Zazen - By Vanessa Veselka Page 0,16

do you think? I’m taking a poll.”

“About what?”

“Should we all just become eco-tourists until the sun shines down?”

She reminded me of someone. I couldn’t think of who it was. I wasn’t sure it was someone I liked.

“People should do what they want,” I said.

My voice sounded thin and she caught it.

“Oh come on!” she laughed, “You can barely even get the words out.”

“I’m just saying that, a lot of times when people leave, it’s no loss.”

“Like?”

Like me.

“Like I went to a party at an anarchist house with some Food Not Bombs guy. They had an old-time band in the basement and like six hundred crusty punks square dancing. I figure they can do that just about anywhere. There are a lot of islands in Micronesia.”

The woman laughed abruptly. For a second I saw her real intelligence blaze out over the world like something that had escaped. It hit me again, that feeling that I knew her. She took another bite of tabouli.

“What about the New Land Trust building? Would you have blown it up?”

A couple of people smearing pâté on their seed crackers stopped. Everyone likes a bomb, I guess.

“No.”

“No one got killed.”

“Could have.”

“What if no one got hurt?”

“Maybe,” I said. “In theory.”

“What if one person got hurt?”

“Then no.”

“What if they just hurt? Time off with pay.”

“And I was a psychic and knew for sure? Maybe.”

“And he was an asshole. Like he beat his wife or molested kids?”

“I wouldn’t be sad but I wouldn’t do it.”

“Oh,” she said smiling, “so it’s a matter of degree. Injuries are fine. And if an asshole gets killed you don’t really mind as long as you don’t have to do it yourself.”

Some guy getting cashew butter laughed and the woman with the blonde and lavender hair grinned.

“They blew up a bathroom,” I said, a little too loudly. “Not the fucking space station. They’ll probably build the new one out of 800-year old cedar and elephant tusks. Blowing it up was fucking pointless.”

Apparently you can be a terrorist as long as you don’t raise your voice because everyone started looking at the ground, which is code for “You’re dead to us now.”

“So what’s your great plan?” I said.

“To begin with I’m not leaving.”

“I might,” I snapped.

“Yeah, that will really change things for people.”

“It’ll change things for me.”

My cheeks were on fire. If didn’t get away I was going to start crying tears of hateful rage all over myself. Across the room by the door I saw Jimmy. She waved. The woman with the lavender hair glanced over her shoulder then put some more tabouli on her plate.

“I hear Goa has nice beaches,” she said.

Jimmy came up, mild and oblivious. She’d dyed her hair tangerine and was holding a tray of pink frosted cupcakes.

“I put Red Hots on them. Want to help me frost the rest?”

“Well,” said the woman, “I guess you can do what you’re doing just about anywhere.”

Jimmy handed me a cupcake. I wanted to throw it at the wall. The Goth chick wanted to know if Red Hots were vegan.

Outside they started setting off fireworks. I could feel them in my spleen. People pressed against the windows. Jimmy went over too. Explosion after explosion in a cascade of storylines, spiders and chrysanthemums, cakes and candles, beautiful showers of green and fuchsia rained down and all I saw was war.

Across the room I saw a guy who was the homeless boyfriend of a girl I used to know. Someone said he wrote a banjo retelling of the Divine Comedy. It was supposed to be good but I never heard it. What I did know was, if he was there, everyone else I knew for the past ten years was going to show up too. I went outside, told Jimmy I needed air.

Smoke from the fireworks drifted between the wheels of biodiesel trucks. On the other side of the water tiny campfires glowed. Abandoned cars parked along the frontage road with people crouched inside. Every now and then a lighter flared and car windows flashed like fireflies on the banks. On our side of the river were dancehalls and lit windows flickering like a net of stars. But it wasn’t going to stay like that. The whole area was about to get a huge development grant. We were only there because we were cheaper than security. And, look! An art district! A cobbled bohemia between the packed earth and the leathered sole of the descending boot, a chapel of freedom.

I helped Jimmy frost cupcakes and