Ashes and Bones by Dana Cameron Page A

for my Café-Nation card, the one that asked “Have you been CaféNated today?,” and counted off how many more trips I had before I got a free drink. Not this time, but not many more to go. I’d already been through two cards since the place opened a couple of months ago.
    One of the kids who worked there came in, smiled, and said hi. It took me a second to remember her name: Bell, bell…Isabel. Isabel had a dumbbell in a piercing over her eye. I had always thought the piercing looked painful, but maybe if I had one, it would keep me from falling asleep facedown on my students’ blue books.
    I smiled back; something of a feat for me, at the moment, but she had access to the coffee, and therefore my happiness. “How’s the pack?” I asked Isabel.
    “Oh, they’re fine,” she said. “Got a new picture. Wanna see?”
    I nodded and she pulled out her wallet. The picture was of her three pugs: Liam, Casey, and Wee Mikey. Bulging marble black eyes and panting tongues strained to reach the camera lens. I could swear they were smiling, all linked up with their little green harnesses.
    “Nice,” I said. “Wee Mikey isn’t so wee anymore.”
    “No, but that’s not why we called him that, anyway.”
    “Oh?”
    “Well, it’s kinda gross, but when we’ve got them all harnessed up together? Everyone runs to have a pee? Mikey’s aim is pretty bad. Pees all over the other guys, pees all over himself. It’s a mess.”
    “Oh,” was all I could manage.
    “Charming,” Tina said. She handed me my double cappuccino with an extra shot, and grinned as she measured out the bag of Columbian beans.
    I handed her my card, which she stamped, and the money for the coffee; I tossed the change into the jar.
    Tina looked at me a little more closely. “Here,” she said, reaching under the counter and pulling out a small stick of chocolate.
    “I didn’t order a mocha,” I said.
    “No, but you look like you could use the fix.”
    “Hey, thanks; you’re not wrong about that. See you, Isabel. Take it easy, Ms. Willner.”
    She picked up the counter cloth as she completed our ritual. “You too, Ms. Fielding.”
     
    Back home, I fled immediately upstairs to my office. Odd, I thought as the door knocked over an unseen obstacle, the room should be clean. I thought I’d cleaned it earlier this summer. Once I fought my way in, I realized that I had, and I could see that the rug was recently vacuumed. But between the notes and crates of artifacts dumped after the fieldwork, and the piles of books pulled for lecture writing, on top of the rush at the beginning of a new academic year, you were bound to lose a little surface area.
    I saw a note stuck to my computer, reminding me that I’d promised to bring some books on introductory archaeology to Raylene Reynolds. She and her husband Erik ran the Lawton Yacht Club and Tiki Bar, one of my favorite haunts. Raylene homeschooled her kids. I had piled the books up and left them by the door, so I’d remember to get them to her.
    After I got the fans started up and the place began to cool down, I pulled out my collection of near-completed syllabi. Four courses this semester, one of them brand new. Yuck. While it was indeed better to burn out than rust out, I could have done with a little more rest and oxidation.
    I worked out the updates for the first three classes, and then tackled the new one. Inspiration hit me, and I thought of a topic for a lecture that would round things out nicely and get me the basis for a paper that I promised to present later in the fall. I got a tingly feeling at this bit of deluxe recycling. No, not recycling. Multiple use and good planning. Yay, me.
    The lights went out. The fan blades became visible as they slowed to a halt. The CD player died.
    “Seven variations on six filthy words!” Deep breath; no problem, I’d prepared for this. I turned off the lights and the fans and the radio. My computer was running on its battery, and I’d squirreled away some