Tony has given Zenia money for the rent, several times already. However, she knows what Zerua will say if she men tions this. But Tony! We had to eat! You don’t know what it’s like, to be hungry. You just don’t get it! You don’t know what it’s like to have no money at all!
“How much?” she says in a cold, meticulous voice. It’s a neat piece of blackmail. She’s being bushwhacked. ‘ “A thousand dollars would see us out of the woods,” says Zenia smoothly. A thousand dollars is a great deal of money. It will make a definite hole in Tony’s nest egg. Also it’s much more than could possibly be needed for back rent. But Zenia doesn’t beg, she doesn’t plead. She knows that Tony’s response is a foregone conclusion.
Tony gets out of bed in her polo pyjamas with blue mice in clown suits printed on them, sent to her from California by her mother, left over from when she was fourteen—her nocturnal wardrobe has not been upgraded, because who would ever see it, and one of the things she minds most about this evening in retrospect is that Zenia got a good look at her absurd pyjamas—and goes over to her desk and turns the desk lamp on, briefly, and writes the cheque. “Here,” she says, thrusting it at Zenia.
“Tony, you’re a brick,” says Zenia. “I’ll pay you back later!” Both of them know this isn’t true.
Zenia exits via the window, and Tony goes back to bed. A brick: hard, foursquare, a potential murder weapon. You could bash in quite a few skulls, with a brick. No doubt Zenia will be back later for more money, and then more. Tony has gained nothing but time.
X,Kvl
Two days later West comes to McClung Hall and seeks out Tony, and asks her if she’s seen Zenia, because Zenia is gone. She’s gone from the apartment, she’s gone from the precincts of the university, she appears to be gone from the entire city, because nobody—not the bearded theatrical men, not the thin, ballet-faced, horse-maned women, and not the police, when West finally calls them—knows where she is. Nobody saw her’ go. She is simply not there any more.
Gone with her are the thousand dollars Tony gave her, plus the contents of her joint account with West—two hundred dollars, give or take. There would have been more, but Zenia took some out earlier on the pretext that their good friend Tony, who was not as rich as they’d all thought, had asked her for a temporary loan, being too shy to mention it to West. Gone also is West’s lute, which is located several weeks later by Tony during a diligent and inspired search of secondhand stores, and is purchased by her on the spot. She carries it to the apartment herself and shoves it at West like a lollipop, hoping to soothe his unhappiness. But it makes scarcely any impact on him, where he sits by himself in the middle of the floor, on a large threadbare cushion, staring at the wall and drinking beer.
Zenia has left a letter for West. She did have that much consideration, or—Tony thinks, with her new insight into the twists of Zenia’s soul—that much calculation. My darling, I am not worthy of you. Some day you will forgive me. I will love you till I die. Your loving Zenia. Tony, who has been the recipient of a similar letter, knows what these avowals are worth, which is nothing at all. She knows how such letters can be hung around your neck like lockets made of lead, heavy keepsakes that will drag you down for years. But she understands too West’s need to rely on Zenia’s assurances. He needs them like water, he needs them like air. He would rather believe that Zenia has renounced him out of misplaced nobility than that she’s been taking him for a ride. Women can make fools of men, thinks freshly disabused Tony, even if they weren’t fools to begin with.
West’s desolation is palpable. It envelops him like a cloud of midges, it marks him like a slashed wrist, which he holds out to Tony (mutely, without moving) to be bandaged. Given the choice, she would not have elected the role of nurse and comforter, having been so bad at it with her father. But there isn’t a lot else on offer, and so Tony makes cups of tea for West, and pries him off his cushion, and—not knowing what else to do—takes him out for walks, like a dog or invalid. Together they meander across parks, together they cross at the corners, holding hands like the babes in the wood. Together they silently lament.
West is in mourning, but Tony is in mourning too. They have both lost Zenia, although Tony has lost her more completely. West still believes in the Zenia he has lost: he thinks that if she would only come back and allow herself to be forgiven and cherished and cared for, all could go on as before. Tony knows better. She knows that the person she’s lost has never really existed in the first place. She does not yet question Zenia’s story, her history; indeed, she uses it to explain her: what can you expect of someone with such a mangled childhood? What she questions is Zenia’s good will. Zenia was only using her, and she has let herself be used; she has been rummaged, she has been picked like a pocket. But she doesn’t have much time to feel sorry for herself because she’s too busy feeling sorry for West.
West’s hand lies passively in Tony’s. It’s as if he’s blind: he goes where Tony steers, sucked dry of any will of his own, careless of where he’s headed. Precipice or safe haven, it’s all the same to him. Once in a while he seems to wake; he peers around, disoriented. “How did we get here?” he says, and Tony’s tenderized little heart is wrung.
What bothers her the most is West’s drinking. It’s still only beer, but there’s a lot more of it going into him than there used to be. It’s possible he’s not ever completely sober. Zenia’s absence is like a path, a path Tony recognizes because she’s seen it before. It leads downwards and ends abruptly in a square of bloodstained newspaper, and West stumbles along it as if he’s sleepwalking. She’s powerless to stop him, or to wake him either. What sort of match is skinny, awkward, and boneheaded Tony, with her oversized spectacles and walks in the park and cups of tea, for the memory of shimmering Zenia that West carries next to his heart, or else instead of it?
Tony is worried sick about him. She loses sleep. Inky rings appear beneath her eyes, her skin turns to paper. She writes her final exams in a frantic trance rather than with her usual cool rationality, calling upon reserves of stashed-away knowledge she didn’t even know she had.
West on the other hand doesn’t even turn up, at least for the Modern History exam. The vortex is taking him down.
Roz passes Tony in the hallway of McClung and notes her dreadful appearance.
“Hey. Tone,” she says. (She has reverted to this pet name since the defection of Zenia, which she knows about, of course. The grapevine here has many tendrils. Tony without Zenia is no longer viewed with trepidation, and can be treated as a diminutive again.) “Hey, Tone, how’s it goin’? Holy cow, you look awful.” She puts her big warm hand on Tony’s pointy bird-shoulder. “It can’t be that bad.—What’s the matter?”
Who else does Tony have to talk to? She can’t talk to West about himself, and Zenia is absent. Once upon a time she would have talked to no one, but ever since Christie’s Coffee Shop she has developed an appreciation for confidences. So they go to Roz’s overstuffed room and sit on Roz’s pillowcovered bed, and Tony disgorges.
She doesn’t tell Roz about the forged term paper or the thousand dollars. In any case they are not the story. The story is about West. Zenia is gone, with West’s soul stuffed into her over-the-shoulder bag, and without it West will die. He will kill himself, and then what will Tony do? How will she live with herself?
This isn’t how she puts it though. She outlines the bare facts, and facts they are. She isn’t being melodramatic. Merely objective.
“Listen, sweetie,” says Roz, when Tony stops talking. “I know you like him, I mean, he seems like a nice enough guy, but is he worth it?”