Intimate Strangers Affair Page 9

  “How?”

  “The fire demons was bad. Now worse. Use to be just his belly, but now they go to head. Make him crazy. Talk like demon. Not him.”

  “What do you mean?” I didn’t understand Lin-Mei. Maybe it was the language problem again. The Captain crazy? He’d been charming, seductive, mysterious. But crazy? Definitely not. I’d never met a saner person who made me insane.

  Lin-Mei looked worried. As she stirred her pots, she seemed to be mulling it over, making some decision, perhaps weighing her loyalty to the Don versus confiding in me. She was about to speak, when the screen door creaked opened.

  “Ma-Ma! Ma-Ma!” piped a small voice from the back door.

  Lin-Mei let loose a torrent of Cantonese that sounded loud and almost angry, but her expression wasn’t so. I heard children reply, then the thump-thump of feet running toward us. Something scraped along the floor. The sounds grew louder, turned the corner, then the children burst into the kitchen, carrying a giant red rectangular kite between them.

  The boy’s face was moon-like round, his oblique eyes looking accusingly to the quiet dark-eyed little girl next to him. Her long black braids hung to the small of her back. At the tips of her braids, the pink silk ribbons tied were still crisp bows, and her pinafore was spotless. She held the other end of the kite. There was a big hole in one corner. Bits of bamboo struts poked through like broken bones. Ugly mess. A regular compound open fracture.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  The girl’s eyes suddenly turned glossy with tears. She sniffled as the boy led them over to a low table by the window. Careful as undertakers with a deceased, they respectfully laid the kite down.

  “Ricardo let Alicia fly the kite,” the boy explained. “It went high, high, higher than ever. Then the wind shifted, and crash!”

  Alicia’s lips quivered as a tear threatened to spill over the edge of her eye.

  “Don’t cry,” the boy soothed her. “Ricardo will fix it. You can fix it, yes?” he turned his head to a slight olive-skinned man who trotted into the room. He carried a large box kite in one hand, its tail bunched in his other hand.

  “Sure, I’ll fix it. I can fix anything, Ling-Shen,” Ricardo answered eagerly in a loud voice more suited for outdoors than inside the house. He was tall and walked fast with his shoulders hunched forward, his arms swinging widely as if he didn’t know where his body was or what it was doing. His left hand barely missed the bowl of jam at the end of the table. He suddenly smiled. “Pan dulce. My favorite.” Suddenly, he let go of the kite tail so that the knotted rags plopped on to the middle of the floor. Then he picked a cake and sunk it into the jam so that blobs flew everywhere. He took a big bite, chewing with his mouth half open.

  “Ricardo, your shirt,” murmured Lin-Mei.

  The front of his shirt was buttoned all wrong. The middle gaped open, and each of the buttons above or below it were offset by one. “I did it. I did it myself,” he said, standing a little too close. He looked me over. His eyes were round and dark-brown like fresh chocolate cakes, made glossy by curiosity. “Hola. Hi, hi. Who are you?”

  “I’m Nathalie.”

  Ricardo finished off his cookie in two more bites. He licked his fingers, jam adorning the corners of his mouth. “You’re a lady. Señora, or señorita? I like señoritas better, but the señoritas don’t like me. They don’t play with me, they all play with my cousin.”

  “Your cousin?” I asked.

  “Miguelito. Well, he’s not little Miguel any more, he’s big Miguel now, because he’s the Don, you know. Don Miguel. I’m just Señor Ricardo. Only you can call me Ricardo like everyone else does. No one calls me señor, I’m not that scary.”

  “No, you’re not.” I smiled.

  He smiled back, wide and without guile, showing all of his jam-stained teeth. So this was the younger Cabrillo cousin, the one they always talked about in hushed voices. They said there was something funny about him, and now I knew why. He was still a child in a man’s body. His mind had simply stopped growing. His father was the old Don Cabrillo, and Ricardo should have inherited the title and the lands when his older brother had died. But Ricardo hadn’t. Instead, the inheritance had passed to Miguel. And now, I understood why. I watched him eat directly out of the bowls. He chewed on the chopped white mushrooms as if they were candy. Then he wiped his hands on the sides of his pants, making little cloud puffs of sugar as he walked over to the damaged kite. Hands on hips, he examined it carefully.

