The Making of Zombie Wars by Aleksandar Hemon

party. Terrified, Joshua scanned the room. Apart from his students and Bega, everyone was comfortingly anonymous. He waved wordlessly at everyone, which everyone ignored. He stood at the door, waiting for something to happen and determine what he should do next. Eventually, he turned to go elsewhere and there was Ana behind him, her short hair so freshly hennaed as to approach purple, matching nicely her sky-blue summer dress and her cleavage beaded with sweat. She had a tray of thin-sliced meat in her hands.
    â€œTeacher Josh,” she said. “Super to see you.”
    She wiggled past him and he had an urge to grab her and keep her by his side. Her face was flushed, and Joshua determined he should be hot as well: he wiped the imaginary sweat off his forehead with his hand, and everyone laughed. “I’m Joshua,” he said, but no one bothered to introduce themselves. Bega finally raised his beer to greet him then poured all of it into his mouth.
    â€œWhat are you doing here?” Joshua ventured to ask.
    â€œBosnia is small world,” Bega said. “And world is small Bosnia. And I live close.”
    The rest of the guests raised their glasses, except for Captain Ponomarenko and Larissa, who hailed him with an ungenerous stare, as if his arrival irreversibly spoiled the reigning harmony. Ana joked in her language with the people at the table and everybody neighed with laughter looking at him. They all appeared Eastern European, but he could not determine what exactly it was that made them so. The flat back of male heads, perhaps. Or the dark circles around their eyes. Or the abundance of defiantly unhealthy food. Or the huddling around the table. On all other nights we eat either sitting up or leaning back; on this night we lean forward and giggle at strangers.
    Ana put the platter down and returned to him. “What did you say to them?” he asked.
    â€œYou don’t know if you don’t learn Bosnian,” she said and winked at him mischievously. “Let me show you where is the kitchen.”
    It wasn’t clear why he needed to know where the kitchen was, but she touched him above the elbow to direct him and his biceps rubbed against her breasts. He could feel their fullness, their weighted maturity. Kimmy’s breasts were small, somehow expressive of her control, as if she willfully prevented them from growing.
    â€œSo, you know Bega,” Joshua said. “Small world.”
    â€œI know him. He lives close.”
    â€œCaptain Ponomarenko and Larissa are here too. They hate the thought of me.”
    â€œYes,” she frankly confirmed. “But I like you.” There was the momentary purse of her lips and a flash of the dimples before she smiled, rendering Captain USSR and his wife harmless and irrelevant. She bespoke the supreme authority of the governing hostess—everyone in her domain was going to be taken care of. Kimmy had a similar quality, but her domain was spare: he and Bushy were the only ones populating it. Ana pulled up her bra and Joshua compliantly followed her to the kitchen.
    â€œYou know Bega?” she asked.
    â€œWe’re in the same screenwriting workshop.”
    â€œWhat is workshop?”
    â€œOh, we share our work with others and then talk shop about it.”
    â€œNice,” she said, in a way that suggested that she understood what he was talking about. Kimmy claimed that the workshop format had emerged at the same time as group therapy, but she hadn’t experienced Graham’s workshopping, which was as far from healing as can be.
    In the small kitchen, there was a man taking up half of the space. A cleaver in hand, he was dismembering what appeared to be a whole lamb stretched on a plank, its eyes about to pop out in roasted surprise. Whenever the man brought the cleaver down, everything on the counter leapt up and the lamb raised its head. Barbed wire was tattooed in a circle around the man’s neck, as if to