Avenue of Mysteries (70 page)

“I don’t think a pipe has burst—there are no pipes in the ceiling, are there?” Vargas not-so-innocently asked the two old priests.

“No pipes—that’s correct, Vargas,” Father Octavio curtly said.

“It’s a miracle, isn’t it?” Edward Bonshaw, his face streaked with his own tears, asked Father Alfonso. “Un milagro—isn’t that what you call it?” the Iowan asked Father Octavio.

“No, no—not the
milagro
word, please,” Father Alfonso said to the parrot man.

“It’s much too soon to mention
that
word—these things take time. This is, as yet, an uninvestigated event—or a series of events, some might say,” Father Octavio intoned, as if he were talking to himself or rehearsing his preliminary report to the bishop.

“To begin with, the bishop must be told—” Father Alfonso speculated, before Father Octavio cut him off.

“Yes, yes—of course—but the bishop is just the beginning. There is a
process,
” Father Octavio stated. “It could take years.”

“We follow a procedure, in these cases—” Father Alfonso started to say, but he stopped; he was looking at Lupe’s hot-chocolate cup. Juan Diego was holding the empty cup in his small hands. “If you’re done with the sprinkling, Juan Diego, I would like to have that cup—for the records,” Father Alfonso said.

It took two hundred years for the Church to declare that Our Lady of Guadalupe was Mary, Juan Diego was thinking. (In 1754, Pope Benedict XIV declared Guadalupe patron of what was then called New Spain.) But Juan Diego wasn’t the one who said it. The parrot man was the one who said it, at the moment Juan Diego handed Lupe’s cup to Father Alfonso.

“Are you talking about two hundred years?” Edward Bonshaw asked the two old priests. “Are you pulling a Pope Benedict the Fourteenth on us? It was two hundred years after the fact when Benedict declared that
your
Virgin of Guadalupe was Mary. Is that the kind of
process
you have in mind?” Señor Eduardo asked Father Octavio. “Are you following a procedure, as you put it, that will take two hundred years?” the Iowan asked Father Alfonso.

“That way, all of us who saw the Virgin Mary cry will be dead, right?” Juan Diego asked the two old priests. “No witnesses, right?” the boy asked them. (Now Juan Diego knew that Dolores hadn’t been kidding; now he knew he would have the balls for other stuff.)

“I thought we believed in miracles,” Brother Pepe said to Father Alfonso and Father Octavio.

“Not
this
miracle, Pepe,” Vargas said. “It’s the same old Church-of-rules business, isn’t it?” Vargas asked the two old priests. “Your Church isn’t about the miracles—it’s about your
rules,
isn’t it?”

“I know what I saw,” Rivera told the two old priests. “You didn’t do anything
—she
did,” the dump boss said to them. Rivera was pointing
up there,
at the Mary Monster’s face, wet with tears. “I don’t come here for you—I come for
her,
” el jefe said.

“It’s not your various virgins who are full of shit,” Flor said to Father Alfonso. “It’s you and your rules—your rules for the rest of us,” Flor told Father Octavio. “They won’t help us,” Flor said to Señor Eduardo. “They won’t help us because you disappoint them, and because they disapprove of me,” she told the Iowan.

“I think the big girl has stopped crying—I think she’s out of tears,” Dr. Vargas observed.

“You could help us, if you wanted to,” Juan Diego told the two old priests.

“I told you the kid had balls, didn’t I?” Flor asked Señor Eduardo.

“Yes, I believe the tears have stopped,” Father Alfonso said; he sounded relieved.

“I see no new tears,” Father Octavio joined in; he sounded hopeful.

“These three,” Brother Pepe said suddenly, his arms surprisingly encompassing the two unlikely lovers and the crippled boy—it was as if Pepe were herding them together. “You can, you
could,
resolve the plight of these three—I’ve looked into what has to be done, and how you can do it. You could resolve this,” Brother Pepe told the two old priests. “Quid pro quo—am I saying it correctly?” Pepe asked the Iowan. Pepe knew that Edward Bonshaw was proud of his Latin.

“Quid pro quo,” the parrot man repeated. “Something given or received for something else,” Señor Eduardo said to Father Alfonso. “A deal, in other words,” was the way Edward Bonshaw put it to Father Octavio.

“We know what it means, Edward,” Father Alfonso said peevishly.