  “Can you fix it, Tio Ricardo?” Alicia asked tremulously, her voice barely above a whisper.

  Nodding, he reached into a wooden carryall on top of the table. He removed a glue pot, brush, and scissors, then laid them out in a precise arrangement. Next, he sorted through a bundle of bamboo sticks, checking their length and testing their flexibility. Humming off-key, he replaced a strut, then a second. It was a delicate operation, deftly performed. His clumsiness seemed to vanish completely as he mended the kite. We watched in awe.

  Next to me, Ling-Shen whispered, “You should see his kites. He’s got a centipede, and a swallow-tail, and a giant square one. Even bigger than this. That giant one picks you up and you can fly on it.”

  “You mean you can fly it. People can’t fly,” I said, trying not to imagine it.

  “No, no. It picks me up,” corrected Ling-Shen excitedly, almost dancing around the table. “I flew like a phoenix. A dragon. Up, up in the air. I could see everything.”

  Swallowing hard, I glanced at Lin-Mei for confirmation. She nodded grimly.

  Ricardo stopped his mending and looked up at me. “You don’t like kites, señorita?”

  “I do like kites, I would love to fly one. I’d be honored if you let me. It’s just that I don’t want to go up in the air. I like to keep both my feet on the ground.”

  “So true,” a new voice said softly behind me.

  I almost jumped. Don Miguel. He was back. Damn the man, he was quieter than a cat. He was always sneaking up on me. I would do well to remember that. I turned around with a calmness I didn’t feel.

  “Some chaw?” Lin-Mei offered, already with a teapot in hand. She held out a small cup without a handle.

  With a small smile of thanks, Miguel took the oolong and sipped, rifling one hand over his windblown hair. So he’d been outside again, God knows where. His black coat and trousers were impeccably clean, but his boots still had traces of street mud and something green and slimy like the duckweed that grew low on the pilings. What had he been doing below the docks? I wondered just how I could trick him into telling me. I searched his face for a clue, any clue, but came up empty-handed as usual. Just another day, nothing out of the ordinary for Don Miguel.

  “Another kite? Good.” He stepped up to the table and listened politely to Ricardo’s long meandering story about the kite crash and every detail of its repair. He made the appropriate sounds of approval as he bent over and examined the fresh paint. The two men stood together, heads side by side. They looked related, the same height, build, and coloring. But there any similarities ended. The cousins carried themselves completely differently. Ricardo seemed soft, open, and child-like, whereas Miguel had been hardened into an adult, all his innocence chiseled away by time and circumstance. In all the essentials, he seemed completely different. And his sanity? Was that different too? After all, how well did I know him? Not very well, and not for very long. I could count our encounters on the fingers of one hand, hardly a sound basis for diagnosis. Perhaps I’d missed something or hadn’t seen its signs yet.

  Remembering Lin-Mei’s claim, I examined Miguel even closer. He seemed lucid. Didn’t say much, but what he did say made sense. There was no sign of wildness in his clear steady gaze. If Miguel had any demons, they remained hidden. I couldn’t find any hint of the madness that affected his cousin. Perhaps Miguel was only better at disguising them. I’d met highly functioning patients like that before. You’d never know when their melancholia or dipsomania would hit. Folks were like tides; madness
ebbed and flowed. Some were on quicker cycles, others had long dry spells before another high tide would hit.

  I stepped away, then noticed that I wasn’t the only one watching him. Hanging back a little, Alicia looked owlishly up at him. She offered him a shy smile, then bobbed a quick curtsey.

  “Papa.”

  Papa? Surprise hit me like a misdirected reflex hammer. So Miguel was a father. What other secrets did he carry? I glanced from daughter to father. Both had a darker complexion, but otherwise there was no resemblance. There was no sign of Don Miguel in that small girl. Perhaps Alicia took after her curiously absent mother instead of the silent, removed father now standing before me.

  It bothered me, I admit it. How could Miguel be her father? He didn’t act like one; no familiar touch or a special secret grin like Papa used to give me and Claude. Miguel only gave her a patient, reserved look, slightly inclining his head to one side. The barest acknowledgement of Alicia. That man could charm any female on land or sea, but didn’t appear to be trying with his own child. How peculiar. Something a little sad and sour twisted in my belly like a bite of green apple. I didn’t know who I felt more sorry for right then, the father or the daughter.

