Avenue of Mysteries (37 page)

The conviction that he chiefly had an
imaginary
sex life depressed him, and he’d taken only
half
a Lopressor pill today; this time, he couldn’t entirely blame the beta-blockers for making him feel diminished. Juan Diego decided to put one Viagra tablet in his right-front pants pocket. This way, he’d be prepared—Miriam or no Miriam.

He often put his hand in his right-front pocket; Juan Diego didn’t need to see that pretty mah-jongg tile, but he liked the feel of it—so smooth. The game block had made a perfect check mark on Edward Bonshaw’s pale forehead; Señor Eduardo had carried the tile with him
as a keepsake. When the dear man was dying—when Señor Eduardo was not only no longer dressing himself, but wasn’t wearing clothes with pockets—he’d given the mah-jongg tile to Juan Diego. The game block, once imbedded between Edward Bonshaw’s blond eyebrows, would become Juan Diego’s talisman.

The four-sided gray-blue Viagra tablet was not as smooth as the bam-boo-and-ivory mah-jongg tile; the game block was twice the size of the Viagra pill—his
rescue
pill, as Juan Diego thought of it. And if Miriam was the uninvited guest in the second-floor room near the Encantador library, the Viagra tablet in Juan Diego’s right-front pants pocket was a second talisman he carried with him.

Naturally, the knock on his hotel-room door filled him with false expectations. It was only Clark, coming to take him to dinner. When Juan Diego was turning out the lights in his bathroom and bedroom, Clark advised him to turn on the ceiling fan and leave it on.

“See the gecko?” Clark said, pointing to the ceiling. A gecko, smaller than a pinky finger, was poised on the ceiling above the headboard of the bed. There wasn’t much Juan Diego missed about Mexico—hence he’d never been back—but he did miss the geckos. The little one above the bed darted on its adhesive toes across the ceiling at the exact instant Juan Diego turned on the fan.

“Once the fan has been on awhile, the geckos will settle down,” Clark said. “You don’t want them racing around when you’re trying to go to sleep.”

Juan Diego was disappointed in himself for not seeing the geckos until Clark pointed one out; as he was closing his hotel-room door, he spotted a second gecko scurrying over the bathroom wall—it was lightning-fast and quickly disappeared behind the bathroom mirror.

“I miss the geckos,” Juan Diego admitted to Clark. Outside, on the balcony, they could hear music coming from a noisy club for locals on the beach.

“Why don’t you go back to Mexico—I mean, just to
visit
?” Clark asked him.

It was always like this with Clark, Juan Diego remembered. Clark wanted Juan Diego’s “issues” with childhood and early adolescence to be over; Clark wanted all grievances to end in an uplifting manner, as in Clark’s novels. Everyone should be saved, Clark believed; everything could be forgiven, he imagined. Clark made goodness seem tedious.

But what
hadn’t
Juan Diego and Clark French fought about?

There’d been no end to their to and fro about the late Pope John Paul II, who’d died in 2005. He’d been a young cardinal from Poland when he was elected pope, and he became a very popular pope, but John Paul’s efforts to “restore normality” in Poland—this meant making abortion illegal again—drove Juan Diego crazy.

Clark French had expressed his fondness for the Polish pope’s “culture of life” idea—John Paul II’s name for his stance against abortion
and
contraception, which amounted to protecting “defenseless” fetuses from the “culture of death” idea.

“Why would you—you of all people, given what
happened
to you—choose a death idea over a life idea?” Clark had asked his former teacher. And now Clark was suggesting (again) that Juan Diego should go back to Mexico—just to
visit
!

“You know why I won’t go back, Clark,” Juan Diego once more answered, limping along the second-floor balcony. (Another time, when he’d had too much beer, Juan Diego had said to Clark: “Mexico is in the hands of criminals and the Catholic Church.”)

“Don’t tell me you blame the Church for AIDS—you’re not saying safe sex is the answer to
everything,
are you?” Clark now asked his former teacher. This was not a very skillfully veiled reference, Juan Diego knew—not that Clark was necessarily trying to
veil
his references.

Juan Diego remembered how Clark had called condom use “propaganda.” Clark was probably paraphrasing Pope Benedict XVI. Hadn’t Benedict said something to the effect that condoms “only exacerbate” the AIDS problem? Or was that what
Clark
had said?

