"A bathroom accident," was all Juan Diego said, pointing to the toilet paper stuck to his forehead.
"I think it's stopped bleeding," Dorothy told him. She stood in her bra in front of him, picking at the toilet paper; when Dorothy plucked the paper off his forehead, the little cut began to bleed again--but not so much that she couldn't stop the bleeding by wetting one index finger and pressing it above his eyebrow. "Just hold still," the young woman said, while Juan Diego tried not to look at her fetching bra.
"For Christ's sake, Dorothy--just get dressed," her mother told her.
"And where are we going--I mean all of us?" the young woman asked her mom, not so innocently.
"First get dressed, then I'll tell you," Miriam said. "Oh, I almost forgot," she said suddenly to Juan Diego. "I have your itinerary--you should have it back." Juan Diego remembered that Miriam had taken his itinerary from him when they were still at JFK; he'd not noticed that she hadn't returned it. Now Miriam handed it to him. "I made some notes on it--about where you should stay in Manila. Not this time--you're not staying there long enough this first time for it to matter where you stay. But, trust me, you won't like where you're staying. When you come back to Manila--I mean the second time, when you're there a little longer--I made some suggestions regarding where you should stay. And I made a copy of your itinerary for us," Miriam told him, "so we can check on you."
"For us?" Dorothy repeated suspiciously. "Or for you, do you mean?"
"For us--I said 'we,' Dorothy," Miriam told her daughter.
"I'm going to see you again, I hope," Juan Diego said suddenly. "Both of you," he added--awkwardly, because he'd been looking only at Dorothy. The girl had put on a blouse, which she hadn't begun to button; she was looking at her navel, then picking at it.
"Oh, you'll see us again--definitely," Miriam was saying to him, as she walked into the bathroom, continuing her sweep.
"Yeah, definitely," Dorothy said, still attending to her belly button--she was still unbuttoned.
"Button it, Dorothy--the blouse has buttons, for Christ's sake!" her mother was shouting from the bathroom.
"I haven't left anything behind, Mother," Dorothy called into the bathroom. The young woman had already buttoned herself up when she quickly kissed Juan Diego on his mouth. He saw she had a small envelope in her hand; it looked like the hotel stationery--it was that kind of envelope. Dorothy slipped the envelope into his jacket pocket. "Don't read it now--read it later. It's a love letter!" the girl whispered; her tongue darted between his lips.
"I'm surprised at you, Dorothy," Miriam was saying, as she came back into the bedroom. "Juan Diego made more of a mess of his bathroom than you did of yours."
"I live to surprise you, Mother," the girl said.
Juan Diego smiled uncertainly at the two of them. He'd always imagined that his trip to the Philippines was a kind of sentimental journey--in the sense that it wasn't a trip he was taking for himself. In truth, he'd long thought of it as a trip he was taking for someone else--a dead friend who'd wanted to make this journey but had died before he was able to go.
Yet the journey Juan Diego found himself taking was one that seemed inseparable from Miriam and Dorothy, and what was that trip but one he was taking solely for himself?
"And you--you two--are going exactly where?" Juan Diego ventured to ask this mother and her daughter, who were veteran world travelers (clearly).
"Oh, boy--have we got shit to do!" Dorothy said darkly.
"Obligations, Dorothy--your generation overuses the shit word," Miriam told her.
"We'll see you sooner than you think," Dorothy told Juan Diego. "We end up in Manila, but not today," the young woman said enigmatically.
"We'll see you in Manila eventually," Miriam explained to him a little impatiently. She added: "If not sooner."
"If not sooner," Dorothy repeated. "Yeah, yeah!"
The young woman abruptly lifted her suitcase off the bed before Juan Diego could help her; it was such a big, heavy-looking bag, but Dorothy lifted it as if it weighed nothing at all. It gave Juan Diego a pang to remember how the young woman had lifted him--his head and shoulders, entirely off the bed--before she'd rolled him over on top of her.
What a strong girl! was all Juan Diego thought about it. He turned to reach for his suitcase, not his carry-on, and was surprised to see that Miriam had taken it--together with her own big bag. What a strong mother! Juan Diego was thinking. He limped out into the hallway of the hotel, hurrying to keep up with the two women; he almost didn't notice that he scarcely limped at all.
