These Dreams of You

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Zan writes to Viv as breezy an email as he can muster, though he doesn’t do breezy in even the breeziest of circumstances. He writes about the city, kids, what they’ve been doing, concluding, Assume you’re not returning to London w/in nxt 48 hrs so looking into childcare prospects for when residency begins next week.

When there’s no answer, Zan sends another email, then phones Viv on her cell, though he knows she has no connection where she is. He phones the Ghion Hotel in Addis Ababa. The weekend passes; Zan, Parker and Sheba spend Saturday afternoon at Leicester Square eating a surprisingly excellent pizza and poking around an old-fashioned Covent Garden toy shop where the manager — a young guy from Vermont who wants to be a fantasy writer and has been in England long enough to pick up an accent — plays with the kids a game involving small toy creatures locked in epic battles. Sheba keeps knocking over the creatures she isn’t supposed to, to her brother’s growing rage.