Only Dr. Stein--dear Dr. Rosemary!--understood, Juan Diego believed. Dr. Rosemary Stein didn't know everything about her friend and patient; she didn't understand dump kids--she hadn't been there when he'd been a child and a young adolescent. But Rosemary did know Juan Diego when he'd lost Senor Eduardo and Flor; Dr. Stein had been their doctor, too.
Dr. Rosemary, as Juan Diego thought of her--most fondly--knew why he'd never married. It wasn't because Flor and Edward Bonshaw had been a queer couple; it was because those two had loved each other so much that Juan Diego couldn't imagine ever finding a partnership as good as theirs--they'd been inimitable. And he'd loved them not only as parents, not to mention as "adoptive" parents. He'd loved them as the best (meaning, the most unattainable) couple he ever knew.
"He misses stuff," Pedro had said, citing geckos and the dump.
"Don't forget his sister," Consuelo had said.
More than a lion had killed Lupe, Juan Diego knew, but he could no more say that--to any of them, there on the beach--than he could have become a skywalker. Juan Diego could no more have saved his sister than he could have become The Wonder.
And if he had asked Dr. Rosemary Stein to marry him--that is, before she'd said yes to someone else--who knows if she would have accepted the dump reader's proposal?
"How was the swimming?" Clark French asked his former teacher. "I mean before the sea urchins," Clark needlessly explained.
"Mister likes to bob around in one place," Consuelo answered. "Don't you, Mister?" the little girl in pigtails asked.
"Yes, I do, Consuelo," Juan Diego told her.
"Treading water, a little dog-paddling--it's a lot like writing a novel, Clark," the dump reader told his former student. "It feels like you're going a long way, because it's a lot of work, but you're basically covering old ground--you're hanging out in familiar territory."
"I see," Clark said cautiously. He didn't see, Juan Diego knew. Clark was a world-changer; he wrote with a mission, a positive agenda.
Clark French had no appreciation for dog-paddling or treading water; they were like living in the past, like going nowhere. Juan Diego lived there, in the past--reliving, in his imagination, the losses that had marked him.
* 22 *
Manana
"If something in your life is wrong, or just unresolved, Mexico City is probably not the answer to your dreams," Juan Diego had written in an early novel. "Unless you're feeling in charge of your life, don't go there." The female character who says this isn't Mexican, and we never learn what happens to her in Mexico City--Juan Diego's novel didn't go there.
The circus site, in northern Mexico City, was adjacent to a graveyard. The sparse grass in the stony field, where they exercised the horses and walked the elephants, was gray with soot. There was so much smog in the air, the lions' eyes were watering when Lupe fed them.
Ignacio was making Lupe feed Hombre and the lionesses; the girl acrobats--the ones who were anticipating their periods--had revolted against the lion tamer's tactics. Ignacio had convinced the girl acrobats that the lions knew when the girls got their periods, and the girls were afraid of bleeding near the big cats. (Of course, the girls were afraid of getting their periods in the first place.)
Lupe, who believed she would never get her period, was unafraid. And because she could read the lions' minds, Lupe knew that Hombre and the lionesses never thought about the girls' menstruating.
"Only Ignacio thinks about it," Lupe had told Juan Diego. She liked feeding Hombre and the lionesses. "You wouldn't believe how much they think about meat," she'd explained to Edward Bonshaw. The Iowan wanted to watch Lupe feeding the lions--just to be sure the process was safe.
Lupe showed Senor Eduardo how the slot in the cage for the feeding tray could be locked and unlocked. The tray slid in and out, along the floor of the cage. Hombre would extend his paw through the slot, reaching for the meat Lupe put on the tray; this was more a gesture of desire on the lion's part than an actual attempt to grab the meat.
When Lupe slid the tray full of meat back inside the lion's cage, Hombre always withdrew his extended paw. The lion waited for the meat in a sitting position; like a broom, his tail swished from side to side across the floor of his cage.
The lionesses never reached through the slot for the meat Lupe was putting on the feeding tray; they sat waiting, with their tails swishing the whole time.
