"Jesus Mary Joseph!" Flor exclaimed, spinning around. She was very tall; she'd been prepared to throw a punch at head level, but she found herself looking down at the boy in a wheelchair.
"It's just me and my sister," Juan Diego said, cringing. "We're looking for our mother."
"Do I look like your mother?" Flor asked. She was a transvestite prostitute. There weren't so many transvestite prostitutes in Oaxaca in those days; Flor really stood out, and not only because she was tall. She was almost beautiful; what was beautiful about her truly wasn't affected by the softest-looking trace of a mustache on her upper lip, though Lupe noticed it.
"You look like our mom, a little," Juan Diego answered Flor. "You're both very pretty."
"Flor's a lot bigger, and there's the you-know-what," Lupe said, passing her finger over her upper lip. There was no need for Juan Diego to translate this.
"You kids shouldn't be here," Flor told them. "You should be in bed."
"Our mother's name is Esperanza," Juan Diego said. "Maybe you've seen her here--maybe you know her."
"I know Esperanza," Flor told them. "But I don't see her around here. I see you around here, all the time," she told the kids.
"Maybe our mom is the most popular of all the prostitutes," Lupe said. "Maybe she never leaves the Hotel Somega--the men just come to her." But Juan Diego didn't translate this.
"Whatever she's babbling about, I can tell you one true thing," Flor said. "Everybody who's ever been here has been seen--I can promise you that. Maybe your mother hasn't been here at all; maybe you kids should just go to sleep."
"Flor knows a lot about the circus--it's on her mind," Lupe said. "Go on--ask her about it."
"We have an offer from La Maravilla--just a sideshow act," Juan Diego said. "We would have our own tent, but we would share it with the dogs--they're trained dogs, very smart. I don't suppose you see any circus people, do you?" the boy asked.
"I don't do dwarfs. You have to draw the line somewhere," Flor told them. "The dwarfs have an unreasonable interest in me--they're all over me," she said.
"I won't be able to sleep tonight," Lupe told Juan Diego. "The thought of dwarfs all over Flor will keep me awake."
"You told me to ask her. I won't be able to sleep, either," Juan Diego said to his sister.
"Ask Flor if she knows Soledad," Lupe said.
"Maybe we don't want to know," Juan Diego said, but he asked Flor what she knew about the lion tamer's wife.
"She's a lonely, unhappy woman," Flor answered. "Her husband is a pig. In his case, I'm on the lions' side," she said.
"I guess you don't do lion tamers, either," Juan Diego said.
"Not that one, chico," Flor said. "Aren't you Ninos Perdidos kids? Doesn't your mother work there? Why would you move into a tent with dogs if you don't have to?"
Lupe began to recite a list of reasons. "One: love of dogs," she started. "Two: to be stars--in a circus, we might be famous. Three: because the parrot man will come visit us, and our future--" She stopped for a second. "His future, anyway," Lupe said, pointing to her brother. "His future is in the parrot man's hands--I just know it is, circus or no circus."
"I don't know the parrot man--I've never met him," Flor told the kids, after Juan Diego had struggled to translate Lupe's list.
"The parrot man doesn't want a woman," Lupe reported, which Juan Diego also translated. (Lupe had heard Senor Eduardo say this.)
"I know lots of parrot men!" the transvestite prostitute said.
"Lupe means that the parrot man has taken a vow of celibacy," Juan Diego tried to explain to Flor, but she wouldn't let him finish what he was going to say.
"Oh, no--I don't know any men like that," Flor said. "Does the parrot man have a sideshow act at La Maravilla?"
"He's the new missionary at the Templo de la Compania de Jesus--he's a Jesuit from Iowa," Juan Diego told her.
"Jesus Mary Joseph!" Flor exclaimed again. "That kind of parrot man."
"His dog was killed--it probably changed his life," Lupe said, but Juan Diego left this untranslated.
Their attention was then diverted by a fight in front of the Hotel Somega; the altercation must have started in the hotel, but it had progressed from the courtyard into Zaragoza Street.
"Shit, it's the good gringo--that kid is a liability to himself," Flor said. "He might have been safer in Vietnam."
