Green Girl (14 page)

No color? The girl looks curiously at Ruth.

No. Just clear.

The girl shrugs.

There were certain ritualized movements Ruth was expected to perform when accepting a manicure that she did not know, or always forgot, planting her hand in a clear bowl of lukewarm soapy liquid post-file, tickling the stones at the bottom, holding out her hand for the obligatory up-to-the-elbow massage with a cheap peach-scented lotion, her arm instead flopping like a fish back down to the dishtowel-covered table. Her hand arches a scared cat’s back as opposed to calmed flat, a willing accomplice. Relax, the girl scowls. She kneads Ruth’s arm angrily, pulling at her knuckles with a smack.

They both keep eyes glued to the monitor overhead blaring music videos. An anonymous boy band, grunting and posturing. Followed by an anonymous girl band, grunting and posturing. Then the libidinal cooing of the singer whose perfume Ruth pushes onto the masses.

Ruth wonders what it would be like to be a manicurist. She thinks about it and can only conjure up Deneuve in
Repulsion
. Or the girl in that Godard film who is doing the nails of Juliette who is a prostitute, and turns out to be one as well. Then that scene in which the two of them walk around naked with Pan-Am bags on their heads.

All right—expert shake and twist of one last bottle, brushing on the final coat of wet. Fifteen minutes to dry. The girl gets up and leaves, snapping her gum one final time.

Ruth sits alone at the table, fingers fanned out, staring at her hands.

Afterwards she wanders around the high streets to look at dresses. A desperate, heated search. But what she is searching for is something elusive. Changing room of Topshop. Cowboy boots fitted over tight jeans walk past. She hears the meaningful clink of bangles. The swish of skirts worn by girls dressed as gypsies. Ruth stands in the changing room, in her bra and cotton underwear from Marks and Spencer. She surveys herself. She turns to the side and studies herself in profile.

Oh, how much it takes to groom oneself for a party she thinks. There are the nails, and then perhaps she should get waxed, her upper lip feels furry, it yearns for that brightening strip of pain. And then she would like to get stockings, gold, silky stockings they sell at Horrids. She didn’t know why she was worried about it. It was a week away. But she would almost rather not go. It was too much effort. To look passable. To look pretty enough. To make sure all the seams lined up and everything matched and she looked as much the her in her mind’s eye as she possibly could. She did not know even who she was dressing up for. So much effort to go through to smile smugly at her mirror reflection. Saying, yes, this is you on your best day.

She puts her clothes back on, and leaves, depositing her dresses in the arms of the attendant.

Outside, a cold slap of freeze. She hears her preacher in the distance, bellowing into his bullhorn:

A life devoted to things is a dead life, a stump.

The eternity of the tube. Pushing down steps thick with bodies, a cattle cavalcade. On the train home: businessmen, emitting beer from their mouths, stench from their armpits, reaching in, holding onto the bars, pressing up against her.

Is this a wind-up? she overhears.

Are you winding me up?

Ruth imagines her fellow passengers crushing tightly wrapped young bodies with that drunken force. Come on baby, just a little more, come on baby, dearie, love.

Blondes make the best victims. They’re like virgin snow that shows up the bloody footprints.

— Alfred Hitchcock

The camera skirts around the fragrance department, like the device Hitchcock used in
Rope
. Colored perfume bottles on mirrored trays like little glass houses. Mirrors everywhere. A maze of thickly made-up faces. Mannequins behind glass. Full pouts. Distant expressions. They seem more alive than the people inside. A woman applies lipstick while crouched behind the counter. Another hunches below the till to eat. Another sends a text furtively hands tucked inside her apron.

A roomful of robotic smiles, parroted pleasure. A roomful of automated transfers. There is a glitch in the machinery. One shopgirl asks the customer twice if she wants her receipt in the bag. She has been standing on her feet all day. She is exhausted. The customer, politely, says yes both times. Sometimes there is an attempt at contact. The false compliment on either side of the counter. Nice necklace. Nice eyeshadow. Nice cage you got there. The bubbles of niceness float up, but they are not real feelings. Perhaps people go to a department store to cool the ache of loneliness lingering in their belly. To release the hysteria bubbling up in one’s throat. So lonely, so longing for any interaction.

A close-up on Ruth, my Hitchcock blonde. Who is the girl behind the counter? I wish to know her. She escapes outside of her body and lets it do all the work. She is an automaton. I want to say to her: It must be terrible to be stuck here. I want to look deep into her eyes and say: I see you. You are not invisible to me. I see you. But the girl will smile blankly. Would you like me to pop your receipt in the bag? As if someone had pulled her string. I am just a moment in her day. I am a blip on her screen. Next please next please until it was over and her shift was done and she could die and be reborn. She only exists from the waist up. She is my girl miraculously sawed in half. This was the only world she knew that day. The world behind the counter.

She cries out to be saved.

