So it wasn’t only the money. But she could put it this way—he wouldn’t have married her without it. Maybe that’s what keeps him with her, what keeps him anchored. She hopes it’s not the only thing.
Mitch raises his glass of white wine to her and says, “To us,” and reaches across the table and takes her left hand, the one with the ring, a modest ring because that’s what he could afford at the time and he’d refused to accept any contribution from her father for a bigger one, and smiles at her, and says, “It hasn’t been so bad, has it? We’re pretty good, together,” and Roz knows he’s consoling himself for hidden disappointments, for time that marches on, for all the worlds he will, now, never be able to conquer, for the fact that there are thousands of nubile young women in the world, millions of them, more every minute, and no matter what he does he will never be able to get into all of them, because art is long and life is brief and mortality looms.
And yes, they are pretty good together. Sometimes. Still. So she beams at him and returns the squeeze, and thinks they are as happy as can be. They are. They are as happy as they can be, given who they are. Though if they’d been different people they might have been happier.
A girl, a pretty girl, a pretty girl in a scoop-neck jersey; appears with a platter of dead fish, from which Mitch selects. He’s having the Catch of the Day, Roz is having the pasta done in sepia, because she has never eaten such a thing before and it sounds so bizarre. Spaghetti in Ink. There’s a salad first, during which Roz sees fit to ask, tentatively enough, whether there’s a specific topic Mitch wants to discuss. At previous lunches there has been one, a business topic usually, a topic having to do with Mitch getting more power on the board of Wise Woman World, of which he is the chairman, oops, chairperson.
But Miteh says no, he was merely feeling that he hasn’t been seeing enough of her lately, without the kids that is, and Roz, eager for scraps as always, laps it up. She will forgive, she will forget. Well anyway, forgive, because what you can or can’t forget isn’t under your control. Maybe Mitch has just been having a middle-aged crisis all these years; though twenty-eight was a little young to begin.
The salad arrives, on a large plate borne by yet another long-haired, scoop-necked lovely, and Roz wonders whether the waitresses are chosen to go with the paintings. With so many nipples around she has the sensation of being watched by a myriad alien eyes. Pink ones. She flashes briefly on some flat-chested woman bringing a discrimination case against this restaurant for refusing to hire her. Even better, a flat-chested man. She’d love to be a fly on the wall.
The waitress bends over, showing deep cleavage, and dishes out the salad, and stands there smiling while Roz takes a bite. “Terrific,” says Roz, meaning the salad
“Absolutely,” says Mitch, smiling up at the waitress. Oh God, thinks Roz. He’s starting to flirt with waitresses. What’ll she think of him? Sleazy old fart? And how soon before he really is a sleazy old fart?
Mitch has always flirted with waitresses, in his restrained way. But that’s like saying a ninety-year-old can-can dancer has always done the can-can. When do you know when to stop?
After the salad the main course arrives. It’s a different girl this time. Well, a different woman; she’s a little older, but with a ravishing cloud of dark hair and= amazing great tits, and a tiny little waist Roz would kill for. Roz looks hard at her and knows she’s seen her before. Much earlier, in another life. “Zenia!” she exclaims, before she can help it.
“Pardon me?” says the woman. Then she looks at Roz in turn, and smiles, and says, “Roz? Roz Grunwald? Is it you? You don’t look like your pictures!”
Roz has an overwhelming urge to deny it. She shouldn’t have spoken in the first place, she should have dropped her purse on the floor and dived after it, anything to stay out of Zenia’s sightlines. Who needs the evil eye?
But the shock of seeing Zenia there, working as a waitress—a server—in Nereids, overrides all that, and “What the heck are you doing here?” Roz blurts out.
“Research,” says Zenia. “I’m a journalist, I’ve been freelance for years, in England mostly. But I wanted to come back, just to see—to see what things were like, over here. So I got myself commissioned to do a piece on sexual harassment in the workplace.”
Zenia must be different, thinks Roz, if she’s writing about that stuff. She even looks different. She can’t place it at first, and then she sees. It’s the tits. And the nose too. The former have swelled, the latter has shrunk. Zenia’s nose used to be more like Roz’s. “Really?” says Roz, who has a professional interest. “Who for?”
“Saturday Night,” says Zenia. “It’s mostly an interview format, but I thought it would be good to take a look at the locales:” She smiles more at Roz than at Mitch. “I was in a factory last week, and the week before that I spent in a hospital. You wouldn’t believe how many nurses get attacked by their patients! I don’t mean just grabbing—they throw things, the bedpans and so forth, it’s a real occupational hazard. They wouldn’t let me do any actual nursing though; this is more hands-on.”
1Vlitch is beginning to look peevish at being sidelined, so Roz introduces him to Zenia. She doesn’t want to say “an old friend,” so instead she says, “We were at the same school.” Not that we were ever what you’d call best buddies, thinks Roz. She scarcely knew Zenia then, except as an object of gossip. Lurid, sensational gossip.
Mitch does nothing to help Roz out, in the conversation department. He simply mutters something and stares at his plate. He obviously feels he’s been interrupted. “So, how’re the occupational hazards in this place?” says Roz, covering for him. “Has anyone called you ‘honeybun’ and pinched your butt?”
Zenia laughs. “Same old Roz. She was always the life of the parry,” she says to Mitch.
While Roz is wondering what parties she ever attended at which Zenia was also present—none, as far as she can remember, but she used to drink more in those days, or more at once; and maybe she’s forgotten—Zenia puts her hand on Roz’s shoulder. Her voice changes, becomes lower, more solemn. “You know, Roz,” she says, “I’ve always wanted to tell you this. But I never could before:”
“What?” says Roz. “Your father,” says Zenia.
“Oh dear,” says Roz, fearing some scam she’s never found out about, some buried scandal. Maybe Zenia is her long-lost half-sister, perish the thought. Her father was a sly old fox. “What did he do?”
“He saved my life,” says Zenia. “During the war.”
“Saved your life?” says Roz. “During the war?” Wait a minute—was Zenia even born, during the war? Roz hesitates, unwilling to believe. But this is what she’s longed for always—an eyewitness, someone involved but impartial, who could assure her that her father really was what he was rumoured to be: a hero. Or a semi-hero; at any rate, more than a shady trader. She’s heard accounts from others, her uncles for instance, but the two of them were hardly reliable; so she’s never been really sure, not really.
Now, finally, there’s a messenger, bringing news from that distant country, the country of the past, the country of the war. But why does that messenger have to be Zenia? It grates on Roz that Zenia has this news and Roz does not. It’s as if her father has left something in his will, some treasure, to a perfect stranger, some drifter he’d met in a bar, and nothing for his own daughter. Didn’t he know how much she wanted to know?
Maybe th~re’s nothing in it. On the other hand, what if there is? It’s at least worth a listen. It’s at least worth a flutter. “It’s a long story” says Zenia. “I’d love to tell you about it, when you’ve got the time. If you want to hear it, that is:” She smiles, nods at Mitch, and walks away. She moves confidently, nonchalantly, as if she knows she’s just made the one offer that Roz can’t possibly refuse.