Helen has understood for a long while now that Vivienne has fl ipped out, that she is losing her marbles one by one. It's been a painful thing to witness and sometimes Helen cries over it, but discreetly, so that Viv won't notice and say, “Now what are you crying about?” Viv is her live-in companion, and her salary is paid by Helen's sister, who had the good sense to marry a rich man and hang on to him forever. Helen's husband sold apples on street corners during the Depression and was never quite the same after that, never quite able to recover from the loss of dignity. He lived uneasily for another 25 years and then he fell sick and died, without giving much advance warning.
“Cancerous,” Helen says out loud, but Viv ignores her and goes on with what she's doing, which is hurling handfuls of ice cubes from a five-pound plastic bag to the living-room fl oor, then smashing the ice with the bottoms of her thick-soled walking shoes. This is to exorcise the smell of evil that Viv claims has permeated the apartment. According to Viv, ice cubes are the only thing that will do the trick. That and the ammonia she has poured all over the lovely parquet fl ooring.
Watching her, Helen says, “The landlord's going to have our heads, yours and mine both, I guarantee it.”
“The evil,” Viv says, “is everywhere in this apartment.”
“Don't you know what all this ammonia is doing to you?” Helen says. “It's destroying your lungs, that's what.” She picks herself up