“These three are bound for Iowa, with your help,” was the way Brother Pepe put it to the two old priests. “Whereas you—that is,
we,
in the sense of the Church—have a miracle, or not a miracle, to soft-pedal or
suppress.
”

“No one has said the
suppress
word, Pepe,” Father Alfonso rebuked him.

“It’s simply premature to say the
milagro
word, Pepe—we have to wait and see,” Father Octavio reprimanded him.

“Just help us get to Iowa,” Juan Diego said, “and we’ll wait and see for another two hundred years.”

“That sounds like a good deal for everybody,” the Iowan chimed in. “Actually, Juan Diego,” Señor Eduardo told the dump reader, “Guadalupe waited two hundred and twenty-three years to be officially
declared.
”

“It doesn’t matter how long we wait for them to tell us that a milagro is a milagro—it doesn’t even matter what the milagro is,” Rivera told them all. The Mary Monster’s tears had stopped; the dump boss was on his way out. “We don’t need to
declare
what a miracle is or isn’t—we
saw
it,” el jefe reminded them, as he was leaving. “Of course Father Alfonso and Father Octavio
will
help you—you don’t need to be a mind reader to know that, do you?” the dump boss asked the dump kid.

“Lupe knew
these two
were a necessary part of it, didn’t she?” Rivera asked Juan Diego, pointing to the parrot man and Flor. “Don’t you think your sister also knew
they
would be part of your getting away?” El jefe pointed to the two old priests.

The dump boss paused only long enough at the fountain of holy
water to think twice about touching it. He didn’t touch the holy water on his way out—apparently, the Mary Monster’s tears had been enough.

“You better come say goodbye to me before you go to Iowa,” Rivera told the dump reader; it was clear that the dump boss was through talking to anyone else.

“Come see me in a day or two, jefe—I’ll take those stitches out!” Vargas called after Rivera.

Juan Diego didn’t doubt what the dump boss had said; he knew that the two old priests would comply, and he also knew that Lupe had known they would. One look at Father Alfonso and Father Octavio told Juan Diego that the two old priests knew they would comply, too.

“What’s that Latin shit again?” Flor asked Señor Eduardo.

“Quid pro quo,” the Iowan said softly; he didn’t want to rub it in.

Now it was Brother Pepe’s turn to cry—his tears were not a miracle, of course, but crying was a big deal to Pepe, who couldn’t stop himself. His tears just kept coming.

“I’m going to miss you, my dear reader,” Brother Pepe told Juan Diego. “I think I’m already missing you!” Pepe cried.

T
HE CATS DIDN
’
T WAKE
up Juan Diego—Dorothy did. Dorothy was a jackhammer in the superior position; with her heavy breasts swaying just above his face, and her hips rocking back and forth as she sat on him, the young woman took Juan Diego’s breath away.

“I’m going to miss you, too!” he’d cried out, when he was still asleep and dreaming. The next thing he knew, he was coming—Juan Diego had no memory of her slipping the condom on him—and Dorothy was coming, too. Un terremoto, an earthquake, Juan Diego thought.

If there were any cats on the thatched roof over the outdoor shower, surely Dorothy’s screams dispersed them; her screaming momentarily silenced the crowing gamecocks, too. Those dogs who’d been barking all night recommenced barking.

There were no telephones in the rooms at The Hiding Place, or some asswheel in a nearby room would have called to complain. As for those ghosts of the young Americans who’d died in Vietnam, now and forever on R&R at El Escondrijo, Dorothy’s explosive-sounding cries must have made their unbeating hearts twitch for a beat or two.

It wasn’t until Juan Diego limped to the bathroom that he saw the open container of his Viagra prescription; the pills were beside his
plugged-in cell phone on the countertop. Juan Diego didn’t remember taking the Viagra, but he must have taken a whole tablet, not a half—whether he took it himself when he’d been half awake, or whether Dorothy had given him the 100-milligram dose when he’d been sound asleep and dreaming about the sprinkling. (Did it matter how he’d taken it? He definitely took it.)

It’s hard to say what surprised Juan Diego more. Was it the young ghost himself or the lost soldier’s Hawaiian shirt? Most surprising was the way the American casualty of that distant war stared searchingly for a trace of himself in the mirror above the bathroom sink; the young victim was not reflected in the mirror at all. (Some ghosts do appear in mirrors—not this one. It’s not easy to compartmentalize ghosts.) And the sight of Juan Diego in that same mirror, above the bathroom sink, caused this ghost to vanish.

