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"Now I'm coming to a part you won't like much, babe," says Zeb.
"Because it's about Lucerne?" says Toby. Zeb's not stupid. He must have suspected for a long time how she'd felt about Lucerne, his live-in at the Gardeners. Lucerne the Irritating, dodger of communal weeding duties, shirker of women's sewing groups, sufferer from frequent excuse-making headaches, whiny possessor of Zeb, neglectful mother of Ren. Lucerne the Luscious, one-time denizen of the HelthWyzer Corp, married to a top geek. Lucerne, the romantic fantasist who'd run away with the raggle-taggle Zeb because she'd seen too many movies in which beautiful women did that.
Zeb, in Lucerne's version, had been crazed with irresistible and relentless desire for her. He'd been cross-eyed with lust when he'd spotted her in her pink negligee at the AnooYoo Spa while he was planting lumiroses in his capacity as gardener, and he'd made mad passionate love to her right there and then, on the dew-damp morning grass. Toby had heard that story many times from Lucerne herself, back at the Gardeners, and she'd liked it less every time. If she leaned over the railing and spat, she might be able to hit the very spot where Zeb and Lucerne had first rolled around on the lawn. Or near enough.
"Right," says Zeb. "Lucerne. That's what came next in my life. I can skip over it if you like."
"No," says Toby. "I've never heard your side of it. But Lucerne told me about the lumirose petals. How you strewed them over her pulsating body and so forth." She tries not to sound envious, but it's difficult. Has anyone ever strewn lumirose petals over her own pulsating body, or even thought about it? No. She lacks the temperament for petal-strewing. She would spoil the moment - "What are you doing with those silly petals?" Or she would laugh, which would be fatal. Right now she needs to shut up and hold back on the commentary or she won't get the story.
"Yeah, well, petal-strewing comes naturally to me, I used to be in the magic biz," says Zeb. "It distracts the attention. But some of what she told you was most likely true."
The first time Zeb and Lucerne set eyes on each other was not at the AnooYoo Spa, however. It was in the women's washroom that Zeb was supposed to be cleaning - was cleaning, in fact - while pawing through the detritus in the metal box for pits, whether peach or date. He hadn't found any yet - it was before Pilar had the results of the Rev mix 'n' match DNA test, or possibly before she could amass the necessary pits - so he was emerging from the second cubicle from the left empty-handed, pit-wise. When who should come into the Women's Room but Lucerne.
"This was the middle of the night?" says Toby.
"Affirmative. What was she doing there? I asked myself. Either she was a robinhooder like me, in which case she was really inept because she'd got caught out of place. Or else she was having it off with some HelthWyzer exec who'd given her an access key to the building so they could flail on his fancy carpet while he was supposed to be working late at the office and she was supposed to be at the gym. Though it was late even for that."
"Or both," says Toby. "The having it off and the robinhooding, both."
"Yeah. They combine well: each can provide an excuse for the other. Oh no, I wasn't pilfering, I was only cheating on my husband. Oh no, I wasn't cheating, I was only pilfering. But it was the first one of those, for sure. No mistaking the symptoms."
Lucerne gave a little scream when she saw Zeb emerging from the cubicle in his impermeable gloves and his alien-from-outer-space nose cone. It wasn't the first time that night she'd given a little scream, in his opinion: she was flushed and breathless, and what you might call dishevelled. Or maybe unbuttoned. Or, if you were being fancy, in disarray. Needless to say, she was very attractive at that moment.
Oh, needless to say, thinks Toby.
"What are you doing in the Ladies?" Lucerne said accusingly. The first rule: when caught wet-handed, accuse first. She did say Ladies, not Women's. That was a clue in itself.
"To what?" says Toby.
"Her character. She had a pedestal complex. She wanted to be on one. Ladies was a step higher than Women."
Zeb shoved his nose cone up onto his forehead: now he looked like a blunted rhinoceros. "I'm a Disinfector, First Rank," he added impressively but pompously. There's something about a gorgeous woman who's obviously been shagging another man that brings out the pompous in a guy: it's a wound to his ego. "What are you doing in this building?" he counter-accused. He noted the wedding ring. Aha, he thought. Caged lioness. Needs a holiday from the tedium.
"I had some work to finish up," Lucerne lied, as convincingly as she could. "My presence here is entirely legitimate. I have a pass." Zeb could have called her on it, but he admired a woman who could use the word legitimate in such a fraudulent context. So he did not march her off to Security, which would have triggered a check via the spouse, and set off unpleasant repercussions for the lover, and would almost certainly have resulted - come to think of it - in Zeb himself being fired. So he let her get away with it.
"Right, okay, sorry," he said with acceptable hangdog servility.
"Now, if you don't mind, this is the Ladies, and I'd like some privacy, Horatio," she said, caressing the name on his tag. She gazed deep into his eyes. It was a plea - Don't rat me out - and also a promise: One day I'll be yours. Not that she intended to honour that promise.
Well played, thought Zeb as he made his exit.
Thus, when he and Lucerne encountered each other for the second time, in the first f
lush of dawn, she barefoot and inadequately concealed in a diaphanous pink negligee, he with a phallic spade and an ardent lumirose bush in hand, right down there on the freshly sodded lawn of the just-completed AnooYoo Spa in the middle of Heritage Park, she recognized him. And she remembered that he'd once been Horatio, but was now, mysteriously - as his AnooYoo Spa grounds-keeper's name tag had it - Atash.
"You were at HelthWyzer," she'd said. "But you weren't ..." So, naturally, he'd kissed her, fervently and with unrestrainable passion. Because she couldn't talk and kiss at the same time.
"Naturally," says Toby. "You were supposed to be who? What's Atash?"
"Iranian," says Zeb. "Immigrant grandparents. Why not? There were a lot of them came over in the late twentieth. It was safe enough as long as I never bumped into any other Iranians and they started asking genealogy stuff, and where was your family from. Though I'd memorized the whole identity, just in case. I had a good backstory - just enough disappearances and atrocities in it to account for any time/place discrepancies."
"So Lucerne meets Atash, and suspects he's really Horatio," says Toby. "Or vice versa." She wants to get over the hurtful parts as quickly as possible: with luck, the hot, irresistible sex and the petal-strewing that Lucerne had never tired of describing to Toby won't be mentioned again.
"Right. And that wasn't good, because I'd had to go missing from HelthWyzer very fast. One of the computers had an alarm on it I didn't spot until too late, and it showed that somebody'd been in there. I could tell I'd triggered it right after I did it, and they were going to start tracking who'd been in the building at the time, and that would pinpoint me. I used the MaddAddam chatroom and called for emergency help, and the cryptics got hold of Adam. He had a contact who could stick me into the AnooYoo Spa gardening job, though we both realized it was a stopgap and I'd have to move on soon."
"So, she knows, and you know she knows, and she knows you know she knows," says Toby. "At the lawn encounter."
"Correct. I had two choices: murder or seduction. I chose the most attractive."
