X Y Zee
opening excerpt
The smell of sizzling bacon fills the air. A young woman pops a slice of bread into the toaster and inspects her image in the shiny surface. The diamond nose stud glints back at her. Dark hair falls softly over her shoulders. Her face seems fuller, her skin smoother – with no vestige of facial hair. Zee smiles and cracks an egg into the frying pan.
Breakfast was once her favourite meal. Each Saturday her father used to cook eggs in bacon grease for her and her sister. Her mother disapproved of so much fat, but Zee and Linney had loved this special connection with their dad.
Zee frowns. No more such mornings for her – and not just because she moved out.
Nevertheless, she cuts her toast into ‘soldiers’ – just like her dad had done – and transfers her breakfast to a plate.
A toast strip beside the yolk of her sunny-side-up egg looks like the number 10. Zee bites her lip. It’s been that many months since she’s seen her dad. “Deep breath,” she tells herself, not wanting that thought to spoil her morning. Coffee mug in hand, she reaches for the hormones that she always takes before breakfast.
In the living room of her small apartment, Zee pushes aside her laptop and sets her plate on the coffee table. “Where’s that remote?” she grumbles, finally unearthing it from under a college assignment she’s been working on. When she clicks the device at the TV, the news lights the screen. Since the lockdown six weeks ago, Canada has recorded more than 51,000 COVID-19 cases and nearly 3000 deaths.
Zee dips a toast ‘soldier’ into her egg yolk and bites off its head. Quebec and Ontario report the highest numbers, with nursing home residents especially vulnerable. On his west-coast tour, David Lynn’s anti-LGBTQ preaching was drowned out in Victoria by protesters.
The coffee sours in Zee’s mouth as her father’s red face springs to mind. “Zakary, God created you in his image,” he had insisted. “God doesn’t make mistakes. What you’re doing is not natural.”
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