When Nemet and Zayna were here

continued from
When Nemet and Zayna were here 

 “I made red beans and rice for them,” I said.
     “Yes, from when we lived in New Orleans,” she said.
     “Yes. I went to meet them at the train. It came in in the afternoon. I’m remembering now. In March—not this last March when we were just curling into our pandemic shelters but the March before. It must have been a Tuesday because that’s when the train comes in.”
     “Thursdays. It comes in on Thursdays, too.”
     “No. Tuesday because you were working. And they left on Thursday. That’s why you wouldn’t remember, you were hardly around.”
     “I see,” Roz said (though she was shaking her head). ‘You met them at the station. And you’d made red beans and rice.”
     “I was making it,” I said.

I remembered mostly what we ate because I was cooking—red beans and rice on Tuesday and gumbo on Wednesday because I was on a New Orleans kick.
     But I remembered too that we visited the little museum in The Camera Shop, also that Nemet took lots of pictures. They met Uncle Albert; they had coffee with him and Nils and Axel, neither of whom had heard of Kristovia.
     “I can see that,” Roz said.
     But Uncle Albert said he’d been there in the sixties, and he was surprised because he thought the language would be like Romansh or Romanian, but it wasn’t. “More like Serbian?” he asked. “Not really like either,” Zayna said. “More like Azerbaijani though no one knows quite why.”
     “There must be theories,” Uncle Albert said.
     “More like hypotheses,” Zayna answered.

BOZOTUS
(digital scribble by m ball)

“But you were with us in the evenings,” I said, “as I remember.”
     Roz did not say, “Like I was with you in Kristovia.” She nodded.
     “We talked about Ottawa because we’d been there [link]. That’s where Zayna’s mother grew up.”
     “Yes.”
     “And about the president because they thought he was amusing. ‘I always imagine him in a clown suit,’ Nemet said, ‘like Bozo.’ They knew Bozo somehow.”
     “What was he up to then?” She meant the president, that clown.
     “I don’t remember,” I said. Then I said, “Wait! He was wearing a long red tie, and he was signing something.”
     “Very funny,” Roz said.

“What else did we talk about?” Roz said.
     “They were going on on the train to Chicago and from there—I don’t remember how—to Toronto. Zayna had an Uncle still there, her mother’s brother. He did something with the National Gallery. We went with Uncle Albert there to see a painting his friend recommended.* You remember that, right?”
     “Yes,” Roz said. “I do remember that.”§ [Our Canada adventures begin here.]

12.05.20

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* Shirley Wiitasalo’s Park.
§ Tomorrow Roz asked, “Where did you get that picture of Nemet and Zayna (← all the links)?” “Mel Ball made it,” I said, “though I’m not sure how. Usually he says, but this time he didn’t.” “But where did he get a picture to make it from?” “I think I took a picture with my phone and sent it to him,” I said. “Oh,” Roz said. “I won't ask where the light was coming from,” Roz said.