Zazen - By Vanessa Veselka Page 0,23

with a tattoo parlor above and a naturopathic clinic below. The sirens came at last but they were far too late.

11 Blackout Stars

A policeman with a wide nose and an oily forehead grabbed my arm.

“No one is leaving this block.

The woman who ran the salon started crying because she had to pick-up her kids and there was no one else to do it and I don’t know if the woman was tired or just scared but she went into hysterics, sat down on the curb, and wailed. Black tears poured down her face as her mascara ran. Thistles of kohl, briery eyes, she looked up and I saw the face of a saint martyred at the boundary of old and new. A patroness of New Honduras who would someday perform miracles for women stuck at work who could not pick up their kids from daycare in time.

“I can’t just stay here,” she sobbed.

“Nobody is leaving,” said the cop and walked away.

The Rat Queen shook her head in a shower of pennies and beads and scratched at the cinders of Old Honduras looking for her children too.

Police set up a barricade at one end of the street and another several blocks down in the other direction. Mirror hauled the Saint with the Black Tears back to the restaurant. I followed a few minutes later, walking through gusts of smoke. Chips of flaming auto shop whizzed by my head, most of them no bigger than a quarter. There was still some pink on the horizon but mostly it was night now. Above us stars were hidden in the haze.

Rise Up Singing was packed. The whole block was standing around eating vegan doughnuts waiting for a chance at the landline. Gangs, they said. But not everyone agreed. Insurance, some thought. One guy said developers but nobody believed him because that would just be too obvious. Mitch was giving away more food. Mirror was taking advantage of the situation to drive turnout for the sex party. “I’m gonna need a warehouse,” she said opening another bottle of champagne.

Jimmy called. I don’t know how she got through. She said it was getting live coverage. We could see the news trucks but the police told us they would give the interviews. Jimmy said barricades were going up all over the north part of town. Time of the Crickets. I asked her to call Annette and let her know I was okay.

The cops weren’t telling us anything and after a few more hours people had all kinds of dumb theories—bio-warfare testing site, elaborate casting call (we’re all going to be in a movie!), or my favorite, foreign invasion. Like some kind of maquiladora Kindertransport had gone rogue and taken a beachhead. But around 2 AM the cops let us go. It happened all of a sudden. There was a radio communication and they packed their bullhorns and their sawhorses, took down the barricades and left. When we walked outside the auto shop was a cinder and everything had a film of greasy smoke on it. People wandered off drunk and stunned.

“Just leave the doors unlocked,” said Mitch, “it doesn’t matter anyway.”

Mirror’s friend Jolie showed up in a Ford Econoline and they started packing up the dry goods and what was left of the food in the walk-in. Mitch gave me some white wine and an untouched vegan pineapple-lemon cake, both of which I put in my bike basket.

Devadatta was asleep in a booth with her mouth open. She was wearing a t-shirt that said “Reincarnation—You Asked For It.” Her scarf was on the ground and the tips of her long red hair lay like wet paintbrushes in a puddle of beer.

“Someone’s got to take her home,” said Mirror and woke her up.

But she was too drunk to stand on her own.

“I’ll take her,” I said.

Mirror helped me get Devadatta on her feet and we left.

I rolled my bike down the sidewalk with one hand on the handlebars and the other on Devadatta. I had to sidestep debris that was still hot and smoking faintly. Every now and then a little piece would pop and crack open near us and we’d jump. After a few blocks she began to get more lucid.

“You know, Devadatta isn’t my real name.”

We passed under the emergency lamp near the post office and she stopped, swaying slightly.

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Yeah, I picked it out when I was in high school,” she stopped to pant then got it together again, “My real name is Galaxy.”

“Galaxy?”

“Yeah. I wanted