Doc didn’t turn, but kept his face to the wall as he said, “Ryan, I find I am experiencing a most disconcerting sense of deja vu.”
“Deja what?”
“Deja vu. French for a disturbing familiarity.”
Ryan cocked an eyebrow. “How so?”
“I have the strangest feeling I have met Dr. Ja-maisvous before…which makes his name all the more peculiar,” Doc replied as he worked his hands nervously up and down his walking stick.
“Jamaisvous. Sounds like more of your French talk to me,” Ryan mused, flexing his fingers in a halfhearted attempt to crack his knuckles.
“Very good, Ryan,” Doc said with some delight. “The cognomen is indeed French.”
Ryan grinned back. “Hell, Doc, my brain’s not as overstuffed as yours, but I’m no dummy either.”
“Well, I guess I’m the stupe. Cognomi-what? Translate for us dullards, please,” J.B. snorted. The laconic man had grown interested in the conversation. Farther down the hall, Dean and Jak were still continuing to insult each other’s personal hygiene.
“Cognomen. Last name,” Doc replied briskly. “And that is not a translation, but a definition, John Barrymore. As for the translation, and I’ll be the first to admit my mastery of French is a bit rusty, I think the name Jamaisvous means ‘a most peculiar sense of time.'”
Chapter Eight
The offer Jamaisvous had made to provide fresh laundry was impossible to resist, and everyone contributed items of apparel to the stack of soiled clothing. In two hours’ time the mound of clothing was taken away by a plump woman with long black hair tied in a tight bun, washed in a remote part of the fortress, dried and returned folded.
One of the sec men they’d met in the gateway control room came at dusk to rap lightly at their doors and fetch the group.
“Lopez, right?” Mildred asked as she stepped out of her room with J.B. She felt refreshed from having a bath, and clean clothing to wear for a change.
The big man didn’t look amused. “No, ma’am.”
“Garcia.”
“Luis, actually. I think you have me confused with my cousins.”
“You lose again,” J.B. said, even as the sec man went on to knock and alert the others of the impending meal. Once all had been accounted for, he led them though a passageway and into an opulent dining room. Centered in the room were a dozen chairs around a long wooden table with an immaculate white tablecloth.
Jamaisvous stood at the head of the table and waited until everyone else was in place and seated before he took his own seat. Ryan sat to his left and Doc to his right.
The Puerto Rican mother and daughter who cooked for Jamaisvous were standing patiently on opposite sides of the table, both apparently serving as hostesses for the meal. He’d introduced them as Elena and Maria, but the pair hadn’t spoken in kind, choosing instead to merely nod and keep their focus on the work. Both carried a vibrantly painted orange serving pot on a tray. Upside-down cups on saucers at the upper left of each of the place settings matched the color of the orange pot, so Ryan took the visual clue and turned his cup over, watching the younger Puerto Rican woman pour it full of a steaming brown liquid.
“Mmm! Smell that aroma!” Mildred said, down and across from Ryan, where the mother was filling the woman’s cup. “I haven’t smelled coffee like this in…well, in years!”
Ryan lifted the smallish mug to his lips, trying to be careful and not burn himself with the hot liquid. He didn’t know what Mildred was getting so excited about, since real coffee was hard to come by. Rarely was the real thing found in any remaining quantity except for aged crystals vacuum-sealed in aluminum cans.
Coffee sub was coffee sub, he thought sourly, until he tasted the brew. He took a long pull at the drink before lowering the cup with a wide smile on his face.
“That’s triple-fine coffee,” Ryan finally said, holding out the cup for a refill.
“I know,” Jamaisvous said, appearing to take satisfaction in Ryan’s surprise and enjoyment of the beverage. “Puerto Rican coffee is some of the most delicious in the world, but there is very little of it left for harvesting. Even before the unfortunate business of war, it was a local treat only and never exported in any quantity to the mainland. A series of hurricanes in the 1930s destroyed most of the coffee trees, and since it takes seven years for them to ma-tare, the island’s farmers were forced to tarn to other crops, such as sugarcane. Such storms still rage, and because of that coffee here is a local delicacy.”