I Dream of Zenia with the Bright Red Teeth Page 2

  “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. “Billy’s a drainpipe. He’ll clean you out.”

  “What does Ouida have to say about him?” Tony asks.

  “Ouida’s a little jealous, I have to admit,” says Charis. “I had to… I had to sequester her.” She is definitely blushing now.

  “Locked Ouida in the closet, is my guess,” says Tony to Roz on the phone.

  “This is dire,” says Roz.

  THEY DEVISE A PHONE TREE: Charis will get two calls a day, one from each of them, to monitor the situation. But Charis stops answering the phone.

  Three days pass. Then Tony receives a text message: Need to talk. Please come. Sorry. It’s from Charis.

  Tony collects Roz, or rather Roz collects Tony, in her Prius. When they arrive at the duplex, Charis is sitting at the kitchen table. She’s been crying. But at least she’s still alive.

  “What happened, sweetie?” says Roz. There are no marks of violence; maybe that schmuck Billy has pocketed Charis’s life savings.

  Tony looks at Ouida. She’s sitting beside Charis, ears pricked, tongue out. There’s something on her chest fur. Pizza sauce?

  “Billy’s in the hospital,” says Charis. “Ouida bit him.” She starts to sniffle. Good dog, Ouida, thinks Tony.

  “I’ll make us some mint tea,” says Roz. “Why did Ouida…?”

  “Well, we were going to, you know… in the bedroom. And Ouida was barking, so I had to shut her in the upstairs hall closet. And then, just before…I simply had to know. So I said, ‘Billy, who murdered my chickens?' Because back then, Zenia told me it was Billy who did it, but I never knew what to believe, because Zenia was such a liar, and I just couldn’t…with someone who’d done that. And Billy said, ‘It was Zenia, she slit their throats, I tried to stop her.’ And then Ouida started to bark really loud, as if something was hurting her, and I had to go see what was wrong, and when I opened the closet door she rushed out and jumped up on the bed and bit Billy. He screamed a lot, there was blood on the sheets, it was…”

  “You can get it out with cold water,” says Roz.

  “On the leg?” asks Tony.

  “Not exactly,” says Charis. “He wasn’t wearing any clothes, otherwise I’m sure she wouldn’t have…but they’re doing surgery. I feel bad about that. I told them at the hospital, after they’d wheeled him to emerg — I said it was me who bit him, it was a sex thing Billy liked and it went too far, and they were very nice, they said these things happen. I hated to lie, but they might have, you know, put Ouida away. It was very stressful! But at least now I know the answer.”

  “What answer?” asks Roz. “The answer to what?”

  Charis says it’s all very clear: Zenia has been coming back in dreams to warn her about Billy, who was the chicken murderer all along. But Charis was too stupid to figure it out — she wanted to believe the best of Billy, and it was so nice at first that he was back in her life, it was like a completion of the circle or something, so Zenia had to take the next step and reincarnate herself in the body of Ouida — that’s why she was wearing fur in the second dream — and she was naturally annoyed when she heard Billy sticking the blame onto her for something she hadn’t done.

  In fact, says Charis, maybe Zenia’s intentions were benevolent all along. Maybe she stole Billy to protect Charis from such a bad apple as him. Maybe she stole West to teach Tony a life lesson about, well, music appreciation or something, and maybe she stole Mitch to clear the way for Roz’s much better husband, Sam. Maybe Zenia was, like, the secret alter ego of each of them, acting out stuff for them they didn’t have the strength to act out by themselves. When you looked at it that way…

  SO THAT IS HOW Tony and Roz have agreed to look at it, at least when they are with Charis, because it makes Charis happier. It takes some doing to pretend that a medium-sized black and white dog who wipes her paws on your coat and poops behind logs is in fact Zenia, but they don’t have to pretend all the time: Zenia comes and goes, unpredictable as she has always been, and only Charis can tell when Zenia is present inside Ouida and when she is not.

  Billy made threatening noises about suing Charis for his injuries, but Roz squashed that: she can out-lawyer him any day of the week, she told him. Thanks to the extensive search done by her hired detective, she has chapter and verse on his career in matron fleecing, Ponzi schemes, and identity theft, and if he thinks he can use Ouida as his blackmail weapon he should think again, because it’s his word against Charis’s, and who does he think a jury will believe?

  So Billy has gone elsewhere, never to be seen again, and now a jovial retired plumber lives in the other half of Charis’s duplex. He’s a widower, and Roz and Tony have hopes for him. He’s redoing the bathroom, which is a start. Ouida approves of him, and tries to cram herself under the sink when he’s down there with his wrench, and licks him wherever possible, and flirts with him shamelessly.