THIS WAS PECULIAR: IN the middle of a conversation he couldn't remember, Juan Diego became separated from Miriam and Dorothy as they were going through the security check at Hong Kong International. He stepped toward the metal-detection device, looking back at Miriam, who was removing her shoes; he saw that her toenails were painted the same color as Dorothy's. Then he passed through the metal-screening machine, and when he looked for the women again, both Miriam and Dorothy were gone; they had simply (or not so simply) disappeared.
Juan Diego asked one of the security guards about the two women he'd been traveling with. Where had they gone? But the security guard was an impatient young fellow, and he was distracted by an apparent problem with the metal-detection device.
"What women? Which women? I've seen an entire civilization of women--they must have moved on!" the guard told him.
Juan Diego thought he would try to text or call the women on his cell phone, but he'd forgotten to get their cell-phone numbers. He scrolled through his contacts, looking in vain for their nonexistent names. Nor had Miriam written her cell-phone number, or Dorothy's, among the notes she'd made on his itinerary. Juan Diego saw just the names and addresses of alternative Manila hotels.
What a big deal Miriam had made about "the second time" he would be in Manila, Juan Diego was thinking, but he stopped thinking about it and made his slow way to the gate for his flight to the Philippines--his first time in Manila, he was thinking to himself (if he was thinking about it at all). He was preternaturally tired.
It must be the beta-blockers, Juan Diego was pondering. I guess I shouldn't have taken two--if I did.
Even the green-tea muffin on the Cathay Pacific flight--it was a much smaller plane this time--was a little disappointing. It wasn't such a heightened experience as eating that first green-tea muffin, when he and Miriam and Dorothy were arriving in Hong Kong.
Juan Diego was in the air when he remembered the love letter Dorothy had put in his jacket pocket. He took out the envelope and opened it.
"See you soon!" Dorothy had written on the Regal Airport Hotel stationery. She had pressed her lips--apparently, with fresh lipstick--to the page, leaving him the impression of her lips in intimate contact with the soon word. Her lipstick, he only now noticed, was the same color as her toenail polish--and her mother's. Magenta, Juan Diego guessed he would call it.
He couldn't miss seeing what was also in the envelope with the so-called love letter: the two empty foil wrappers, where the first and second condom had been. Maybe there was something wrong with the metal-screening machine at Hong Kong International, Juan Diego considered; the device hadn't detected the foil condom wrappers. Definitely, Juan Diego was thinking, this wasn't quite the sentimental journey he'd been expecting, but he was long on his way and there was no turning back now.
* 9 *
In Case You Were Wondering
Edward Bonshaw had an L-shaped scar on his forehead--from a childhood fall. He'd tripped over a sleeping dog when he was running with a mah-jongg tile clutched in his little hand. The tiny game block was made of ivory and bamboo; a corner of the pretty tile had been driven into Edward's pale forehead above the bridge of his nose, where it made a perfect check mark between his blond eyebrows.
He'd sat up but had felt too dizzy to stand. Blood streamed down between his eyes and dripped from the end of his nose. The dog, now awake, had wagged her tail and licked the bleeding boy's face.
> Edward found the dog's affectionate attention soothing. The boy was seven; his father had labeled him a "mama's boy," for no better reason than that Edward had expressed his dislike of hunting.
"Why shoot things that are alive?" he'd asked his father.
The dog didn't like hunting, either. A Labrador retriever, she'd blundered into a neighbor's swimming pool when she was still a puppy, and had almost drowned; thereafter, she was afraid of water--not normal for a Lab. Also "not normal," in the unwavering opinion of Edward's dictatorial father, was the dog's disposition not to retrieve. (Neither a ball nor a stick--certainly not a dead bird.)
"What happened to the retriever part? Isn't she supposed to be a Labrador retriever?" Edward's cruel uncle Ian always said.
But Edward loved the nonretrieving, never-swimming Lab, and the sweet dog doted on the boy; they were both "cowardly," in the harsh judgment of Edward's father, Graham. To young Edward, his father's brother--the bullying uncle Ian--was an unkind dolt.
This is all the background necessary to understand what happened next. Edward's father and Uncle Ian were hunting pheasants; they returned with a couple of the murdered birds, barging into the kitchen by the door to the garage.
