off. She went to the refrigerator and studied its contents. As usual, Dwight had left a selection of his pies and cakes for her delectation.
"Don't expect any help from me," she said out of the blue.
"Help for what?"
"You know what," she said, still studying the laden shelves. "I don't think it's right." She reached in and took out a pie with either hand, then, pirouetting with a grace surprising in one of her extreme bulk, turned and closed the refrigerator door with her backside. "So don't expect me to be unburdening myself."
She was talking about the book of course. Her antipathy was perfectly predictable, given that she knew it to be at least in part Marietta's idea. Even so, I wasn't in the mood to be harangued.
"Let's not talk about it," I said.
She set the pies-one cherry, one pecan-on the table side by side. Then she went back to the refrigerator, with a little sigh of irritation at her own forgetfulness, and took out a bowl of whipped cream. There was a fork already in the bowl. She lowered herself gently onto a chair and set to, loading up the fork with a little cherry pie, a little pecan, and a lot of whipped cream. She clearly had done this countless times before; watching the skillful way she created these little towers of excess, without ever seeming to drop a crumb of pastry into the cream, or a spot of cream onto the table, was an entertainment unto itself.
"So when did you last hear from Galilee?" she asked me.
"Not in a long while."
"Huh." She delivered a teetering mound between her lips, and her lids flickered with bliss as she worked it around her mouth.
"Does he ever write to you?"
She took her leisurely time to swallow befire abswering. "He used to drop me a note now and again. But not any more."
"Do you miss him?"
She frowned at me, her lower lip jutting out. "Don't start that," she said. "I told you already-"
I rolled my eyes. "In God's name, Zabrina, I just asked-"
"I don't want to be in your book."
"So you said."
"I don't want to be in anybody's book. I don't want to… be talked about. I wish I was invisible."
I couldn't help myself: I smirked. The very idea that Zabrina, of all people, would dream of invisibility was sadly laughable. There she was, conspiring against her own hopes with every mouthful. I thought I'd wiped the smirk off my face by the time she looked up at me, but it lingered there, like the cream at the corners of her own mouth.
"What's so funny?" she said.
I shook my head. "Nothing."
"So I'm fat. And I wish I was dead. So what?"
The smirk had gone now. "You don't wish you were dead," I said. "Surely."
"What have I got to live for?" she replied. "I've got nothing. Nothing I want anyway." She put down her fork, and started on the cherry pie with her fingers, picking out the syrupy fruit. "Day in and day out, it's the same story. Serving Momma. Eating. Serving Momma. Eating. When I sleep I dream I'm up there with her, while she talks about the old days." With sudden vehemence she said: "I hate the old days! What about tomorrow? How about doing something about tomorrow?" Her face, which was, as I men tioned, flushed to begin with, was now beet red. "We're all so passive," she said, the vehemence mellowing into a sadness. "You got your legs back but what did you do with them? Did you walk out of here? No. You sat exactly where you'd been sitting all these years, as though you were still a cripple. That's because you still are. I'm fat and you're a cripple, and we're going to go on, day after day after day living our useless lives, till somebody from out there-" she pointed out toward the world "-comes and does us the kindness of putting a bullet through our brains."
With that, she rose from the ruins of the pies, and made her exit. I didn't attempt to delay her. I just sat back in my chair and watched her go.
Then, I will admit, I sat for a while with my head in my hands and wept.
A ssaulted by both Marietta and Zabrina, feeling thoroughly uncertain of my talents, I returned to my room, and sat up through the rest of the night. I'd like to tell you that I did so because I was agonizing over the literary problems I had, but the truth was rather more prosaic: I had the squirts. I don't know whether it was the baked ham, the braised aubergine, or Zabrina's damn conversation that did it: I only know I spent the hours till dawn sitting on my porcelain throne in a private miasma. Somewhere around dawn, feeling weak, raw, and sorry for myself, I crawled into bed and snatched a couple of hours of sleep. By the time I woke my slumbering mind seemed to have decided that I'd be best writing about Rachel and Mitchell's wedding in a rather curter style than I'd been employing so far. After all, I reasoned, a wedding was a wedding was a wedding. No use belaboring the subject. People could fill in the pretty details for themselves.