And now, because Juan Diego hadn’t answered Clark’s question about safe sex solving
everything,
Clark kept pressing the Benedict point: “
Benedict’s
position—namely, that the only efficient way to combat an epidemic is by
spiritual renovation
—”

“Clark!” Juan Diego cried. “All ‘spiritual renovation’ means is more of the same old family values—meaning heterosexual marriage, meaning nothing but sexual abstention before marriage—”

“Sounds to me like
one
way to slow down an epidemic,” Clark said slyly. He was as doctrinaire as ever!

“Between your Church’s unfollowable rules and human nature, I’ll bet on human nature,” Juan Diego said. “Take celibacy—” he began.

“Maybe after the children and the teenagers have gone to bed,” Clark reminded his former teacher.

They were alone on the balcony, and it was New Year’s Eve; Juan
Diego was pretty sure that the teenagers would be up later than the adults, but all he said was: “Think about pedophilia, Clark.”

“I knew it! I knew that was next!” Clark said excitedly.

In his Christmas address in Rome—not even two weeks ago—Pope Benedict XVI had said that pedophilia was considered
normal
as recently as the 1970s. Clark knew that would have made Juan Diego hot under the collar. Now, naturally, his former teacher was up to his old tricks, quoting the pope as if the entire realm of Catholic theology were to blame for Benedict’s suggesting there was no such thing as evil in itself or good in itself.

“Clark, Benedict
said
there is only a ‘better than’ and a ‘worse than’—that’s what your pope said,” Clark’s former teacher was telling him.

“May I remind you that the statistics on pedophilia
outside
the Church, in the general population, are exactly the same as the statistics
inside
the Church?” Clark French said to Juan Diego.

“Benedict said: ‘Nothing is good or bad in itself.’ He said
nothing,
Clark,” Juan Diego told his former student. “Pedophilia isn’t nothing; surely pedophilia is ‘bad in itself,’ Clark.”

“After the children have—”

“There are no children here, Clark!” Juan Diego shouted. “We’re alone, on a balcony!” he cried.

“Well—” Clark French said cautiously, looking all around; they could hear the voices of children somewhere, but no children (not even teenagers, or other adults) were anywhere in sight.

“The Catholic hierarchy believes kissing leads to sin,” Juan Diego whispered. “Your Church is against birth control, against abortion, against gay marriage—your Church is against
kissing,
Clark!”

Suddenly, a swarm of small children ran past them on the balcony; their flip-flops made a slapping sound and their wet hair gleamed.

“After the little ones have gone to bed—” Clark French began again; conversation was a competition with him, akin to a combat sport. Clark would have made an indefatigable missionary. Clark had that Jesuitical “I know everything” way about him—always the emphasis on learning and evangelizing. The mere thought of his own martyrdom probably motivated Clark. He would happily suffer, just to make an impossible point; if you abused him, he would smile and thrive.

“Are you all right?” Clark was asking Juan Diego.

“I’m just a little out of breath—I’m not used to limping this fast,” Juan Diego told him. “Or limping and talking, together.”

They slowed their pace as they descended the stairs and made their way to the main lobby of the Encantador, where the dining room was. There was an overhanging roof to the hotel restaurant, and a rolled-up bamboo curtain that could be lowered as a barrier against wind and rain. The openness to the palm trees and the view of the sea gave the dining room the feeling of a spacious veranda. There were paper party hats at all the tables.

What a big family Clark French had married into! Juan Diego was thinking. Dr. Josefa Quintana must have had thirty or forty relatives, and more than half of them were children or young people.

“No one expects you to remember everyone’s name,” Clark whispered to Juan Diego.

“About the mystery guest,” Juan Diego said suddenly. “She should sit next to me.”

“Next to
you
?” Clark asked him.

“Certainly. All of you hate her. At least I’m neutral,” Juan Diego told Clark.

“I don’t
hate
her—no one
knows
her! She’s inserted herself into a
family
—”

“I know, Clark—I know,” Juan Diego said. “She should sit next to me. We’re both strangers. All of you know one another.”

