Page 5 of 10 Things I Hate About Zombies

Well, it could be worse, Nick thought, as flakes of ceiling plaster drifted down onto the hardwoods: at least the spring rains hadn’t started yet.

3

Zoey

The Vitamix whirred sadly as Zoey slapped the off button and sank back against the Formica counter of the cramped kitchen she shared with an astonishing number of roommates. She fanned herself with a dish towel. Portland didn’t do AC, which was fine nine months out of the year, and absolutely brutal during a humid summer heatwave, when a portable fan and a propped-open fridge were your only line of defence. That and a quick sprint through the garden sprinkler the neighbours had set up for their kids.

All right, so Zoey wasn’t just hot and sweaty from the whole blending vegetables to a pulp thing. There was also the fact that she’d just, against all of her best instincts, called Nick.

What had she been thinking? How could her thumbs have betrayed her in such a way?

The call had gone through to voicemail, which was a salvageable situation. But then! Instead of hanging up so that she had plausible deniability about the call being a butt dial, she’d blathered something about the cordyceps turning from orange to green in the blend she’d just worked up, asking if that was normal.

Of course it’s normal, Zoey, you dolt. Practically everything turned green when you blended it.

But she hadn’t been able to help herself. In spite of all her self-preservation-minded instincts, she’d made the call.

He probably thought she was a fool. Or worse, a stalker. Someone as handsome as that probably had a list of restraining orders longer than Zoey’s Goodreads list. No wonder he screened his calls.

Mrow!

Romero, the itinerant black cat that roamed the nearby residential streets, had snuck in through an open front window and was regarding her judgementally. Great, she’d embarrassed herself on the phone so badly that even the local cat population had something to say about it.

‘I know, Romero,’ she groaned. ‘I’m my own worst enemy.’

She’d been doing so well, too. It had been almost a year since she’d ended things with Kit, and she’d managed to keep her days and evenings filled with productive activities. Running the smoothie shop. Grudgingly helping out her best friend and roommate Ainsley with a neighbourhood chalk mural session or offering business tips to her other roommate Joaquin, who had just opened a tattoo studio a few streets away on SE Hawthorne. Or even holding up handfuls of seashells so that Peta, yet another resident of the house, could photograph them to sell on eBay.

But never asking for help herself, of course.

Because Zoey didn’t need anyone.

Least of all a man. And a mushroom man at that.

To paraphrase the rhyme: Do you know the mushroom man, the mushroom man, the mushroom man?

Yes, I know the mushroom man, but I’m a self-sufficient woman who can handle my shit myself, dammit.

Zoey rolled out her shoulders, wincing at the tension she’d incurred from all the dicing, chopping and blending. Maybe one of June’s yoga sessions was in order. With The Troggs blasting through her earphones, she’d been head down the last few hours prepping and mixing all manner of smoothies using her new produce – Kenard’s Phat Beets, sweetened dried coconut from The Nut Job, and of course Nick’s mushrooms.

Shoulder pain aside, she’d managed a few recipes worthy of trialling when the shop opened tomorrow. Sure, there’d been some disasters. She’d overdone it on the zucchini on one and had ended up with an Exorcist-style vomit blend. Another had turned into the kind of carroty splatter you might see outside Dig a Pony on any given Friday night.

(She’d almost called Nick about that one, too, but thankfully she’d been distracted by the screaming and splattering sounds coming from her reclusive roommate Winslow’s gaming console.)

But the mushroom ones were coming along, although she’d decided to keep the morels for dinner – it seemed a shame to dehydrate them, blend them into a powder and then sprinkle them into a smoothie the way she had the cordyceps. Even if another order was just a phone call away, and she did have Nick’s phone number in her wallet. All right, and in her phone as well, because she’d put it in just in case she lost his card.

Yep, just in case. Absolutely, Zoey.

That had led to some curious googling while the weird orange mushrooms were being whipped into nothingness in the Vitamix.

Hmm, not much on the socials other than a half-hearted farm account … ooh, a write-up in The Oregonian about the area’s hottest new mushroom farmer, with a photo of Nick looking particularly buff and bearded.

Zoey screenshotted and forwarded that to Ainsley with some shamelessly thirsty emojis, because how could she not?

At Fred Meyer, Ainsley texted back. Coming back with cheap wine and discussion questions.

Zoey chuckled. Ainsley never missed an opportunity for gossip. She’d been in advertising before she’d switched into sign painting, a seemingly niche skill that was in high demand in Portland. Ainsley loved niche, and over the years had joined Zoey, who loved learning, in all manner of short courses and workshops. They’d signed up for everything from Belly Dancing for Bellyachers to Urban Yarnbombing to Let’s Blow a Whale. That one had been a glassblowing course, something quite a few of the participants had been disappointed to find out.

They’d been roommates since Zoey had moved to the city during college, having lived in tiny Art Deco apartments downtown, a creaky subdivided townhouse that had deservedly been condemned, and now the cosy craftsman sharehouse within walking distance from Zoey’s shop on SE Belmont. There’d been a few brief breaks in their cohabitation – when Ainsley had practically moved in with her ex Celeste, and when Zoey had almost signed a lease with Kit – but they’d come to their respective senses before they’d made commitments that were hard to walk back.