Avenue of Mysteries (11 page)

The writer in Juan Diego found fault with “1 single journey”; shouldn’t the numeral
1
have been written out as a word? Didn’t “one single journey” look better? Almost like a title, Juan Diego thought. He wrote something on the ticket with his ever-present pen.

“What are you
doing
?” Miriam asked Juan Diego. “What can be so fascinating about a train ticket?”

“He’s
writing
again,” Dorothy said to her mother. “He’s always writing.”

“ ‘Adult Ticket to City,’ ” Juan Diego said aloud; he was reading to the women from his train ticket, which he then put away in his shirt pocket. He really didn’t know how to behave on a date; he’d never known how, but these two women were especially unnerving.

“Whenever I hear the
adult
word, I think of something pornographic,” Dorothy said, smiling at Juan Diego.

“
Enough,
Dorothy,” her mother said.

It was already dark when their train arrived at Kowloon Station; the Kowloon harborfront was crowded with tourists, many of them taking pictures of the skyscraper-lined view, but Miriam and Dorothy glided unnoticed through the crowds. It must have been a measure of Juan Diego’s infatuation with this mother and daughter that he imagined he limped less when either Miriam or Dorothy held his arm or his hand; he even believed that he managed to
glide
as unnoticed as the two of them.

The snug, short-sleeved sweaters the women wore under their cardigans were revealing of their breasts, yet the sweaters were somehow conservative.
Maybe the conservative part was what went
unnoticed
about Miriam and Dorothy, Juan Diego thought; or was it that the other tourists were mostly Asian, and seemingly uninterested in these two attractive women from the West? Miriam and Dorothy wore skirts with their sweaters—also revealing, meaning
tight,
or so Juan Diego would have said, but their skirts were not glaringly attention-getting.

Am I the only one who can’t stop looking at these women? Juan Diego wondered. He wasn’t aware of fashion; he couldn’t be expected to understand how neutral colors worked. Juan Diego didn’t notice that Miriam and Dorothy wore skirts and sweaters that were beige and brown, or silver and gray, nor did he notice the impeccable design of their clothes. As for the fabric, he may have thought it looked welcoming to touch, but what he
noticed
were Miriam’s and Dorothy’s breasts—and their hips, of course.

Juan Diego would remember next to nothing of the train ride to Kowloon Station, and not a bit of the busy Kowloon harborfront—not even the restaurant they ate their dinner in, except that he was unusually hungry, and he enjoyed himself in Miriam and Dorothy’s company. In fact, he couldn’t remember when he’d last enjoyed himself as much, although later—less than a week later—he couldn’t recall what they’d talked about. His novels? His childhood?

When Juan Diego met his readers, he had to be careful not to talk too much about himself—because his readers tended to ask him about himself. He often tried to steer the conversation to his readers’ lives; surely he would have asked Miriam and Dorothy to tell him about themselves. What about
their
childhood years,
their
adolescence? And Juan Diego must have asked these ladies, albeit discreetly, about the men in their lives; certainly he would have been curious to know if they were attached. Yet he would remember nothing of their conversation in Kowloon—not a word beyond the absurd attention paid to the train ticket when they were en route to Kowloon Station on the Airport Express, and only a bit of bookish conversation on the train ride back to the Regal Airport Hotel.

There was one thing that stood out about their return trip—a moment of awkwardness in the sleek, sanitized underground of Kowloon Station, when Juan Diego was waiting with the two women on the train platform.

The glassy, gold-tinted interior of the station with its gleaming stainless-steel trash cans—standing like sentinels of cleanliness—gave
the station platform the aura of a hospital corridor. Juan Diego couldn’t find a camera or photo icon on his cell phone’s so-called menu—he wanted to take a photo of Miriam and Dorothy—when the all-knowing mother took the cell phone from him.

“Dorothy and I don’t do pictures—we can’t stand the way we look in photographs—but let me take
your
photo,” Miriam said to him.

They were almost alone on the platform, except for a young Chinese couple (kids, Juan Diego thought) holding hands. The young man had been watching Dorothy, who’d grabbed Juan Diego’s cell phone out of her mother’s hands.

“Here, let
me
do it,” Dorothy had said to her mom. “You take terrible pictures.”

But the young Chinese man took the cell phone from Dorothy. “If I do it, I can get one of
all
of you,” the boy said.

“Oh, yes—thank you!” Juan Diego told him.

