“We’re going to a party,” declares the Black Widow.

We’re following her through a pair of ornate double doors.  Today she’s dressed gay as a Gibson girl, complete with black lacy parasol, little black button boots, and a huge hat wide as a cheese wheel and heavy with an orchard’s worth of waxy black fruit.

We’re entering a great white dining hall.  It’s filled to the brim with tiny white tables edged with low couches, plush white and softer than moss.  The Black Widow weaves her way through the white crowd with ease, returning greetings and blowing kisses, conspicuous as a raven in a flock of doves.

She stops at a table with a cluster of girls, none older than eighteen.  They’re dressed in gowns of snowy white, their hair covered with little white beaded caps, strings of seed pearls embellishing their milky throats.  They laugh and chatter; they eat tiny sandwiches and perfect little cream pastries.  Angels dining on angel cake.

They greet the Black Widow with high bird-like cries of delight, making space for her.  The Black Widow smiles and peels off her black lace gloves, as they ply her with cake and tea.  “So, darlings,” she purrs, “what’s the talk today?”

“Status quo, status quo,” they chorus.  “A and B are together and J and J should be, we think! You-know-who’s been going out with Cee’s boyfriend, she stole him from right under her nose – ”

“The little whore!” interjects one, pale cheeks flushed with excitement.  The rest gasp in delicious horror, hands clutching mouths in feigned scandal and implicit approval.

“I hear Marianne’s ano,” whispers another, savouring the last word like a particularly sweet crumb of cake.  “Thin as anything!  It’s too awful!”

“I hear she faints in class.”
“I hear she cries for no reason sometimes, just like that.”
“I hear she’s so slow now she gets the simplest questions wrong!”

“It’s so stupid to be anorexic,” cries the first girl.  “I know I’d never do it.  Why anyone would be silly enough to, I’d like to know!”

“Ridiculous, ridiculous, ridiculous,” they chant, shaking their heads sagely.

“But you’re sorry for her, of course,” prompts the Black Widow, the smile on her lips like a hidden blade.

“Of course, of course!” they chorus immediately.  “We feel for her, really we do.  Though it’s not like she doesn’t look better now than she did before, you know.  But of course we’re sorry for her.”

“Of course,” repeats the Black Widow, smiling.  She rises, pulling on her gloves, and turns to face us.

“Strychnine,” she tells us.  “Social strychnine, in the teacups, in the cake.  No smell, no colour, just that incredibly bitter taste.  You’ll never trace it.”

She looks back at the table, at the cluster of white heads caught up in their chatter.  “What little darlings,” she murmurs.  “Such angels.”

She picks up her parasol, and smiles indulgently.  “Girls and their strychnine,” she remarks fondly, and leaves the party.