“Yes, you can,” said Matt, hugging her back.
She solemnly unwrapped his arms and put them down at his sides. “No, mi vida. Whatever you may wish, you’re a drug lord now and must learn to behave like one.” She called a servant to take him to El Patrón’s private wing. “You look exhausted, mijo. Take a bath and a nap. I’ll send you clean clothes.”
3
EL PATRÓN’S PRIVATE WING
A servant girl took Matt along various passages and unlocked the heavy wooden door that led to the private wing. It was an area only the most trusted allies of El Patrón had been allowed to visit. A haze of dust hung in the air, as though the windows had been closed for a long time.
As a child El Patrón had been so skinny that chili beans had to wait in line to get inside his stomach. The wealthy ranchero who owned his village had amused himself by casting centavos to the boy. El Patrón had to grovel in the dirt to collect them. He had never recovered from this humiliation. He wanted to become so rich and powerful that he could grind the ranchero under his heel. Unfortunately, the man died long before El Patrón could carry out his plan.
The insult was forever green in the old man’s mind. He built a magnificent hacienda copying the ranchero’s estate. That was why most things in Opium were a hundred years in the past, but El Patrón’s private wing was even older. He had brought back entire sections of Iberian castles. He had plundered El Prado, the finest art museum in Spain, for paintings and tapestries. These he studied carefully, for his goal was to become nothing less than a king.
The rooms of his private wing were as dark and cheerless as the old paintings. Tam Lin had once pointed out that the reason the pictures were so gloomy was because they were dirty. El Patrón had been furious. He exiled the bodyguard to eejit duty for an entire month.
The colors in this part of the hacienda were various shades of brown and black. Even the walls were a milky color that Tam Lin called “baby-poo.” The furniture was made of heavy mahogany and cast iron and took at least three eejits to move. Yet here and there were pockets of beauty—a golden deer with delicate antlers, a statue of the Madonna, a painting of a woman in a white dress lying on a couch. Unlike the other portraits, whose subjects looked miserable, this woman had a mischievous smile. She reminded Matt of María.
The servant led Matt to a bedroom even darker and stuffier than the hall. She bowed politely and left.
Matt stretched out on the bed and closed his eyes, but for some reason he couldn’t relax. For a few minutes he puzzled about what was wrong. He got up, pulled back the covers, and there, in the middle of the mattress, was the distinct impression of a man. Matt caught his breath. Of course! El Patrón had lain here for a hundred years. The hollow in the mattress was shaped like the old man, and the horrible thing was that Matt had fit into it exactly.
He tore the covers off, driven by a panic he didn’t understand, and heaped them up in a corner to make a new bed. He fell into a troubled sleep, opening his eyes briefly to see the girl enter with an armful of fresh clothes.
Matt awoke hours later wedged under a chair. Above him were strips of ancient leather stained by years of use. A shred of dirty webbing dangled a dead fly next to his nose. He scooted out, vowing to have everything cleaned and to have the windows unsealed. He would send the tapestries back to El Prado and burn the dreadful mattress. Matt yanked at the heavy curtains hanging over the bed. The rotten fabric tore, revealing a bell cord El Patrón used to call servants.
A man appeared in the doorway, answering Matt’s call.
“Help me get rid of this stuff,” Matt ordered, gathering up the curtains in his arms.
The man didn’t move.
Matt took a closer look at his eyes and realized that he was only an eejit. For months the boy had lived with normal people and had forgotten how creepy such beings were. The servant would understand only a few commands. “Get me lunch,” Matt said hopefully. Nothing happened. “Call Celia. Make the bed. Oh, forget it. I’m going to take a shower.” At the word shower the eejit woke up and went into the next room. Matt heard water being turned on and the man reappeared, pushing a wheelchair. He reached for the boy and started to undo his shirt.
“Whoa! Stop! Go away!” cried Matt. The eejit’s hands fell, and he left the room as silently as he had come.
Matt heard water thundering in the shower and sprinted to turn it off. It was criminal to waste such a precious resource. At the plankton factory, where he’d been enslaved, clean water was unknown. Everything they used smelled of brine shrimp and strange chemicals. Even the water they drank was polluted and made the boys’ faces break out with terrible acne. Including mine, Matt thought unhappily, feeling the bumps on his skin.
He saw that the bathroom had been set up for an old man. Handholds were everywhere. The floor was padded against falls. The shower stall was large enough to contain the wheelchair, and there were no mirrors. El Patrón hadn’t wanted to be reminded of his age.
Matt took a quick shower and emerged feeling much happier. He discovered his old clothes in a closet and set out to find Celia. The bath eejit stood in the hallway. Only his blinking eyes indicated that he was something other than a waxwork.
* * *
On the way to the kitchen, the servant girl who had taken him to El Patrón’s bedroom stepped out of an alcove. “Please follow me to the dining room, mi patrón,” she said, bowing.
“I don’t want to eat in the dining room,” Matt said crossly. “I want to have lunch in the kitchen with Celia. And don’t call me patrón.”
He tried to go on, but the girl hurried past him and bowed again. “Please follow me to the dining room, mi patrón.”
“I told you—” He halted, realizing that she was another eejit. He hadn’t noticed earlier, because she’d seemed so much more alert. If he tried to go on, she would only try to stop him again and again. Matt didn’t have the energy to argue. Shrugging, he allowed her to lead him to a room large enough to entertain a hundred people.
A long table was covered with a white damask tablecloth. At intervals were vases of fresh flowers, and overhead, chandeliers glittered. Only one place had been set, which made Matt wonder. Did the servants decorate this room with flowers every day? They had certainly polished the chandeliers, because dust settled on everything in only a few hours. It was how things were in the desert. El Patrón hadn’t minded, though he insisted on cleanliness when there were important visitors. He said that the dust reminded him of his childhood in the dry, dusty state of Durango.
From there, more times than not, the old man had gone on with the story of his childhood, following the well-worn tracks of his youth. Matt knew it by heart. It was like a real place hanging somewhere in space, just waiting to be visited again. Matt shivered. Sometimes it almost felt like one of his own memories.
He sat down, and the girl served him watery scrambled eggs, mushy polenta, and applesauce. It was an old man’s lunch.