Zazen - By Vanessa Veselka Page 0,45

and Indonesian patio furniture. In the other, I see the Statue herself gather her gowns and step off the island. Liberté! Liberté! Hairpins falling like cluster bombs in the harbor and a bustle of chattering soundbites—she wades in. And I think I could take having these dreams if I knew when they would stop. If someone said, you will have the first one two hundred and thirty nine more times and the second one six times, I could be okay and get used to it because I would know that it wasn’t forever. The problem is that I will never know, not until the day I die and look back and say, oh! that was it. February 22, 20— that’s when they stopped. Likewise, I don’t know when all this will stop. It’s a strange thing to be god of someone else’s terror, even minor god, because I knew I was harmless. People were figuring that out but there was a shining moment in between, a strawberry on the cliff, passing, it still shimmered.

The phone rang. It was Tamara. She wanted to meet for brunch at Naught. I liked the idea of eating somewhere I had recently threatened to bomb. Besides, I heard they had an ice sculpture there of Leda and the Swan, but that was probably just wishful thinking. Tamara said she had a friend in the kitchen that could hook us up—cashew hummus, seed crackers and probiotic gin—whatever we wanted. I walked into the restaurant right before the rain started. The group of men that came in behind me turned when they heard the thunderclap. “Just in time,” said one of them as the door shut. No, you’re not, I thought. Someone turned up the bossa nova.

Tamara was in the far corner with her face in a book. I walked over and sat down. Her hair was in short pigtails and she was wearing a green t-shirt with owls on it, light freckles over the bridge of her nose and her fair skin almost violet under her eyes.

“So, do they really make probiotic gin?” I asked.

“Yes. I always get it. It’s disgusting.”

She handed me a glass. It tasted like the bottom of a planter.

“Guess what I saw on the way down here?” I said. “‘Superland. We will never forget!’ sprayed right the a wall by the bus station.”

Tamara picked up her menu, “Do you like nori?”

“Do I what?”

“Like nori. I like dulse.”

“Did you hear what I said?”

“About what?”

“Superland. We will never forget?”

“That’s the problem they already have,” she flipped the menu over. “Do you know what makes something a sea lettuce?”

“Come on, it was cool. Citizens for a Rabid Economy? What was the other one, Manifestation?”

“All I’m saying is that it’s a fucking lovely day to buy more IKEA. They’re already out shopping.”

“Two days ago you said it was brilliant.”

“Yes,” she shrugged, “but it was a wink, wasn’t it? It didn’t really change anything.”

“Oh right, it would have been much more effective if they lit a trashcan on fire and spray-painted anarchy on the wall.”

The waiter set a small glass dish of sprouted lentils on the table.

“Not saying that.”

“So it doesn’t count because no one torched the parking lot?”

“No one did anything. It was more like a joke, right? Just like all the other threats. And,” she leaned across the table, “you’re right, a lot of people claiming to be anarchists are pathetic suburban kids that just don’t want to clean their rooms, but I’ll give them one thing, they’ve got it right about property destruction. It isn’t violence, war, poverty, now that’s violence. Blowing up someone’s SUV when no one’s around it is just a good idea. Either way, don’t lump me in with them.”

Tamara’s face was inches from mine. I could see gray lines in the blue of her iris, her cornflower fingertips on the gin glass. She was a bully but we were more alike than different. I might be too chicken to set an SUV on fire but I wasn’t really against it. In fact I loved reading about things like that because I knew the people who did it were on the same side I was. Even if they didn’t know about me, I knew about them and that made all the difference. I began to think that maybe what I viewed as sensitivity and compassion had just been squeamishness all along.

Tamara settled back and called the waiter over.

“I’m going to have the sea lettuce,” she turned, “and you?”

“Nothing.”

“My friend will have