Avenue of Mysteries

  Dorothy had hugged Juan Diego to her chest; she rocked him in her surprisingly strong arms, where he went on sobbing. He'd no doubt noticed how the young woman was wearing one of those bras that let her nipples show--you could see her nipples through her bra and through the sweater Dorothy wore under her open cardigan.

  It must have been Miriam (Juan Diego thought) who now massaged the back of his neck; she had once more leaned close to him as she whispered in his ear. "You darling man, of course it hurts to be you! The things you feel! Most men don't feel what you feel," Miriam said. "That poor mother in A Story Set in Motion by the Virgin Mary--my God! When I think about what happens to her--"

  "Don't," Dorothy warned her mother.

  "A statue of the Virgin Mary falls from a pedestal and crushes her! She is killed on the spot," Miriam continued.

  Dorothy could feel Juan Diego shudder against her breasts. "Now you've done it, Mother," the disapproving daughter said. "Are you trying to make him more unhappy?"

  "You miss the point, Dorothy," her mom quickly said. "As the story says: 'At least she was happy. It is not every Christian who is fortunate enough to be instantly killed by the Blessed Virgin.' It's a funny scene, for Christ's sake!"

  But Juan Diego was shaking his head (again), this time against young Dorothy's breasts. "That wasn't your mom--that wasn't what happened to her, was it?" Dorothy asked him.

  "That's enough with the autobiographical insinuations, Dorothy," her mother said.

  "Like you should talk," Dorothy said to Miriam.

  No doubt, Juan Diego had noticed that Miriam's breasts were also attractive, though her nipples were not visible through her sweater. Not such a contemporary kind of bra, Juan Diego was thinking as he struggled to answer Dorothy's question about his mother, who hadn't been crushed to death by a falling statue of the Virgin Mary--not exactly.

  Yet, again, Juan Diego couldn't speak. He was emotionally and sexually overcharged; there was so much adrenaline surging through his body, he couldn't contain his lust or his tears. He was missing everyone he ever knew; he was desiring both Miriam and Dorothy, to the degree that he could not have articulated which of these women he wanted more.

  "Poor baby," Miriam whispered in Juan Diego's ear; he felt her kiss the back of his neck.

  All Dorothy did was inhale. Juan Diego could feel her chest expand against his face.

  What was it Edward Bonshaw used to say in those moments when the zealot felt that the world of human frailties must yield to God's will--when all we mere mortals could do was listen to whatever God's will was, and then do it? Juan Diego could still hear Senor Eduardo saying this: "Ad majorem Dei gloriam--to the greater glory of God."

  Under the circumstances--cuddled against Dorothy's bosom, kissed by her mother--wasn't that all Juan Diego could do? Just listen to whatever God's will was, and then do it? Of course, there was a contradiction in this: Juan Diego wasn't exactly in the company of a couple of God's-will kind of women. (Miriam and Dorothy were "Spare me God's will!" kind of women.)

  "Ad majorem Dei gloriam," the novelist murmured.

  "It must be Spanish," Dorothy told her mom.

  "For Christ's sake, Dorothy," Miriam said. "It's fucking Latin."

  Juan Diego could feel Dorothy shrug. "Whatever it is," the rebellious daughter said, "it's about sex--I know it is."

  * 7 *

  Two Virgins

  There was a panel of push-buttons on the night table in Juan Diego's hotel room. Confusingly, these buttons dimmed--or turned on and off--the lights in Juan Diego's bedroom and bathroom, but the buttons had a bewildering effect on the radio and TV.

  The sadistic maid had left the radio on--this perverse behavior, often below levels of early detection, must be ingrained in hotel maids the world over--yet Juan Diego managed to mute the volume on the radio, if not turn it off. Lights had indeed dimmed; yet these same lights faintly endured, despite Juan Diego's efforts to turn them off. The TV had flourished, briefly, but was once more dark and quiet. His last resort, Juan Diego knew, would be to extract the credit card (actually, his room key) from the slot by the door to his room; then, as Dorothy had warned him, everything electrical would be extinguished, and he would be left to grope around in the pitch-dark.

  I can live with dim, the writer thought. He couldn't understand how he'd slept for fifteen hours on the plane and was already tired again. Perhaps the push-button panel was at fault, or was it his newfound lust? And the cruel maid had rearranged the items in his bathroom. The pill-cutting device was on the opposite side of the sink from where he'd so carefully placed his beta-blockers (with his Viagra).