This was the house in Coralville--at the time, a distant-seeming suburb of Iowa City--and Edward, bloody-faced, was sitting on the kitchen floor, where the nonretrieving, never-swimming Lab appeared to be eating the boy head-first. The men burst into the kitchen with Uncle Ian's Chesapeake Bay retriever, a thoughtless male gundog of Ian's own aggressive disposition and lack of discernible character.
"Fucking Beatrice!" Edward's father shouted.
Graham Bonshaw had named the Lab Beatrice, the most derisively female name he could imagine; it was a name suitable for a dog that Uncle Ian said should be spayed--"so she won't reproduce herself and further dilute a noble breed."
The two hunters left Edward sitting on the kitchen floor while they took Beatrice outside and shot her in the driveway.
This was not quite the story you were expecting when Edward Bonshaw, in his later life, pointed to the L-shaped scar on his forehead and began, with disarming indifference, "In case you were wondering about my scar--" thereby leading you to the brutal killing of Beatrice, a dog young Edward had adored, a dog with the sweetest disposition imaginable.
And for all those years, Juan Diego remembered, Senor Eduardo had kept that pretty little mah-jongg tile--the block that had permanently checkmarked his fair forehead.
Was it the inconsequential cut from the towel rod on Juan Diego's forehead, which had finally stopped bleeding, that triggered this nightmarish memory of Edward Bonshaw, who'd been so dearly beloved in Juan Diego's life? Was it too short a flight, from Hong Kong to Manila, for Juan Diego to sleep soundly? It was not as short a flight as he'd imagined, but he was restless and half awake the entire two hours, and his dreams were disjointed; Juan Diego's fitful sleep and the narrative disorder of his dreams were further evidence to him that he'd taken a double dose of beta-blockers.
He would dream intermittently all the way to Manila--foremost, the horrible history of Edward Bonshaw's scar. That is exactly what taking two Lopressor pills will get you! Yet, tired though he was, Juan Diego was grateful to have dreamed at all, even disjointedly. The past was where he lived most confidently, and with the surest sense of knowing who he was--not only as a novelist.
*
THERE IS OFTEN TOO much dialogue in disjointed dreams, and things happen violently and without warning. The doctors' offices in Cruz Roja, the Red Cross hospital in Oaxaca, were confusingly close to the emergency entrance--either a bad idea or by design, or both. A girl who'd been bitten by one of Oaxaca's rooftop dogs was brought to the orthopedic office of Dr. Vargas instead of the ER; though her hands and forearms had been mangled while she was trying to protect her face, the girl did not present any obvious orthopedic problems. Dr. Vargas was an orthopedist--though he did treat circus people (mainly child performers), dump kids, and the orphans at Lost Children, not just for orthopedics.
Vargas was irked that the dog-bite victim had been brought to him. "You're going to be fine," he kept telling the crying girl. "She should be in the ER--not with me," Vargas repeatedly said to the girl's hysterical mother. Everyone in the waiting room was upset to see the mauled girl--including Edward Bonshaw, who had only recently arrived in town.
"What is a rooftop dog?" Senor Eduardo asked Brother Pepe. "Not a breed of dog, I trust!" They were following Dr. Vargas to the examining room. Juan Diego was being wheeled on a gurney.
Lupe babbled something, which her injured brother was disinclined to translate. Lupe said some of the rooftop dogs were spirits--actual ghosts of dogs who'd been willfully tortured and killed. The ghost dogs haunted the rooftops of the city, attacking innocent people--because the dogs (in their innocence) had been attacked, and they were seeking revenge. The dogs lived on rooftops because they could fly; because they were ghost dogs, no one could harm them--not anymore.
"That's a long answer!" Edward Bonshaw confided to Juan Diego. "What did she say?"
"You're right, not a breed," was all Juan Diego told the new missionary.
"They're mostly mongrels. There are many stray dogs in Oaxaca; some are feral. They just hang out on the rooftops--no one knows how the dogs get there," Brother Pepe explained.
"They don't fly," Juan Diego added, but Lupe went on babbling. They were now in the examining room with Dr. Vargas.
"And what has happened to you?" Dr. Vargas asked the incomprehensible girl. "Just calm down and tell me slowly, so I can understand you."
"I'm the patient--she's just my sister," Juan Diego said to the young doctor. Maybe Vargas hadn't noticed the gurney.
