Avenue of Mysteries (12 page)

Why was it that Edward Bonshaw was always quoting from Thomas à Kempis? Señor Eduardo liked to make a little gentle fun of that bit from
The Imitation of Christ:
“Be rarely with young people and strangers.”

Ah, well—it was too late to warn Juan Diego about Miriam and Dorothy
now.
You don’t skip a dose of your beta-blockers and
ignore
a couple of women like this mom and her daughter.

Dorothy had hugged Juan Diego to her chest; she rocked him in her surprisingly strong arms, where he went on sobbing. He’d no doubt noticed how the young woman was wearing one of those bras that let her nipples show—you could see her nipples through her bra
and
through the sweater Dorothy wore under her open cardigan.

It must have been Miriam (Juan Diego thought) who now massaged the back of his neck; she had once more leaned close to him as she whispered in his ear. “You darling man, of course it hurts to be you! The things you
feel
! Most men don’t feel what you feel,” Miriam said. “That poor mother in A
Story Set in Motion by the Virgin Mary
—my God! When I think about what
happens
to her—”

“Don’t,”
Dorothy warned her mother.

“A statue of the Virgin Mary falls from a pedestal and crushes her! She is killed on the spot,” Miriam continued.

Dorothy could feel Juan Diego shudder against her breasts. “Now you’ve done it, Mother,” the disapproving daughter said. “Are you trying to make him
more
unhappy?”

“You miss the point, Dorothy,” her mom quickly said. “As the story says: ‘At least she was happy. It is not every Christian who is fortunate enough to be instantly killed by the Blessed Virgin.’ It’s a
funny
scene, for Christ’s sake!”

But Juan Diego was shaking his head (again), this time against young Dorothy’s breasts. “That wasn’t
your
mom—that wasn’t what happened to
her,
was it?” Dorothy asked him.

“That’s enough with the autobiographical insinuations, Dorothy,” her mother said.

“Like
you
should talk,” Dorothy said to Miriam.

No doubt, Juan Diego had noticed that Miriam’s breasts were also attractive, though her nipples were not visible through her sweater. Not such a
contemporary
kind of bra, Juan Diego was thinking as he struggled to answer Dorothy’s question about
his
mother, who
hadn’t
been crushed to death by a falling statue of the Virgin Mary—not exactly.

Yet, again, Juan Diego couldn’t speak. He was emotionally and sexually overcharged; there was so much adrenaline surging through his body, he couldn’t contain his lust
or
his tears. He was missing everyone he ever knew; he was desiring both Miriam and Dorothy, to the degree that he could not have articulated which of these women he wanted more.

“Poor baby,” Miriam whispered in Juan Diego’s ear; he felt her kiss the back of his neck.

All Dorothy did was inhale. Juan Diego could feel her chest expand against his face.

What was it Edward Bonshaw used to say in those moments when the zealot felt that the world of human frailties must yield to God’s will—when all we mere mortals could do was
listen
to whatever God’s will was, and then
do
it? Juan Diego could still hear Señor Eduardo saying this: “Ad majorem Dei gloriam—to the greater glory of God.”

Under the circumstances—cuddled against Dorothy’s bosom, kissed by her mother—wasn’t that all Juan Diego could do? Just
listen
to whatever God’s will was, and then
do
it? Of course, there was a contradiction in this: Juan Diego wasn’t exactly in the company of a couple of God’s-
will
kind of women. (Miriam and Dorothy were “
Spare me
God’s will!” kind of women.)

“Ad majorem Dei gloriam,” the novelist murmured.

“It must be Spanish,” Dorothy told her mom.

“For Christ’s sake, Dorothy,” Miriam said. “It’s fucking
Latin.
”

Juan Diego could feel Dorothy shrug. “Whatever it is,” the rebellious daughter said, “it’s about sex—I know it is.”

•
7
•

Two Virgins

There was a panel of push-buttons on the night table in Juan Diego’s hotel room. Confusingly, these buttons dimmed—or turned on and off—the lights in Juan Diego’s bedroom and bathroom, but the buttons had a bewildering effect on the radio and TV.

