Avenue of Mysteries (56 page)

It was a bumpy landing at Lio Airport, Palawan—the runway was unpaved, a dirt landing strip. Upon leaving the plane, the passengers were greeted by native singers; standing aloof from the singers, as if bored by
them, was a weary-looking water buffalo. It was hard to imagine this sad water buffalo charging or trampling anyone, but only God (or Dorothy) really knew what Leslie’s wild boys (or one of them) may have done to provoke the beast.

Three boats were required the rest of the way, though the El Nido resort on Lagen Island wasn’t a long way from Palawan. What you saw of Lagen from the sea were the cliffs—the island was a mountain. The lagoon was hidden; the buildings of the resort circled the lagoon.

There was a friendly young spokesman for the resort to greet Juan Diego upon his arrival at El Nido. Consideration had been given to his limp; his room, with a view of the lagoon, was only a short walk to the dining hall. The misfortunes leading to poor Leslie’s sudden departure were discussed. “Those boys were a bit wild,” the young spokesman said tactfully, when he showed Juan Diego his room.

“But the
stingings
—surely those stinging things were not the result of any wildness on the boys’ part?” Juan Diego asked.

“Our guests who swim are not usually stung,” the young man said. “Those boys were seen stalking a monitor lizard—this is asking for trouble.”

“Stalking!” Juan Diego said; he tried to imagine the wild boys, armed with spears made from mangrove roots.

“Ms. Leslie’s friend was swimming with those boys
—she
wasn’t stung,” the young spokesman for the resort pointed out.

“Ah, yes—her
friend.
Is she—” Juan Diego started to ask.

“She’s here, sir—I take it you mean Ms. Dorothy,” the young man said.

“Yes, of course—Ms. Dorothy,” was all Juan Diego could say. Had last names gone out of style? Juan Diego would wonder, albeit briefly. He was surprised how pleasing a place El Nido was—remote but beautiful, he thought. He would have time to unpack, and perhaps limp around the perimeter of the lagoon, before dinner. Dorothy had arranged everything for him: she’d paid for his room and all his meals, the young spokesman for the resort had said. (Or had poor Leslie paid for everything? Juan Diego wondered, also briefly.)

Juan Diego didn’t know what he would do at El Nido; he was definitely questioning the idea that he truly liked the prospect of being alone with Dorothy.

He’d just finished unpacking—he had showered and shaved—when he heard the knock on his door. As knocks go, this one wasn’t tentative.

That would be her, Juan Diego thought; without looking in the peephole, he opened the door.

“I guess you were expecting me, huh?” Dorothy asked. Smiling, she pushed past him, bringing her bags into his room.

Hadn’t he figured out what kind of trip he was taking? Juan Diego was thinking. Wasn’t there something about this trip that felt preternaturally arranged? On this journey, didn’t the connections seem more predetermined than coincidental? (Or was he thinking too much like a writer?)

Dorothy sat on the bed; slipping off her sandals, she wiggled her toes. Juan Diego thought her legs were darker than he remembered—maybe she’d been in the sun since he’d last seen her.

“How did you and Leslie meet?” Juan Diego asked her.

The way Dorothy shrugged seemed so familiar; it was as if she’d watched Esperanza and Lupe shrug, and Dorothy was imitating them. “You meet so many people in airports, you know,” was all she said.

“What happened with the water buffalo?” Juan Diego asked.

“Oh, those boys!” Dorothy said, sighing. “I’m so glad you don’t have kids,” she told him with a smile.

“The water buffalo was provoked?” Juan Diego asked her.

“The boys found a live caterpillar—it was green and yellow, with dark-brown eyebrows,” Dorothy said. “Werner put the caterpillar up the water buffalo’s nose—he stuck it all the way up one nostril, as far as it would go.”

“Much tossing of the head and horns, I imagine,” Juan Diego said. “And those hooves—they must have made the ground shake.”

“You would snort, too, if you were trying to blow a caterpillar out of your nose,” Dorothy told him; it was clear she took the water buffalo’s side. “Werner wasn’t that badly trampled, considering.”

“Yes, but what about the stinging condoms and the transparent fingers that swam vertically?” Juan Diego asked her.

“Yeah, they were creepy. They didn’t sting
me,
but that kid’s penis was nothing anyone could be prepared for,” Dorothy said. “You just never know who’s going to be allergic to what—and
how
!”

