Page 44 of Death of the Author

I can’t be normal, so I’ll be something else.

19

Surprise, Surprise

She woke up at 6:00 a.m. sharp and put on her black T-shirt with the dolphins on it, her favorite jeans with the blue-and-white Ankara cloth back pockets, and gym shoes. She braided her long braids down her back. She put on some perfume. She put on cowry shell earrings and her Apple watch with the aqua-blue band. And she even put a thin line of silver eyeliner around each eye. Today was special.

She’d finished getting ready too early, so she wasted another hour checking her email. The usual. Interview and speaking requests, news of strong sales from her agent, fan mail, social media notifications galore. It was easy to push it all away. Today, only one thing mattered.

She didn’t take a cab there. She wheeled. It was a fifteen-minute hike, and it was a cold morning. She welcomed the exercise and brisk forty-degree air, needing the time to clear her head. This hike was special.

She passed department buildings with both modern and historic designs. Gaggles of twentysomething-year-old students in winter gear, and professor types in heavier winter gear, passed on their way to early classes. More than a few paused to glance at her, but only three actually had thenerve to stop her and ask for her autograph. She was shivering and relieved to be inside by the time she reached the Eisner Building, a boxy white structure sitting at one end of campus. When she arrived at the entrance to the physical therapy gym, she paused, looking at the doors. This moment was special, too. The lights were already on inside. Through the frosted glass, she could see that more than one person was in there. They were waiting for her.

She took a deep breath. She shut her eyes. She imagined herself on the beach in Tobago, looking out at the ocean. Not a soul around. No family. No Msizi. No fans. No friends. No one. Just her. She was ready. She walked toward the warm waters. Yes. Walked.

She opened her eyes and pushed the button beside the doors. They smoothly opened and she rolled in. In the gym, Zelu found Hugo and his two assistants. He’d spoken about them yesterday, and she could tell who they were immediately: Marcy was the tall black woman who looked like she could lift a car if she had to, and Uchenna was a short Igbo guy who clearly thought he was still in Nigeria because he couldn’t bother to hide his suspicious expression from her.

“You are Igbo?” he asked her when Marcy and Hugo had stepped to the other side of the room to grab some equipment. He put a blood pressure cuff around her arm and touched the On button.

“You can’t tell by my name?” she asked.

“You have an Igboanda Yoruba last name.”

“There’s your answer, then.”

He said nothing for a moment. Then he blurted, “I read your novel. So did my father.”

Zelu raised her eyebrows as the cuff got tighter and tighter.

“My father asked me if we are building robots like that at MIT,” Uchenna said. “I told him that the writer wasn’t even a real engineer.”

Beep!The cuff released her arm.

Zelu scoffed. “Yeah, we writers are just wannabe engineers, mm-hmm.”

The machine beeped a second time. “Blood pressure’s a little high,” Uchenna said, smirking as he took the cuff off her arm.

“Surprise, surprise,” she said, trying to keep her cool despite the fact that everything inside her was wriggling, desperate to get to it.

Hugo and Marcy returned holding either end of a big stepladder. Zelu was impressed that Hugo had zero balance issues as he held his side of it. They set it down and Hugo stepped back and stretched. “Whoo! A good start to the morning,” he announced.

“You excited, Zelu?” Marcy asked.

“Nervous,” she admitted. “How many have you done this with?”

“You’ll be my twelfth,” she said, walking to Zelu’s other side.

“How many were able to—”

Marcy held up a hand. “Let’s not do that. This isyourday. Let’s venture into it with a blank slate.”

Zelu nodded, glad that Marcy had stopped her from going down the rabbit hole of negativity. As she waited, her mind began doing the math, weighing and reweighing her chances. She kept thinking about how her parents and siblings would react when she told them she’d failed (she’d never hear the end of it) or if they got a call saying that she’d injured herself (they’d never let her leave the house again).

“This is my first time assisting a new user,” Uchenna said. “I read all your paperwork, and I’m rather confident.”

Somehow, this didn’t make Zelu feel any better. She swallowed hard, wishing she hadn’t eaten that bag of potato chips on the way over.

“Let’s do this,” Hugo suddenly said. “Uchenna, get your phone ready.”

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