Chapter 74

74

Around the Mayor’s dinner table, conversation was stilted as all the guests waited for the poor commissioner to finish his mouthful.

“So this new drug, what’s it called?” Claudius, the diplomat, piped up as soon as it looked like the man might be close to swallowing. Claudius took another bite of fish as he waited to hear the answer. He’d finished almost half his plate, not as put off his meal as the rest of the crowd by the conversation.

Glancing nervously at Zeus, the commissioner answered, “On the streets, it’s now being called A, or Bro, or Brew. Short for Ambrosia.”

“Sounds lovely,” Claudius’s wife said with a smile to her husband. “Causes extreme arousal? If the only cost is a little headache, might be something I’d want to try.” She finished with a mischievous glance toward Zeus. “If it weren’t illegal, of course.”

“The libido is a powerful drive,” said the professor. “Unexpressed emotions never die, but are merely buried alive to appear later in uglier ways. We suppress our desires to fit into society but when we suppress them too long, society may collapse.”

“That’s Freud, isn’t it?” Zeus recognized the quote.

The professor nodded, looking pleased that someone had caught the reference, and raised his glass to Claudius’s wife. “So you see, a woman such as yourself, keeping your libido under wraps could be dangerous to all.”

She laughed delightedly, and the rest of the table looked impressed with the professor’s musings. Zeus barely kept himself from rolling his eyes. The professor slipped down a few rungs in his estimation. He’d met academics like him before—old, self-important windbags who were relevant only to the campus bubble they lived in.

This was the last thought he had before he gasped involuntarily and hunched over a little. Fuck, his stomach. A cramping pain tore through his stomach and radiated outward to the rest of his body.

“Honey, what’s wrong?” he heard Claudius’s wife say. Looking up through watering eyes, Zeus saw Claudius collapse forward, face down into his meal, gagging.

Help. He needed help.

But when Zeus opened his mouth to shout for help, all he managed was another desperate, choking gurgle. The pain. Zeus had never felt anything so intense. Gods, he was going to die. He was going to die!

Zeus thrashed and plates and cutlery flew. His dinner partners jumped up as his hand went rigid, gripping the tablecloth as he slowly sank to the floor.

“Mr. Mayor?” The commissioner’s voice was a distant shout.

Zeus’s vision went blurry and he prayed to pass out because the pain, oh fuck. His eyes went wide as another spasm tore through his stomach.

The professor crouched beside him. “Get an ambulance!” he shouted in his thick accent.

“Is he choking?” someone cried out.

The professor stared down at Zeus and Zeus wanted to beg him for help, to do something, dammit. But all the man said was, “I do not think so.” He looked down the table. “Two choking at the same time? It cannot be a coincidence.”

A woman was screaming and Zeus peripherally registered that it was Claudius’s wife, that her husband had collapsed, too.

“Madam!” The professor bellowed at her from the floor beside Zeus. “Does your husband have a food allergy?”

Zeus didn’t hear her reply. All he knew was that the next moment, the professor was cradling his head and ordering someone, “Take his feet, now! We must carry him to the car.”

“But, the ambulance?—”

“It will be too late. We must go. Now.”

“What about Signore Claudius?”

“He’s already dead. Now hurry or we’ll lose the mayor, too!”