The House of the Scorpion (25 page)

I could!
thundered Esperanza.
El Patrón sold those people's souls to the Devil! When they died, he plowed their bodies into the dirt for fertilizer. The roots of Opium are watered with blood, and anyone who buys its foul weed is no better than a flesh-eating cannibal.

That was definitely enough reading for one day. Matt rested the book on his chest and tried to picture Esperanza's face. She was probably covered with warts like an old witch. She'd have yellow fangs and cheeks that collapsed in like a rotten pumpkin. He flipped through the book, looking for her photo.

On page 247 he found it. She was dressed in a black suit with a pearl necklace. Her black hair hung in a shiny veil on either side of her pale and beautiful face.

She looked a lot like María.

Matt read the blurb under the picture:
Esperanza Mendoza, the ex-wife of Senator Mendoza, is a charter member of the
Anti-Slavery Society of California. She has written numerous, bestselling books. She was a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in—

Matt dropped the book. María couldn't possibly know about this. She thought her mother was dead. Esperanza had walked out of the house when María was five years old and never returned. The little girl imagined her mother had gotten lost in the desert, and she woke up night after night, crying that she could hear her mother's voice. That was why María clung so desperately to keepsakes. She was terrified of losing the things she loved.

And all this time her mother had been living it up in California. Matt felt a deep, burning rage against the woman and against Senator Mendoza too. He certainly knew what had happened, but he'd preferred to let María suffer. Well, Matt wasn't going to let the situation go on any longer. The next time María visited—and she'd have to come to Steven and Emilia's wedding in two months—Matt would hit her between the eyes with this evidence.

•   •   •

Matt discovered the reason Tam Lin had forbidden him to swim at the oasis. That night he came down with the worst stomach flu he could ever remember. He spent hours retching into a bucket until his throat burned like fire. Celia insisted on treating him herself. She forced glass after glass of milk down him, and she didn't leave him alone for a second. In the periods between attacks, he noticed that her hands were as cold and clammy as his own.

Finally, he recovered enough to lie down. Celia pulled a chair up by his bed and sat there all night while Matt drifted in and out of sleep. At one point he woke to find Tam Lin's face only an inch from his own. The bodyguard straightened up and said, “His breath smells of garlic.”

Why wouldn't it smell of garlic?
Matt thought drowsily. Practically everything Celia cooked was loaded with it.

“I warned you not to try this. We have to talk,” said Tam Lin to Celia.

“I'll get the dosage right next time,” she said.

“Do you want to ruin everything?”

“Maybe your plan won't work out. We need a backup,” Celia said.

“You'll kill him.”

She looked up at the secret camera. “I'd die rather than let that happen.”

The voices stopped. Matt tried to stay awake, to see whether they would reveal more, but he was too weak.

The illness left Matt nervous and headachy for days. Just when he thought he was getting better, another bout of nausea occurred. The second attack wasn't as bad as the first, so it seemed he was fighting off the disease. He did wonder why Celia didn't call for the doctor, but he was grateful at the same time. It would have meant a trip to the hospital, and Matt wanted to avoid that at all costs.

When he had recovered sufficiently, he resumed spending his days at El Patrón's side, listening to the old man ramble. It seemed that a fog was gradually enveloping El Patrón's memories. He sometimes called Matt by another name, and he was confused about other things, too. “I built this shack with my own hands,” he told Matt. Matt looked around. The last thing you'd call the mansion with its gardens and fountains was a shack.

“I put in the grapevine, too,” El Patrón said. “It's doing very well. It covered the arbor in only two years. I think it's the water. There's nothing finer than one of these desert pools.”

He's talking about the oasis
, Matt thought with a chill. El Patrón must have been the person who had lived there long ago. The shack had fallen down, but the grapevine was still doing very well. “Is that the place behind the hole in the rock?” Matt asked, to be sure he was correct.

“Of course, Felipe!” El Patrón snapped. “You climb through that hole every single day.” He fell into another reverie, his eyes seeing things no one else could. “This is the most beautiful place in the world,” he said with a sigh. “If there's a heaven and I'm allowed inside, I'm sure this pool and grapevine will be there.”

Then he wandered off into an even older memory. El Patrón's voice filled with wonder as he described the hacienda where he had attended fiestas so long ago. “They had a fountain,” El Patrón marveled. “The water sounded like music, and there was a statue of a little angel in the middle. He looked so cool and clean. And you can't imagine the food, Felipe. Tamales—as many as you wanted—and barbecued ribs! There were chiles rellenos and moro crabs flown in from Yucatán and a whole table of caramel puddings, each with its own little dish.”

Matt felt sure that if there was a heaven, it contained moro crabs flown in from Yucatán and a table covered with caramel puddings. But then El Patrón's voice became sad. “Mamá brought my little sisters to the fiesta. She carried one, and the other held on to her skirt and followed behind. My little sisters caught typhoid and died in the same hour. They were so small, they couldn't look over the windowsill—no, not even if they stood on tiptoe.”

It struck Matt that El Patrón was a lot nicer when he remembered the past. He seemed kinder and more vulnerable. Matt still loved the old man, but there was no question he was evil.

“Who's Felipe?” Matt asked Celia in the large, wood-burning kitchen of the mansion.

“You mean the sauce cook or gardener?” she said.

“It must be someone else. El Patrón's always calling me that.”

“Oh, no,” murmured Celia, pausing from the pie dough she was rolling out. “Felipe was his son. He died almost eighty years ago.”