There were more and more of the American hippie boys in Oaxaca; some of them came with girlfriends, but the girlfriends never stayed long. Most of the draft-age boys were alone, or they ended up alone. They were running away from the war in Vietnam, or from what their country had become, Edward Bonshaw said. The Iowan reached out to them--he tried to help them--but most of the hippie boys weren't religious types. Like the rooftop dogs, they were lost souls--they were running wild, or they drifted around town like ghosts.
Flor had reached out to the young American draft dodgers, too; all the lost boys knew her. Maybe they liked her because she was a transvestite--like them, she was still a boy--but the lost Americans also liked Flor because her English was excellent. Flor had lived in Texas, but she'd come back to Mexico. Flor never changed the way she told that story. "Let's just say my only way out of Oaxaca took me to Houston," she would always begin. "Have you ever been to Houston? Let's just say I had to get out of Houston."
Lupe and Juan Diego had seen the good gringo around Zaragoza Street before. One morning Brother Pepe had found him sleeping in a pew of the Jesuit temple. El gringo bueno was singing "Streets of Laredo," the cowboy song, in his sleep--just the first verse, over and over again, Pepe had said.
As I walked out in the streets of Laredo
As I walked out in Laredo one day,
I spied a young cowboy, all wrapped in white linen,
Wrapped up in white linen and cold as the clay.
The hippie boy was always friendly to the dump kids. As for the fracas that had started in the Hotel Somega, it appeared that el gringo bueno hadn't been given time to get dressed. He lay curled on the sidewalk in a fetal position, to protect himself from being kicked; he wore just a pair of jeans. He was carrying his sandals and a dirty long-sleeved shirt, the only shirt the dump kids had seen him wear. But Lupe and Juan Diego had not seen the boy's big tattoo before. It was a Christ on the Cross: the bleeding face of Jesus, crowned with thorns, filled the slender hippie's bare chest. Christ's torso, including the pierced part, covered the hippie's bare belly. Christ's outstretched arms (Jesus's sorely abused wrists and hands) were tattooed over the hippie boy's upper arms and forearms. It was as if the upper body of Christ had been violently affixed to the upper body of the good gringo. Both the crucified Christ and the hippie boy needed to shave, and their long hair was similarly matted.
There were two thugs standing over the boy on Zaragoza Street. The dump kids knew Garza--the tall, bearded one. Either he let you in the lobby of the Somega or he didn't; he was usually the one who told the kids to get lost. Garza had a territorial attitude concerning the hotel courtyard. The other thug--the young, fat one--was Garza's slave boy, Cesar. (Garza fucked everything.)
"Is this how you get your rocks off?" Flor asked the two thugs.
There was another prostitute on the sidewalk of Zaragoza Street, one of the younger ones; she had badly pockmarked skin, and she wasn't wearing much more than the good gringo was. Her name was Alba, which means "dawn," and Juan Diego thought she looked like a girl you might meet for a moment as short-lived as a sunrise.
"He didn't pay me enough," Alba told Flor.
"It was more than she told me it was going to be," el gringo bueno said. "I paid her what she first told me."
"Take the gringo with you," Flor said to Juan Diego. "If you can sneak out of Lost Children, you can sneak in--right?"
"The nuns will find him in the morning--or Brother Pepe or Senor Eduardo or our mother will find him," Lupe said.
Juan Diego tried to explain this to Flor. He and Lupe shared a bedroom and a bathroom; their mother, unann
ounced, came to use the bathroom, and so on. But Flor wanted the dump ninos to get the good gringo off the street. Ninos Perdidos was safe; the kids should take the hippie boy with them--no one at the orphanage would beat him. "Tell the nuns you found him on the sidewalk, and you were just doing the charitable thing," Flor said to Juan Diego. "Tell them the boy didn't have a tattoo, but when you woke up in the morning, the Crucified Christ was all over the good gringo's body."
"And we heard him singing in his sleep--that cowboy song--for hours, but we couldn't see in the dark," Lupe improvised. "El gringo bueno must have been getting that tattoo in the dark all night!"
As if on cue, the half-naked hippie boy had begun to sing; he was not asleep now. He must have been singing "Streets of Laredo" to taunt the two thugs who'd been harassing him--just the second verse, this time.
"I see, by your outfit, that you are a cowboy."
These words he did say as I slowly walked by.
"Come sit down beside me and hear my sad story,
Got shot in the breast, and I know I must die."
"Jesus Mary Joseph," was all Juan Diego said softly.