  Yes, he was aware that he was now long overdue for a beta-blocker; even so, he didn't take one of the gray-blue Lopressor pills. He'd held the elliptical tablet in his hand but then had returned it to the prescription container. Juan Diego had taken a Viagra instead--a whole one. He'd not forgotten that half a pill was sufficient; he was imagining that he would need more than half a Viagra if Dorothy called him or knocked on his door.

  As he lay awake, but barely, in the dimly lit hotel room, Juan Diego imagined that a visit from Miriam might also require him to have a whole Viagra. And because he was accustomed to only half a Viagra--50 milligrams, instead of 100--he was aware that his nose was stuffier than usual and his throat was dry, and he sensed the beginnings of a headache. Always deliberate, he'd drunk a lot of water with the Viagra; water seemed to lessen the side effects. And the water would make him get up in the night to pee, if the beer didn't suffice. That way, if Dorothy or Miriam never made an appearance, he wouldn't have to wait till the morning to take a diminishing Lopressor pill; it had been so long since he'd had a beta-blocker, maybe he should take two Lopressor pills, Juan Diego considered. But his confounding, adrenaline-driven desires had commingled with his tiredness, and with his eternal self-doubt. Why would either of those desirable women want to sleep with me? the novelist asked himself. By then, of course, he was asleep. There was no one to notice, but, even asleep, he had an erection.

  IF THE RUSH OF adrenaline had stimulated his desire for women--for a mother and her daughter, no less--Juan Diego should have anticipated that his dreams (the reenactment of his most formative adolescent experiences) might suffer a surge of detail.

  In his dream at the Regal Airport Hotel, Juan Diego almost failed to recognize Rivera's truck. Streaks of the boy's blood laced the exterior of the windswept cab; barely more recognizable was the blood-flecked face of Diablo, el jefe's dog. The gore-glazed truck, which was parked at the Templo de la Compania de Jesus, got the attention of those tourists and worshipers who'd come to the temple. It was hard not to notice the blood-spattered dog.

  Diablo, who'd been left in the flatbed of Rivera's pickup, was fiercely territorial; he would not permit the bystanders to approach the truck too closely, though one bold boy had touched a drying streak of blood on the passenger-side door--long enough to ascertain that it was still sticky and, indeed, was blood.

  "!Sangre!" the brave boy said.

  Someone else murmured it first: "Una matanza." (This means "a bloodbath" or "a massacre.") Oh, the conclusions a crowd will come to!

  From a little blood spilled on an old truck, and a bloodstained dog, this crowd was leaping to conclusions--one after another. A splinter group of the crowd rushed inside the temple; there was talk that the victim of an apparent gang-style shooting had been deposited at the feet of the big Virgin Mary. (Who would want to miss seeing that?)

  It was on the heels of this rampant speculation, and the partial but sudden shift in the crowd--a mad dash leaving the scene of the crime (the truck at the curb) for the drama taking place inside the temple--that Brother Pepe found a parking place for his dusty red VW Beetle, next to the blood-smeared vehicle and the murderous-looking Diablo.

  Brother Pepe had recognized el jefe's truck; he saw the blood and assumed that the poor children, who were (Pepe knew) in Rivera's care, might have come to some unmentionable harm.

  "U
h-oh--los ninos," Pepe said. To Edward Bonshaw, Pepe said quickly: "Leave your things; there appears to be some trouble."

  "Trouble?" the zealot repeated, in his eager way. Someone in the crowd had uttered the perro word, and Edward Bonshaw--hurrying after the waddling Brother Pepe--got a glimpse of the terrifying Diablo. "What about the dog?" Edward asked Brother Pepe.

  "El perro ensangrentado," Pepe repeated. "The bloodstained dog."

  "Well, I can see that!" Edward Bonshaw said, somewhat peevishly.

  The Jesuit temple was thronged with stupefied onlookers. "Un milagro!" one of the gawkers shouted.

  Edward Bonshaw's Spanish was more selective than just plain bad; he knew the milagro word--it sparked in him an abiding interest.

  "A miracle?" Edward asked Pepe, who was pushing his way toward the altar. "What miracle?"

  "I don't know--I just got here!" Brother Pepe panted. We wanted an English teacher and we have un milagrero, poor Pepe was thinking--"a miracle monger."

  It was Rivera who'd been audibly praying for a miracle, and the crowd of idiots--or some idiots in the crowd--had doubtless overheard him. Now the miracle word was on everyone's lips.

