The Lord of Opium

14

MADNESS

Matt was in an irritable mood that evening, and he had a persistent, dull headache. He ordered Celia to serve him dinner in the kitchen. “I’m a drug lord. I do what I like,” he snapped when she tried to argue. Everyone eyed him nervously. Cienfuegos arrived late, slinking into a chair in his usual noiseless way.

“I distributed the eejit pellets,” he announced. “There’s enough for three months with our current population. Of course, we’ll need more eejits as the workers die off.” He helped himself to potato salad and turkey. Celia poured him a mug of pulque, and he settled back with a satisfied sigh. “How was the convent?” he asked Matt.

“Don’t ask,” the boy said.

“Ah! The visit went badly. Did Esperanza throw sand in your eyes?” asked Cienfuegos.

“She wasn’t there. She’d taken María to New York for dancing lessons. I talked to my friends from the plankton factory.”

The jefe raised his eyebrows, and Celia shrugged. “He didn’t tell me what happened,” she said.

“I had a picnic, okay? I ate on one side of the portal and the boys ate on the other.”

“So far, so good,” said Cienfuegos. “What went wrong?”

“Fidelito let María’s bird out of a cage. It flew through the portal and shattered like a piece of glass.”

The jefe nodded and took another drink of pulque. “The holoport is a wormhole connecting one place to another. Inside, I’m told, it’s as cold as outer space. I don’t understand the science and neither did El Patrón, but he always had brainy people working for him. It’s no great loss. There are lots of birds.”

“You don’t understand!” cried Matt. “The holoport made me feel like I was really in the same room with my friends. I was happy. Then the bird died, and I knew it was all a big lie. I don’t want the boys on the other side of a wormhole. I want them here, and I want María, too. I am owed those lives!”

Celia and Cienfuegos looked at each other sharply. “What an odd turn of phrase,” murmured Celia.

“It’s only a coincidence,” said Cienfuegos.

“Another thing,” Matt said, close to tears and trying to control it. His head was pounding. “I’m tired of people talking in riddles. Say what you mean or shut up! I’m going to my apartment, and I want my food sent there along with Mirasol.” He got up, intending to stride out like a tough guy, but instead he knocked the chair over and almost fell himself. No one tried to help him.

Never had El Patrón’s private wing seemed more like a refuge. Matt could shut out the world, and no one could criticize him. No one would expect him to make decisions. Even the gloomy old paintings looked different. The little princess who had seemed hypnotized was merely showing off her dress. She was waiting for a compliment she knew would come. The dwarf next to her wasn’t in pain, as Matt had first thought. He was listening to a conversation beyond the edge of the picture.

“Do you want me to serve you?”

Matt turned to see Mirasol carrying a tray. The long table was already set with two places, and the chandelier was ablaze. “Put the tray down. I’ll serve you,” said Matt.

Mirasol devoured the meal with her usual speed. Matt contented himself with watching her feed. My pet Waitress, he thought, and was obscurely pleased that Celia didn’t like the girl being there. It’s my apartment. I’ll invite who I please, he thought.

He was still trying to puzzle out how anyone could think of El Patrón as a saint. All those prayers and silver charms were wasted. El Patrón wasn’t going to fix ulcers or restore Mr. Ortega’s hearing. He’d caused the problems in the first place. And what did Cienfuegos mean, my heart is frozen? It didn’t seem frozen, the way he begged for help.

Matt noticed that Mirasol had cleaned her plate and was piling on more food than was good for her. “Stop,” he ordered. Mirasol stopped and waited for further instructions. One of the good things about her was that she never questioned his commands. She didn’t criticize him, and she was always there. Unlike María. How could María go off to Nueva York when she knew he was longing to see her? It was disloyal. She belonged to him.

Matt remembered the many times El Patrón had described his childhood, using exactly the same words as though he were reciting a long prayer. The Drug Lord’s Prayer, Matt thought with a twisted smile. María would scold him for disrespect, but why should he care what she thought? She was dancing and partying without him.

El Patrón had a rosary with only one bead on it: He wanted the lost years of his seven brothers and sisters added to his own. Eight lifetimes.

Matt hugged himself. His head pounded, and even his skin was sore. I’m sick, he realized with amazement. He’d suffered from asthma and from Celia’s doses of arsenic, but never in his life had he contracted an infectious disease. The asthma was caused by being kept in a room full of sawdust as a small child. Celia, of course, fed him arsenic to save him from being used for transplants. He was immunized against everything else.

“Mirasol,” he said. The girl sat unmoving. “Waitress . . . ” She looked up. Matt sucked in his breath. The light from the chandelier was too bright, and he was suddenly covered with sweat. El Patrón had always called himself a cat with nine lives, and he’d achieved only eight of them. Matt remembered his confrontations with Esperanza and Major Beltrán, and the way words suddenly appeared from nowhere. He remembered the old, old voice whispering in his ear. What if . . . what if . . . I’m the ninth life? Matt thought.

“No! I won’t let it happen!” the boy shouted, sweeping dinner plates off the table. Mirasol observed him placidly. “I’m not him! I won’t be like him! He’s dead and I’m alive! I’ll cut the cord that binds us together!” Matt grabbed a carving knife and stabbed at the damask tablecloth, slashing until he was so exhausted the knife fell from his hand. He knelt on the floor, sobbing. He’d been alone for years, but it was nothing like this. Then, he hadn’t known what friendship was.