The sadistic maid had left the radio on—this perverse behavior, often below levels of early detection, must be ingrained in hotel maids the world over—yet Juan Diego managed to mute the volume on the radio, if not turn it off. Lights had indeed dimmed; yet these same lights faintly endured, despite Juan Diego’s efforts to turn them off. The TV had flourished, briefly, but was once more dark and quiet. His last resort, Juan Diego knew, would be to extract the credit card (actually, his room key) from the slot by the door to his room; then, as Dorothy had warned him, everything electrical would be extinguished, and he would be left to grope around in the pitch-dark.

I can live with
dim,
the writer thought. He couldn’t understand how he’d slept for fifteen hours on the plane and was already tired again. Perhaps the push-button panel was at fault, or was it his newfound lust? And the cruel maid had rearranged the items in his bathroom. The pill-cutting device was on the opposite side of the sink from where he’d so carefully placed his beta-blockers (with his Viagra).

Yes, he was aware that he was now long overdue for a beta-blocker; even so, he didn’t take one of the gray-blue Lopressor pills. He’d held the elliptical tablet in his hand but then had returned it to the prescription container. Juan Diego had taken a Viagra instead—a
whole
one. He’d not forgotten that half a pill was sufficient; he was imagining that he would need more than half a Viagra if Dorothy called him or knocked on his door.

As he lay awake, but barely, in the dimly lit hotel room, Juan Diego imagined that a visit from Miriam might also require him to have a whole Viagra. And because he was accustomed to only half a Viagra—50 milligrams, instead of 100—he was aware that his nose was stuffier than usual and his throat was dry, and he sensed the beginnings of a headache. Always deliberate, he’d drunk a lot of water with the Viagra; water seemed to lessen the side effects. And the water would make him get up in the night to pee, if the beer didn’t suffice. That way, if Dorothy or Miriam never made an appearance, he wouldn’t have to wait till the morning to take a
diminishing
Lopressor pill; it had been so long since he’d had a beta-blocker, maybe he should take
two
Lopressor pills, Juan Diego considered. But his confounding, adrenaline-driven desires had commingled with his tiredness, and with his eternal self-doubt. Why would either of those desirable women want to sleep with
me
? the novelist asked himself. By then, of course, he was asleep. There was no one to notice, but, even asleep, he had an erection.

I
F THE RUSH OF
adrenaline had stimulated his desire for women—for a mother
and
her daughter, no less—Juan Diego should have anticipated that his dreams (the reenactment of his most formative adolescent experiences) might suffer a surge of detail.

In his dream at the Regal Airport Hotel, Juan Diego almost failed to recognize Rivera’s truck. Streaks of the boy’s blood laced the exterior of the windswept cab; barely more recognizable was the blood-flecked face of Diablo, el jefe’s dog. The gore-glazed truck, which was parked at the Templo de la Compañía de Jesús, got the attention of those tourists and worshipers who’d come to the temple. It was hard not to notice the blood-spattered dog.

Diablo, who’d been left in the flatbed of Rivera’s pickup, was fiercely territorial; he would not permit the bystanders to approach the truck too closely, though one bold boy had touched a drying streak of blood on the passenger-side door—long enough to ascertain that it was still sticky and, indeed, was blood.

“¡Sangre!” the brave boy said.

Someone else murmured it first: “Una matanza.” (This means “a bloodbath” or “a massacre.”) Oh, the conclusions a crowd will come to!

From a little blood spilled on an old truck, and a bloodstained dog, this crowd was leaping to conclusions—one after another. A splinter group of the crowd rushed inside the temple; there was talk that the victim
of an apparent gang-style shooting had been deposited at the feet of the big Virgin Mary. (Who would want to miss seeing
that
?)

It was on the heels of this rampant speculation, and the partial but sudden shift in the crowd—a mad dash leaving the scene of the crime (the truck at the curb) for the drama taking place inside the temple—that Brother Pepe found a parking place for his dusty red VW Beetle, next to the blood-smeared vehicle and the murderous-looking Diablo.

Brother Pepe had recognized el jefe’s truck; he saw the blood and assumed that the poor children, who were (Pepe knew) in Rivera’s care, might have come to some unmentionable harm.

“Uh-oh—los niños,” Pepe said. To Edward Bonshaw, Pepe said quickly: “Leave your things; there appears to be some
trouble.
”

“Trouble?”
the zealot repeated, in his eager way. Someone in the crowd had uttered the
perro
word, and Edward Bonshaw—hurrying after the waddling Brother Pepe—got a glimpse of the terrifying Diablo. “What about the dog?” Edward asked Brother Pepe.