Brother Pepe had already explained to Dr. Vargas that he'd examined these dump kids before, but Vargas saw too many patients--he had trouble keeping the kids straight. And Juan Diego's pain had quieted down; for the moment, he'd stopped screaming.
Dr. Vargas was young and handsome; an aura of intemperate nobility, which can occasionally come from success, emanated from him. He was used to being right. Vargas was easily perturbed by the incompetence of others, though the impressive young man was too quickly inclined to judge people he was meeting for the first time. Everyone knew that Dr. Vargas was the foremost orthopedic surgeon in Oaxaca; crippled children were his specialty--and who didn't care about crippled children? Yet Vargas rubbed everyone the wrong way. Children resented him because Vargas couldn't remember them; adults thought he was arrogant.
"So you're the patient," Dr. Vargas said to Juan Diego. "Tell me about yourself. Not the dump-kid part. I can smell you; I know about the basurero. I mean your foot--just tell me about that part."
"The part about my foot is a dump-kid part," Juan Diego told the doctor. "A truck in Guerrero backed over my foot, with a load of copper from the basurero--a heavy load."
Sometimes Lupe spoke in lists; this was one of those times. "One: this doctor is a sad jerk," the all-seeing girl began. "Two: he is ashamed to be alive. Three: he thinks he should have died. Four: he's going to say you need X-rays, but he's just stalling--he already knows he can't fix your foot."
"That sounds a little like Zapoteco or Mixteco, but it isn't," Dr. Vargas declared; he wasn't asking Juan Diego what his sister had said, but (like everyone else) Juan Diego was not fond of the young doctor, and he decided to tell him everything Lupe had proclaimed. "She said all that?" Vargas asked.
"She's usually right about the past," Juan Diego told him. "She doesn't do the future as accurately."
"You do need X-rays; I probably can't fix your foot, but I have to see the X-rays before I know what to tell you," Dr. Vargas said to Juan Diego. "Did you bring our Jesuit friend for divine assistance?" the doctor asked the boy, nodding to Brother Pepe. (In Oaxaca, everyone knew Pepe; almost as many people had heard of Dr. Vargas.)
"My mom is a cleaning woman for the Jesuits," Juan Diego told Vargas. The boy then nodded to Rivera. "But he's the one who looks af
ter us. El jefe--" the boy started to say, but Rivera interrupted him.
"I was driving the truck," the dump boss said guiltily.
Lupe launched into her routine about the broken side-view mirror, but Juan Diego didn't bother to translate. Besides, Lupe had already moved on; there was more detail concerning why Dr. Vargas was such a sad jerk.
"Vargas got drunk; he overslept. He missed his plane--a family trip. The stupid plane crashed. His parents were onboard--his sister, too, with her husband and their two children. All gone!" Lupe cried. "While Vargas was sleeping it off," she added.
"Such a strained voice," Vargas said to Juan Diego. "I should have a look at her throat. Maybe her vocal cords."
Juan Diego told Dr. Vargas he was sorry about the plane crash that had killed the young doctor's entire family.
"She told you that?" Vargas asked the boy.
Lupe wouldn't stop babbling: Vargas had inherited his parents' house, and all their things. His parents had been "very religious"; it had long been a source of family friction that Vargas was "not religious." Now the young doctor was "less religious," Lupe said.
"How can he be 'less religious' than he used to be when he was 'not religious' to begin with, Lupe?" Juan Diego asked his sister, but the girl just shrugged. She knew certain things; messages came to her, usually without any explanations.
"I'm just telling you what I know," Lupe was always saying. "Don't ask me what it means."
"Wait, wait, wait!" Edward Bonshaw interjected, in English. "Who was 'not religious' and has become 'less religious'? I know about this syndrome," Edward said to Juan Diego.
In English, Juan Diego told Senor Eduardo everything Lupe had told him about Dr. Vargas; not even Brother Pepe had known the whole story. All the while, Vargas went on examining the boy's crushed and twisted foot. Juan Diego was beginning to like Dr. Vargas a little better; Lupe's irritating ability to divine a stranger's past (and, to a lesser degree, that person's future) was serving as a distraction from Juan Diego's pain, and the boy appreciated how Vargas had taken advantage of the distraction to examine him.