  I didn’t have much time to puzzle over it, because the next thing I knew, Lin-Mei was clapping her hands together, and shooing the children out of the kitchen. “Come, come. Wash up. Dinner early today.”

  “Ah, that’s right. Tonight is The State Ball.” Miguel drained the last of his cup, then set it down on the table. He looked at me with an intimacy that made me uncomfortable. When I thought I couldn’t bear it any longer, he turned to his cousin. “Going?”

  Ricardo frowned, wetting his brush between his lips. He dipped the perfect tip into the paint and retouched the kite some more. “No, no, no. Grown-ups talk too much, then dance, and eat. Then more talking. I don’t like it, no games.”

  “Not the kind you like,” Miguel agreed.

  “Are you going, señorita?”

  “Me?” I sputtered. “No.”

  Miguel took my hand and sniffed the knuckles. He looked curiously at my green-stained apron, then back at me. “Why not?”

  “Because…because I don’t belong.”

  “Are you afraid?” Miguel sugested.

  “Of course, not.” My spine stiffened as if it were suddenly made of iron and whalebone.

  “Good. You are quite capable. Surely it’s no more daunting than some of the things you do so well,” Miguel said referring to my medical skills, but implying a different kind of skill all together. I flushed in response. “Come, querida, don’t be shy. And please, no maidenly protests about nothing to wear.” He smiled a little wickedly as if that alternative would be just fine with him.

  I almost jerked my hand away from him, but remembered my role. The wide watchful eyes of Ricardo were upon us. I suffered Miguel’s kiss on my hands, and smiled prettily up at him. “As you command, Miguel. You are the Captain, after all.”

  “No, niña, you are. The Capitán of my heart.”

  ***

  I stood outside his…our bedroom, feeling as ridiculous as could be. I mean, here I was, dressed like a lady, but right now I was sweating like a horse underneath all this powder and petticoats. My shoulders might be bare, but below that I was smothering in layers and layers of lavender chiffon. Maybe I looked like a fluffy little cloud, but inside I felt as humid as a thunderhead. Paris fashions? More like Paris torture. It was too much, way too much. I couldn’t stand it. How did women do this? I was convinced that the corset had shoved my intestines somewhere near my ears. Permanently. Now my lungs were completely compressed, only pitiful shallow breaths keeping me alive.

  Who was I trying to kid? I wasn’t a lady, never really claimed to be. I was ignorant of most of those lady rules. They hampered me like this blasted single hoop petticoat I was wearing right now. Silly rules, tripping me up half the time. It was easier to do what made sense to me instead of what made sense to society. Now for instance, take this rule: A lady should always be fashionably late. Forget that. I was unfailingly prompt for appointments and hospital rounds. Never could understand the reason behind making a gentleman wait for me. Why wait? Time was wasting like pouring water in the sand.

  I could hear the seconds ticking away as Miguel made me wait for him to finish getting ready for the ball. Wait in this get-up? Who was I kidding? I couldn’t wait a moment longer! It was already an hour past our agreed-upon departure, and I’d worn a stripe down the rug from my pacing. Something was wrong, seriously wrong. Don Miguel didn’t strike me as a procrastinating type.

  I tried again, almost shouting through the door. “The landau is ready. Been waiting for us for an hour. Let’s go.”

  There was only silence from the other side. I knocked harder on the door. “Miguel!” Again I raised my hand, ready to knock some more, but the door finally swung open. I stopped just in time before accidentally striking Xiang, who stood on the other side of the threshold. He looked at me with a bland impassive expression that would have rivaled his master’s. He held up ten fingers and nodded meaningfully.

  “Ten more minutes? That’s what you said half an hour ago. Now where is Miguel?” I asked, shouldering Xiang aside. I stepped into the bedroom, and then it hit me. That smell. No matter how much you wash away or how long you open the windows to air something out, there is no disguising the rank acid smell of a sickroom. I recognized it in a second. Poor Miguel. And here I’d been irritated instead of concerned. Guilt washed over me. I should have known something was wrong. I grabbed Xiang’s long cotton sleeve. “Where is he? Take me to him.”

