The Robber Bride

Roz eats a spare breakfast while thinking of Mitch and Zenia—specifically, Zenia’s fake breasts and Mitch’s infatuation with them. Roz would rather age gracefully than fight nature with constant nips and tucks. She finishes breakfast and walks past Larry, her eldest’s room. Larry, a college graduate, is asleep. He is reassessing his life, but he seems adrift, and Roz wonders how many ways she has failed her children. She worries about Larry’s sensitivity and his vulnerability to women like Zenia. She does not care much for his previous girlfriends with their “shifty little mascara-encrusted eyes” (92). As she dresses for her lunch date with Tony and Charis, she hopes for a nice girl for Larry who appreciates his strengths, is pretty, and loves kids.

Roz’s wealth is recently acquired, unlike the stodgier, generational “old money,” and she takes comfort in the fact that the old money WASPs “are no better than they should be. No better than her” (95). Now the president of her father’s company, Roz considers the pitfalls of being a female in authority: Other women resent her, but, if she was a man, they would gladly fetch the coffee without complaint. In her office, she meets with Boyce, her executive assistant, who gives her daily stock advice. She and Boyce then attend a meeting with a small cosmetics company looking for an investor. The product excites her, and she decides to invest as long as she has a controlling interest. Back in her office, she shows Boyce a picture of Zenia, asking his opinion: He sees a woman who looks like she is trying too hard. 

Roz drives to The Toxique and parks her Mercedes Benz in a supervised lot. She witnesses the human victims of economic recession all around her and her cynicism rises to the surface: “They hate me for my money.” She thinks of how she and Zenia used to be friends and how Zenia’s hedonism was infectious. When she was with Zenia, Roz longed to indulge in her wealth without the burden of guilt.

Roz approaches the restaurant, dispensing cash to the homeless as is her assumed duty. Inside, she greets Tony and Charis and is relieved to be in their company of friends who want nothing of her and know all her secrets. She is both fascinated and a bit repelled by The Toxique with its oddly dressed staff and eccentric clientele. She knows Larry has been here, which is another reason to check it out: She wants to unravel some of the mystery of her son, who she believes may have a romantic interest in one of the servers.

Over lunch, Roz, Tony, and Charis discuss current events and their effect on the world of business. Roz admires Tony’s knowledge and cool-headed assessment of the world. She has a sudden inspiration: lipsticks named after famous rivers—Delaware, Ganges, Volga, Styx—a marketing strategy for the cosmetics company in which she plans to invest. At that moment, Zenia enters, and Roz marvels at her reconstituted façade, no less effective for its artifice. Despite having nothing left, she fears Zenia is on the hunt for something—specifically, something from her.

Roz says goodbye to Tony and Charis. All three are shaken by Zenia’s reappearance. Unlike the other two, however, Roz vows to fight Zenia on her own terms, “and [she’s] much less vulnerable, because this time there’s no Mitch” (114). In the parking lot, she finds a message—“Rich Bitch’’—scratched into her car door. She weeps tears of anger, but with no place to put the rage, she wipes her eyes and peels out of the lot, spraying gravel in her wake.

Back at her office, Roz contacts a private detective and hires her to keep tabs on Zenia. However, even that action doesn’t quell her restlessness, her curiosity, and, she reluctantly admits, her envy.