For cleaning, the feeding tray could be entirely removed from the slot at the floor of the cage. Even when the tray was taken out of the cage, the slot wasn't big enough for Hombre or the lionesses to escape through the opening; the slot was too small for Hombre's big head to fit through it. Not even one of the lionesses could have stuck her head through the open feeding slot.
"It's safe," Edward Bonshaw had said to Juan Diego. "I just wanted to be sure about the size of the opening."
Over the long weekend when La Maravilla was performing in Mexico City, Senor Eduardo slept with the dump kids in the dogs' troupe tent. The first night--when the dump kids knew the Iowan was asleep, because he was snoring--Lupe said to her brother: "I can fit through the slot where the feeding tray slides in and out. It's not too small an opening for me to fit through."
In the darkness of the tent, Juan Diego considered what Lupe meant; what Lupe said and what she meant weren't always the same thing.
"You mean, you could climb into Hombre's cage--or the lionesses' cage--through the feeding slot?" the boy asked her.
"If the feeding tray was removed from the slot--yes, I could," Lupe told him.
"You sound like you've tried it," Juan Diego said.
"Why would I try it?" Lupe asked him.
"I don't know--why would you?" Juan Diego asked her.
She didn't answer him, but even in the dark he sensed her shrug, her sheer indifference to answering him. (As if Lupe couldn't be bothered to explain everything she knew, or how she knew it.)
Someone farted--one of the dogs, perhaps. "Was that the biter?" Juan Diego asked. Perro Mestizo, a.k.a. Mongrel, slept with Lupe on her cot. Pastora slept with Juan Diego; he knew the sheepdog hadn't farted.
"It was the parrot man," Lupe answered. The dump kids laughed. A dog's tail wagged--there was the accompanying thump-thump. One of the dogs had liked the laughter.
"Alemania," Lupe said. It was the female German shepherd who had wagged her big tail. She slept on the dirt floor of the tent, by the tent flap, as if she were guarding (in police-dog fashion) the way in or out.
"I wonder if lions can catch rabies," Lupe said, as if she were falling asleep, and she wouldn't remember this idea in the morning.
"Why?" Juan Diego asked her.
"Just wondering," Lupe said, sighing. After a pause, she asked: "Don't you think the new dog act is stupid?"
Juan Diego knew when Lupe was deliberately changing the subject, and of course Lupe knew he'd been thinking about the new dog act. It was Juan Diego's idea, but the dogs hadn't been very cooperative, and the dwarf clowns had taken over the idea; it had become Paco and Beer Belly's new act, in Lupe's opinion. (As if those two clowns needed another stupid act.)
Ah, the passage of time--one day when he'd been dog-paddling in the pool at the old Iowa Field House, Juan Diego realized that the new dog act had amounted to his first novel-in-progress, but it was a story he'd been unable to finish. (And the idea that lions could catch rabies? Didn't this amount to a story that Lupe had been unable to bring to a close?)
Like Juan Diego's actual novels, the dog act began as a what-if proposition. What if one of the dogs could be trained to climb to the top of a stepladder? It was that type of stepladder with a shelf at the top; the shelf was for holding a can of paint, or a workman's tools, but Juan Diego had imagined the shelf as a diving platform for a dog. What if one of the dogs climbed the stepladder and sailed into the air, off the diving platform, into an open blanket the dwarf clowns were holding out?
"The audience would love it," Juan Diego told Estrella.
"Not Alemania--s
he won't do it," Estrella had said.
"Yes--I guess a German shepherd is too big to climb a stepladder," Juan Diego had replied.
"Alemania is too smart to do it," was all Estrella said.
"Perro Mestizo, the biter, is a chickenshit," Juan Diego said.
"You hate little dogs--you hated Dirty White," Lupe had told him.
"I don't hate little dogs--Perro Mestizo isn't that little. I hate cowardly dogs, and dogs who bite," Juan Diego had told his sister.
"Not Perro Mestizo--he won't do it," was all Estrella said.
They tried Pastora, the sheepdog, first; everyone thought that a dachshund's legs were too short to climb the steps on a stepladder--surely Baby couldn't reach the steps.
