I Dream of Zenia With the Bright Red Teeth by Margaret Atwood

Author:Margaret Atwood
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Contemporary Women, Fiction
ISBN: 9780987998910
Publisher: Walrus Ebooks
Published: 2012-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

THEIR REGULAR WALKS are on Saturdays, but this is a crisis, so Roz fixes lunch for Wednesday.

The three of them used to eat at the Toxique, back in the days of Zenia. Queen Street West was edgier then: more green hair, more black leather, more comic book stores. Now the mid-scale clothing chains have moved in, though there are still some residual tattoo joints and button shops, and the Condom Shack is soldiering on. The Toxique is long gone, however. Roz settles for the Queen Mother Cafe. A little elderly and battered, but comfy, like the three of them.

Or like the three of them used to be. Today, however, Charis is ill at ease. She fiddles with her vegetarian pad Thai and keeps looking out the window, where Ouida is impatiently waiting, roped to a bicycle stand.

“When’s the next vampire night?” says Roz. She’s just come from the dentist and is having trouble eating, because of the freezing. Her teeth are going the way of her high-heeled shoes, and for the same reasons: crumbling and pain. And the expense! It’s like shovelling money into her open mouth. On the bright side, dentistry is far more pleasant than it used to be. Instead of writhing and sweating, Roz puts on dark glasses and earphones and listens to New Age dingle music, borne away on a wave of sedatives and analgesics.

“Well,” says Charis, “the thing is, vampire night was last night.” She sounds guilty.

“You didn’t tell us?” says Tony. “We would have come over. I bet it gave you bad dreams about Zenia.”

“That was the night before,” says Charis. “Zenia came and sat at the end of my bed and told me to watch out for this person...it was a name I didn’t know. It sounded like a woman. A Martian kind of name, you know, it began with a Y. This time, she was wearing fur.”

“What sort of fur?” says Tony. She’s guessing wolverine.

“I don’t know,” says Charis. “It was black and white.”

“Cripes,” says Roz. “And then you watched a vampire film by yourself! That was reckless!”

“I didn’t,” says Charis — now she’s gone pink — “watch it by myself.”

“Oh, crap,” says Roz. “Not Billy!”

“Did you have sex?” asks Tony. It’s an intrusive question, but she and Roz need to know exactly where the enemy stands.

“No!” says Charis, flustered. “It was just friendly! We talked! And I feel a lot better now, because how can you really forgive a person if they aren’t there?”

“Did he put his arm around you?” says Roz, feeling like her own mother. No: her grandmother.

Charis ducks this. “Billy thinks we should open an urban B and B,” she says. “As an investment. They’re the coming thing. In one half of the duplex. He’d do the renovations, and then I’d do the baking.”

“And he’d be in charge of the money, right?” says Roz.

“The name Zenia told you. It wouldn’t by any chance be Yllib?” says Tony. Zenia had always been good at codes, and puzzles, and reflections.

“Trust me on this: forget it!” says Roz.

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