  Colophon

  Fearless. Witty. Thoughtful. Canadian.

  This ebook is just the start. Subscribe to The Walrus and have the best in long form journalism, fiction, poetry, and editorials every month.

  walrusmagazine.com/subscribe

  If you enjoyed this story, you’ll enjoy these great stories from past issues of The Walrus: All the Way Home

  http://walrusmagazine.com/articles/2008.07-adventure-move-to-austin-wendy-dennis

  I left for Austin, Texas, last September, on a splendid Saturday of the Labour Day weekend. Dawn was breaking as I headed west along the Queen Elizabeth Way toward the US border and a more expansive idea of myself. It was unclear what lay in store. I was just thrilled to be moving again.

  This was my first trip to Austin, except for a few days the previous spring, when I’d flown down to see if it would be a good place to do some writing and take a sabbatical from my life. Among other things, I wanted to meet my prospective landlords, Cat and Norm Ballinger. I’d connected with them in March after posting an ad in the Austin section on Craigslist, indicating that I was a writer looking for an “apartment, house or idiosyncratic space.”

  The Walrus Foundation is a registered charitable non-profit organization dedicated to promoting debate on matters vital to Canadians.

  The Walrus magazine launched in September of 2003 with a straightforward mandate: t
o be a national general interest magazine about Canada and its place in the world. We are committed to publishing the best work by the best writers from Canada and elsewhere on a wide range of topics for readers who are curious about the world.

  Browse. Photo galleries, blogs, web exclusives, archives, and much more with a click of your mouse. walrusmagazine.com

  Watch. Smart on the page, smart on the screen. Original documentaries based on stories from the magazine. walrustv.ca

  Attend. Public events and debates, coming soon to cities across the country. walrusmagazine.com/events

  Join. Sign up for our newsletter, follow us on Twitter, or like our Facebook page for all things Walrus online. www.walrusMagazine.com/newsletter, Twitter.com/WalrusMagazine, Facebook.com/TheWalrusMagazine

  Laugh. Funny words, pictures, sites, and sounds exclusive to The Walrus. TheWalrusLaughs.com

  Engage. Have your say on ideas that matter. Suggest, share, vote, or comment. Walrussoapbox.com

  Please consider becoming a supporter of The Walrus Foundation, the charitable non-profit organization that publishes The Walrus and presents other important educational initiatives.

  Subscribe

  If you enjoy this book, please consider subscribing to The Walrus. To subscribe online, visit our website at walrusmagazine.com/subscribe

  “The Walrus is one of the best things that has happened in Canada. It’s very rare, an outfit like this, informed by integrity, vision, and dedication. Please help The Walrus survive. We need it.”

  Leonard Cohen - poet, singer-songwriter, and author

  Copyright

  COPYRIGHT © 2012 O.W. TOAD LTD.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Published in 2012 by

  THE WALRUS FOUNDATION

  101–19 Duncan Street, Toronto, ON M5H 3H1

  Tel. (416) 971-5004, fax (416) 971-8768

  walrusmagazine.com

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Atwood, Margaret 1939—

  I Dream of Zenia with the Bright Red Teeth / Margaret Atwood.

  Stories published in the July/August 2012 edition of the Walrus magazine, as part of a collection of three short stories.

  ISBN 978-0-9879989-3-4

  I. Walrus Foundation II. Title.

  PS8501.T86I2 2012 C813'.54 C2012-901829-5

  Designed by Brian Morgan at The Walrus.

  Set in Arno Pro

  Ebook Conversion by Coach House Books

  Cover image for I Dream of Zenia with the Bright Red Teeth

  COPYRIGHT © CC-BY ClickFlashPhotos / Nicki Varkevisser

  Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/clickflashphotos/4194026300/

  Story based on characters from The Robber Bride, 2006, McClelland and Stewart.

  FB2 document info

  Document ID: be228733-1aa1-4592-8e82-a5da8457ad0a

  Document version: 1

  Document creation date: 2.9.2013

  Created using: calibre 1.1.0, FictionBook Editor Release 2.6.6 software

  Document authors :

  Namenlos

  About

  This file was generated by Lord KiRon's FB2EPUB converter version 1.1.5.0.

  (This book might contain copyrighted material, author of the converter bears no responsibility for it's usage)

  Этот файл создан при помощи конвертера FB2EPUB версии 1.1.5.0 написанного Lord KiRon.

  (Эта книга может содержать материал который защищен авторским правом, автор конвертера не несет ответственности за его использование)

  http://www.fb2epub.net

  https://code.google.com/p/fb2epub/