Avenue of Mysteries (46 page)

Maybe not to Lupe—that’s what Juan Diego was thinking. Juan Diego was in no mood for a dinner party, either; he doubted that Lupe had been entirely forthcoming to him.

“What
is
on Hombre’s mind?” he’d asked her.

“Not much—typical guy,” Lupe had told her brother. “Hombre thinks about doing it to the lionesses. To Cara, usually. Sometimes to Garra. To Oreja, hardly at all—except when he thinks of her suddenly, and then he wants to do it to her right away. Hombre thinks about sex or he doesn’t think at all,” Lupe said. “Except about eating.”

“But is Hombre dangerous?” Juan Diego asked her. (He thought it was odd that Hombre thought about sex. Juan Diego was pretty sure that Hombre didn’t actually have sex, at all.)

“If you bother Hombre when he’s eating—if you touch him when he’s thinking about doing it to one of the lionesses. Hombre wants everything to be the same—he doesn’t like change,” Lupe said. “I don’t know if the lions actually do it,” she admitted.

“But what does Hombre think about Ignacio? That’s all Ignacio cares about!” Juan Diego cried.

Lupe shrugged their late mother’s shrug. “Hombre loves Ignacio, except when he hates him. It confuses Hombre when he hates Ignacio. Hombre knows he’s not
supposed to
hate Ignacio,” Lupe answered.

“There’s something you’re not telling me,” Juan Diego said to her.

“Oh—now you read minds, do you?” Lupe asked him.

“What is it?” Juan Diego asked her.

“Ignacio thinks the lionesses are dumb twats—he’s not interested in what the lionesses are thinking,” Lupe answered.

“That’s it?” Juan Diego asked. Between what Ignacio thought and
the vocabulary of the girl acrobats, Lupe’s language was growing filthier on a daily basis.

“Ignacio is obsessed with what Hombre thinks—it’s a guy-to-guy thing.” But the next thing she said in a funny way, Juan Diego thought. “The tamer of the
lionesses
doesn’t care what the lionesses are thinking,” Lupe said. She hadn’t said el domador de leones—that’s what you called the lion tamer. Instead Lupe had said el domador de
leonas.

“So what
are
the lionesses thinking, Lupe?” Juan Diego had asked her. (Not about sex, apparently.)

“The lionesses hate Ignacio—all the time,” Lupe answered. “The lionesses
are
dumb twats—they’re jealous of Ignacio because they think Hombre loves Ignacio more than the asshole lion loves them! Yet if Ignacio ever hurts Hombre, the lionesses will kill Ignacio. The lionesses are all dumber than monkey twats!” Lupe shouted. “They
love
Hombre, even though the asshole lion never thinks about them—unless he remembers that he wants to do it, and then Hombre has trouble remembering which one he wants to do it to
more
!”

“The lionesses want to
kill
Ignacio?” Juan Diego asked Lupe.

“They
will
kill him,” she said. “Ignacio has nothing to fear from Hombre—it’s the lionesses the lion tamer should be afraid of.”

“The problem is what you tell Ignacio, or what you don’t tell him,” Juan Diego told his little sister.

“That’s
your
problem,” Lupe had said. “I’m just the mind reader. You’re the one the lion tamer listens to,
ceiling
-walker,” she said.

That was truly
all
he was, Juan Diego was thinking. Even Soledad had lost confidence in him as a future skywalker. The good foot gave him trouble; it slipped in the rope rungs of the ladder, and it wasn’t strong enough to bear his weight in that unnatural right-angle position.

What Juan Diego saw of Dolores was often upside down. Either she was upside down or he was; in the acrobats’ troupe tent, there could be only one skywalker practicing at a time. Dolores had never had any confidence in him as a skywalker—like Ignacio, Dolores believed Juan Diego lacked the balls for it. (For balls, apparently, only the main tent—the skywalk at eighty feet, without a net—was a true test.)

Lupe had said Hombre liked you if you were afraid of him; maybe this was why Ignacio told the girl acrobats that Hombre knew when the girls got their periods. This made the girls fear Hombre. Since Ignacio made the girls feed the lion (and the lionesses), possibly this made the girls safer?

It was sick that Hombre liked the girls
because
they were afraid of
him, Juan Diego thought. But this made no sense, Lupe had said. Ignacio just wanted the girl acrobats to be afraid,
and
he wanted them to feed the lions. Ignacio thought if
he
fed the lions, they would think he was weak. The part about the girls’ periods mattered only to Ignacio. Lupe said Hombre didn’t think about the girls’ periods—not ever.