Pastora could climb the ladder--those border-collie types are very agile and aggressive--but when she got to the top, she lay down on the diving platform with her nose between her forepaws. The dwarf clowns danced under the stepladder, holding out the open blanket to the sheepdog, but Pastora wouldn't even stand on the diving platform. When Paco or Beer Belly called her name, the sheepdog just wagged her tail while she was lying down.
"She's no jumper," was all Estrella said.
"Baby has balls," Juan Diego said. Dachshunds do have balls--for their size, they seem especially ferocious--and Baby was willing to try climbing the stepladder. But the short-legged dachshund needed a boost.
This would be funny--the audience will laugh, Paco and Beer Belly decided. And the sight of the two dwarf clowns pushing Baby up the stepladder was funny. As always, Paco was dressed (badly) as a woman; while Paco pushed Baby's ass, to help the dachshund up the stepladder, Beer Belly stood behind Paco--pushing her ass up the ladder.
"So far, so good," Estrella said. But Baby, balls and all, was afraid of heights. When the dachshund got to the top of the stepladder, he froze on the diving platform; he was even afraid to lie down. The little dachshund stood so rigidly still that he began to tremble; soon the stepladder started to shake. Paco and Beer Belly pleaded with Baby as they held out the open blanket. Eventually, Baby peed on the diving platform; he was too afraid to lift his leg, the way male dogs are supposed to do.
"Baby is humiliated--he can't pee like himself," Estrella said.
But the act was funny, the dwarf clowns insisted. It didn't matter that Baby wasn't a jumper, Paco and Beer Belly said.
Estrella wouldn't let Baby do it in front of an audience. She said the act was psychologically cruel. This was not what Juan Diego had intended. But that night in the darkness of the dogs' troupe tent, all Juan Diego said to Lupe was: "The new dog act isn't stupid. All we need is a new dog--we need a jumper," Juan Diego said.
It would take him years to realize how he'd been manipulated into saying this. It was so long before Lupe said something--in the snoring, farting troupe tent for the dogs--Juan Diego was almost asleep when she spoke, and Lupe sounded as if she were half asleep herself.
"The poor horse," was all Lupe said.
"What horse?" Juan Diego asked in the darkness.
"The one in the graveyard," Lupe answered him.
In the morning, the dump kids woke up to a pistol shot. One of the circus horses had bolted from the sooty field and jumped the fence into the graveyard, where it broke its leg against a gravestone. Ignacio had shot the horse; the lion tamer kept a .45-caliber revolver, in case there was any lion trouble.
"That poor horse," was all Lupe said, at the sound of the shot.
La Maravilla had arrived in Mexico City on Thursday. The roustabouts had set up the troupe tents the day they'd arrived; all day Friday, the roustabouts were raising the main tent and securing the animal barriers around the ring. The animals' concentration was affected by traveling, and they needed most of Friday to recover.
The horse had been named Manana; he was a gelding, and a slow learner. The trainer was always saying that the horse might master a trick they'd been practicing for weeks "tomorrow"--hence Manana. But the trick of jumping the fence into the graveyard, and breaking his leg, was a new one for Manana.
Ignacio put the poor horse out of his misery on Friday. Manana had jumped a fence to get into the graveyard, but the gate to the graveyard was locked; disposing of the dead horse shouldn't have become a matter of such insurmountable difficulty. However, the gunshot had been reported; the police came to the circus site, and they were more of a hindrance than a help.
Why did the lion tamer have a big-caliber gun? the police asked. (Well, he was a lion tamer.) Why had Ignacio shot the horse? (Manana's leg was broken!) And so on.
There was no permit to dispose of the dead horse in Mexico City--not on a weekend, not in the case of a horse that hadn't "come from" Mexico City. Getting Manana out of the locked graveyard was just the start of the difficulties.
There were performances throughout the weekend, starting with Friday night. The last was early Sunday afternoon, and the roustabouts would collapse the main tent and dismantle the ring barriers before nightfall that day. La Maravilla would be on the road again, heading back to Oaxaca, by the middle of the day on Monday. The dump kids and Edward Bonshaw planned to go to the Guadalupe shrine on Saturday morning.