The ghost who wasn’t reflected in the bathroom mirror reminded Juan Diego of the weird dream he’d had about the photograph the young Chinese man took at Kowloon Station. Why weren’t Miriam and Dorothy in that photo? What was it Consuelo had called Miriam? “The lady who just appears”—wasn’t that what the little girl in pigtails said?

But how had Miriam and Dorothy
disappeared
from a photograph? Juan Diego was wondering. Or had the cell-phone camera failed to capture Miriam and Dorothy in the first place?

That thought, that
connection
—not the young ghost himself, and not his Hawaiian shirt—was what spooked Juan Diego the most. When Dorothy found him standing stock-still in the bathroom, where he was staring into the little mirror above the sink, she guessed he’d seen one of the ghosts.

“You saw one of them, didn’t you?” Dorothy asked him; she quickly kissed the back of his neck, before gliding behind him, naked, on her way to the outdoor shower.

“One of them—yes,” was all Juan Diego said. He’d never taken his eyes from the bathroom mirror. He felt Dorothy kiss his neck; he felt her brush against his back as she glided behind him. But Dorothy didn’t appear in the bathroom mirror—like the ghost in the Hawaiian shirt, she wasn’t reflected there.
Un
like the ghost of that young American captive, Dorothy didn’t bother searching for herself in the mirror; she’d passed so unnoticeably behind Juan Diego that he didn’t see she was naked—not until he saw her standing in the outdoor shower.

For a while, he watched her wash her hair. Juan Diego thought Dorothy was a very attractive young woman, and if she were a specter—or, in some sense, not of this world—it seemed more believable to Juan Diego that she would want to be with him, even if her being with him was of an unreal or illusory nature.

“Who are you?” Juan Diego had asked Dorothy at El Nido, but she’d been asleep, or she was pretending to be asleep—or else Juan Diego only imagined that he’d asked her.

He felt all right about not asking her who she was anymore. It was a great relief to Juan Diego to imagine that Dorothy and Miriam might be spectral. The world he’d imagined had brought him more satisfaction and less pain than the real world ever had.

“You want to take a shower with me?” Dorothy was asking him. “That would be fun. Only the cats and dogs can see us, or the ghosts, and what do they care?” she said.

“Yes, that would be fun,” Juan Diego answered her. He was still staring at the bathroom mirror when the little gecko came out from behind the mirror and stared back at him with its bright, unblinking eyes. There was no question that the gecko saw him, but, just to be sure, Juan Diego shrugged his shoulders and moved his head from side to side. The gecko darted behind the bathroom mirror; the little lizard hid itself in half a second.

“I’ll be right there!” Juan Diego called to Dorothy; the outdoor shower (not to mention, Dorothy in it) looked very inviting. And the gecko had absolutely seen him—Juan Diego knew he was still alive, or at least visible. He was not some kind of ghost—not yet.

“I’m coming!” Juan Diego called to her.

“Promises, promises,” Dorothy called back to him from the outdoor shower.

She liked to make his cock slippery with shampoo and rub herself against him under the water. Juan Diego wondered why he’d not known any girlfriends like Dorothy, but even as a younger man, he supposed there’d been a bookishness to his conversation, a seeming seriousness that had driven the good-time girls away. And was this why, in his imagination, Juan Diego would have been prone to
make up
a young woman like Dorothy?

“Don’t worry about the ghosts—I just thought you should see them,” Dorothy was telling him in the shower. “They don’t expect anything
from you—they’re just sad, and there’s nothing you can do about their sadness. You’re an American. What they went through is part of you, or you’re part of what they went through—or something.” Dorothy went on and on.

But what part of them was truly part of him? Juan Diego wondered. People—even ghosts, if Dorothy was a kind of ghost—were always trying to make him “part of” something!

You cannot take the scavenging out of scavengers; los pepenadores will be foreigners wherever they go. What was Juan Diego
part of
? A kind of universal foreignness traveled with him; it was who he was, not only
as a writer.
Even his name was fictitious—not “Rivera” but “Guerrero.” The American immigration lawyer had objected to Juan Diego’s having Rivera’s name. It didn’t suffice that Rivera was “probably not” Juan Diego’s father. Rivera was alive; it didn’t look good that the adopted boy had Rivera’s name.

Pepe had to explain this awkwardness to the dump boss; Juan Diego would have had trouble telling el jefe that the “adopted boy” needed a new name.