Mamba Point (15 page)

“I just thought if you didn’t want to get sick again …”

“What are you, some kind of diseasologist?”

“My mom died of hepatitis,” he said. “She didn’t know how she got it. I mean, we never found out, exactly. The kind she had is usually caused by contaminated food or water, though.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It was a long time ago. A year and a half after we moved here. I was only seven.”

“I’m still sorry.”

“Me too. Nobody ever gets hepatitis in the States, do they? Just in Africa. Just like they still get yellow fever and malaria and all kinds of things. So we moved to Africa and my mom got hepatitis somehow and died. Even in
Africa people usually don’t die of it, unless they’re pregnant, which she was.”

No wonder Matt never went outside. He was scared of the air.

“What are we supposed to do, though?” I asked him. “We live here. Lots of people live here, and most of them don’t die.”

“It’s like that here. That’s all I’m saying.”

“My mom works at the WHO,” I said. “They’re trying to make it better, I guess.”

“Yeah, fat lot of good that does,” he said gloomily. He wiped his eye with the back of his hand. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to freak out on you.”

“It’s okay. Do you want to play the game?”

“Yeah, of course. I missed playing.” He finally headed back to his other room, and I followed.

Zartan and Bob narrowly avoided a rhinoceros and started following a twinkling riverbed. Zartan dug at one of the twinkles with a knife and pulled an emerald out of the mud. The riverbed was full of gemstones, but a rush of water came thundering from above and Zartan had to take his one jewel and flee before he drowned. Some bad guys had blown up the dam. He and Bob made their way up a sheer cliff and circled around the bad guys to take them by surprise.

“A python drops from a higher branch and tries to eat Bob,” Matt said.

“No way. Really? A snake?”

“There
are
snakes in Africa,” he said. “In case you haven’t
heard.”
He rolled a twenty-sided die. “Uh-oh. The snake eats Bob.”

“What?”

He showed me the die and shrugged. It was a three. “I needed to roll at least a five for Bob to survive.”

“Can you just roll again?”

“No.” Matt looked offended. “That wouldn’t be fair.”

“You gave me that whatchamacallit before—a mulligan,” I reminded him.

“My dad says you only get one mulligan per game,” he said grimly.

“That sucks!” I rapped on the table.

“Sorry. Bob didn’t have that many hit points. He was just a bird.”

“So what does that mean? Is the game over?”

“It is for Bob,” he explained. “But you can keep going. You have to foil the bad guys. Figure out why they blew up the dam and—”

“But Zartan’s a pirate.” It made me sad to think about a pirate without a parrot. How would he have the courage to take on bombers and solve mysteries? “Maybe Zartan can find a magic stone that brings Bob back to life?”

“I don’t make up the rules as I go,” Matt said. “Otherwise, there’s no point.”

“Maybe we should call it a day, then,” I said.

“It’s early,” he said. “Not even dinnertime yet.”

“We can go up and play Atari, then you can have dinner at our place.”

“I suppose.” He scooped up the gaming stuff and put
it all in the box. “I can make another character for the next adventure.”

“Maybe you can be the python.”

“Maybe.” He mulled it over. “A pirate with a pet snake, huh? That would be one bad pirate.”

When we headed upstairs, we found Gambeh and Tokie waiting in the stairwell.

“Hi, Linus,” said Gambeh, his face serious.

“Oh, hey, it’s you. I haven’t seen you in a while.” I wondered how long they’d been waiting around.

“You know these guys?” Matt asked.

“Sort of, yeah. Their dad was a guard here.”

“We used to play football in the yard,” Gambeh said. “The new guard told us we can’t play there anymore.”

“He told us to go away,” Tokie added. “He said never come back.”

“We had to sneak in now,” Gambeh admitted with a guilty smile.

I unlocked the door so we could all go in. Gambeh stopped in the hallway, Tokie hiding behind him.

“Your mama makes good rice,” he said, peering around his big brother.

I got it. They were hungry. I glanced at the clock. Mom wouldn’t be home for another hour, probably longer.

“Do you want me to make some?” I didn’t know how to make rice, but I could read the instructions.

“Yes, please!”

“Oh, for …” Matt muttered something in disbelief.

