Free Green Girl by Kate Zambreno Page A

been an actress, she says. What? I said, you should act. On stage or something. I hear that sometimes. She warms up to this her favorite subject. What if life were like that Peter Greenaway film, and every room I walk into the color of my outfit changes, like Helen Mirren’s.
     
    Agnes is now looking around the room, looking for something, someone, something else. Ruth doesn’t know what she is looking for, but the room disappoints her tonight. Oh, Ruth. Agnes finally says. I’m so bored, I’m so terribly, terribly bored. She waves her empty glass at the bartender at the other end of the bar.
     
    Another red wine? Yes, could you, please? She oozes flirtatiousness.
     
    Care for another? The bartender leans in with his arms folded across the bar, and taps his fingers against Ruth’s glass. A vodka and cranberry. Her voice comes out little girl. She liked the dark pink of vodka and cranberries. Nod. Coming up. His accent is thick, Scottish. As he makes her drink—cocking his head from time to time to take an order—Ruth studies him. Agnes has sprung down from her stool to accost a boy she knows from across the room with a spiky hairstyle called the Hoxton hawk. How do I look she fixates on Ruth’s face as if Ruth’s eyes were her mirror. Fine fine. Agnes’ nose wrinkles with displeasure. Fine just fine? You look lovely, Ruth soothes. Lovely lovely lovely.
     
    Ruth is now alone at the bar. This is why I don’t like going out with Agnes, she thinks. The trains stop running at a certain time. If she abandons her tonight she doesn’t know what she will do. She doesn’t have enough money for a cab, and she doesn’t know where to find a cashpoint. She hasn’t figured out how to take the bus yet. To Ruth the circuitous rituals and routes of London bus transit are transportational enigmas she knew she could never brave alone.
     
    When the bartender returns with her pink drink she smiles at him. How much? He waves his hand, bringing it down to barely rest on her wrist, which he strokes once with one finger. She stares back, mimicking his boldness.
     
    Smug face, smug eyes, smug lips. He had a slight bruise around one eye, that lent him a sort of dangerous vulnerability. A bit of a brute.
     
    There are strangers who wear your face.
     
    You remind me of someone.
    And who’s that? Smirk.
    Just someone…she trails off.
    Another smirk, twisting his towel into the wet glass. Oh, yeah?
     
    He leaves again. He returns. Ruth feels a sort of fatality about everything. Listen, he hesitates for a moment. A slow smile. I’m going to take my break now in back. Would you care to accompany me? Ruth shrugs. A heart thump, a start of panic.
     
    Almost in slow motion he takes her hand and leads her behind the bar and out to the back room. There are coats sprawled everywhere like deflated corpses. We can go downstairs. It’s more private, he says. Ruth nods. She is on mute. She follows him down the gray concrete stairs, tentative, not wanting to trip.
     
    They are in what appears to be a supply room. It is just the two of them. Ruth shivers. He could rape her right now, she knows. She has gone to a strange place with a strange man, and she is drunk. She has agreed to meet him in the equivalent of a dark alley. And here she is. That is how Ruth approached so much of her life—and here she is. She finds herself in situations. She could leave. She couldn’t leave. She wouldn’t know how to leave. She is frozen to the spot. She is also curious to see what is going to happen in this film of her life. Will it be a horror film? This is certainly not shaping up to be a romance picture. It is a cautionary tale. It is at least R-rated. R for rape not romance. R for ruin. R for run, Ruth, run. But Ruth won’t run. She doesn’t hold the strings. She is the unwilling puppet. She is not the author of the Book of Ruth.
     
    She is curious to see what will happen, a gaper’s block of self. She is the voyeur of herself. She is willing, a