“You just never know,” Juan Diego repeated; he sat down on the bed beside her. She smelled like coconut—maybe it was her sunscreen.

“I’ll bet you’ve missed me, huh?” Dorothy asked him.

“Yes,” he told her. Juan Diego had missed her, but until now he’d not realized how much Dorothy reminded him of the sex-doll statue of Guadalupe
—the one the good gringo had given him, the statue Sister Gloria had disapproved of from the start.

It had been a long day, but was that why Juan Diego felt so exhausted? He was too tired to ask Dorothy if she’d had sex with poor Leslie. (Knowing Dorothy, of course she had.)

“You look sad,” Dorothy was whispering. Juan Diego tried to speak, but the words wouldn’t come. “Maybe you should eat something—the food is good here,” she told him.

“Vietnam,” was all Juan Diego managed to say. He wanted to tell her that he’d been a new American once. He was too young for the draft, and when the draft ended, the lottery drawings didn’t matter. He was crippled; they would never have taken him. But because he’d known the good gringo, who had died trying not to go to Vietnam, Juan Diego would feel guilty for not going—or for not having to maim himself or run away in order not to go.

Juan Diego wanted to tell Dorothy that it troubled him to be so geographically close to Vietnam—on the same South China Sea—because he’d not been sent there, and how it bothered him that el gringo bueno was dead because the luckless boy had tried to run away from that misbegotten war.

But Dorothy said suddenly: “Your American soldiers came here, you know—I don’t mean
here,
not to this resort, not to Lagen Island or Palawan. I mean when they were on leave, you know—for what they called R and R from the Vietnam War.”

“What do you know about that?” Juan Diego found the words to ask her. (To himself, he sounded as incomprehensible as Lupe.)

There was Dorothy’s familiar shrug, again—she’d understood him. “Those frightened soldiers—some of them were only nineteen-year-olds, you know,” Dorothy said, as if she were remembering them, though she couldn’t have
remembered
any of those young men.

Dorothy wasn’t that much older than those boys had been during the war; Dorothy couldn’t have been
born
when the Vietnam War ended—it was thirty-five years ago! Surely, she’d been speaking
historically
about those frightened nineteen-year-olds.

They’d been frightened of dying, Juan Diego imagined—why wouldn’t young boys in a war be frightened? But, again, his words wouldn’t come, and Dorothy said: “Those boys were afraid of being captured, of being tortured. The United States suppressed information about the degree of torture the North Vietnamese practiced on captured
American soldiers. You should go to Laoag—the northernmost part of Luzon. Laoag, Vigan—those places. That’s where the young soldiers on leave from Vietnam went for R and R. We could go there, you know—I know a place,” Dorothy told him. “El Nido is just a resort—it’s nice, but it’s not real.”

All Juan Diego managed to say was: “Ho Chi Minh City is due west from here.”

“It was Saigon then,” Dorothy reminded him. “Da Nang and the Gulf of Tonkin are due west of Vigan. Hanoi is due west of Laoag. Everyone in Luzon knows how the North Vietnamese were into torturing your young Americans—that’s what those poor boys were afraid of. The North Vietnamese were ‘unsurpassed’ in torture—that’s what they say in Laoag and Vigan. We could go there,” Dorothy repeated.

“Okay,” Juan Diego told her; it was the easiest thing to say. He’d thought of mentioning a Vietnam vet—Juan Diego had met him in Iowa. The war veteran told some stories about R&R in the Philippines.

There’d been talk about Olongapo and Baguio, or maybe it was Baguio City. Were they cities in Luzon? Juan Diego wondered. The vet had mentioned bars, nightlife, prostitutes. There’d been no talk of torture, or of the North Vietnamese as experts in the field, and no mention of Laoag or Vigan—not that Juan Diego could recall.

“How are your pills? Should you be taking something?” Dorothy asked him. “Let’s go look at your pills,” she said, taking his hand.

“Okay,” he repeated. As tired as he was, he had the impression that he didn’t limp when he walked with her to the bathroom to look at the Lopressor and the Viagra tablets.

“I like this one, don’t you?” Dorothy was asking him. (She was holding a Viagra.) “It’s so perfect the way it is. Why would anyone cut it in half? I think a whole one is better than a half—don’t you?”

“Okay,” Juan Diego whispered.

“Don’t worry—don’t be sad,” Dorothy told him; she gave him the Viagra and a glass of water. “Everything’s going to be okay.”