“It’s just food,” I said. I knew what he was thinking—that these kids would pick you clean if you let them. That’s what his dad told us our first day in Monrovia. It wasn’t like I was giving them money, though, and even if I did, so what? It was my money. I got an allowance and so far hadn’t used it for anything but the occasional soda because I hadn’t found any comic-book stores or arcades in Monrovia.

We had plenty of bagged rice but also a box of instant. I made that, boiling filtered water and dumping in the rice. I didn’t remember exactly what Mom did to hers, but I made mine yummy by melting margarine in it and sprinkling in sugar and cinnamon. Matt hovered in the background, watching, not saying much. My rice came out mushy.

“Sorry it’s not good,” I said, dividing it into two bowls and giving it to Gambeh and Tokie. They carried their bowls into the dining room to eat, so we went with them.

“Is there more?” Tokie asked a minute later, showing me his empty bowl.

“Maybe we have something else.” I went back to the kitchen and opened a can of deviled ham. Halfway through making sandwiches, I realized they might be Muslims like Charlie. They must not have been because they ate the sandwiches.

“Thanks for dinner,” Gambeh said.

“Anytime.”

I saw Matt rolling his eyes. He probably thought they’d come every night now.

“We have to go,” Gambeh said. “Mama expects us home.”

“I want to play with the lemon,” said Tokie sulkily.

“No, we have to go.” Gambeh grabbed Tokie’s hand and half dragged him to the door.

“Just one game with the lemon!” Tokie said again.

“He thinks Pac-Man’s a lemon,” I explained to Matt, who looked confused.

I let them out, and Gambeh turned around just before I shut the door. “Do you have any jobs for my pa?” he asked.

“Well, I don’t, but let me ask people.”

“Thanks! I’ll come back!” He and Tokie ran down the steps.

“Pathetic,” Matt said, shaking his head, when I came back to the living room.

“Oh, come on,” I said. “They’re all right.” Gambeh and Tokie were usually pretty happy. “You know, you could help those kids.” An idea was dawning on me.

“What, make rice and sandwiches for them tomorrow?”

“No. Help their dad get a job.”

“Who, me? Am I going to hire him?” He shrugged.

“Your dad could help.”

“Him? We don’t even have a houseboy. I bet we’re the one American family in Liberia that doesn’t.”

“He knows people, though. Caesar and those guys. They’re big shots, right? You said they work for the Liberian government. They must hire lots of people, especially guards. So you can ask your dad to ask them to give Gambeh’s dad a job.”

“Your dad knows people, too,” he suggested. “So does your mom.”

“My dad only knows people at the embassy, and they already fired Gambeh’s dad. And my mom just started at her job. She can’t already start asking for favors.”

“Yeah, but … I don’t know if my dad can ask them to hire people just because he knows them,” he said. “It’s not like they owe him anything.”

“It doesn’t hurt to ask,” I said. “I mean, it can’t be any worse than the
last
thing we asked, right?”

“No, that’s definitely true,” he admitted. He still looked uneasy.

“So, will you do it? Please?”

“I’ll think about it.”

I tried to think of something to offer in trade, but Matt already had everything I had, and more. I could have talked Joe into anything by letting him use the Atari for a few weeks, I bet. He probably would have done this anyway, but still. He could be bought. Not Matt.

Well, he didn’t have
everything
.

“If you do it, I’ll show you something really cool,” I promised. “So cool you won’t even believe it if I tell you.”

“Hmm.” He looked at me closely. “It isn’t some rare comic book, is it?”

“A hundred million times better than that.”

“It better not be something stupid.”

“It’s not.”

“Do I just have to ask my dad, or does he have to agree to ask his friends to give that guy a job?”

“You just have to ask him.”

“All right. I’ll do it because I’m curious what your big secret is,” he said. “If it’s dumb, though, I’m going to
un-ask
my dad.”

“Sounds like a deal to me.”

The power went out late at night and stayed out. I tossed my sheets off the bed and lay there awhile, a film of sweat on me, and tried to think cool thoughts. I could live without the air conditioner if I had to, but I at least needed a fan. What did people do before fans? I wondered. Probably they missed a lot of sleep.

I thought about my snake and wondered if I could do that mind-fuse trick with it again, or if I’d really done it in the first place. I concentrated, trying to imagine myself in the mamba’s head and hoping I wouldn’t connect with it just as it swallowed something gross like a raw frog. It didn’t work, and I decided either the snake was asleep or I’d been feverish and delusional the first time it happened.