“Then why? . . . ”

“Some people are like that,
mi vida.
First they get older and older, and then they stop and get younger and younger. El Patrón believes he's about thirty-five years old now, so he thinks you're his son, Felipe. He can't possibly know who you really are.”

“Because I won't exist for another hundred years.”

“That's right,” replied Celia.

“So what should I do?”

“Be Felipe for him,” Celia said simply.

Matt went to the music room and played the piano to calm his nerves. If El Patrón's mind was slipping, it meant he was ready for another dose of fetal brain implants. That meant an embryo—
Matt's brother
—was growing inside a cow. Could embryos understand death? Could they be afraid? Matt crashed into a rendition of the “Turkish March” by Mozart, playing loud enough to make a servant drop a tray in the hallway outside. When Matt finished, he played it again. And again. The orderliness of Mozart made him feel as though he had control of his own life. It transported him beyond the stifling world of the mansion.

More and more he wanted to escape. Once the possibility had occurred to him at the oasis, the longing returned until it became a constant ache. He felt trapped like a worm in a nut. Esperanza's book had opened his eyes to the horrors of the
empire El Patrón had built, and he had seen for himself the low, dark dwellings of the eejits that were no better than coffins.

He could run away through the gray-tinged mountains that ringed the oasis. He could go to Aztlán. Tam Lin had given him a chest full of maps and food for that very reason. Matt was sure of it.

But he couldn't leave before Steven and Emilia's wedding. María would be there, and he couldn't go without seeing her.

T
he mansion seethed with activity. Potted orange trees were dragged in and placed around the perimeter of the salon. The scent of their flowers filled the house. The gardens were planted with jasmine, honeysuckle, and baby's breath. So many powerful perfumes made Matt queasy. His stomach hadn't felt right since his swim at the oasis.

The freezers adjoining the kitchen filled up with ice sculptures. Mermaids, lions, castles, and palm trees swirled with mist when Matt looked inside. They would be placed in bowls of punch for the wedding reception.

The old curtains and rugs were packed away, and new ones in white, pink, and gold took their place. The walls were repainted, the red tile roofs cleaned and polished. The house began to look like a giant birthday cake covered with frosting.

Matt skirted around the edge of these festivities. He knew he'd be confined to Celia's apartment during the party.
Big deal
,
thought Matt, scuffing his shoes along a newly laid stretch of white carpet. He didn't want to go to the stupid wedding anyway. Everyone had known for years that Steven and Emilia were going to get married. El Patrón had decreed it. He wanted to bind the Alacráns to the powerful political machine Senator Mendoza ruled in the United States. It was simply good luck that Steven and Emilia liked each other. If they hadn't, it wouldn't have mattered.

Benito, Steven's older brother, had married the daughter of the Nigerian president because Nigeria was one of the richest countries in the world. Benito and Fani, his bride, had loathed each other on sight; but El Patrón liked Nigerian money, so their opinions didn't count.

As the day drew near, Matt felt more and more isolated. Celia was too distracted to talk. Tam Lin was shut away with El Patrón, whose health was too poor to allow visits. Matt could have gone to the oasis, but a strange tiredness had come over him. He fell asleep early, only to find his nights disturbed by evil dreams. By day his mouth tasted of metal and his head ached. He made only one brief trip to fetch Esperanza's book on Opium.

The house filled up with guests. MacGregor arrived with a new wife—number seven, Matt thought; this one was as young as Emilia. And Felicia consumed so much alcohol that a cloud of whiskey followed her wherever she went. She drifted from one garden party to another, staring at people with bright, feverish eyes until they became uncomfortable and moved away.

As for MacGregor, he was in fine spirits. He'd had hair transplants. His scalp was a riot of springy red hair just like Tom's, and he kept patting it as though it might fall out if he didn't push the roots back in.

Matt observed everything from behind pillars or wall hangings. He didn't want anyone to point at him and say,
What's
this?
Who brought
this
creature into a place for people?

On the day of the wedding, a Nigerian hovercraft landed, carrying Benito, Fani, and Steven. Mr. Alacrán greeted them and kissed Fani, who grimaced as though she'd touched something nasty. She had a hard, bitter face, and Benito was beginning to get a potbelly. Steven, on the other hand, was as handsome as a storybook prince.

Matt disliked him less than the other Alacráns. It was Steven who had carried him away from the little house in the poppies. And if he and Emilia had ignored Matt since, neither had they been cruel.

Matt watched the milling crowd of guests and recalled their names, business connections, and scandals. He thought he understood the Alacrán empire every bit as well as Steven. For the hundredth time Matt felt the gulf that separated him from humanity. All these people were here to honor Steven. No one would ever honor Matt, nor would he ever marry.

A familiar hovercraft landed, and Matt's heart leapt to his throat. The guests turned toward the landing pad and craned their necks to see the bride. Emilia didn't disappoint them. She was dressed in a shimmering blue gown, surrounded by a cluster of little girls as attendants. Each carried a basket of rose petals, which she tossed in handfuls at the crowd. Matt thought they made a pretty picture until he realized the little girls were eejits.

Everyone applauded as the bride was led up the stairs to the salon by Senator Mendoza. But Matt had no eyes for them. The only person he cared about stepped out of the hovercraft without any fanfare at all. No one noticed María slip through the
crowd, or that she wasn't going in the same direction as her sister. Matt understood, though, and he worked his stealthy way around the edge of the crowd to the music room.

•   •   •

Most people shunned the music room. The servants entered only when they cleaned, and Felicia had stopped playing altogether. The room was Matt's territory and thus tainted.