"Hey, how's it going, man on wheels?" the good gringo asked Juan Diego, as if he'd just noticed the boy in his wheelchair. "Hey, fast-drivin' little sister! You got any speedin' tickets yet?" (Lupe had bumped the good gringo with the wheelchair before.)
Flor was helping the hippie boy into his clothes. "If you touch him again, Garza," Flor was saying, "I'll cut your cock and balls off while you're asleep."
"You got the same junk between your legs," Garza told the transvestite prostitute.
"No, my junk is a lot bigger than yours," Flor told him.
Cesar, Garza's slave boy, started to laugh, but the way both Garza and Flor looked at him made him stop.
"You ought to say what you're worth the first time, Alba," Flor said to the young prostitute with the bad skin. "You shouldn't change your mind about what you're worth."
"You can't tell me what to do, Flor," Alba said, but the girl had waited until she'd slunk back inside the courtyard of the Hotel Somega before she said it.
Flor walked with the dump kids and the good gringo as far as the zocalo. "I owe you!" the young American called to her, after she left them. "I owe you ninos, too," the hippie boy told the dump kids. "I'm going to get you a present for this," he told them.
"How are we supposed to keep him hidden?" Lupe asked her brother. "We can sneak him into Lost Children tonight--no problem--but we can't sneak him out in the morning."
"I'm working on the story that his Bleeding Christ tattoo is a miracle," Juan Diego told her. (This was definitely an idea that would appeal to a dump reader.)
"It is a miracle, kind of," el gringo bueno started to tell them. "I got the idea for this tattoo--"
Lupe wouldn't let the lost young man tell his story, not then. "Promise me something," she said to Juan Diego.
"Another promise--"
"Just promise me!" Lupe cried. "If I end up on Zaragoza Street, kill me--just kill me. Let me hear you say it."
"Jesus Mary Joseph!" Juan Diego said; he was trying to exclaim this the way Flor had done it.
The hippie had forgotten what he was saying; he struggled with a verse of "Streets of Laredo," as if he were writing the inspired lyrics for the first time.
"Get six jolly cowboys to carry my coffin,
Get six pretty maidens to bear up my pall.
Put bunches of roses all over my coffin,
Roses to deaden the clods as they fall."
"Say it!" Lupe yelled at the dump reader.
"Okay, I'll kill you. There, I said it," Juan Diego told her.
"Whoa! Man on wheels, little sister--nobody's killin' anyone, right?" the good gringo asked them. "We're all friends, right?"
The good gringo had mescal breath, which Lupe called "worm breath" because of the dead worm in the bottom of the mescal bottle. Rivera called mescal the poor man's tequila; the dump boss said you drank mescal and tequila the same way, with a lick of salt and a little lime juice. The good gringo smelled like lime juice and beer; the night the dump kids sneaked him into Lost Children, the young American's lips were crusty with salt, and there was more salt in the V-shaped patch of beard the boy had left unshaven beneath his lower lip. The ninos let the good gringo sleep in Lupe's bed; they had to help him undress, and he was already asleep--on his back, and snoring--before Lupe and Juan Diego could get themselves ready for bed.
Through his snores, the gutteral-sounding verse of "Streets of Laredo" seemed to emanate from el gringo bueno--like his smell.
"Oh, beat the drum slowly and play the fife lowly,
Play the dead march as you carry me along;
Take me to the valley, and lay the sod o'er me,
For I'm a young cowboy and I know I've done wrong."
Lupe wet a washcloth and wiped the salty crust off the hippie boy's lips and face. She meant to cover him with his shirt; she didn't want to see his Bleeding Jesus in the middle of the night. But when Lupe smelled the gringo's shirt, she said it smelled like mescal or beer puke, or like the dead worm--she just pulled the sheet up to the young American's chin and made some effort to tuck him in.
The hippie boy was tall and thin, and his long arms--with Christ's mangled wrists and hands imprinted on them--lay at his sides, outside the bedsheet. "What if he dies in the room with us?" Lupe asked Juan Diego. "What happens to your soul if you die in someone else's room in a foreign country? How can the gringo's soul get back home?"
"Jesus," Juan Diego said.
"Leave Jesus out of it. We're the ones who are responsible for him. What do we do if the hippie boy dies?" Lupe asked.
"Burn him at the basurero. Rivera will help us," Juan Diego said. He didn't really mean it--he was just trying to get Lupe to go to bed. "The good gringo's soul will escape with the smoke."
