Because It Is My Blood (31 page)

“Yes, I thought so. I’ve been following your case closely. It’s all been very unfair to you, hasn’t it?”

I told him that I tried not to dwell on it.

On the bus back home, the aroma of roses was pervasive. I looked in my bag and found that the not-a-wizard had slipped the cacao nibs in with the chili peppers.

Since the crash, I was still a bit on edge during bus rides, but the rose-scented air suffused me with a sense of calm and—dare I say—clarity. My mind relaxed. My brain became soft and empty and then it began to fill with a picture. First, I saw Our Lady of Guadalupe, and I knew it was her because of the roses that haloed around her and because her image had featured so prominently at Granja Mañana. But then I saw that she wasn’t a real person, but a painting on a wall and underneath the painting were the words,
Do not fear any illness or vexation, anxiety or pain. Am I not your Mother? Are you not under my shadow and protection? Am I not the fountain of life? Is there anything else you need?
And the wall was the back wall of a smallish store. And Balanchine chocolate was stacked on the dark-stained mahogany shelves. And the chocolate was right out in the open, even in the front display windows. And the sign on the store said:

Balanchine’s Medicinal Cacao Bar

Chocolate For Your Health—By Rx Only—Doctor On Premises

I sat up in my seat.

I was not my sister. No one had ever suggested sending me to genius camp nor should they have, and I was not given to brilliant ideas. If I had a genius, I’d say it was probably one for survival, nothing more. But this seemed like it could almost work. Cacao might never be legal, but what if there were legal ways around that? Things Daddy and Uncle Yuri and now Fats had never even considered.

The bus was about a block away from Win’s house. I didn’t want to wait. I wanted to know what he would think. I pushed the tape to indicate that I wanted the bus to stop, and I got out.

Outside Win’s apartment, I rang the bell. Charles Delacroix answered. Win and Mrs. Delacroix were still out, but he expected them back any minute if I wanted to wait. Mr. Delacroix hadn’t shaved but at least he had dressed for the day.

Charles Delacroix led me into the living room. I was still thinking about my vision.

“How are you?” Charles Delacroix asked me.

“Mr. Delacroix, you’re a lawyer.”

“You’re very businesslike today, Anya. Yes, I am a lawyer. An unemployed one at present.”

“Have you ever heard of anyone selling medicinal cacao?” I asked.

Charles Delacroix laughed at me. “Anya Balanchine, what have you gotten yourself into now?”

“Nothing,” I insisted. I could feel myself blushing. “I only wondered if a person could sell medicinal cacao legally in the city. I’d heard that you could sell it with a prescription.”

Charles Delacroix studied me for a moment. “Yes, I suppose a theoretical person could.”

“And if that were true, could a proprietor sell a customer a chocolate health bar or, say, a hot-chocolate vitamin shake as long as there was a prescription?”

Mr. Delacroix nodded. “Yes. Though I’d have to research the matter in greater detail.”

“And if you were still acting as district attorney, would you have gone after a person who was selling medicinal cacao at a store in Manhattan?”

“I … Such a person might have aroused my interest, yes, but if they had a good lawyer who made sure everything was in order, and all the prescriptions were legitimate, I doubt we would have bothered with them. Anya, you’re looking terrifyingly bright-eyed at the moment. Don’t tell me you know such a hypothetical proprietor.”

“Mr. Delacroix…”

Win and his mother got home. “Aren’t you two looking chummy,” Mrs. Delacroix said.

Win kissed me. “Were we supposed to meet? I thought you’d still be at the GEDs.”

“I was at the market, and I thought I’d stop by to see if you were home.” I was still carrying my roses and the bag with the chili peppers and cacao nibs. I told him how my friend from Mexico had sent me a recipe that I’d been planning to try. Win’s mother wanted to know what it was. While it was one thing to pose hypothetical legal questions to Win’s father, it was another thing to admit to recreational cacao consumption in front of him. “An ancient family health drink from Chiapas,” I said.

Charles Delacroix raised an eyebrow. I wasn’t fooling him.

“It’s almost dark,” Win said. “I’ll walk you the rest of the way uptown.”

“Goodbye, Anya,” Charles Delacroix said.

Once we were outdoors, Win took my bag in one hand and I linked my arm through his.

