Zazen - By Vanessa Veselka Page 0,8
talk about. He scheduled the meeting for the day after my party and I’m totally not coming. No way.”
Mitch came out of the kitchen and took some fliers. I looked at the one in my hand. It was a picture of an orgy drawn to look like a subway map with an arrow pointing to a tangle in the center that said You Are Here.
“We’ll have lube, condoms and dental dams there. If you’re allergic to latex you should bring your own gloves.”
Mirror reached in her bag and pulled out a few more fliers. Mitch took some.
“You can take these and invite a couple of people but let them know that we’re asking all fluid-bonded couples to use condoms and dams too,” she said, “It’s just more respectful that way.”
I saw a broken horizon. Huge, jagged slabs in the distance under which people met and danced as though it was an actual dancehall and not a crack in the pavement.
Mirror grabbed a cookie from a basket by the register and unwrapped it. “When is Franklin going to fucking figure out that a chocolate chip cookie with milk chocolate is not vegan?”
Mirror picked out the chocolate chips and put them on a napkin, “Oh, by the way, I found another rat. Thankfully, it was already dead.”
“You sure?” asked Mitch.
“Yeah. It had its head chewed off.”
I went out to see where they had buried it.
The rain made the upturned earth look black. I found a hole near the back fence but there wasn’t a rat in it. The other mounds had weeds growing out of them. Some of the crosses had fallen over in the rain but several were still standing. It had a miniature Buzz Lightyear lashed to it. I stepped around a rotten crate and went to the grave of the pregnant rat. I wondered if she was really in there and if I should have made more little white flags. I don’t know how many baby rats she would have had, or how many are in a litter or even if they’re called litters.
I left for the Asian market.
4 The Asian Market
The windows of the Asian market were steamed and I smelled shrimp frying. Strings of packaged candy hung like beaded curtains and bowls of jade sat on dark lacquer shelves. I picked up a calendar that was lying on a wicker chair. It was full of Chinese girls wearing satin. When I flipped through it, it sounded like a fan whirring in another room.
On the grocery side a cook was stirring a pot and yelling in Chinese. Then he yelped and threw something. There was a huge clatter of thin metal, like a tray of spoons falling. A woman came out and they started arguing. The cook was holding a towel around his hand and kicking the oven door. I could see him through the hanging meat. He was just beneath two birds strangled and dangling with feet twined and tied to a crossbeam. The fluorescent light made the cook’s skin look gray and yellow against his white shirt.
I looked through a basket full of Buddhas on the shelf next to me. Some were brass and others were gunmetal gray, no bigger than bullets. One was the size of a golf ball. I picked it up and thought about buying it and throwing it through the glass door of the box-mall-church. But that door wouldn’t break no matter how hard I threw it. I couldn’t do it anyway. I’d be afraid I’d hit someone or scare some kid so I put it back. I’m sick of how they always win.
On the floor was a basket full of fans. They had bamboo spines and collapsed like butterfly knives. Fans with flowers, pagodas, birds and the names of cities: Bangkok, Osaka, Tokyo on orange skies with burgundy suns and I thought, I need to get something, something for someone but I didn’t know whom. I tried to imagine giving a fan to Annette. Maybe one that said Phnom Penh in red over a field of yellow. I could leave it on her nightstand and she’d put it somewhere special. But I couldn’t take what it would mean to her. That would just be too much. I picked out a white fan with a single black branch on it. Good for all occasions.
The boxes of fortune cookies were at the end of the aisle. A recent shipment had come in. I usually get a bag, which has about thirty useable fortunes