Miriam gave her daughter one of those looks that said: If you’d just let
me
do it, Dorothy, this wouldn’t be happening.

They could all hear the train coming, and the young Chinese woman said something to her boyfriend—no doubt, given the train, that he should hurry up.

He did. The photo caught Juan Diego, and Miriam and Dorothy, by surprise. The Chinese couple seemed to think it was a disappointing picture—perhaps out of focus?—but then the train was there. It was Miriam who snatched the cell phone away from the couple, and Dorothy who—even more quickly—took it from her mom. Juan Diego was already seated on the Airport Express when Dorothy gave him back his phone; it was no longer in the camera mode.

“We don’t photograph well,” was all Miriam said—to the Chinese couple, who seemed unduly disturbed by the incident. (Perhaps the pictures they took usually turned out better.)

Juan Diego was once more searching the menu on his cell phone, which was a maze of mysteries to him. What did the Media Center icon do? Nothing I want, Juan Diego was thinking, when Miriam covered his hands with hers; she leaned close to him, as if it were a noisy train (it wasn’t), and spoke to him as if they were alone, though Dorothy was very much with them and clearly heard her—every word.

“This
isn’t
about sex, Juan Diego, but I have a question for you,” Miriam said. Dorothy laughed harshly—loudly enough to get the attention of the young Chinese couple, who’d been whispering to each other in a
nearby seat of the train. (The girl, though she sat in the boy’s lap, seemed to be upset with him for some reason.) “It truly
isn’t,
Dorothy,” Miriam snapped.

“We’ll see,” the scornful daughter replied.

“In
A Story Set in Motion by the Virgin Mary,
there’s a part where your missionary—I forget his name,” Miriam interrupted herself.

“Martin,” Dorothy quietly said.

“Yes,
Martin,
” Miriam quickly said. “I guess you’ve read that one,” she added to her daughter. “Martin admires Ignatius Loyola, doesn’t he?” Miriam asked Juan Diego, but before the novelist could answer her, she hurried on. “I’m thinking about the saint’s encounter with that Moor on a mule, and their ensuing discussion of the Virgin Mary,” Miriam said.

“Both the Moor
and
Saint Ignatius were riding mules,” Dorothy interrupted her mom.

“I
know,
Dorothy,” Miriam dismissively said. “And the Moor says he can believe that Mother Mary has conceived without a man, but he does
not
believe that she remains a virgin
after
she gives birth.”

“That part is about sex, you know,” Dorothy said.

“It
isn’t,
Dorothy,” her mother snapped.

“And after the Moor rides on, young Ignatius thinks he should go after the Muslim and
kill
him, right?” Dorothy asked Juan Diego.

“Right,” Juan Diego managed to say, but he wasn’t thinking about that long-ago novel or the missionary he’d named Martin, who admired Saint Ignatius Loyola. Juan Diego was thinking about Edward Bonshaw, and that life-changing day he arrived in Oaxaca.

As Rivera was driving the injured Juan Diego to the Templo de la Compañía de Jesús, when the boy was grimacing in pain with his head held in Lupe’s lap, Edward Bonshaw was also on his way to the Jesuit temple. While Rivera was hoping for a miracle, of a kind the dump boss imagined the Virgin Mary could perform, it was the new American missionary who was about to become the most credible miracle in Juan Diego’s life—a miracle of a
man,
not a saint, and a mixture of human frailties, if there ever was one.

Oh, how he missed Señor Eduardo! Juan Diego thought, his eyes blurring with tears.

“ ‘It was extraordinary that Saint Ignatius felt so strongly about defending Mother Mary’s virginity,’ ” Miriam was saying, but her voice trailed off when she saw that Juan Diego was about to cry.

“ ‘The defaming of the Virgin Mary’s postbirth vaginal condition was inappropriate and unacceptable behavior,’ ” Dorothy chimed in.

At that moment, fighting back his tears, Juan Diego realized that this mother and her daughter were quoting the passage he’d written in
A Story Set in Motion by the Virgin Mary.
But how could they so closely remember the passage from his novel, almost verbatim? How could
any
reader do that?

“Oh, don’t cry—you dear man!” Miriam suddenly told him; she touched his face. “I simply
love
that passage!”

“
You
made him cry,” Dorothy told her mom.

“No, no—it’s not what you think,” Juan Diego started to say.