“What were you and my father talking about?” Win asked.

I had stopped by Win’s house with the full intention of telling him my idea, but now that he was standing next to me, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I didn’t want to see his eyebrows furrow and his lips purse if he thought it was pure folly. I’d only been thinking of this for the last hour or so, but in that brief span, I’d already grown incredibly attached to the concept. It felt big to me, the kind of idea that might just change my life. I felt, for the first time in a very long time, hopeful.

“Annie?”

“It wasn’t anything.” I was emphatic. “I was waiting for you.”

He stopped walking and looked at me. “You’re lying. You’re awfully good at it, but you forget—I know what you look like when you’re being deceitful.”

What did I look like when I was lying? I’d have to ask him sometime. “I’m not lying, Win. It’s only an idea I had, but I’m not ready to talk about it yet,” I said. “While I was waiting for you, I thought I’d run a couple parts of it by your dad because it has a legal component to it.”

“Well, he certainly owes you the free advice.” He took my arm again, and we resumed walking. At some point, we got to talking about our plans for what was left of the weekend.

“Win,” I asked, “would you mind if we went to a legalize-cacao rally some time?”

“Sure … But why would you want to do that?”

“Mainly curiosity, I suppose. Maybe I’d like to see what it’s like on the other side.”

Win nodded. “Does this have anything to do with what you were talking to my dad about?”

“I’m not sure yet,” I admitted.

When I got home, I found out the next Cacao Now meeting was Thursday night.

The tough part was that I didn’t want to be recognized. I wanted to check it out without making a spectacle of myself. Noriko lent us wigs and dispensed makeup advice. I had a stick-straight blond wig and red lips. (I had abandoned my mustache in Mexico, of course, not that I would have wanted to unveil my mustachioed look in front of Win.) Win wore dreadlocks and a mesh cap, a modified version of what he’d worn to visit me at Liberty.

Win and I took the bus downtown to the abandoned library building where the meeting was being held.

We were a little bit late so we slipped in at the back.

About one hundred people were there. Standing behind a lectern in the front of the hall was Sylvio Freeman, who was in the middle of introducing a speaker. “Dr. Elizabeth Bergeron will speak about the health benefits of cacao.”

Dr. Bergeron was a pale, skinny woman with a high-pitched voice. She wore a long tie-dyed skirt down to her ankles. “I am a doctor,” she began. “And it is from this perspective that I will speak tonight.” Her lecture dealt with many of the same things Theo had said to me in Chiapas. I looked at Win to see if he was bored. He didn’t seem to be.

“So why,” she concluded, “if there is so much enrichment to be found in natural cacao, should it be illegal? Our government allows the sale of plenty of things that are completely toxic. We should be using common sense and not money to determine what we consume.”

The Cacao Now people did not overly impress me. They were disorganized, and their main plans seemed to involve standing outside government buildings and passing out leaflets.

On the way back uptown, Win started talking about next year. “I’ve been thinking I want to do premed,” he said.

“Premed?” I’d never heard anything about that before. “What about your band? You’re so talented!”

“Annie, I hate to tell you this, but I’m only okay.” He looked at me shyly. “The band still doesn’t have a name and, had you been around, you’d know that we’ve barely played this year. At first, because I was hurt, and then I just wasn’t all that interested. And, well, a lot of guys who have bands in high school would be better off not making a life of it. I’m into other things, too, you know. I’d never want to do what my dad does, but I would like to help people. That doctor at the rally. I was watching her and thinking how great it would be to do that.”

“Do what exactly?”

“Help people be less ignorant about their health, I guess.” He paused. “Plus, if I do stay with you, medical skills would probably come in pretty handy. Everyone’s always getting hurt when you’re around.”

“If…”

While the bus was stopped at a traffic light, I studied Win out of the corner of my eye. The streetlights lit up different parts of his face than I was used to seeing.

From two rows behind us, Daisy Gogol, who’d been trailing us the whole night, chimed in. “I thought I was going to be a singer, but I’m so glad I know Krav Maga.”

“Thanks for the support, Daisy,” Win said. “What should the pro-cacao people do instead?” he asked me.

