gloat, to intimidate the foe, to boost oneself into action?
Dieu et mon droit. Nemo
me impune lacessit. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. Don’t mess with me
. Challenges, battle cries, epitaphs. Bumper stickers.
This man says, “You’re history.”
Tony has compiled a mental list of these televised synonyms for death.
You’re toast, you’re fried, you’re wasted, you’re steak, you’re dead meat
. It’s odd how many of them have to do with food, as if being reduced to nutrients is the final indignity. But
you’re history
has long been one of her favourites. It makes such an exact equation between the past – any of the past, all of the past – and a deserved and shoddy oblivion.
That’s history
, the young announce, with self-righteous scorn.
This is now
.
There’s a close-up of the bug-eyed fear on the face of the man who will soon be history if things go the way they’re going, and then the scene shifts to a view of nasal passages, with smile-button medicated orange bubbles percolating through them.
“This is awful,” says West. Tony doesn’t know whether he means the cop show or the cross-sectioned nose. She mutes the sound, and takes up his large hand, holding two of his soy-sauced fingers. “West,” she says. What is it she would like to convey?
You’re so large?
No.
I
don’t own you?
No.
Please stay?
Mutt and Jeff, he sometimes calls them.
Ttum and Ffej
, Tony replies. Cut that out, says West. When they go walking together, they always look as if one of them is on a leash; but which one? A bear and its handler? A poodle and its trainer?
“Want a beer?” says West.
“Apple juice,” says Tony, “please,” and West unfolds himself from his cushion and pads down the stairs in his sock feet.
Tony sits watching a new car scream around, silently, in the mountainous desert, overlooked by flat-topped buttes. Good ambush country. She has only one decision to make right now: whether or not to tell West. How could she put it?
Zenia lives
. And then what? What would West do? Run from the house, without his coat,without his shoes? It’s possible. Tall people’s heads are too far from the ground, their centre of gravity is too high. One shock and they topple. As Zenia said once, West is a pushover.
On a hunch, she gets up and tiptoes over to West’s desk, where he keeps his phone. He has nothing so coherent as a phone pad, but on the back of a discarded sheet of musical notations she finds what she’s afraid of. Z. –
A. Hotel. Ext. 1409
.
The Z floats on the page as if scrawled on a wall, as if scratched on a window, as if carved in an arm. Z for Zorro, the masked avenger. Z for Zero Hour. Z for Zap.
It’s as if Zenia has already been here, leaving a taunting signature; but the handwriting is West’s. How sweet, she thinks; he just left it there for anyone to see, he doesn’t even know enough to flush it down the toilet. What is not so sweet is that he hasn’t told her. He is less transparent than she thought, less candid; more perfidious. The enemy is already within the walls.
The personal is not political, thinks Tony: the personal is military. War is what happens when language fails.
Zenia
, she whispers, trying it out.
Zenia, you’re history
.
You’re dead meat
.
7
CHARIS
C haris gets up at dawn. She makes her bed neatly, because she respects this bed. After working her way through time from one bed to another – a mattress on the floor, or several mattresses on several floors, a second-hand box bed with screw-on tapered wooden legs that kept breaking, a spine-wrecking futon, a chemical-smelling foam pad – she has finally achieved a bed that pleases her: firm, but not too firm, with a wrought-iron bedstead painted white. She bought it cheap from Shanita, at work, who was getting rid of it in one of her periodic transformations. Anything from Shanita is good luck, and this bed is good luck too. It’s clear, it’s fresh, like a mint candy.
Charis has covered the bed
Dieu et mon droit. Nemo
me impune lacessit. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. Don’t mess with me
. Challenges, battle cries, epitaphs. Bumper stickers.
This man says, “You’re history.”
Tony has compiled a mental list of these televised synonyms for death.
You’re toast, you’re fried, you’re wasted, you’re steak, you’re dead meat
. It’s odd how many of them have to do with food, as if being reduced to nutrients is the final indignity. But
you’re history
has long been one of her favourites. It makes such an exact equation between the past – any of the past, all of the past – and a deserved and shoddy oblivion.
That’s history
, the young announce, with self-righteous scorn.
This is now
.
There’s a close-up of the bug-eyed fear on the face of the man who will soon be history if things go the way they’re going, and then the scene shifts to a view of nasal passages, with smile-button medicated orange bubbles percolating through them.
“This is awful,” says West. Tony doesn’t know whether he means the cop show or the cross-sectioned nose. She mutes the sound, and takes up his large hand, holding two of his soy-sauced fingers. “West,” she says. What is it she would like to convey?
You’re so large?
No.
I
don’t own you?
No.
Please stay?
Mutt and Jeff, he sometimes calls them.
Ttum and Ffej
, Tony replies. Cut that out, says West. When they go walking together, they always look as if one of them is on a leash; but which one? A bear and its handler? A poodle and its trainer?
“Want a beer?” says West.
“Apple juice,” says Tony, “please,” and West unfolds himself from his cushion and pads down the stairs in his sock feet.
Tony sits watching a new car scream around, silently, in the mountainous desert, overlooked by flat-topped buttes. Good ambush country. She has only one decision to make right now: whether or not to tell West. How could she put it?
Zenia lives
. And then what? What would West do? Run from the house, without his coat,without his shoes? It’s possible. Tall people’s heads are too far from the ground, their centre of gravity is too high. One shock and they topple. As Zenia said once, West is a pushover.
On a hunch, she gets up and tiptoes over to West’s desk, where he keeps his phone. He has nothing so coherent as a phone pad, but on the back of a discarded sheet of musical notations she finds what she’s afraid of. Z. –
A. Hotel. Ext. 1409
.
The Z floats on the page as if scrawled on a wall, as if scratched on a window, as if carved in an arm. Z for Zorro, the masked avenger. Z for Zero Hour. Z for Zap.
It’s as if Zenia has already been here, leaving a taunting signature; but the handwriting is West’s. How sweet, she thinks; he just left it there for anyone to see, he doesn’t even know enough to flush it down the toilet. What is not so sweet is that he hasn’t told her. He is less transparent than she thought, less candid; more perfidious. The enemy is already within the walls.
The personal is not political, thinks Tony: the personal is military. War is what happens when language fails.
Zenia
, she whispers, trying it out.
Zenia, you’re history
.
You’re dead meat
.
7
CHARIS
C haris gets up at dawn. She makes her bed neatly, because she respects this bed. After working her way through time from one bed to another – a mattress on the floor, or several mattresses on several floors, a second-hand box bed with screw-on tapered wooden legs that kept breaking, a spine-wrecking futon, a chemical-smelling foam pad – she has finally achieved a bed that pleases her: firm, but not too firm, with a wrought-iron bedstead painted white. She bought it cheap from Shanita, at work, who was getting rid of it in one of her periodic transformations. Anything from Shanita is good luck, and this bed is good luck too. It’s clear, it’s fresh, like a mint candy.
Charis has covered the bed
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