Yet what Juan Diego suddenly remembered was not
okay.
He was remembering what Dorothy and Miriam had cried out, together—as if they were a chorus.

“
Spare me
God’s will!” Miriam and Dorothy had spontaneously cried. Had Clark French heard this, Juan Diego had little doubt, Clark would have thought this was a
succubi
kind of thing to say.

Did Miriam and Dorothy have an ax to grind with God’s will? Juan
Diego wondered. Then he suddenly thought: Did Dorothy and Miriam resent God’s will because
they
were the ones who carried it out? What a crazy idea! The thought of Miriam and Dorothy as messengers who carried out God’s will didn’t jibe with Clark’s impression of those two as demons in female form—not that Clark could have persuaded Juan Diego to believe that this mother and daughter were evil spirits. In his desire for them, surely Juan Diego felt that Miriam and Dorothy were bodily attached to the corporeal world; they were flesh and blood, not shades or spirits. As for the unholy two of them actually being the ones who carried out God’s will—well, why even think about it? Who could imagine it?

Naturally, Juan Diego would never express such a crazy idea—certainly not in the context of the moment, not when Dorothy was giving him the Viagra tablet and a glass of water.

“Did you and Leslie—” Juan Diego started to ask.

“Poor Leslie is confused—I just tried to
help
her,” Dorothy said.

“You tried to
help
her,” was all Juan Diego could say. The way he said it didn’t sound like a question, though he was thinking that if he were confused, being with Dorothy wouldn’t exactly
help.

•
25
•

Act 5, Scene 3

The way you remember or dream about your loved ones—the ones who are gone—you can’t stop their endings from jumping ahead of the rest of their stories. You don’t get to choose the chronology of what you dream, or the order of events in which you remember someone. In your mind—in your dreams, in your memories—sometimes the story begins with the epilogue.

In Iowa City, the first centralized HIV clinic—with nursing, social services, and teaching components—opened in June 1988. The clinic was held in Boyd Tower—it was called a tower, but it wasn’t. So-called Boyd Tower was a new five-story building tacked onto the old hospital. The Boyd Tower building was part of the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, and the HIV/AIDS clinic was on the first floor. It was called the Virology Clinic. At the time, there was some concern about advertising an HIV/AIDS clinic; there was a legitimate fear that both the patients and the hospital would be discriminated against.

HIV/AIDS was associated with sex and drugs; the disease was uncommon enough in Iowa that many locals thought of it as an “urban” problem. Among rural Iowans, some patients were exposed to both homophobia and xenophobia.

Juan Diego could remember when the Boyd Tower building was under construction, in the early seventies; there was (there still is) an actual tower, the Gothic tower on the north side of the old General Hospital. When Juan Diego first moved to Iowa City with Señor Eduardo and Flor, they lived in a duplex apartment in an overelaborate wedding cake of a Victorian house with a dilapidated front porch. Juan Diego’s bedroom and bathroom, and Señor Eduardo’s study, were on the second floor.

The rickety front porch was of little use to Edward Bonshaw or Flor, but Juan Diego remembered how he’d once loved it. From the porch, he could see the Iowa Field House (where the indoor pool was) and Kinnick Stadium. That decaying front porch on Melrose Avenue was a great location for student-watching, especially on those autumn Saturdays when the Iowa football team had a home game. (Señor Eduardo referred to Kinnick Stadium as the Roman Colosseum.)

Juan Diego wasn’t interested in American football. Out of curiosity, at first—and, later, to be with his friends—Juan Diego would occasionally go to the games in Kinnick Stadium, but what he really liked was sitting on the front porch of that old wooden house on Melrose, just watching all the young people go by. (“I suppose I like the sound of the band, from a distance—and imagining the cheerleaders, up close,” Flor would say, in her hard-to-read way.)

Juan Diego would be finishing his undergraduate studies at Iowa when the Boyd Tower building was completed; from their Melrose Avenue neighborhood, the distinctively different family of three could see the Gothic tower on the old General Hospital. (Flor later said she’d lost her fondness for that old tower.)

Flor was the first to have symptoms; when she was diagnosed, of course Edward Bonshaw would be tested. Flor and Señor Eduardo tested positive for HIV in 1989. That insidious pneumonia
Pneumocystis carinii,
PCP, was the earliest presentation of AIDS for both of them. That cough, the shortness of breath, the fever—Flor and the Iowan were put on Bactrim. (Edward Bonshaw would develop a rash from the Bactrim.)