Avenue of Mysteries (48 page)

“I’ve never seen anyone faster, Mister,” Pedro told Juan Diego. “I mean your lady friend.”

“At either appearing or disappearing, Mister,” Consuelo said, pulling on her pigtails.

Since they were so interested in Miriam, Juan Diego opened her letter.
Until Manila,
Miriam had written on the envelope.
See fax from D.,
she’d also scrawled there—either hastily or impatiently, or both. Clark took the envelope from Juan Diego, reading aloud the “Until Manila” part.

“Sounds like a title,” Clark French said. “You’re seeing Miriam in Manila?” he asked Juan Diego.

“I guess so,” Juan Diego told him; he’d mastered Lupe’s shrug, which had been their mother’s insouciant shrug. It made Juan Diego a little proud to believe that Clark French thought his former teacher was
worldly,
to imagine that Clark might think Juan Diego was consorting with succubi!

“I suppose D. is the daughter. It looks like a long fax,” Clark carried on.

“D. is for Dorothy, Clark—yes, she’s the daughter,” Juan Diego said.

It
was
a long fax, and a little hard to follow. There was a water buffalo in the story, and stinging things; a series of mishaps had happened to children Dorothy had encountered in her travels, or so it seemed. Dorothy was inviting Juan Diego to join her at a resort called El Nido on Lagen Island—it was in another part of the Philippines, a place called Palawan. There were plane tickets in the envelope. Naturally, Clark had noticed the plane tickets. And Clark clearly knew and disapproved of El Nido. (A nido could be a nest, a den, a hole, a haunt.) Clark no doubt disapproved of D., too.

There was a sound of small wheels rolling across the lobby of the Encantador; the sound made the hair on the back of Juan Diego’s neck stand up—before he looked and saw the gurney, he had known (somehow) that it was the stretcher from the ambulance. They were wheeling it to the service elevator. Pedro and Consuelo ran after the gurney. Clark and Juan Diego saw Clark’s wife, Dr. Josefa Quintana; she was coming down the stairs from the second-floor library and was with the medical examiner.

“As I told you, Clark, Auntie Carmen must have fallen awkwardly—her neck was broken,” Dr. Quintana told him.

“Maybe someone
snapped
her neck,” Clark French said; he looked at Juan Diego, as if seeking confirmation.

“They’re both novelists,” Josefa said to the medical examiner. “Big imaginations.”

“Your aunt fell hard, the floor is stone—her neck must have crumpled under her, when she fell,” the medical examiner explained to Clark.

“She also banged the top of her head,” Dr. Quintana told him.

“Or someone
banged
her, Josefa!” Clark French said.

“This hotel is—” Josefa started to say to Juan Diego. She stopped herself to watch the solemn children, Pedro and Consuelo, accompanying the gurney carrying Auntie Carmen’s body. One of the EMTs was wheeling the gurney through the lobby of the Encantador.

“This hotel is
what
?” Juan Diego asked Clark’s wife.

“Enchanted,” Dr. Quintana told him.

“She means
haunted,
” Clark French said.

“Casa Vargas,” was all Juan Diego said; that he’d just been dreaming about ghosts was not even a surprise. “Ni siquiera una sorpresa,” he said in Spanish. (“Not even a surprise.”)

“Juan Diego knew the daughter of his woman friend first—he only met them on the plane,” Clark was explaining to his wife. (The medical examiner had left them, following the gurney.) “I guess you don’t know them
well,
” Clark said to his former teacher.

“Not at all well,” Juan Diego admitted. “I’ve slept with them both, but they’re mysteries to me,” he told Clark and Dr. Quintana.

“You’ve slept with a mother
and
her daughter,” Clark said, as if making sure. “Do you know what succubi are?” he then asked, but before Juan Diego could answer, Clark continued. “
Succuba
means ‘paramour’; a succubus is a demon in female form—”

“Said to have sex with men in their sleep!” Juan Diego hurried to interject.

“From the Latin
succubare,
‘to lie beneath,’ ” Clark carried on.

“Miriam and Dorothy are just mysteries to me,” Juan Diego told Clark and Dr. Quintana again.

“Mysteries,” Clark repeated; he kept saying it.

“Speaking of mysteries,” Juan Diego said, “did you hear that rooster crowing in the middle of the night—in total darkness?”

Dr. Quintana stopped her husband from repeating the
mysteries
word. No, they’d not heard the crazy rooster, whose crowing had been cut short—perhaps forever.

