Free Slow Recoil by C.B. Forrest Page A

of the vestibule. Full-colour pictures of pizzas and buckets of chicken. Delivery to your door so you didn’t have to get off your ass and walk down to the pizzeria. The pizzas looked good and hot. His stomach growled. Then the door buzzed. He opened it and stepped inside.

    They had assembled in that kitchen those years ago, around that long wood table. Back home. Would she ever see home again? It seemed like a lifetime already lived in this new country. At first the plan was easy to follow, the directives and the drills running your body as though you were on automatic pilot. The paperwork was handled through The Colonel’s unseen contacts, and she’d entered the country with a suitcase and a number to call. The one-eyed man she met through the immigration support centre, everything made to seem natural and quite by circumstance. The man got her the job as a seamstress in the little factory in the fashion district. She kept her head down and made dresses, or parts of them, and the women around her were all immigrants from some other place: Cambodia, Vietnam, and yes, Bosnians too, working for this Serb manager (though she had lied about her background and her hometown to get the job). She worked and she watched and she made notes. She saved some money and moved to that small apartment away from the guns and the gangs of Jane and Finch. She took the night course in English. Her only social time away from work, out of the apartment.
    The teacher. This was her mistake. The Canadian with the sad eyes. The good heart, the small smile. She never should have gone for coffee when he asked. And then asked again. But it felt good to talk to someone—even if she felt her English made her sound like a grade school student. This was her mistake. She had lost so much, it seemed like a small gift she could allow herself, a simple coffee with a good soul. First you lose your village, then you lose your family, and finally you lose yourself. You die or choose to be born again. There had been something in the eyes of the sad Canadian, this teacher who made bad jokes about words they looked up in the dictionary—something there, yes, within the sadness a tiny spark of life. A flash of hope. And this was her mistake…
    Donia Kruzik opened the door of her apartment. She stood there for a long moment. Kad stared at her, blinking. She opened the door all the way, and he stepped inside. An awkward moment as they stood there, each deciding on the proper greeting. Finally he moved to embrace her, but she shrank, and stepped back.
    â€œFriend,” he said, “it has been a long journey. From there to here.”
    He spoke in his native tongue, and it brought her back to who they were, where they had come from. She went to the tiny kitchen and put the kettle on to boil.
    â€œI will make tea,” she said. “Are you hungry?”
    He stood there. Watching her. He knew, and she knew that he knew. She took two cups down from the cupboard and got a box of Red Rose from the shelf. Something had changed. However small.
    â€œI met the man. I have the tools,” he said.
    He watched her. Then he moved to the kitchen and put a hand on her shoulder from behind. She froze. His hand was strong, and he held her there, rooted.
    â€œAre you ready?” he said.
    â€œReady?”
    â€œTo do what we have sworn to do,” he said. “Have you forgotten already, sister? Has your time in this country erased the past? Have you lost your appetite to avenge our people? Please tell me this is not so.”
    She bowed her head and nodded. “I am ready,” she said. “It’s a surprise, that’s all. You plan for the day for so many months and years, and then it is finally here. I apologize for not welcoming you. It was wrong of me. Please, come and sit.”
    He moved his hand from her shoulder to his side but sensed the change in the weather, within the hesitation. This was the inherent risk for those