B00BCLBHSA EBOK Read Online Free PDF Page B

awkwardness. He really didn’t know anything at all about football.
    “What do you worship on your altar?” he asked. “Do you use it for worship?”
    “Say there’s some element of your life, yeah, that needs acknowledgment or control? That’s what it’s for. So if there’s something that I want to celebrate or influence, I’ll place it on the altar. I might put one of my books there, and be thankful that it’s been published, and hope it’ll do well with sales. Or I might put a little doll there that represents a person who’s important to me. My grandma, say, when she was sick for a while.”
    “Oh yeah!” said Trevor. “Yeah, I can see why you’d do that.” He almost sounded convinced. Like many nicely brought-up young men (and some of the bad boys too), Trevor loved his grandma.
    “See what I’m saying! He’s listening to Zena now,” said Zena. She was all for speaking in the third person when the drama or emotion of a situation demanded it. “Yeah, but it doesn’t have to be all about celebration, Trevor. See, right now, I’m trying to give up smoking cigarettes. So I put a cigarette butt in there, on my altar, and I ring the little silver bell I keep to the side, and then I crush the cigarette butt with my fingers; I peel off the paper and shred it; I mash up the nasty, sticky, brown filter. Symbolically, I’m crushing a very nasty habit. Yeah? And that prepares Zena to beat it in real life. So that’s how I use my altar. Plus, when I light it, the incense smells nice.”
    Trevor laughed. She imagined him scribbling away, impressed, though he might actually just be recording this. Did he realize she was in the bath? It would only add to her allure, like the earthly goddess Cleopatra before her.
    “I grew up a sassy North London girl, Trevor, with my share of setbacks. I’m not afraid to strike out at someone or something I believe is holding me back. Sure, Zena’s a bold, beautiful, spiritual woman who has risen up in life, and she likes to help others rise up. I’m a mentor to wayward children, disaffected youth, disenfranchised adults and other writers.”
    “Me too, I’m a mentor to some kids in a local school. What is it about being black that means we’ve all got to be a beacon for our local community? You ever wish you could be frivolous, Zena, instead of being a saint?”
    “You don’t have to be a saint, brother. Someone wants to make an enemy of me? They better watch out. I can be a saint, but I can be vindictive, too.”
    “I bet you can,” said Trevor. “Someone would have to be an idiot to make an enemy of you.”
    “You’re right. Crush or be crushed, yeah? Ain’t no one ever wants to know what it’s like to be crushed by Zena.”
    “Unless in the most passionate, romantic sense,” said Trevor, dutifully, offering Zena an opportunity to chat about her work (the real purpose of the call) and her new novel, a sensual romance called Venus in Velvet . Zena explained that she would be discussing the book during her appearance at the upcoming Romance Writers of Great Britain conference. She plugged a few other events—a book signing at a shop in Kensington, a reading at a spoken word event in Shoreditch—and made sure that Trevor was clear about where his readers could buy her books, both in store and online, and then they ended the call.
    Zena stepped, finally, out of the bath, with the grandiosity of a rock star emerging from an onstage water feature to rapturous applause. She planted one foot onto the bath mat, then the other, her ten purple-painted toenails making a V-shape like migratory birds. She pulled off her purple shower cap and shook loose her plaited hair so that it tumbled almost to her shoulders. She patted the moisture off her skin with a towel, and then made a fair attempt to put a little back in by rubbing coconut body salve over herself. She hummed again. Almost everything she did was self-congratulatory, but then there was a lot that she had to be