steadily along, like a wind-up toy. For a moment Charis stands there in front of the Toxique, lost. She doesn’t know what to do next. She could turn around and march back in there, march up to Zenia, stand planted; but the things she was goingto say to Zenia have evaporated, have flown up out of her head. All that’s left is a whirring sound.
She could go back to the store, back to Radiance, even though it’s her half-day and Shanita isn’t expecting her. She could tell Shanita what happened; Shanita is a teacher, maybe she can help. But possibly Shanita won’t be too sympathetic. A woman like that , she’ll say. She’s nothing. Why are you concerned about her? You are giving her the power, you know better than that! What colour is she? What colour is the pain? Wipe the tape!
Shanita has never had a dose of Zenia. She won’t realize, she can’t understand, that Zenia can’t be meditated out of existence. If she could be, Charis would have done it long ago.
She decides to go home. She’ll fill up the bathtub and put some orange peel into it, some rose oil, a few cloves; she’ll pin up her hair and get into the tub and let her arms float in the scented water. Steering herself towards this goal, she walks downhill, in the general direction of the lake and the ferry dock; but a block along she turns left and makes her way by a narrow alley to the next street, and then she turns left again, and now she’s back on Queen.
Her body doesn’t wish her to go home right now. Her body is urging her to have a cup of coffee; worse than that, a cup of espresso. This is so unusual – her body’s promptings of this kind are normally for fruit juice or glasses of water – that she feels obliged to do what it wants.
There’s a café, right across the street from the Toxique. It’s called the Kafay Nwar, and has a hot-pink neon sign in forties writing in the window. Charis goes into it and sits at one of the small round chrome-edged tables by the window, and takes off her cardigan, and when the waiter comes, wearing a pleated dress shirt, a black bow tie, and jeans, she orders an Espresso Esperanto – all the things on the menu have complicated names, Cappuccino Cappriccio, Tarte aux Tarts, Our Malicious Mudcake – and watches the door of theToxique. It’s clear to her now that her body doesn’t want an espresso primarily. Her body wants her to spy on Zenia.
To make herself less obvious as a watcher she takes her notebook out of her tote bag, a lovely notebook she traded some of her paytime for. It has a hand-bound cover of marbled paper with a burgundy suede spine, and the pages are a delicate lavender. The pen she bought to go with it is pearl grey, and filled with grey-green ink. She got the pen at Radiance too, and the ink. It makes her sad to think of Radiance vanishing. So many gifts.
The notebook is for her to write her thoughts in, but so far she hasn’t written any. She hates to spoil the beauty of the blank pages, their potential; she doesn’t want to use them up. But now she uncaps her pearl grey pen, and prints: Zenia must go back . She once took a course in italic handwriting, so the message looks elegant, almost like a rune. She does one letter at a time, looking up between the words, over the tops of her reading glasses, so nothing going on across the street will escape her.
At first more people go in than out, and after that more people go out than in. None of the people who go in is Billy, not that she is realistically expecting him, but you never know. None of the people who come out is Zenia.
Her coffee arrives and her body tells her to drop two lumps of sugar into it, and so she does, and then she drinks the coffee quickly and feels the hit of caffeine and sucrose rush to her head. She’s focused now, she has X-ray vision, she knows what she has to do. Neither Tony nor Roz can help her, they don’t need to help her with this, because their stories, the stories with Zenia in them, have
She could go back to the store, back to Radiance, even though it’s her half-day and Shanita isn’t expecting her. She could tell Shanita what happened; Shanita is a teacher, maybe she can help. But possibly Shanita won’t be too sympathetic. A woman like that , she’ll say. She’s nothing. Why are you concerned about her? You are giving her the power, you know better than that! What colour is she? What colour is the pain? Wipe the tape!
Shanita has never had a dose of Zenia. She won’t realize, she can’t understand, that Zenia can’t be meditated out of existence. If she could be, Charis would have done it long ago.
She decides to go home. She’ll fill up the bathtub and put some orange peel into it, some rose oil, a few cloves; she’ll pin up her hair and get into the tub and let her arms float in the scented water. Steering herself towards this goal, she walks downhill, in the general direction of the lake and the ferry dock; but a block along she turns left and makes her way by a narrow alley to the next street, and then she turns left again, and now she’s back on Queen.
Her body doesn’t wish her to go home right now. Her body is urging her to have a cup of coffee; worse than that, a cup of espresso. This is so unusual – her body’s promptings of this kind are normally for fruit juice or glasses of water – that she feels obliged to do what it wants.
There’s a café, right across the street from the Toxique. It’s called the Kafay Nwar, and has a hot-pink neon sign in forties writing in the window. Charis goes into it and sits at one of the small round chrome-edged tables by the window, and takes off her cardigan, and when the waiter comes, wearing a pleated dress shirt, a black bow tie, and jeans, she orders an Espresso Esperanto – all the things on the menu have complicated names, Cappuccino Cappriccio, Tarte aux Tarts, Our Malicious Mudcake – and watches the door of theToxique. It’s clear to her now that her body doesn’t want an espresso primarily. Her body wants her to spy on Zenia.
To make herself less obvious as a watcher she takes her notebook out of her tote bag, a lovely notebook she traded some of her paytime for. It has a hand-bound cover of marbled paper with a burgundy suede spine, and the pages are a delicate lavender. The pen she bought to go with it is pearl grey, and filled with grey-green ink. She got the pen at Radiance too, and the ink. It makes her sad to think of Radiance vanishing. So many gifts.
The notebook is for her to write her thoughts in, but so far she hasn’t written any. She hates to spoil the beauty of the blank pages, their potential; she doesn’t want to use them up. But now she uncaps her pearl grey pen, and prints: Zenia must go back . She once took a course in italic handwriting, so the message looks elegant, almost like a rune. She does one letter at a time, looking up between the words, over the tops of her reading glasses, so nothing going on across the street will escape her.
At first more people go in than out, and after that more people go out than in. None of the people who go in is Billy, not that she is realistically expecting him, but you never know. None of the people who come out is Zenia.
Her coffee arrives and her body tells her to drop two lumps of sugar into it, and so she does, and then she drinks the coffee quickly and feels the hit of caffeine and sucrose rush to her head. She’s focused now, she has X-ray vision, she knows what she has to do. Neither Tony nor Roz can help her, they don’t need to help her with this, because their stories, the stories with Zenia in them, have
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