Was Miriam a prescription-pill addict? Juan Diego wondered. But not even an addict would find the beta-blockers stimulating, and what would a woman want with Viagra?
Juan Diego cleaned up the mess. He took an outdoor shower, enjoying the cats who skittishly appeared on the tile roof, yowling at him. Perhaps a cat, in the cover of darkness, had killed that misguided rooster mid-squawk. Cats were born killers, weren't they?
Juan Diego was dressing when he heard the sirens, or what sounded like sirens. Maybe a body had washed ashore, he imagined--one of the perpetrators of the late-night karaoke music at the Panglao Island beach club, a night swimmer who'd danced all night and then drowned with cramps. Or the Nocturnal Monkeys had gone skinny-dipping, with disastrous results. Thus Juan Diego indulged his imagination with diabolical death scenes, the way writers will.
But when Juan Diego limped downstairs for breakfast, he saw the ambulance and the police car in the driveway of the Encantador. Clark French was officiously guarding the staircase to the second-floor library. "I'm just trying to keep the kids away," Clark said to his former teacher.
"Away from what, Clark?" Juan Diego asked.
"Josefa is up there--with the medical examiner and the police. Auntie Carmen was in the room diagonally across the hall from your woman friend. I didn't know she was leaving so soon!"
"Who, Clark? Who left?" Juan Diego asked him.
"Your woman friend! Who would come all this way for one night--even for New Year's Eve?" Clark asked him.
Juan Diego hadn't known Miriam was leaving; he must have looked surprised. "She didn't tell you she was leaving?" Clark said. "I thought you knew her! The desk clerk said she had an early flight; a car picked her up before dawn. Someone said all the doors to the second-floor rooms were wide open after your woman friend had gone. That's why they found Auntie Carmen!" Clark blathered.
"Found her--found her where, Clark?" Juan Diego asked him. The story was as chronologically challenging as one of Clark French's novels! the former writing teacher was thinking.
"On the floor of her room, between her bed and the bathroom--Auntie Carmen is dead!" Clark cried.
"I'm sorry, Clark. Was she sick? Had she been--" Juan Diego was asking, when Clark French pointed to the registration desk in the lobby.
"She left a letter for you--the desk clerk has it," Clark told his former teacher.
"Auntie Carmen wrote me--"
"Your woman friend left a letter for you--not Auntie Carmen!" Clark cried.
"Oh."
"Hi, Mister," Consuelo said; the little girl with the pigtails was standing beside him. Juan Diego saw that Pedro was with her.
"No going upstairs, children," Clark French cautioned the kids, but Pedro and Consuelo chose to follow Juan Diego as he limped through the lobby to the registration desk.
"The aunt with all the fish has died, Mister," Pedro began.
"Yes, I heard," Juan Diego told the boy.
"She broke her neck," Consuelo said.
"Her neck!" Juan Diego exclaimed.
"How do you break your neck getting out of bed, Mister?" Pedro asked.
"No idea," Juan Diego said.
"The lady who just appears has disappeared, Mister," Consuelo told him.
"Yes, I heard," Juan Diego said to the little girl with the pigtails.
The desk clerk saw Juan Diego coming; an eager-looking but anxious young man, he was already holding out the letter. "Mrs. Miriam left this for you, sir--she had to catch an early flight."
"Mrs. Miriam," Juan Diego repeated. Did no one know Miriam's last name?
Clark French had followed him and the children to the registration desk. "Is Mrs. Miriam a frequent guest at the Encantador? Is there a Mr. Miriam?" Clark asked the desk clerk. (Juan Diego knew well the tone of moral disapproval in his former student's voice; it was also a presence, a glowing heat, in Clark's writing voice.)
"She has stayed with us before, but not frequently. There is a daughter, sir," the desk clerk told Clark.
"Dorothy?" Juan Diego asked.
"Yes, that's the daughter's name, sir--Dorothy," the desk clerk said; he handed Juan Diego the letter.
"You know the mother and the daughter?" Clark French asked his former teacher. (Clark's tone of voice was now in moral high-alert mode.)
"I was closer to the daughter first, Clark, but I only just met both of them--on my flight from New York to Hong Kong," Juan Diego explained. "They're world travelers--that's all I know about them. They--"
"They sound worldly, all right--at least Miriam seemed very worldly," Clark abruptly said. (Juan Diego knew that worldly wasn't such a good thing--not if you were, like Clark, a serious Catholic.)
"Aren't you going to read the letter from the lady, Mister?" Consuelo asked. Remembering the contents of Dorothy's "letter" had made Juan Diego pause before opening Miriam's message in front of the children, but how could he not open it now? They were all waiting.
"Your woman friend may have noticed something--I mean about Auntie Carmen," Clark French said. Clark managed to make a woman friend sound like a demon in female form. Wasn't there a word for a female demon? (It sounded like something Sister Gloria would say.) A succubus--that was the word! Surely Clark French was familiar with the term. Succubi were female evil spirits, said to have sex with men who were asleep. It must come from Latin, Juan Diego was thinking, but his thoughts were interrupted by Pedro pulling on his arm.
"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, Jo
sefa!" 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."
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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.
EDWARD BONSHAW 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 Senor 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.