I glanced at the clock, which ran on batteries. It was 2:38 in the morning and I hadn’t slept at all. I got up and went to get a drink of water.

I padded down the hall in my bare feet. It was too hot for pajamas, so I was just wearing underwear. I had to grope around in the dark for a glass, then in the refrigerator for the pitcher of cold water.

I took the glass into the dining room. The side windows
were open, and a bit of a breeze was blowing through. It felt good. I was taking a couple of gulps when the lights in the kitchen and dining room flickered on.

I heard a muted female laugh from the living room. There was Law, lying on the couch, snuggled up with some girl. No, it wasn’t some girl at all. It was Eileen.

I plunked the glass on the table and hurried back to my room, slamming the door behind me.

“Keep it down out there!” Dad hollered from my parents’ bedroom.

I grabbed some shorts and a T-shirt from the dirty-clothes corner. Law softly rapped on my door.

“Leave me alone,” I said. I got dressed in about three seconds.

He opened the door a crack, enough to put his hand through and make a Pac-Man. “Waka waka waka?”

“Shut up.” I whacked at his hand and opened the door. “It’s not cool to have girls over when your brother’s walking around in his underwear.”

“So a girl saw you in your Fruit of the Looms. It’s not that much different from seeing you in swim trunks,” he said.

“Yeah, but she laughed at me.”

“It was funny.” He grinned. “Come on, it was funny. She wasn’t laughing at you. It was a funny situation.”

“Maybe to you.” I put on my sandals. No socks this time. I felt like living dangerously. I grabbed my key from the dresser and my empty gym bag.

“Where are you going?”

“Out.”

“It’s like three in the morning.”

“If you can have a friend over, I can go out.”

“She was only still here ’cause the power was out,” he said. He pushed his hair back. It was getting long enough to hang in his face now. “We were at a friend’s place and—”

“Good for you!” I shouted. I didn’t want to hear all the details. I heard my dad muttering and cussing, throwing his door open. I pushed past Law and went down the hall.

“Come on, Linus,” Law pleaded.

Eileen was still in the living room.

“If you wait a bit longer, you’ll get to see our dad in his underwear, too,” I told her before banging out the front door. I wanted it to be funny, but it probably sounded sulky and angry. I ran down the steps and out into the courtyard.

“It’s past your bedtime,” said the guard. He wasn’t bossing me around, just surprised to see a kid at that hour.

“It’s none of your beeswax,” I told him.

“Beeswax, oh?” He laughed at the expression.

I walked toward the embassy, stopping halfway between two streetlights in a canyon of darkness.

“Are you there?” I whispered.

The street was quiet. Even the bar up at the corner of UN Drive and Fairground would be closed, I thought. There were no taxis cruising along the street, hoping for fares. Mamba Point was sleeping. Were the mambas sleeping, too?

“Are you there?” I repeated, a bit louder.

I was briefly blinded by a single headlight cruising up
the road, turning around the bend. The car slowed, then stopped. The light went out. I heard a car door open and slam shut. I remembered Gambeh’s story of the heartman. It was probably nonsense, but whoever was out there was probably up to no good.

Never mind the snake. I took a few quick strides back to the building, ready to run if I needed to. I stumbled, and then there was an arm around me, covering my mouth. The smell of unwashed hand filled my nose and choked me. I wriggled and bit at the hand, then felt a punch to the small of my back. A twinge racked my entire body, like when you bang your funny bone on something.

“Be still,” the voice ordered, holding me tight. The man’s other hand patted at my pockets, and my bag was yanked away from me.

“I don’t have any money,” I told him.

“Shut up now!” he ordered.

I felt a weight on my foot, the familiar friction of scale on skin. The mamba streaked up my body and over my shoulder, brushing by my ear. I heard a stifled shout, then felt the grip on me loosen. The snake was gone. I broke free and ran for the light by the building.

“Hey, Linus.” It was Law, lingering outside the gate, trying to hide a smoldering cigarette behind his leg. “You okay?”

I couldn’t talk at first. I was panting, trying to catch my breath. “I think so,” I said at last, glancing back over my shoulder.