Zazen - By Vanessa Veselka Page 0,15
about leaving?”
“No. Never,” I lied.
“Good,” he slaps my shoulder, “there’s been enough of that,” and with jail solidarity reconfirmed, Credence sets his coffee cup in the sink where it turns into a silk moth, flies into a light fixture, and rains down in a cascade of ash.
That evening I got a text message from Jimmy asking me to meet her at a party in the industrial district down by the water. I don’t know if it was her idea or if Credence asked her to keep an eye on me. He probably thought a warehouse full of dystopic urban hippies was safer than any padded room. Nothing but the dull thud of zero contact.
“Come on,” said Jimmy. “You’ll meet people. It’ll be good.”
Because meeting people is always good.
The Glass House was a single-story factory between grain elevators where they used to make art glass in the 40s. Two summers ago when I was home from school I’d gone to a bunch of parties there. Mostly noise bands. It was down by the water where all the roads were industrial gullies and loading zones. Most of the windows of the Glass House were blown out and the electrical was badly patched because the copper wire got scavenged from the boxes every few months and sold. Someone told me there was a fleet of meth-heads in homemade boats crossing the river at night, sailing right up under the docks and stripping copper from the conduits. A Dunkirk of tweakers. I imagined them building a penny-colored palace in the hills with exploding processing plants and Guitar Hero going all the time.
I chained my bike to the side rail. Music came through the windows, some brown Goth thing with cellos and keyboards. By the door was a girl in a pink dress with a vintage apron tied around her waist. Her arm was tattooed with cherry blossoms and her hand was on a glass vase full of dollar bills. I didn’t see Jimmy’s truck anywhere. I asked the door girl if she knew Jimmy but she didn’t.
Inside, sheets of colored glass hung from ceiling like guillotines and I could hear the words “New Land Trust” pattering through the room.
The event was a benefit for a media collective that taught underprivileged kids how to make chapbooks. On a table next to me were some of the books the kids made. I looked through them. They were full of basketball stars with guns and Spiderman cars, kids with blood drawn like tears. Slanted houses and sagging rainbows buckling in the blue sky. I couldn’t take it. Everyone was eating almond pâté.
Jimmy said on the phone that she was bringing vegan cupcakes so I went over to the food table but it was all nut paste and tabouli. Behind me someone was talking about leaving the country and I glanced behind me. It was some neo-tribal Goth chick with thick silver jewelry and henna tattoos. She had a ticket to Mexico. A man with a thin beard spreading nut paste on a cracker asked her where she was flying into—Mexico City—and they compared notes. I thought about Jimmy in Honduras and an aching swell like nausea hit me. I wanted to go. I wanted to go and never come back. Honduras, Mexico, Bali, anywhere, I don’t care.
“I’ll start in the north and work my way down to Chiapas,” the girl said.
Her Nepalese bracelets clanked together as she reached for the tabouli.
Another woman laughed.
“It won’t matter where you go,” she said, “it’s all going to happen here.”
The woman who spoke was older than me, not by much, maybe in her thirties. Most of her hair was dirty blonde but the hair closest to her face was lavender.
“It’s already started,” she said and leaned across me to put some tabouli on her plate. “Look at the New Land Trust building. You knew someone was going to try to take that thing down. It was just a matter of time.”
She put a forkful of tabouli in her mouth and chewed.
“So what,” the other girl said, “They can blow up all the buildings. It’s still going to be the same stupid people walking around.”
The woman with the lavender hair put her fork down, staring blankly across the crowd. Her eyes were bright blue and she had on gray glitter eye shadow that was creased and rubbing off. Faint streaks of it sparkled under her eyes and across her cheekbones. Swallowing, she turned slightly and looked up at me.
“Well,” she said, “What