Chapter 2
“So, what happened?” Flaco asked as soon as I got the monitor off.
“Nothing,” I said, not wishing to compromise Tamara’s privacy any further. I pulled her plug from the console, terminating her self-torture. Tamara straightened and stretched.
“Is it time to eat?” she asked. She stared at the floor and would not look at me.
“Yes.” Flaco helped her stand. It had begun to rain outside, so Flaco went to the closet for an umbrella.
Tamara stared at the floor and said, “Stay out of my dreams.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “You looked as if you were in pain.”
“I only had a headache. You invaded me. You don’t have that right!”
“You’re my patient,” I said. “I’m obligated to care for you.”
Flaco came back with the umbrella, and we walked to La Arboleda.
When we got to the restaurant, only a few late eaters and drunks were there. We all ordered fish dinners. Flaco convinced Tamara to order a Rum Sunset—a drink his grandfather had invented that is made of rum and lemon wine, spiced with cinnamon. Flaco tried to get me to drink one too, but I refused. Flaco bragged that his family still owned the company that made the lemon wine, and I pointed out that both his grandfather’s company and his grandfather’s bad taste were still in the family. Tamara laughed slightly and stared at the stub on her arm. A drunk staggered to our table, looked at our drinks, and said, “Ah, a Rum Sunset. That’s my favorite God damned drink in the world. In fact, it’s the only good drink!”
“Then you should sit and have a Rum Sunset with the grandson of the man who invented it!” Flaco said, and he ordered a Rum Sunset for the drunk.
I was very sorry about this, for the drunk smelled of sour sweat, and he sat next to me. He fell asleep after guzzling his drink, but his smell ruined my dinner. We ate and talked; Flaco told many peculiarly bad jokes, which Tamara laughed at shyly at first, but later she laughed horrendously at the slightest provocation. One of my customers that day, a refugiado from Cartagena, had paid me in mixed foreign coins, so I’d carried a large bag of coins tied to my belt all day. I opened the bag and began stacking the coins according to country and denomination. When Tamara finished her first Rum Sunset, Flaco ordered her another, then another, and I realized Flaco was trying to get her drunk, and Tamara must have realized this too, since she excused herself from the third drink, claiming she had a headache.
Flaco kept drinking and got drunk himself. He told a long story about how his father did well in the wine business, until one day when he went to Mass and fell asleep. In a dream, the statue of the Virgin began weeping. Flaco’s father asked the Virgin why she wept, and she told him it was because he sold wine when he should be selling hats to the Indians in the Amazon. Flaco’s father became convinced he would make a great deal of money selling hats because, after all, the Virgin Mary had told him to do it. Then he sailed up the Amazon and was killed by a poisonous toad before he could sell a single hat. This incident greatly diminished the faith of everyone in Flaco’s village—so much so that the villagers broke the offending statue with hammers.
“Sho, what about your family?” Flaco asked Tamara, his head wobbling back and forth as if it would topple off. She straightened up, and her face took on a closed look. She hadn’t drunk much, but she pretended to be out of control so we’d excuse her bad manners. “Family? Want to know about my family? I’ll tell you—my father, he was just like Angelo there. He only wanted two things: order and immortality.” I had just finished stacking my coins in neat little staggered rows, like banana trees. Tamara lashed out with her stump and knocked all the coins down.
“That’s not—” I started to say.
“What? You going to say you don’t want immortality?” Tamara asked.
Like most morphogenic pharmacologists, the hope of obtaining a discount on rejuvenations until man solved the problem of mortality or learned to download brains into crystals was a major factor in determining my career. I concluded, “I don’t want order.”
Tamara peered at me as if I’d said something very strange, and shook her head. “You bastards are all the same. Your bodies may live, but your souls die.”
“Who’s a bashtard?” Flaco asked.
“Angelo. He’s just like a cyborg—the assholes want to live forever, but they make their living denying other people that opportunity.” I suddenly felt as if I’d jacked back into her dreamworld. As far as I could see, her strange accusations against cyborgs and me made no sense.
“You’re full of guano,” Flaco said. “Don Angelo Oshic here, he’sh nice. He’s a gentleman.”
Tamara looked at us, and her head wobbled. She reached for a glass of water and missed. The water spilled on the table. “Maybe he is a cyborg,” she said, ducking her head a little.
“We’re not shyborgs,” Flaco said in an easy tone. “See, no shyborgs are in thish room.” He handed her his Rum Sunset.
“You got a comlink in your head?” Tamara asked. Flaco nodded. “Then you’re a cyborg.” She acted as if she’d made her point. I remembered a news clip I’d once seen of Surinamese Body Purists. Upon conversion to their cult, new members pulled out their comlinks and their cranial jacks, their prosthetic kidneys or whatever they had, and lived totally without mechanical aid. I wondered if she were a Body Purist, and I suddenly knew why she wanted a regenerated hand instead of a prosthetic—the thought of her body being welded to a machine terrified her; it desecrated the temple of her spirit.
“A comlink doeshn’t make you a shyborg,” Flaco said.
“That’s where it starts. First a comlink. Then an arm. Then a lung. One piece at a time.”
“What about you?” Flaco asked. “You shaid you were going to tell about your family.”
“My mother and father are cyborgs,” she answered with that closed look. “I never met them. I’m just the interest paid by the sperm bank. If my parents ever saw me, they probably got pissed off because I didn’t look enough like a washing machine.”
“Hah! There musht be a shtory in that!” Flaco said. “Tell ush the shtory.”
“There’s no story,” Tamara said. And I wondered what her point was, why she bothered to lie at all.
The waiter brought Flaco another drink, which he downed on the spot. Tamara ordered some aspirin. Flaco was nodding off, so I pulled away his plate and glasses before his head landed on the table. Tamara just sat and gazed at her plate. I decided to drag away the smelly drunk who sat beside me and order dessert.
I put all my coins in my bag and moved the drunk back to his previous stall. As I finished setting him upright, comlink tones sounded in my head. I tapped the comlink switch behind my ear and a man with a heavy Arab accent said, “Señor Osic?”
“Yes,” I answered.
“Tell the woman across the table from you to go to the telephone.”
The caller had to have been in the room at some time in the evening to know I’d been sitting with Tamara, but since he didn’t know I’d moved away, he’d obviously left. “She’s drunk. She’s unconscious,” I lied, hurrying to the door to see if I was being called from outside.
I opened the door and looked out. The avenue was dark and empty, but far down the street I could see the shining heat of a man’s body outside a minishuttle. The caller clicked off, and the man jumped in the minishuttle. The tail lights glowed red momentarily and the shuttle blossomed into a ball of light as the engine turned on. It shot up into the night sky and streaked away.
I went back into the restaurant, and Tamara looked at me curiously, as if to ask why I’d run out. Flaco struggled to lift his head from the table. He turned toward Tamara and said, “I got a messhage for you on comlink: Arish shays he h-has your hand. And now he has y-you.”
Tamara turned pale and drank another Rum Sunset.
***