"Okay, we have a plan," Lupe said. When she got into Juan Diego's bed, she was wearing more clothes than she usually slept in. Lupe said she wanted to be "modestly dressed" with the hippie boy in their bedroom. She wanted Juan Diego to sleep on the side of the bed nearest the gringo; Lupe didn't want the sight of the Agonizing Christ to startle her in the night. "I hope you're working on the miracle story," she said to her brother, turning her back to him in the narrow bed. "Nobody's going to believe that tattoo is a milagro."
Juan Diego would be awake half the night, rehearsing how he would present the lost American's Bleeding Christ tattoo as an overnight miracle. Just before he finally fell sleep, Juan Diego realized that Lupe was still awake, too. "I would marry this hippie boy, if he smelled better and stopped singing that cowboy song," Lupe said.
"You're thirteen," Juan Diego reminded his little sister.
In his mescal stupor, el gringo bueno could manage no more than the first two lines of the first verse of "Streets of Laredo"; the way the song just petered out almost made the dump kids wish the good gringo would keep singing.
As I walked out in the streets of Laredo
As I walked out in Laredo one day--
"You're thirteen, Lupe," Juan Diego repeated, more insistently.
"I mean later, when I'm older--if I get older," Lupe said. "I am beginning to have breasts, but they're very small. I know they're supposed to get bigger."
"What do you mean, if you get older?" Juan Diego asked his sister. They lay in the dark with their backs turned to each other, but Juan Diego could feel Lupe shrug beside him.
"I don't think the good gringo and I get much older," she told him.
"You don't know that, Lupe," Juan Diego said.
"I know my breasts don't get any bigger," Lupe told him.
Juan Diego would be awake a little longer, just thinking about this. He knew Lupe was usually right about the past; he fell asleep with the half-comforting knowledge that his sister didn't do the future as accurately.
* 13 *
Now and Forever
What happened to Juan Diego with the bomb-sniffing dogs at th
e Makati Shangri-La can be calmly and rationally explained, though what transpired developed quickly, and in the panic-stricken eyes of the hotel doorman and the Shangri-La security guards--the latter instantly lost control of the two dogs--there was nothing calm or rational attending the arrival of the Distinguished Guest. Such was the lofty-sounding designation attached to Juan Diego Guerrero's name at the hotel registration desk: Distinguished Guest. Oh, that Clark French--Juan Diego's former student had been busy, asserting himself.
There'd been an upgrade to the Mexican-American novelist's room; special amenities, one of which was unusual, had been arranged. And the hotel management had been warned not to call Mr. Guerrero a Mexican American. Yet you wouldn't have known that the natty hotel manager himself was hovering around the registration desk, waiting to confer celebrity status on the weary Juan Diego--that is, not if you witnessed the writer's rude reception at the driveway entrance to the Shangri-La. Alas, Clark wasn't on hand to welcome his former teacher.
As they pulled into the driveway, Bienvenido could see in the rearview mirror that his esteemed client was asleep; the driver tried to wave off the doorman, who was hurrying to open the rear door of the limo. Bienvenido saw that Juan Diego was slumped against this same rear door; the driver quickly opened his own door and stepped into the hotel entranceway, waving both arms.
Who knew that bomb-sniffing dogs were agitated by arm-waving? The two dogs lunged at Bienvenido, who raised both arms above his head, as if the security guards held him at gunpoint. And when the hotel doorman opened the limo's rear door, Juan Diego, who appeared to be dead, began to fall out of the car. A falling dead man further excited the bomb-sniffing dogs; both of them bounded into the limo's backseat, wresting the leather handles of their dog harnesses from the security guards' hands.
The seat belt kept Juan Diego from falling entirely out of the car; he was suddenly jerked awake, his head lolling in and out of the limo. There was a dog in his lap, licking his face; it was a medium-size dog, a small male Labrador or a female Lab, actually a Lab mix, with a Lab's soft, floppy ears and warm, wide-apart eyes.
"Beatrice!" Juan Diego cried. One can only imagine what he'd been dreaming about, but when Juan Diego cried out a woman's name, a female name, the Lab mix, who was male, looked puzzled--his name was James. And Juan Diego's crying out "Beatrice!" utterly unnerved the doorman, who'd presumed the arriving guest was dead. The doorman screamed.