“I was thinking of putting her at one of the children’s tables,” Clark told him. “Maybe at the table with the most obstreperous children.”

“You see? You
do
hate her,” Juan Diego said to him.

“I was kidding. Maybe a table of teenagers—the most sullen ones,” Clark continued.

“You definitely hate her. I’m
neutral,
” Juan Diego reminded him. (Miriam could corrupt the teenagers, Juan Diego was thinking.)

“Uncle Clark!” A small, round-faced boy tugged on Clark’s hand.

“Yes, Pedro. What is it?” Clark asked the little boy.

“It’s the big gecko behind the painting in the library. It came out from behind the painting!” Pedro told him.

“Not the
giant
gecko—not
that
one!” Clark cried, feigning alarm.

“Yes! The giant one!” the little boy exclaimed.

“Well, it just so happens, Pedro, that
this
man knows all about geckos—he’s a gecko expert. He not only loves geckos; he
misses
geckos,” Clark told the child. “This is Mr. Guerrero,” Clark added, slipping away and leaving Juan Diego with Pedro. The boy instantly clutched the older man’s hand.

“You
love
them?” the boy asked, but before Juan Diego could answer him, Pedro said: “Why do you miss geckos, Mister?”

“Ah, well—” Juan Diego started and then stopped, stalling for time. When he began to limp in the direction of the stairs to the library, his limp drew a dozen children to him; they were five-year-olds, or only a little older, like Pedro.

“He knows all about geckos—he
loves
them,” Pedro was telling the other kids. “He
misses
geckos.
Why
?” Pedro asked Juan Diego again.

“What happened to your foot, Mister?” one of the other children, a little girl with pigtails, asked him.

“I was a dump kid. I lived in a shack near the Oaxaca basurero—
basurero
means ‘dump’; Oaxaca is in Mexico,” Juan Diego told them. “The shack my sister and I lived in had only one door. Every morning, when I got up, there was a gecko on that screen door. The gecko was so fast, it could disappear in the blink of an eye,” Juan Diego told the children, clapping his hands for effect. He was limping more as he went up the stairs. “One morning, a truck backed over my right foot. The driver’s side-view mirror was broken; the driver couldn’t see me. It wasn’t his fault; he was a good man. He’s dead now, and I miss him. I miss the dump, and the geckos,” Juan Diego told the children. He was not aware that some adults were also following him upstairs to the library. Clark French was following his former teacher, too; it was, of course, Juan Diego’s
story
that they were following.

Had the man with the limp really said he missed the
dump
? a few of the children were asking one another.

“If I’d lived in the basurero, I don’t think I would
miss
it,” the little girl with pigtails told Pedro. “Maybe he misses his
sister,
” she said.

“I can understand missing
geckos,
” Pedro told her.

“Geckos are mostly nocturnal—they’re more active at night, when there are more insects. They eat insects; geckos don’t hurt you,” Juan Diego was saying.

“Where is your sister?” the little girl with the pigtails asked Juan Diego.

“She’s dead,” Juan Diego answered her; he was about to say
how
Lupe had died, but he didn’t want to give the little ones nightmares.

“Look!” Pedro said. He pointed at a big painting; it hung over a comfortable-looking couch in the Encantador library. The gecko was enough of a giant to be almost as visible, even from a distance, as the painting. The gecko clung to the wall beside the painting; as Juan Diego
and the children approached, the gecko climbed higher. The big lizard waited, watching them, about halfway between the painting and the ceiling. It really was a big gecko, almost the size of a house cat.

“The man in the painting is a saint,” Juan Diego was telling the children. “He was once a student at the University of Paris; he’d been a soldier, too—he was a Basque soldier, and he was wounded.”

“Wounded
how
?” Pedro asked.

“By a cannonball,” Juan Diego told him.

“Wouldn’t a cannonball kill you?” Pedro asked.

“I guess not if you’re going to be a saint,” Juan Diego answered.

“What was his name?” the little girl with pigtails asked; she was full of questions. “Who was the saint?”

“Your uncle Clark knows who he was,” Juan Diego answered her. He was aware of Clark French watching him, and listening to him—ever the devoted student. (Clark looked like someone who might survive being shot with a cannonball.)

“Uncle Clark!” the children were calling.