Elias smiled smugly. “My idea.”
“Music from the war years is a perilous path to walk.” Cheng caught Kenuda’s alarm. “I actually prefer it, but there’s a reason why it’s rarely played anymore.”
“I thought…”
“Clearly not thoroughly, but you’re a young man. You don’t remember how such music became anthemic to the rebels. Especially Lopez’s songs.”
“Not everything is remembered,” Elias said smugly.
“No,” Cheng conceded. “Not everything. Mooshie was a wretched person, but an amazing voice.” He began singing softly, “’Be brave with your heart, love ain’t never smart, let God sleep in the bed with us.’ It’s called Drapes. All right. Be careful. But nostalgia music might work. Just might,” he mused. “In its day, the sound was wonderful, a musical renaissance until it got twisted like everything else back then.” He paused, dancing with one leg on a memory. “You’ve already implemented a waiver, correct?”
“For what?”
Cheng’s disdain returned. “Mooshie’s songs are still outlawed.”
• • • •
ZELDA TIGHTENED THE knot on Diego’s new tie. “The flowers weren’t necessary.”
“I thought I’d make a good impression and let them see I’m responsible.” He nodded toward the Parents’ house.
“If they can’t see that, then fuck ‘em.”
“And you better not swear.”
“Oh?” She grinned. “Any other tips on my crappy shitty behavior you’d like to make?”
He glanced at his watch. “We don’t have time.”
The woman tossed Diego a surprised, but approving glance as she placed the roses in a glass vase.
“Thank you, these are beautiful. I don’t remember the last time someone brought flowers.”
“I thought, given the occasion. You know, the uh, occasion, it would be nice.” His stammering increased as the little demons in pigtails skipped into the room. They looked at Diego, sorting out what someone with such a nice smile was doing with the she-pig in the dreads.
“Girls, this is Diego. He’s Zelda’s friend.”
“What happened to the other one?” They turned accusingly toward Zelda.
“She couldn’t make it anymore,” the woman explained.
Zelda had received a curt official letter that Mooshie’s negativity and suspicions were not welcome in a setting of warmth and love, asking if she needed a temporary “friend” assigned during the pregnancy, implying Zelda’s taste in companions matched her choice in sex partners.
“But Diego’s much nicer, isn’t he?” the woman asked.
The girls took Diego by the hands and led him toward the couch; Zelda wondered if there was an oven behind.
“So do we play games?” he asked.
They simultaneously said “oh yes, lots.”
“Not lots,” the woman said with a scolding smile. “Today we get acquainted. Would you like some brownies, Diego?”
“I’d love some.”
If he didn’t stop smiling Zelda would smack him.
“We made them,” the girls chorused, offering the plate to Zelda, who waved them off; the children frowned, plotting other ways to poison her.
“I’m having another brownie,” Diego announced and the girls applauded.
Zelda had enough. “Now what?”
The woman frowned. “We’re a family. We do what families do.”
“Being together,” Diego said.
The woman and girls leaned forward as if Diego were the most fascinating person who ever lived.
“You can do pretty much anything as long as you love each other,” he said, shooting Zelda an encouraging look. She plopped besides him, determined not to smile.
“Isn’t that always the case? Finding the way together. And what memories do you have of your family, Zelda?” the woman asked.
“Very happy ones. Always a lot of love.”
“Your mother died young, didn’t she?”
Zelda reddened. “Sort of. I was twelve.”
“Suicide’s a painful thing for a young girl.”
The children were horrified, certain Zelda had a role in her mother’s death.
“I didn’t know that,” Diego said.
Zelda shrugged. “That was a long time ago.”
“Were you close to her?” asked one of the girls, startling Zelda.
While she’d helped her bewildered father with the arrangements and set up the house for visiting mourners, she hadn’t gone to the funeral, which brought Zelda before the DV Community Board for questioning. If you couldn’t love and respect your dead mother, how could you possibly love and respect The Family as a whole; if you ever made it out. What if she hadn’t loved and respected her mother, Zelda told the committee, which sort of gasped since Zelda’s failure was theirs. My mother was an asshole, she beat me, she beat my father, I’m not sorry she jumped off the roof, only that she didn’t do it sooner.
Zelda had been put on probation for two years and monitored monthly through a bored general practitioner, psychiatry had been outlawed a few years earlier under the Anti-Parasite Act, who asked if she had any bad dreams. Just life, she’d told him once. Zelda liked making adults gasp. She still did.
“Um, not really. She was kind of…” her voice trailed off as everyone waited. “Troubled. I don’t like troubled people. I like happy people.”
“You don’t seem happy,” the other child said.
“Maybe not at this moment.” Zelda glared at the girls. “Usually I’m very happy.” She poked Diego for backup.
“Zelda’s always happy and singing.”
“Sing,” the children said.
“Yes,” the woman clapped. “We’d love a song.”
Zelda looked helplessly at Diego, who thought for a moment and sang On the Road Again. He has to pick the song he played over and over when they fucked? The children clapped rhythmically. Zelda reluctantly joined in. The girls held hands and danced in a circle.
Diego gestured to his lips and heart. Finally, she gestured back her love. Diego beamed and spun the girls around a little quicker.
“Join us, Zelda,” he called out.
• • • •
DIEGO HAD LEFT Zelda a squared note on her pillow just after midnight. The subway took about forty minutes and then the walk along the dark streets another half an hour. Captain Lee stood outside Basil Hayden’s Funeral Home, impatiently smoking a ‘bacco.
He shook his wristwatch at Diego, who shrugged apologetically.
“Trains.”
Lee sniffed. “Yeah, they’re dousing ‘em in lilac shampoo lately.”
Diego blushed. “Strawberry. Sir.”
Lee shook his head at the many mysteries of Diego. His blue van was parked at the rear of the warehouse. The captain rattled the fence and a light flickered on. An A24 came