Juan Diego watched Lupe feeding the lions. A mourning dove was having a dust bath in the dirt near Hombre's cage; the lion hated birds, and maybe Hombre thought the dove was after his meat. For some reason, Hombre was more aggressive in the way he extended his paw through the slot for the feeding tray, and one of his claws nicked the back of Lupe's hand. There was only a little blood; Lupe put her hand to her mouth, and Hombre withdrew his paw--the guilty-looking lion retreated into his cage.
"Not your fault," Lupe said to the big cat. There was a change in the lion's dark-yellow eyes--a more intense focus, but on the mourning dove or on Lupe's blood? The bird must have sensed the intensity of Hombre's calculating stare and took flight.
Hombre's eyes were instantly normal again--even bored. The two dwarf clowns were waddling past the lions' cages, on their way to the outdoor showers. They wore towels around their waists and their sandals were flapping. The lion looked at them with an utter lack of interest.
"!Hola, Hombre!" Beer Belly called.
"!Hola, Lupe! !Hola, Lupe's brother!" Paco said; the cross-dresser's breasts were so small (almost nonexistent) that Paco didn't bother to cover them when she walked to and from the outdoor showers, and her beard was at its most stubbly in the mornings. (Whatever Paco was taking for hormones, she wasn't getting her estrogens from the same source Flor got hers; Flor got her estrogens from Dr. Vargas.)
But, as Flor had said, Paco was a clown; it wasn't Paco's aim in life to make herself passable as a woman. Paco was a gay dwarf who, in real life, spent most of her time as a man.
It was as a he that Paco went to La China, the gay bar on Bustamante. And when Paco went to La Coronita, where the transvestites liked to dress up, Paco also went as a he--Paco was just another guy among the gay clientele.
Flor said that Paco picked up a lot of first-timers, those men who were having their first experiences at being with another man. (Maybe the first-timers looked at a gay dwarf as a cautious way to start?)
But when Paco was with her circus family at La Maravilla, the dwarf clown felt safe to be a she. She could be comfortable as a cross-dresser around Beer Belly. In the clown acts, they always acted as if they were a couple, but in real life Beer Belly was straight. He was married, and his wife wasn't a dwarf.
Beer Belly's wife was afraid of getting pregnant; she didn't want to have a dwarf for a child. She made Beer Belly wear two condoms. Everyone in La Maravilla had heard Beer Belly's stories about the perils of wearing an extra condom.
"Nobody does that--no one wears two condoms, you know," Paco was always telling him, but Beer Belly kept using double condoms, because it was what his wife wanted.
The outdoor showers were made of flimsy, prefabricated plywood--they could be assembled and taken apart fairly fast. They sometimes fell down; they had even collapsed on the person taking a
shower. There were as many bad stories about the outdoor showers La Maravilla used as there were about Beer Belly's extra condoms. (Lots of embarrassing accidents, in other words.)
The girl acrobats complained to Soledad about Ignacio looking at them in the outdoor showers, but Soledad couldn't stop her husband from being a lecherous pig. The morning Manana was shot in the graveyard, Dolores was taking an outdoor shower; Paco and Beer Belly had timed their arrival at the showers--they were hoping to get a look at Dolores naked.
The two dwarf clowns were not lecherous--not in the case of the beautiful but unapproachable skywalker, The Wonder herself. Paco was a gay guy--what did Paco care about getting a look at Dolores? And Beer Belly had all he could possibly handle with his two-condom wife; Beer Belly wasn't personally interested in seeing Dolores naked, either.
But the two dwarfs had a bet between them. Paco had said: "My tits are bigger than Dolores's." Beer Belly bet that Dolores's were bigger. This was why the two clowns were always trying to get a look at Dolores in the outdoor shower. Dolores had heard about the bet; she wasn't happy about it. Juan Diego had imagined the shower falling down--Dolores exposed, the dwarf clowns arguing about breast size. (Lupe, who'd used the mouse-tits definition for Dolores's breasts, was on Paco's side; Lupe believed Paco's tits were bigger.)
That was why Juan Diego followed Paco and Beer Belly to the outdoor showers; the fourteen-year-old hoped something might happen, and he would get to see Dolores naked. (Juan Diego didn't care that her breasts were small; he believed she was beautiful, even if her tits were tiny.)