In the East End, hurrying home after closing at Horrids, lowering her head, her shoulder blades going in. Shielding herself from wind and stares. A stream of blankness. She spies the shadow of a young woman appearing in the distance walking towards Ruth, towards Liverpool Station. With a jolt, she realizes it is Elspeth. Then she remembers Olly mentioning something about playing with his jazz group nearby. At first Ruth feels violated. Elspeth, in her neighborhood. But she looks almost lovely, walking alone, head down, arms crossed, black sleeve on black. Like the Virgin Mary, Ruth thinks. As their paths cross Elspeth lifts her head almost as if she had been expecting her and smiles brightly. Not a word is spoken. And then Ruth feels almost tender towards this pale aloof girl, so in love with a boy as to go out at night to follow him and then walk home alone. This is her world more than mine, she thinks. In this city, this London, she is merely only a visitor, a tourist and not a tourist, somewhere in between. She can leave any time. She would leave. And maybe Elspeth would never leave her solitary circle, her train ride there, her walk home here, her trips out at night. This is the globe she was born inside, with its little white shaky pieces settling over a toy city, that you turn over and say Ahh…

The two girls are at home, making up their faces as if they were the Sistine Chapel. Silently inventing themselves. Agnes had invited herself as Ruth’s plus-one to the Horrids holiday party. Ruth is kneeling on their floor in front of the mirror, carefully making up her face. Agnes had let her borrow her green sparkly eyeshadow. Like throwing on green tinsel. On top of which the cat’s-eyeliner. She is wearing a black work dress but with her new stockings and a pair of Agnes’ gold door-knockers. Agnes is wearing a red dress, red stockings, red shoes, red hair flipped up. She is twirling on her fifth coat of lipstick, blotting on an old copy of a
Metro
that she then throws back on the floor. Their flat was already filthy. These girls lived like pigs. Walking on their red carpet of dirty clothes that they picked up from the floor, sniffed and wore. They had more important things to do. They must groom themselves, they do not have time to clean. They have to get ready for their audience, for the flash and wave. To Agnes there was always this Everyone appraising them at all times. And maybe there was. The world is always the audience for young girls, and they were still young, weren’t they? They were poor and foreigners, but they were still young.

The party is held in the basement of a restaurant where there is a disco. As Agnes and Ruth make their entrance, the room turns to look, then returns to their conversations. The two girls stand at the entrance, as if suspended. Finally, well, this is BIZ-arre. Shall we? Agnes nods towards the bar. Ruth just keeps smoking her cigarette. Her face like smooth glass. She tries to affect Holly Golightly’s stoicism when eating a croissant outside Tiffany’s.

Near the bar Elspeth has cornered Olly. She is laughing at something he is saying and keeps on touching his arm which holds a glass of beer, which Olly then lifts to his mouth, like a marionette. Agnes orders champagne and flirts with the bartender. Ruth lingers near her colleagues. Hi guys, she says. Elspeth smiles at Ruth. She was much friendlier now, ever since that day on the street. Hiya Ruth. Oh, hello, Ruth, says Olly, nicely. You look lovely. Ruth smiles, blushing. You look nice yourself. He is dressed in the same suit he wore at Horrids, but with a brightly-colored necktie he had chosen for the occasion, a red that matches Agnes’ hair.

Here you go. Agnes slides up behind them. Olly fixes his eyes on her red beam. She hands Ruth the other glass of champagne and Olly her hand, like she is in a movie about to be introduced to her leading man. My flatmate Agnes, Ruth, reluctantly. It’s a pleasure, she purrs. Ruth actually feels sympathetic for Elspeth, who lingers at Olly’s elbow, simmering. You’re sitting with fragrance, aren’t you? Elspeth pulling at his sleeve. Yes. Yes of course Olly smiles. He continues to stare mesmerized at Agnes. Would you ladies like to join us? He says to her. Elspeth smirks at Agnes. Oh, dear, there isn’t room for
two
more. That’s okay, Ruth says, apologetically. Olly finally excuses himself, following Elspeth’s whip of black hair. Agnes grabs the crook of Ruth’s arm, fingernails shoving in. Ouch Ruth winces. So that’s Joan Crawford, hmmm? I guess Ruth says (thinking to herself, wouldn’t Agnes be the femme fatale figure here?). If you’re going to dye your hair black you at least have to wear lipstick, Agnes glares. So that’s the infamous Olly. I guess, Ruth shrugs. Agnes has that look on her face, that look like she could eat glass. He would be so much fun to spoil, wouldn’t he? She almost meows. Ruth doesn’t know what to do but laugh. Why should Ruth be surprised? Or maybe the champagne tempered everything. If you want Olly, you’re going to have to get through them, she nods her head at the table of girls, currently pawing at Olly like he is the homecoming king of Horrids. Those girls? They don’t bother me, Agnes tosses her hair like an orange flame.

Dinner is an anonymous lump of meat smothered in brown gravy, vegetables tortured in a sauce of a similar shade. They are sitting alone. Agnes hadn’t wanted to mingle. Ruth eats her champagne instead, watching the bubbles rise up, up, up, waving at a few of her colleagues, there’s Ava Gardner, there’s The Italian in men’s fragrance who she has started taking smoke breaks with. Agnes eats her red lipstick, which she swirls and smacks with the ferocity of one going to battle. Like Mars, Ruth thinks.

People were starting to dance or pair off in the corners pressing up against each other. C’mon, Agnes pulls at her limp arm. Ruth teeters behind, splashing around her glass of sparkling blonde, a bemused look plastered on her face. Plastered. Agnes saunters up to Olly. The waves of girls separate. Dance with us she orders. Elspeth’s white face looks pinched and pained. Olly stands up, yanked by the puppet strings attached around his penis.

Ruth stands on the edge of the dance floor, swaying, as Agnes circles around a hypnotized Olly, like predator around prey, grinding her hips. Agnes is such an imperialist, Ruth thinks fuzzily. The room dances around her. A man approaches her out of the corner of her eye. She vaguely recognizes him. Jimorsomething. From Cookery. He is saying something to her. So, what are your thoughts on the war?