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my belly. A light so pure and white that it seemed to bore holes through my eyes to the back of my skull. And a knife.
    I remembered staring at the blade. It was a big kitchen knife, and someone was prying my fingers from the handle. I don’t remember seeing the face of the person who took it from me. I felt the wood slipping out of my hand, and I did not want to let it go.
    I lay in the hospital several days before the doctor told me about the others. Edo was weeping constantly. Gil was raving. Rovil couldn’t speak. And Mikala—she was in the morgue.
    I wanted to die for my sins, but death was impossible now. I understood that my true self, this consciousness, was not located here, in this body, but woven into the fabric of all things. These lungs could stop breathing, this flesh could fall from my bones, but that had as little to do with me as the erosion of mountain ranges. Which is to say, it had everything to do with me.
    I was entangled with all existence, stars and minds and particles all aspects of the same thing. As long as the universe existed, I had no choice but to exist with it. There was no escape, because there was nothing to escape from.
    “Don’t be afraid,” the doctor told me. “I’m here to help you through this.” She placed a cool hand on my forehead. “ Gloria in excelsis Deo. ”
    *   *   *
    I’d sent Bobby out for a couple lattes, and by the time he returned he had lost his mind.
    “They took me, Lyda!” He slapped the skin just below his neck, where he usually kept his treasure chest. “Just yanked me.”
    “Slow down,” I said. It was way too early in the morning, the sun pinging through the slats like a ball-peen hammer. “Did they take your wallet, too?”
    “What? No.”
    “Then you couldn’t at least come back with some Goddamned coffee?”
    “Be nice,” Dr. Gloria said. “The boy’s in despair.” My body ached from a night on Bobby’s couch.
    “Okay, okay,” I said. “Who took your … you ?”
    “Two guys. Mean guys.” His hands fluttered like pigeons. “I think they were terrorists.”
    “Why would terrorists want your treasure chest?”
    “I don’t know! They said, ‘If you want this back, tell Lyda Rose to talk to somebody named Feeza.’ Or maybe Fiza.”
    “Uh-oh,” Dr. G said.
    I said, “Bobby, think hard. Was the name Fayza ?”
    He pointed at me. “That’s it.”
    Shit.
    “What’s the matter?” he asked.
    “And they mentioned me by name ?”
    “Yes! Now who is this guy?”
    “It’s not a guy—it’s a woman. And she runs the Millies.”
    “Oh.” Even Bobby had heard of the Millies.
    *   *   *
    On the way downtown to Millie home territory, Dr. G and I worked it out. Brandy must have passed the word on what we were looking for, and that word made its way up the supply chain to the Millies. I shouldn’t have been surprised. The Millies ran a huge slice of the Toronto cannabis trade, and there was no reason they wouldn’t have branched into smart drugs. Fayza was one of those hyperentrepreneurs that make even hardcore capitalists nervous.
    She and the Millies got their start in 2020 with microloans from a nonprofit that decided that charity begins at home. A dozen Afghan women, riding in on the third wave of immigration from the war zone after the Taliban reclaimed the homeland (again), formed a trust group and were given five hundred bucks apiece. They called themselves the Millionaires Club. The women set up a living room nail salon, a vegetable stand featuring bathtub-grown cardamom and saffron, a postal assistance business, and, in a metamove, a micro-microbank. Ten-buck loans, in a variety of currencies, transferrable to relatives back home.
    The bank was Fayza’s idea. Utilizing her newly discovered talent for money, she began to convert other women in the neighborhood into business owners and set them up with accounts. She offered seminars on marketing, corporate strategy, and human resources (managing husbands).