“We could call it the Travel bundle.”

I got the smallest bowl of ice cream with no syrup. “This in honour of the guy who ran off with the old bundle?”

“I got just the thing.” Bernie pushed away from the table. “Just make sure he doesn’t touch my ice cream.”

She came back a few minutes later with a black case. “Here we go,” she said. “Ballistic nylon. And it has a zipper.”

“I was thinking more along the lines of a piece of elk hide,” said Mimi.

“Sure,” said Bernie, “if this were the nineteenth century.”

“You want to make a medicine bundle out of a zippered nylon case?”

“Used to belong to your auntie Helen.”

“The chef?”

“She carried her knives in it,” said Bernie. “When she quit and went back to singing, she gave me the case.”

“Doesn’t seem all that authentic,” I said.

“Authentic is overdone,” said Bernie. “Authentic is one of the ideas Whites use to hold us in place. It’s one of the ways we hold ourselves in place.”

“I got no problem with a nylon medicine bundle,” said Mimi. “And the zipper will make it easier to put things in and take them out.”

“If you’re concerned about authentic,” said Bernie, “I can always get Ester Fox to do a little beading on the case. Maybe a floral design.”

“Okay,” said Mimi, “so let’s get started.”

“Sometimes,” Bernie told her daughter, “starting is how we continue.”

SO WE’RE IN PRAGUE. Mimi finds a coffee shop. I have an espresso, which comes with a cookie. Mimi has something called an Italian hot chocolate. Once I sit down, I don’t want to get up. Mimi is wrong about travel. It doesn’t slow time, it just wears you out.

“Are you tired, Bird?”

“I’m tired.”

“But not too tired.”

“I’m very tired.”

“Then we’ll go to the castle tomorrow.” Mimi sips her hot chocolate. It’s quite thick and looks as though it would be better managed with a backhoe.

I sink into the chair. If I sink down far enough, I may disappear altogether.

“What do you want to do for the rest of the day?” Mimi slides the guidebook across the table, in case I need help with the right answer. “Your choice.”

She doesn’t mean this, of course, but it’s sweet of her to offer. I take a moment to contemplate all the things we could do and see in Prague, City of a Hundred Spires, Rome of the North, Mistress of Bohemia.

And then I sink into the chair even further, flag down the server, and order another espresso.

IV

I wake up in the middle of the night to find my left eye swollen shut. This is the very newest of the medical bruisings.

Kitty catches me on the way to the bathroom. Cancer, she whispers. Intraocular lymphoma.