“El perro ensangrentado,” Pepe repeated. “The bloodstained dog.”

“Well, I can
see
that!” Edward Bonshaw said, somewhat peevishly.

The Jesuit temple was thronged with stupefied onlookers. “Un milagro!” one of the gawkers shouted.

Edward Bonshaw’s Spanish was more selective than just plain bad; he knew the
milagro
word—it sparked in him an abiding interest.

“A
miracle
?” Edward asked Pepe, who was pushing his way toward the altar. “
What
miracle?”

“I don’t know—I just got here!” Brother Pepe panted. We wanted an English teacher and we have un milagrero, poor Pepe was thinking—“a miracle monger.”

It was Rivera who’d been audibly praying for a miracle, and the crowd of idiots—or some idiots in the crowd—had doubtless overheard him. Now the
miracle
word was on everyone’s lips.

El jefe had carefully placed Juan Diego before the altar, but the boy was screaming nonetheless. (In his dreams, Juan Diego downplayed the pain.) Rivera kept crossing himself and genuflecting to the overbearing statue of the Virgin Mary, all the while looking over his shoulder for the appearance of the dump kids’ mother; it was unclear if Rivera was praying for Juan Diego to be cured as much as the dump boss was hoping for a miracle to save himself from Esperanza’s wrath—namely, her blaming Rivera (as she surely would) for the accident.

“The screaming isn’t good,” Edward Bonshaw was muttering. He’d
not yet seen the boy, but the sound of a child screaming in pain lacked miracle potential.

“A case of hopeful wishing,” Brother Pepe gasped; he knew his words weren’t quite right. He asked Lupe what had happened, but Pepe couldn’t understand what the crazed child said.

“What language is she speaking?” Edward eagerly asked. “It sounds a little like
Latin.
”

“It’s gibberish, though she seems very intelligent—even prescient,” Brother Pepe whispered in the newcomer’s ear. “No one can understand her—just the boy.” The screaming was unbearable.

That was when Edward Bonshaw saw Juan Diego, prostrate and bleeding before the towering Virgin Mary. “Merciful Mother! Save the poor child!” the Iowan cried, silencing the murmuring mob but not the screaming boy.

Juan Diego hadn’t noticed the other people in the temple, except for what appeared to be two mourners; they knelt in the foremost pew. Two women, all in black—they wore veils, their heads completely covered. Strangely, it comforted the crying child to see the two women mourners. When Juan Diego saw them, his pain abated.

This was not exactly a miracle, but the sudden reduction of his pain made Juan Diego wonder if the two women were mourning
him
—if
he
were the one who’d died, or if he was going to die. When the boy looked for them again, he saw that the silent mourners had not moved; the two women in black, their heads bowed, were as motionless as statues.

Pain or no pain, it was no surprise to Juan Diego that the Virgin Mary hadn’t healed his foot; the boy wasn’t holding his breath for an ensuing miracle from Our Lady of Guadalupe, either.

“The lazy virgins aren’t working today, or they don’t want to help you,” Lupe told her brother. “Who’s the funny-looking gringo? What’s he want?”

“What did she say?” Edward Bonshaw asked the injured boy.

“The Virgin Mary is a fraud,” the boy replied; instantly, he felt his pain returning.

“A
fraud
—not our Mary!” Edward Bonshaw exclaimed.

“This is the dump kid I was telling you about, un niño de la basura,” Brother Pepe was trying to explain. “He’s a smart one—”

“Who are you? What do you want?” Juan Diego asked the gringo in the funny-looking Hawaiian shirt.

“He’s our new teacher, Juan Diego—be
nice,
” Brother Pepe warned the boy. “He’s one of us, Mr. Edward Bon—”

“Eduardo,” the Iowan insisted, interrupting Pepe.

“Father Eduardo?
Brother
Eduardo?” Juan Diego asked.

“
Señor
Eduardo,” Lupe suddenly said. Even the Iowan had understood her.

“Actually, just Eduardo is okay,” Edward modestly said.

“Señor Eduardo,” Juan Diego repeated; for no known reason, the injured dump reader liked the sound of this. The boy looked for the two women mourners in the foremost pew, not finding them. How they could have just disappeared struck Juan Diego as unlikely as the fluctuations in his pain; it had briefly relented but was now (once again) relentless. As for those two women, well—maybe those two were always just appearing, or disappearing. Who knows what just appears, or disappears, to a boy in this much pain?