“Hi, Mister,” Consuelo said; she was back beside Juan Diego. “What are you going to do today?” she whispered to him. Before Juan Diego could answer her, Consuelo took his hand; he felt Pedro take hold of his other hand.

“I’m going to
swim,
” Juan Diego whispered to the kids. They looked surprised—all the water, which was everywhere around them, notwithstanding. The kids glanced worriedly at each other.

“What about your foot, Mister?” Consuelo whispered. Pedro was nodding gravely; both children were staring at the two-o’clock angle of Juan Diego’s crooked right foot.

“I don’t limp in the water,” Juan Diego whispered. “I’m not crippled when I’m swimming.” The whispering was fun.

Why did Juan Diego feel so exhilarated at the prospect of the day ahead of him? More than the swimming beckoned him; it pleased him that the children enjoyed whispering with him. Consuelo and Pedro liked making a game of his going swimming—Juan Diego liked the kids’ company.

Why was it that Juan Diego felt no urgency to pursue the usual arguing with Clark French about Clark’s beloved Catholic Church? Juan Diego didn’t even mind that Miriam hadn’t told him she was leaving; actually, he was a little relieved she was gone.

Had he felt
afraid
of Miriam, in some unclear way? Was it merely the simultaneity of his dreaming about ghosts or spirits on a New Year’s Eve and Miriam having spooked him? To be honest, Juan Diego was happy to be alone. No Miriam. (“Until Manila.”)

But what about Dorothy? The sex with Dorothy, and with Miriam, had been sublime. If so, why were the details so difficult to remember? Miriam and Dorothy were so entwined with his dreams that Juan Diego was wondering if the two women existed only in his dreams. Except that they definitely
existed
—other people had seen them! That young Chinese couple in the Kowloon train station: the boyfriend had taken Juan Diego’s picture
with
Miriam and Dorothy. (“I can get one of
all
of you,” the boy had said.) And there was no question that everyone had seen Miriam at the New Year’s Eve dinner; quite possibly, only the unfortunate little gecko, skewered by the salad fork, had failed to see Miriam—until it was too late.

Yet Juan Diego wondered if he would even recognize Dorothy; in his mind’s eye, he had trouble visualizing the young woman—admittedly, Miriam was the more striking of the two. (And, sexually speaking, Miriam was more recent.)

“Shall we all have breakfast?” Clark French was saying, though both Clark and his wife were distracted. Were they peeved at the whispering, or that Juan Diego seemed inseparable from Consuelo and Pedro?

“Consuelo, haven’t you already had breakfast?” Dr. Quintana asked the little girl. Consuelo had not let go of Juan Diego’s hand.

“Yes, but I didn’t eat anything—I was waiting for Mister,” Consuelo answered.

“Mr.
Guerrero
,” Clark corrected the little girl.

“Actually, Clark, I prefer just
Mister
—all by itself,” Juan Diego said.

“It’s a two-gecko morning, Mister—so far,” Pedro told Juan Diego; the boy had been looking behind all the paintings. Juan Diego had seen
Pedro lifting the corners of rugs and peering at the insides of lampshades. “Not a sign of the big one—it’s gone,” the boy said.

The
gone
word was a hard one for Juan Diego. The people he’d loved were gone—all the dear ones, the ones who’d marked him.

“I know we’ll see you again in Manila,” Clark was saying to him, though Juan Diego would be in Bohol for two more days. “I know you’re seeing D., and where you’re going next. We can discuss the daughter another time,” Clark French said to his former teacher—as if what there was to say about Dorothy (or what Clark felt compelled to say about her) wasn’t possible to say in the company of children. Consuelo tightly held Juan Diego’s hand; Pedro had lost interest in the hand-holding, but the boy wasn’t going away.

“What about Dorothy?” Juan Diego asked Clark; it was hardly an innocent question. (Juan Diego knew that Clark was hot and bothered by the mother-daughter business.) “And where is it I’m seeing her—on another island?” Before Clark could answer him, Juan Diego turned to Josefa. “When you don’t make your own plans, you never remember where you’re going,” he said to the doctor.

“Those meds you’re taking,” Dr. Quintana began. “You’re still taking the beta-blockers, aren’t you—you haven’t
stopped
taking them, have you?”

