Page 22 of Death of the Author

“Nothing new. I swear, Amarachi probably thinks I shoot up heroin and smoke crack.”

“She’s just trying to help, Zelu.”

Zelu slammed her laptop shut. “Well, she’s a snitch. We’re not ten years old anymore. Yeah, I live at home, but I’m thirty-four, and she’s twenty-eight! I can do whatever I want. And I wasoutside!”

“True.”

“And what the fuck is this self-righteous crap!? We’veallsmoked weed before! I’m pretty sure Dad smoked plenty of it in Nigeria! He wanted to try my pen; he was just playing it off like an accident because of Mom. And you know what, I bet she probably smoked it right in the palace, too!”

Tolu giggled at this, and even though she was still angry, she couldn’t help but join him. They quieted. Zelu’s high had worn off a while ago, but working onRusted Robotsa little had kept her nerves calm. However, now she was right back to where she’d been when it all happened—low. She sighed.

“Is it all true?” Tolu asked.

She looked up, met his eyes, and grinned. “One hundred percent.”

“Holy fuck,” he said.

She did a self-satisfied shimmy with her shoulders. “Thank you.”

Over the next few days, everyone eventually came around, putting the whole vaping incident behind them. Her parents gently asked her what the bookwas about. When she told them, they were obviously confused by the plot but didn’t ask any clarifying questions. Her father said, “Well, that’s great. Congratulations.” Her sisters each called and congratulated her, too, though none of them asked for details about the story or the publishing process. Jackie came by in person to apologize for Amarachi, and then he sat with Zelu for an hour to hear how it had all happened.

Zelu was glad they all knew now, but enough was enough. She wouldn’t get their admiration, and she didn’t need it. Satisfied to be left alone, she quickly got back to editing and disappeared into her own world without humankind.

Then the journalist came to the house.

Weeks before, her publisher’s publicity director had excitedly called her to set up a prepublication interview with a venerable newspaper—the kind that reported real news, not just book stuff. But she’d been so distracted with revising her novel that she’d completely forgotten about it. She was deep into rewriting a tricky paragraph when her mother showed up at her bedroom door.

“The reporter is here,” she said.

Zelu resisted the urge to be snippy; her mother wasn’t her maid. “Thanks, Mom,” she said. “Can you tell him I’ll be there in a minute?” She looked at her computer’s clock and was surprised at the time. An hour had passed like it was five minutes.

“All this publicity for this crazy book you wrote.” Her mother frowned as she looked over Zelu’s wrinkled pajamas. “Put something presentable on.”

“I was going to, Mom,” Zelu said as she closed her laptop.

“You better,” her mother said as she walked back into the hallway. “Remember, good journalists notice more than your words.”

Alone again, Zelu looked down at herself. She’d taken a shower around 1 a.m. that day , and it was 3 p.m. now. She sniffed her armpits. “Not terrible,” she muttered. She slipped on her long red skirt and Digable Planets T-shirt—a little wrinkled, but they were just going to have to do. She tiedback her braids, rubbed some frankincense oil on her wrists, splashed some water on her face and dried it. Her appearance was nothing special, but it was her.

“Hi,” she said as she wheeled into the living room.

He was a little white guy, maybe only twenty-five years old. He slouched comfortably in her father’s chair, legs crossed. His clothes were casual but expensive; his stylish jeans were rolled up to reveal clean purple Chucks and brightly striped socks. In his left hand he held one of her mother’s favorite glasses, but he wasn’t drinking the orange juice in it. He smiled but didn’t get up to greet her. Zelu didn’t like him.

“Zelu Onyenezi-Onyedele!” he said. “So honored to meet you. Seth Daniels.”

Zelu narrowed her eyes at him. He’d pronounced her name perfectly. She shook his hand. Then he reached into his pocket and put a cell phone on the coffee table between them. “You mind if I record?” he asked.

Zelu looked down at his phone screen. The flashing red dot on the screen indicated that it was already picking up audio. “Do whatever you need to do.”

He smirked knowingly. “I know I’m talking to a sci-fi writer, but honestly, I don’t fully trust tech.” He reached into his briefcase and pulled out a yellow legal pad and pen. Retro. Okay, maybe he wasn’t so bad after all. “So, the way I like to start these things is by just verifying the basic stuff.”

“Cool.”

He read from his notepad. “You’re the child of Nigerian immigrants.”

Zelu nodded. “My mother is Yoruba—that’s a Nigerian ethnic group. And my father is Igbo, another ethnic group. They met in grad school. They came to the US to start a new life together. Home is complicated.”

He tilted his chin, eyes still on the notepad. “And you’ve been back to Nigeria?”

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