“Your missionary,” Miriam went on.

“Martin,” Dorothy reminded her.

“I
know,
Dorothy!” Miriam said. “It’s just so touching, so
sweet,
that Martin finds Ignatius admirable,” Miriam continued. “I mean, Saint Ignatius sounds
completely insane
!”

“He wants to kill some stranger on a mule—just for doubting the Virgin Mary’s postbirth vaginal condition. That’s
nuts
!” Dorothy declared.

“But, as always,” Juan Diego reminded them, “Ignatius seeks God’s will on the matter.”

“
Spare me
God’s will!” Miriam and Dorothy spontaneously cried out—as if they were in the habit of saying this, either alone or together. (
That
got the young Chinese couple’s attention.)

“ ‘And where the road parted, Ignatius let his own mule’s reins go slack; if the animal followed the Moor, Ignatius would kill the infidel,’ ” Juan Diego said. He could have told the story with his eyes closed. It’s not so unusual that a novelist can remember what he’s written, almost word for word, Juan Diego was thinking. Yet for
readers
to retain the actual words—well,
that
was unusual, wasn’t it?

“ ‘But the mule chose the other road,’ ” mother and daughter said in unison; to Juan Diego, they seemed to have the omniscient authority of a Greek chorus.

“ ‘But Saint Ignatius was crazy—he must have been a madman,’ ” Juan Diego said; he wasn’t sure they understood that part.

“Yes,” Miriam said. “You’re very brave to say so—even in a novel.”

“The subject of someone’s postbirth vaginal condition is sexual,” Dorothy said.

“It is
not
—it’s about
faith,
” Miriam said.

“It’s about sex and faith,” Juan Diego mumbled; he wasn’t being diplomatic—he meant it. The two women could tell he did.

“Did you know someone like that missionary who admired Saint Ignatius?” Miriam asked him.

“Martin,” Dorothy repeated softly.

I think I need a beta-blocker—Juan Diego didn’t
say
it, but this was what he thought.

“She means, Was Martin
real
?” Dorothy asked him; she’d seen the writer stiffen at her mother’s question, so noticeably that Miriam had let go of his hands.

Juan Diego’s heart was racing—his adrenaline receptors were
receiving
like crazy, but he couldn’t speak. “I’ve lost so many
people,
” Juan Diego tried to say, but the
people
word was unintelligible—like something Lupe might have said.

“I guess he was real,” Dorothy told her mom.

Now they both put their hands on Juan Diego, who was shaking in his seat.

“The missionary I knew was
not
Martin,” Juan Diego blurted out.

“Dorothy, the dear man has lost loved ones—we both read that interview, you know,” Miriam told her daughter.

“I
know,
” Dorothy replied. “But you were asking about the Martin character,” the daughter said to her mom.

All Juan Diego could do was shake his head; then his tears came, lots of tears. He couldn’t have explained to these women why (and for whom) he was crying—well, at least not on the Airport Express.

“¡Señor Eduardo!” Juan Diego cried out. “¡Querido Eduardo!”

That was when the Chinese girl, who was still sitting in her boyfriend’s lap—she was still upset about something, too—had an apparent fit. She began to hit her boyfriend, more in frustration than out of anger, and almost playfully (as opposed to anything approaching actual violence).

“I
told
him it was you!” the girl said suddenly to Juan Diego. “I
knew
it was you, but he didn’t believe me!”

She meant that she’d recognized the writer, perhaps from the start, but her boyfriend hadn’t agreed—or he wasn’t a reader. To Juan Diego, the Chinese boy didn’t look like a reader, and it couldn’t have surprised the writer that the boy’s girlfriend
was
. Wasn’t this the point Juan Diego had made repeatedly? Women readers kept fiction alive—here was another
one. When Juan Diego had used Spanish in crying out the scholastic’s name, the Chinese girl knew she’d been right about who he was.

It was just another writer-recognition moment, Juan Diego realized. He wished he could stop sobbing. He waved to the Chinese girl, and tried to smile; if he’d noticed the way Miriam and Dorothy looked at the young Chinese couple, he might have asked himself how safe he was in the company of this unknown mother and her daughter, but Juan Diego didn’t see how Miriam and Dorothy utterly silenced his Chinese reader with a withering look—no, it was more of a
threatening
look. (It was actually a look that said: We found him first, you slimy little twat. Go find your own favorite writer—he’s
ours
!)