He missed the boys, and it wasn’t enough to see them on a screen. He missed María, who was moving beyond his reach. “Please! Please! Please! Bring them back. I will do anything for you, if only you tell me what it is,” cried Matt, not knowing of whom he asked the favor.

He came to his senses with his head on Mirasol’s lap and reeled back against a table leg. But she seemed not to have noticed anything strange. “Go to bed,” he ordered.

“Yes, mi patrón,” she replied.

He lay on the carpet after she left and shivered with fever. The pain in his head eclipsed everything. This isn’t a bad way to die, he thought in the brief moments he could form an idea, if only it didn’t hurt so much.

* * *

Cienfuegos, Celia, and Nurse Fiona were there, although Matt couldn’t remember calling them. Fiona said that his temperature was 104 and that the young master must have run barking, what with the tablecloth and dishes, oh my.

“What’s wrong with him?” asked Celia, sounding very worried.

“I’m sure I don’t know,” admitted Fiona. “I’m not a full nurse, more like an aide, really.”

“He needs antibiotics,” Cienfuegos said.

“Not if it’s a virus,” said Fiona. “It’s no better than drinking tap water to take antibiotics for a virus. The doctors say you should let that kind of illness run its course, and anyhow I don’t know which ones to use or how much.”

“Can you bring his fever down?” Celia asked.

“Well, there’s aspirin, only he threw up gloriously when I gave it to him, so I don’t know—”

“¡Chis! Do something besides use up oxygen,” snarled Cienfuegos. “Get ice bags. Lots of them.” Fiona scurried off.

“You’ll be okay, mi vida,” Celia said, wiping Matt’s forehead with a wet cloth.

Matt’s throat was so raw he could hardly whisper. “What happened?”

“I was hoping you could tell me that. No, don’t strain yourself. I should have guessed you were getting sick at dinner, but I thought you were immunized against everything.”

Fiona came back and to her credit had a washtub full of ice bags. “My mum used to do this when we had a fever,” she said brightly. “She packed us up as neatly as mackerels going to market. Twenty minutes on and twenty off is the charm. Up with your arms, laddie.”

But Matt was so weak he couldn’t obey. Cienfuegos helped him, and Fiona and Celia put ice bags under his armpits, between his legs, and on either side of his neck. The cold was a shock, but after a while Matt’s pounding headache settled down to a dull ache.

“Twenty minutes off,” announced Fiona. Without the ice bags, the headache soon came back.

“The sides of his neck are swollen,” said Celia, feeling gently.

“I hope it isn’t mumps,” said Fiona. “Oh, look! His tongue is a funny shade of red.”

“All those years we were up to here in doctors,” raged Cienfuegos. “El Patrón couldn’t hiccup without someone rushing to take his pulse. Now there’s only one, and he’s on the other side of the country.”

“If Matt could open the border—” began Celia.

“He’s too weak. In fact, I’m wondering if the scanner is what lowered his immune system.”

The conversation faded into the background. Matt lay in a daze as his temperature went up and down. Gradually he was able to swallow when Fiona dripped water into his mouth.

“When did you come?” he managed to say.

“Around ten o’clock. It’s two in the morning now,” said Celia.

“How . . . ” Matt swallowed, and his throat burned. “How did you know?”

“It was Waitress. She came to the kitchen, and I told her to go to bed, but she didn’t. She hung around like a dog that wants to tell you something, and I even shouted at her. Then I realized that she wanted me to follow her. The minute I got here, she took off.”

“Celia sent a message to me,” Fiona added. “I can tell you it gave me the collywobbles to see all those broken dishes. I thought Waitress had gone mad—eejits do, sometimes, although mostly they wander off or lose coordination—”

“She didn’t do it,” whispered Matt, and paid for it with a flare of pain.

“Don’t talk,” said Celia.

Cienfuegos returned—Matt hadn’t been aware he was gone—and said, “I’ve readied the hovercraft.”

“How many passengers can it take?”

“Three. Me, Fiona, and Matt.”

“Oh, dear! I wanted to go,” said Celia.

“The small hovercraft is the fastest, and time is important,” Cienfuegos said. “Don’t worry. If things work out, we’ll be back before you know it.”

“Perhaps I could take the place of Fiona.”

Cienfuegos laughed. “The limit isn’t numbers but weight, mi caramelito. You weigh twice as much as she does.”

“No,” whispered Matt.

“What’s that?” The jefe bent down to hear.

“No Fiona,” said Matt.

“I’m sorry, mi patrón. If I took Celia, we couldn’t get off the ground.”

“Mirasol.”

Cienfuegos straightened up and brushed back his hair. “Oh, brother! He wants the girl.”

“Mirasol . . . or I won’t go.” Matt had used up all his strength. He waited.

“What about me? Am I chopped liver or something?” cried Fiona. “First the doctors dumped on me and then the nurses, nasty things. I’m glad they’re all dead! Fine! Go ahead and take your stupid eejit. I’m going back to the hospital, and I hope you crash!”

Matt heard her slam the door, but he was too tired to care. “How fast can you get Waitress here, Celia?” Cienfuegos said. “She can tranquilize the patient, if nothing else.”