  El jefe had carefully placed Juan Diego before the altar, but the boy was screaming nonetheless. (In his dreams, Juan Diego downplayed the pain.) Rivera kept crossing himself and genuflecting to the overbearing statue of the Virgin Mary, all the while looking over his shoulder for the appearance of the dump kids' mother; it was unclear if Rivera was praying for Juan Diego to be cured as much as the dump boss was hoping for a miracle to save himself from Esperanza's wrath--namely, her blaming Rivera (as she surely would) for the accident.

  "The screaming isn't good," Edward Bonshaw was muttering. He'd not yet seen the boy, but the sound of a child screaming in pain lacked miracle potential.

  "A case of hopeful wishing," Brother Pepe gasped; he knew his words weren't quite right. He asked Lupe what had happened, but Pepe couldn't understand what the crazed child said.

  "What language is she speaking?" Edward eagerly asked. "It sounds a little like Latin."

  "It's gibberish, though she seems very intelligent--even prescient," Brother Pepe whispered in the newcomer's ear. "No one can understand her--just the boy." The screaming was unbearable.

  That was when Edward Bonshaw saw Juan Diego, prostrate and bleeding before the towering Virgin Mary. "Merciful Mother! Save the poor child!" the Iowan cried, silencing the murmuring mob but not the screaming boy.

  Juan Diego hadn't noticed the other people in the temple, except for what appeared to be two mourners; they knelt in the foremost pew. Two women, all in black--they wore veils, their heads completely covered. Strangely, it comforted the crying child to see the two women mourners. When Juan Diego saw them, his pain abated.

  This was not exactly a miracle, but the sudden reduction of his pain made Juan Diego wonder if the two women were mourning him--if he were the one who'd died, or if he was going to die. When the boy looked for them again, he saw that the silent mourners had not moved; the two women in black, their heads bowed, were as motionless as statues.

  Pain or no pain, it was no surprise to Juan Diego that the Virgin Mary hadn't healed his foot; the boy wasn't holding his breath for an ensuing miracle from Our Lady of Guadalupe, either.

  "The lazy virgins aren't working today, or they don't want to help you," Lupe told her brother. "Who's the funny-looking gringo? What's he want?"

  "What did she say?" Edward Bonshaw asked the injured boy.

  "The Virgin Mary is a fraud," the boy replied; instantly, he felt his pain returning.

  "A fraud--not our Mary!" Edward Bonshaw exclaimed.

  "This is the dump kid I was telling you about, un nino de la basura," Brother Pepe was trying to explain. "He's a smart one--"

  "Who are you? What do you want?" Juan Diego asked the gringo in the funny-looking Hawaiian shirt.

  "He's our new teacher, Juan Diego--be nice," Brother Pepe warned the boy. "He's one of us, Mr. Edward Bon--"

  "Eduardo," the Iowan insisted, interrupting Pepe.

  "Father Eduardo? Brother Eduardo?" Juan Diego asked.

  "Senor Eduardo," Lupe suddenly said. Even the Iowan had understood her.

  "Actually, just Eduardo is okay," Edward modestly said.

  "Senor Eduardo," Juan Diego repeated; for no known reason, the injured dump reader liked the sound of this. The boy looked for the two women mourners in the foremost pew, not finding them. How they could have just disappeared struck Juan Diego as unlikely as the fluctuations in his pain; it had briefly relented but was now (once again) relentless. As for those two women, well--maybe those two were always just appearing, or disappearing. Who knows what just appears, or disappears, to a boy in this much pain?

  "Why is the Virgin Mary a fraud?" Edward Bonshaw asked the boy, who lay unmoving at the Holy Mother's feet.

  "Don't ask--not now. There isn't time," Brother Pepe started to say, but Lupe was already babbling unintelligibly--pointing first to Mother Mary, then to the smaller, dark-skinned virgin, who was often unnoticed in her more modest shrine.

  "Is that Our Lady of Guadalupe?" the new missionary asked. From where they were, at the Mary Monster altar, the Guadalupe portrait was small and off to one side of the temple--almost out of sight, purposely tucked away.

  "!Si!" Lupe cried, stamping her foot; she suddenly spat on the floor, almost perfectly between the two virgins.

  "Another probable fraud," Juan Diego said, to explain his sister's spontaneous spitting. "But Guadalupe isn't entirely bad; she's just a little corrupted."

  "Is the girl--" Edward Bonshaw started to say, but Brother Pepe put a cautionary hand on the Iowan's shoulder.

  "Don't say it," Pepe warned the young American.