That was when Juan Diego realized that he must have stopped taking his Lopressor prescription—all those pills strewn about his bathroom had fooled him. He felt too good this morning; if he’d taken the beta-blockers, he wouldn’t be feeling this good.

He lied to Dr. Quintana. “I’m definitely taking them—you’re not supposed to stop unless you do it gradually, or something.”

“You talk to your doctor before you even
think about
not taking them,” Dr. Quintana told him.

“Yes, I know,” Juan Diego said to her.

“You’re going from here to Lagen Island—Palawan,” Clark French told his old teacher. “The resort is called El Nido—it’s not at all like here. It’s very
fancy
there—you’ll see how different it is,” Clark told him disapprovingly.

“Are there geckos on Lagen Island?” Pedro asked Clark French. “What are the lizards like there?” the boy asked him.

“They have
monitor
lizards—they’re carnivorous, as big as
dogs,
” Clark told the boy.

“Do they run or swim?” Consuelo asked Clark.

“They do both—fast,” Clark French said to the little girl with the pigtails.

“Don’t give the children nightmares, Clark,” Josefa said to her husband.

“The idea of that mother
and
her daughter gives me nightmares,” Clark French began.

“Maybe not around the children, Clark,” his wife told him.

Juan Diego just shrugged. He didn’t know about the monitor lizards, but seeing Dorothy on the
fancy
island would indeed be different. Juan Diego felt a little guilty—how he enjoyed his former student’s disapproval, how Clark’s moral condemnation was somehow gratifying.

Yet Clark and Miriam and Dorothy were, in their different ways,
manipulative,
Juan Diego thought; maybe he enjoyed manipulating the three of them a little.

Suddenly, Juan Diego was aware of Clark’s wife, Josefa, holding his other hand—the one Consuelo wasn’t attached to. “You’re limping less today, I think,” the doctor told him. “You seem to have caught up on your sleep.”

Juan Diego knew he would have to be careful around Dr. Quintana; he would have to watch how he fooled around with his Lopressor prescription. When he was around the doctor, he might need to appear more diminished than he was—she was very observant.

“Oh, I feel pretty good today—pretty good for
me,
I mean,” Juan Diego told her. “Not quite so tired, not quite so diminished,” was how Juan Diego put it to Dr. Quintana.

“Yes, I can tell,” Josefa told him, giving his hand a squeeze.

“You’re going to hate El Nido—it’s full of tourists,
foreign
tourists,” Clark French was saying.

“You know what I’m going to do today? It’s something I
love,
” Juan Diego said to Josefa. But before he could tell Clark’s wife his plans, the little girl with the pigtails was faster.

“Mister is going
swimming
!” Consuelo cried.

You could see what an effort Clark French was making—what a struggle it was for him to suppress his disapproval of
swimming.

E
DWARD
B
ONSHAW AND THE
dump kids rode in the bus with the dog lady Estrella and the dogs. The dwarf clowns, Beer Belly and his not very female-looking counterpart—Paco, the cross-dresser—were on the
same bus. As soon as Señor Eduardo had fallen asleep, Paco dotted the Iowan’s face (and the faces of the dump kids) with “elephant measles.” Paco used rouge to create the measles; he dotted his own face and Beer Belly’s face, too.

The Argentinian aerialists fell asleep fondling each other, but the dwarfs did not dot the lovers’ faces with the rouge. (The Argentinians might have imagined the elephant measles were sexually transmitted.) The girl acrobats, who never stopped talking in the back of the bus, acted too superior to be interested in the elephant-measles prank, which Juan Diego had the feeling the dwarf clowns
always
played on unsuspecting souls on La Maravilla’s road trips.

All the way to Mexico City, Pajama Man, the contortionist, slept stretched out on the floor of the bus, in the aisle between the seats. The dump kids had not seen the contortionist fully extended before; they were surprised to see that he was actually quite tall. The contortionist was also undisturbed by the dogs, who restlessly paced in the aisle, stepping on and sniffing him.

Dolores—The Wonder herself—sat apart from the less-accomplished girl acrobats. She stared out the window of the bus, or she slept with her forehead pressed against the window glass, verifying for Lupe the skywalker’s status as a “spoiled cunt”—this appellation in tandem with the “mouse-tits” slur. Even Dolores’s ankle chimes had earned her Lupe’s condemnation as a “noise-making, attention-seeking slut,” though Dolores’s aloofness—from everyone, at least on the bus—made the skywalker strike Juan Diego as the opposite of “attention-seeking.”