The Making of Zombie Wars by Aleksandar Hemon Page B

handwritten sign on it said “Welcome to Hell!”
    â€œRoom of Alma. My daughter,” Ana said, but she didn’t open the door for him, and he didn’t insist. What could’ve been in there? Script Idea #62: A secret door in a teenager’s closet leads to an alternate universe, where she is the heiress to a powerful empire, her life endangered by her evil stepfather .
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    Ana placed him at the head of the table, so that everyone now regarded him with expectation, as if he were supposed to conduct a workshop, or affirm his authority by delivering a salutation of some sort. No authority, however, was affirmed except for Ana’s, as she went around the table introducing all of her guests. Their names consisted entirely of unpronounceable sounds, therefore incomprehensible and impossible to remember. When she got to Bega, he said something that made her laugh.
    â€œWe go way back,” Bega said in English and winked. The woman sitting next to Bega was Ana’s boss, it turned out, and she was Russian. She had coal-black hair and biblically dark eyes, which made her appear very young. Joshua hadn’t even known Ana worked but he refrained from inquiring. Everyone at the table was now quiet, still waiting for Joshua to say something, and he couldn’t think of a single word to utter. Everything excellent is as difficult as it is rare.
    In the meantime, Ana packed a plate and set it down before him. “Little bit of everything,” she said. When Esko walked in with a pile of lamb on a platter, she picked a boneless piece for Joshua and dropped it on his plate, to which everyone responded with an appreciative “oooh.”
    â€œWhat do you want to drink?” Bega asked. “There is everything.”
    â€œI like wine,” Joshua said, before he saw what was on the table. There was little doubt he looked like a snob.
    And thus he drank some overoxidized wine and it was vile, but people talked at him and he could not fend off their foreign blather without alcohol, and he drank a lot of it, oxidation be damned. Ana was seated next to him, their thighs rubbing. It seemed that she was looking for ways to touch him surreptitiously, and mind he did not. She refilled his glass with the dreadful wine, while she sipped Johnnie Walker. Esko came in occasionally to bring more food or another bottle of booze, but he pretty much spent the evening in the kitchen. There was a cloud over his head, and everyone quieted down whenever he came by. “He doesn’t like parties,” Ana told Joshua by way of explanation. “Because he doesn’t like people.”
    â€œEarth is populated with reasons not to like people.”
    â€œHe is wild man.”
    â€œI think I ran into your daughter on my way in,” Joshua said, mainly to change the subject.
    â€œYes, Alma. I am worry about her,” Ana said. “Drugs, sex, crazy people. I don’t know her friends, where is she going. I think we maybe must go back to Sarajevo.”
    â€œShe’ll be fine,” Joshua said. “Teenagers have a lot of energy.”
    â€œEnergy is not good for mother,” Ana said. “Mother gets tired.”
    Joshua arranged an empathetic face to signal he understood. The arrangement required raised eyebrows and lips rolled in; he could feel his forehead muscles straining. The easiest thing would be just to hug her or hold her hand. Kimmy liked to snuggle up and put her head on the side of his chest to listen to his heartbeat; he often worried she could smell his armpit.
    â€œYou are too young to get tired.”
    She laughed: “How old you think I am?”
    â€œThirty,” Joshua ventured. Thirty-five or thirty-seven, really, maybe even forty, but he knew better than to say it.
    She pressed her hands against her cheeks and said: “I can kiss you for that.”
    Bega was ranting forcefully about something in Bosnian, occasionally sitting up