  "No, she's not," Juan Diego answered. The unspoken retarded word hovered there in the temple, as if one of the miraculous virgins had communicated it. (Naturally, Lupe had read the new missionary's mind; she knew what he'd been thinking.)

  "The boy's foot isn't right--it's flattened, and it's pointing the wrong way," Edward said to Brother Pepe. "Shouldn't he see a doctor?"

  "!Si!" Juan Diego cried. "Take me to Dr. Vargas. Only the boss man was hoping for a miracle."

  "The boss man?" Senor Eduardo asked, as if this were a religious reference to the Almighty.

  "Not that boss man," Brother Pepe said.

  "What boss man?" the Iowan asked.

  "El jefe," Juan Diego said, pointing to the anxious, guilt-stricken Rivera.

  "Aha! The boy's father?" Edward asked Pepe.

  "No, probably not--he's the dump boss," Brother Pepe said.

  "He was driving the truck! He's too lazy to get his side-view mirror fixed! And look at his stupid mustache! No woman who isn't a prostitute will ever want him with that hairy caterpillar on his lip!" Lupe raved.

  "Goodness--she has her own language, doesn't she?" Edward Bonshaw asked Brother Pepe.

  "This is Rivera. He was driving the truck that backed over me, but he's like a father to us--better than a father. He doesn't leave," Juan Diego told the new missionary. "And he never beats us."

  "Aha," Edward said, with uncharacteristic caution. "And your mother? Where is--"

  As if summoned by those do-nothing virgins, who were taking the day off, Esperanza rushed to her son at the altar; she was a ravishingly beautiful young woman who made an entrance of herself wherever and whenever she appeared. Not only did she not look like a cleaning woman for the Jesuits; to the Iowan, she most certainly didn't look like anyone's mother.

  What is it about women with chests like that? Brother Pepe was wondering to himself. Why are their chests always heaving?

  "Always late, usually hysterical," Lupe said sullenly. The girl's looks at the Virgin Mary and Our Lady of Guadalupe had been disbelieving--in her mother's case, Lupe simply looked away.

  "Surely she isn't the boy's--" Senor Eduardo began.

  "Yes, she is--the girl's, too," was all Pepe said.

  Es
peranza was raving incoherently; it seemed she was beseeching the Virgin Mary, rather than be so mundane as to ask Juan Diego what had happened to him. Her incantations sounded to Brother Pepe like Lupe's gibberish--possibly genetic, Pepe thought--and Lupe (of course) chimed in, adding her incoherence to the babble. Naturally, Lupe was pointing to the dump boss as she reenacted the saga of the multifaceted mirror and the foot-flattening truck in reverse; there was no pity for the caterpillar-lipped Rivera, who seemed ready to throw himself at the Virgin Mary's feet--or repeatedly bash his head against the pedestal where the Holy Mother so dispassionately stood. But was she dispassionate?

  It was then that Juan Diego looked upward at the Virgin Mary's usually unemotional face. Did the boy's pain affect his vision, or did Mother Mary indeed glower at Esperanza--she who'd brought so little hope, her name notwithstanding, into her son's life? And what exactly did the Holy Mother disapprove of? What had made the Virgin Mary glare so angrily at the children's mother?

  The low-cut neckline of Esperanza's revealing blouse certainly showed a lot of the implausible cleaning woman's cleavage, and from the Virgin Mary's elevated position on her pedestal, the Holy Mother looked down upon Esperanza's decolletage from an all-encompassing height.

  Esperanza herself was oblivious to the towering statue's implacable disapproval. Juan Diego was surprised that his mom understood what her vehement daughter was babbling about. Juan Diego was used to being Lupe's interpreter--even for Esperanza--but not this time.

  Esperanza had stopped wringing her hands imploringly in the area of the Virgin Mary's toes; the sensual-looking cleaning woman was no longer beseeching the unresponsive statue. Juan Diego always underestimated his mother's capacity for blame--that is, for blaming others. In this case, Rivera--el jefe, with his unrepaired side-view mirror, he who slept in the cab of his truck with his gear shift in reverse--was the recipient of Esperanza's animated blame. She beat the dump boss with both her hands, in tightly clenched fists; she kicked his shins; she yanked his hair, her bracelets scratching his face.

  "You have to help Rivera," Juan Diego said to Brother Pepe, "or he'll need to see Dr. Vargas, too." The injured boy then spoke to his sister: "Did you see how the Virgin Mary looked at our mother?" But the seemingly all-knowing child simply shrugged.