  “No need…I’m here.” Miguel walked out of the dressing room into the bedroom with his usual athletic stride. There was no sickly hitch or hesitation. His evening clothes were stark black elegance from the line of his jacket to the pressed pleats of his trousers. The white wings of his collar were crisp and pointed at almost mathematically precise angles, but above his tie, his face looked a little grimmer, his color a little off.

  I pressed my hand against his forehead for a brief second as he continued moving forward without breaking a step. No fever. Not clammy either. The hair at his temples felt damp as if he’d recently splashed water on his face. “What is it? How long have you been this way?”

  He made an impatient sound as he walked quickly to the outer door. With each step, he seemed to add a layer of determination, then another, so that by the time he had crossed the room, all the layers had hardened into a black lacquer that obscured any sign of illness. He looked shiny and new, the picture of health. Was this the same man?

  I almost blinked. “You’re not well, I can see that. We don’t have to go, let’s send the landau back. Call it off.”

  “No,” he said quietly.

  “No? Are you nuts?” Immediately, I regretted my choice of words. Never tell a crazy person that they’re crazy. Just makes them mad. I could tell by the way his eyes widened. He opened the door with deliberate care, then ushered me out.

  “Hey, hey. No pushing,” I said.

  “Where’s your fan? These affairs are usually crowded. You’ll overheat.” He was ruthlessly shepherding me down the hallway as if trying to make up for lost time. I had to pick up my skirts and trot faster in the darn slippers to keep up with him. “And you need gloves,” he added.

  I groaned. “I’m always forgetting something. I can’t do this.”

  “You can.” His hand closed over my arm. Five points of kid leather pressing down, commanding me forward. “Let’s go.”

  “Well, at least tell me if you’re lightheaded. If you’ve been puking, you can get dehydrated real fast. You need to push fluids. Not alcohol, mind you. No wine, beer, or anything stronger. That will dry you up even faster. You need water, juice, or lemonade,” I said vengefully, knowing that men abhorred those insipid refreshments. “Are you feeling dizzy at all?”

  “Only when I’m with you, querida. Only with you,” he said with a low purposeful intent that made
me feel funny inside. That look…dark, direct, and dangerous. Definitely dangerous. Somehow, I knew that this was one ball I would never forget. Don Miguel would definitely make sure of it.

  ***

  Indian summer had finally arrived, melting away the fog and heating the crowded ballroom at the Calhoun mansion. Frizzled hair and collars wilted, fans flapped everywhere like a flock of jeweled butterflies under the high plastered walls that were draped in patriotic red, white, and blue. I smiled, sweated, then smiled some more to all the introductions. On the anniversary of California’s statehood, everyone, it seemed, had something to say to Don Miguel, whose heritage and hard gold commanded respect. Old power and new. You could sense both standing next to him. As his companion, I was under intense scrutiny. It reminded me of the first time I’d entered the auditorium full of male medical students, all curious, most hostile, a few undecided. All had been waiting for one false step. The society nobles here were exactly the same. Predatory, pausing, circling for just one faux pas from me, the tall blonde greenhorn in borrowed finery. I didn’t belong here. I knew it, and I think they knew it too. I was being tested constantly. I ignored another pointed remark from a redheaded beauty with more rubies than good sense. Uh, oh! Did I just see that? She really licked her lips while looking at Miguel? I wanted to toss my glass of liqueur in her face. That would snap that redhead out of her drooling state.

  “More liqueur, my dear?” Miguel asked quietly.

  I shuddered inwardly, the sweet fruity taste not to my liking at all. “Oh, no. I’ll just taste yours.” I took his still full glass before he had a chance to react, and sipped it. Lemon, a touch of nutmeg, and liquid fire. A ball of it hit my gut, then shot upward, squeezing out my breath. Miguel took his drink back while I coughed a little behind my hand, trying to suck in air. I managed to gather enough to wheeze, then eventually to speak. “What…is that? Strongest whiskey I’ve ever tasted.” The men laughed around me.

  Our host Christopher B. Calhoun laughed the loudest. His nose was red and veined, the obvious effect of an over-indulgence in spirits. “No, it’s Pisco punch. Peruvian brandy.”