“I know that they think too small. They need lawyers. And money, lots of it. Standing in front of a courthouse with dirty hair and pamphlets isn’t going to do anything. They need ads. They need to convince the public that they deserve chocolate and that there was never anything wrong with it to begin with.”

“Anya, you know I support you, but aren’t there bigger problems in the world than chocolate?” Win asked me.

“I’m not sure, Win. Just because something is a small problem doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be addressed. Small injustices conceal larger ones.”

“Is that something your father used to say?”

No, I told him. It was my own wisdom, and something I had learned through experience.

*   *   *

Sunday after church, I went to talk to Fats at the Pool. His stomach was distended and his eyes were red. I worried that he might have been poisoned. “You feeling all right?” I asked.

“I look that bad to you?” He chuckled, then patted his gut. “I’m an emotional eater.”

I asked him if anything specific was bothering him.

He shook his head. “Nothing to concern your pretty little head with. Been working nights at the speakeasy and here in the days. Let’s just say there’s a reason guys in my position don’t live that long.”

Fats punctuated that remark with a laugh so I suppose it was meant as a joke. I reminded him that my father had been “a guy in his position.”

“Didn’t mean any disrespect, Annie. So what’s on your mind?” Fats asked.

“I’ve got a proposition,” I said. “A business proposition.”

Fats nodded. “I’m all ears, kid.”

I took a deep breath. “Have you ever heard of medicinal cacao?”

Fats nodded slowly. “Yeah, maybe.”

I described what I had learned from my discussions with Mr. Delacroix and the man at the market.

“So what’s the big idea?” Fats asked.

I took another deep breath. I had not wanted to admit to myself how invested I was in this idea. Before she whacked me over the head, Sophia Bitter had called me the “daughter of a cop and a criminal” who would always be at war with herself. It was a cruel thing to say, but it also happened to be true. It was cruel
because
it was true. I felt it in my every impulse, and I was incredibly tired of living that way. This idea, for me, was a way to end the war. “Well, I was thinking that instead of selling Balanchine chocolate on the black market, we could open a medicinal cacao dispensary.” I looked at Fats to see what he thought of the idea, but his face was blank. “Eventually, maybe even a chain of them,” I continued. “It would all be aboveboard. We’d hire doctors to write the prescriptions. And possibly even nutritionists to help us come up with recipes. And the only chocolate we’d use would be Balanchine, of course. We’d also need pure cacao, but I know a great place we could import that from. If the dispensaries were a success, maybe this could even go a long way toward changing public opinion and convincing the lawmakers that chocolate should never have been illegal in the first place.” I snuck another glance at Fats. He was nodding a little. “The reason I came to you is because you know all about the restaurant business and, of course, you’re the head of the Family now.”

Fats looked at me. “You’re a good kid, Annie. You’ve always been a good kid. And I can tell you put a heck of a lot of thought into this idea. And it’s definitely an interesting one. I’m glad you came to me. But I got to tell you, from the
semya
side of things, this will never work.”

I was not yet ready to let this go. “Why won’t it work?”

“It’s real simple, Annie. The machinery of Balanchine Chocolate is set up to service a market where chocolate is illegal. If chocolate became legal or there even became a popular way to get around its illegality—à la the medicinal dispensaries you propose—Balanchine Chocolate would be out of business. We exist to serve a black market, Anya. The only way I know how to run a restaurant, if you want to call it that, or any sort of business at all is under the conditions of illegality. Chocolate is legal, Fats is obsolete. Maybe someday chocolate will be legal again, but I honestly hope I’m dead by then.”

I didn’t say anything.

Fats looked at me with sad eyes. “When I was a kid, my senile old grandma used to read me vampire stories. You know what a vampire is, Anya?”

“Kind of. I’m not sure.”

“They’re like these superhuman beings that enjoy drinking human blood. I know, it doesn’t make any sense, but Grandma Olga was mad for them. So, okay, there’s this one vampire story I remember. Maybe the only reason I remember it is because it’s the longest. This human girl falls for this vampire boy, and he loves her, but he kind of wants to kill her, too. And this goes on for a really long time. You wouldn’t believe how long! Should he kiss her or kill her? Well, he ends up kissing her a lot—you wouldn’t believe how much! But ultimately, he kills her and turns her into a vampire anyway—”