Juan Diego was afraid of Dolores, but this didn’t make Dolores like him. Dolores did say one helpful thing to him, about skywalking—not that Dolores had meant to be helpful. She was just being cruel to him, which was her nature.

“If you think you’re going to fall, you will,” Dolores told Juan Diego. He was upside down in the practice tent, his feet in the first two rope rungs of the ladder. The loops of rope dug into the creases where the tops of his feet bent at his ankles.

“That’s not helpful, Dolores,” Soledad had told The Wonder, but it
was
helpful to Juan Diego; at the moment, however, he’d been unable to stop thinking that he was going to fall—hence he’d fallen.

“See?” Dolores had told him, climbing up to the ladder. Upside down she seemed especially desirable.

Juan Diego had not been allowed to bring his life-size Guadalupe statue to the dogs’ troupe tent. There was no room for it, and when Juan Diego tried to describe the Guadalupe figure to Estrella, the old woman had told him that the male dogs (Baby, the dachshund, and Perro Mestizo) would piss on it.

Now, when Juan Diego thought about masturbating, he thought about Dolores; she was usually upside down, when he thought of her this way. He’d said nothing to Lupe about masturbating to the image of an upside-down Dolores, but Lupe caught him thinking about it.

“Sick!” Lupe said to him. “You imagine Dolores upside down with your penis in her mouth—what are you
thinking
?”

“Lupe, what can I say? You already
know
what I’m thinking!” Juan Diego said in exasperation, but he was also embarrassed.

It was terrible timing: their move to La Maravilla, and their respective ages at that time; it was suddenly painful to both of them—namely, that Lupe didn’t want to know what her brother was thinking, and Juan Diego didn’t want his little sister to know, either. They were estranged from each other for the first time.

T
HUS
(
IN THEIR UNFAMILIAR
states of mind) the dump kids arrived, with Brother Pepe and Señor Eduardo, at Casa Vargas. The statues of the
Spanish conquistadors caused Edward Bonshaw to stagger on the stairs, or perhaps it was the grandeur of the foyer that unbalanced him. Brother Pepe took hold of the Iowan’s arm; Pepe knew that Señor Eduardo’s long list of the things he’d denied himself had shortened. In addition to having sex with Flor, Edward Bonshaw now permitted himself to drink beer—it was almost impossible to be with Flor and not drink
something
—but even a couple of beers could unbalance Edward Bonshaw.

It didn’t help that Vargas’s dinner-party girlfriend was there to greet them on the grand staircase. Dr. Vargas didn’t have a live-in girlfriend; he lived alone, if you could call living in Casa Vargas living “alone.” (The statues of the Spanish conquistadors amounted to an occupying force—a small army.)

For dinner parties, Vargas always came up with a girlfriend who could cook. This one was named Alejandra—a bosomy beauty whose breasts must have been a hazard around a hot stove. Lupe took an instant dislike to Alejandra; in Lupe’s harsh judgment, Vargas’s lustful thoughts about Dr. Gomez should have obligated Vargas to fidelity to the ENT doctor.

“Lupe, be realistic,” Juan Diego whispered to his sullen little sister; she’d merely scowled at Alejandra, refusing to shake the young woman’s hand. (Lupe didn’t want to let go of the coffee can.) “Vargas isn’t
supposed to be
faithful to a woman he hasn’t slept with! Vargas only
wants
to sleep with Dr. Gomez, Lupe.”

“It’s the same thing,” Lupe pronounced in biblical fashion; naturally, she hated passing the Spanish army on the stairs.

“Alejandra, Alejandra,” Vargas’s dinner-party girlfriend kept repeating, introducing herself to Brother Pepe and the staggering Señor Eduardo on the treacherous staircase.

“What a penis-breath,” Lupe said to her brother. She meant that Alejandra was a penis-breath—Dolores’s favorite epithet. It was what The Wonder called the girl acrobats who were sleeping with, or had slept with, Ignacio. It was what Dolores called each of the lionesses, too, whenever she had to feed them. (The lionesses hated Dolores, Lupe said, but Juan Diego didn’t know if that was true; he only knew for sure that Lupe hated Dolores.) Lupe called Dolores a penis-breath, or Lupe implied that Dolores was a
future
penis-breath, which (Lupe said) Dolores was too much of a dumb monkey twat to know.

Now Alejandra was a penis-breath, just because she was one of Dr. Vargas’s girlfriends. Edward Bonshaw, out of breath, saw Vargas smiling at the top of the stairs—his arm around the bearded soldier in the
plumed helmet. “And who is this savage?” Señor Eduardo asked Vargas, pointing to the soldier’s sword and his breastplate.

“One of your evangelicals in armor, of course,” Vargas answered the Iowan.

Edward Bonshaw eyed the Spaniard warily. Was it only Juan Diego’s anxiety for his sister that made the boy think the statue’s lifeless gaze came to life when the conquistador spotted Lupe?

“Don’t stare at me, rapist and pillager,” Lupe said to the Spaniard. “I’ll cut off your dick with your sword—I know some lions who would like to eat you and your Christian scum!”

“Jesus, Lupe!” Juan Diego exclaimed.

“What does Jesus matter?” Lupe asked him. “It’s the virgins who are in charge—not that they’re really virgins, not that we even know who they are.”

“What?” Juan Diego said to her.

“The virgins are like the lionesses,” Lupe told her brother. “They’re the ones you have to worry about—they run the show.” Lupe’s head was eye-level to the hilt of the Spaniard’s sword; her small hand touched the scabbard. “Keep it sharp, killer,” Lupe told the conquistador.

“They certainly were frightening, weren’t they?” Edward Bonshaw said, still staring at the conquering soldier.

“They certainly intended to be,” Vargas told the Iowan.

They were following Alejandra’s hips down a long and decorous hall. Of course they couldn’t pass a portrait of Jesus without comment. “Blessed
are
—” Edward Bonshaw began to say; the portrait was of Jesus delivering the Sermon on the Mount.

“Oh, those endearing beatitudes!” Vargas interrupted him. “My favorite part of the Bible—not that anyone pays attention to the beatitudes; they are not what most Church business is about. Aren’t you taking these two innocents to the Guadalupe shrine? A Catholic tourist attraction, if you ask me,” Vargas went on to Señor Eduardo but for everyone’s benefit. “No evidence of the beatitudes at that unholiest of basilicas!”

“Have tolerance, Vargas,” Brother Pepe pleaded. “You tolerate our beliefs, we’ll tolerate your lack thereof—”

“The virgins rule,” Lupe interrupted them, holding tight to the coffee can. “Nobody cares about the beatitudes. Nobody listens to Jesus—Jesus was just a baby. The virgins are the ones who pull the strings.”

“I suggest you don’t translate for Lupe—whatever she said. Just
don’t,
” Pepe said to Juan Diego, who was too transfixed by Alejandra’s hips to have been paying attention to Lupe’s mysticism—perhaps the contents of the coffee can contributed to Lupe’s irritating powers.

“Tolerance is never a bad idea,” Edward Bonshaw began. Ahead of them, Juan Diego saw another Spanish soldier, this one standing at attention by a double doorway in the hall.

“This sounds like a Jesuitical trick,” Vargas said to the Iowan. “Since when do you Catholics ever leave us nonbelievers alone?” As proof, Dr. Vargas gestured to the solemn conquistador standing guard at the doorway to the kitchen. Vargas put his hand on the soldier’s breastplate, over the conquistador’s heart—if the conquering Spaniard had ever had a heart. “Try talking to this guy about free will,” Vargas said, but the Spaniard seemed not to notice the doctor’s overfamiliar touch; once again, Juan Diego saw the statue’s distant gaze come into focus. The Spanish soldier was looking at Lupe.

Juan Diego leaned down and whispered to his sister, “I know you’re not telling me everything.”

“You wouldn’t believe me,” she told him.

“Aren’t they sweet—those children?” Alejandra said to Vargas.

“Oh, God—the penis-breath wants to have kids! This will ruin my appetite,” was all Lupe would say to her brother.

“Did you bring your own coffee?” Alejandra suddenly asked Lupe. “Or is it your toys? It’s—”

“It’s for
him
!” Lupe said, pointing to Dr. Vargas. “It’s our mother’s ashes. They have a funny smell. There’s a little dog in the ashes, and a dead hippie. There’s something
sacred
in the ashes, too,” Lupe added, in a whisper. “But the smell is
different.
We can’t identify it. We want a scientific opinion.” She held out the coffee can to Vargas. “Go on
—smell
it,” Lupe said to him.

“It just smells like
coffee,
” Edward Bonshaw tried to assure Dr. Vargas. (The Iowan didn’t know if Vargas had any prior knowledge of the contents of the coffee can.)

“It’s Esperanza’s
ashes
!” Brother Pepe blurted out.

“Your turn, translator,” Vargas said to Juan Diego; the doctor had taken the coffee can from Lupe, but he’d not yet lifted the lid.

“We burned our mother at the basurero,” Juan Diego began. “We burned a gringo draft dodger with her—a dead one,” the fourteen-year-old struggled to explain.