Avenue of Mysteries

6. Sex and Faith

The elongated passageway to the Regal Airport Hotel at Hong Kong International was bedecked with an incomplete assortment of Christmas memorabilia — happy-faced reindeer and Santa’s elf-laborer types, but no sleigh, no gifts, no Santa himself.

“Santa’s getting laid — he probably called an escort service,” Dorothy explained to Juan Diego.

“Enough sex, Dorothy,” her mother cautioned the wayward-looking girl.

From the testiness that infiltrated their seemingly more than mother-daughter banter, Juan Diego would have guessed this mother and daughter had been traveling together for years — improbably, for centuries.

“Santa is definitely staying here,” Dorothy said to Juan Diego. “The Christmas shit is year-round.”

“Dorothy, you’re not here year-round,” Miriam said. “You wouldn’t know.”

“We’re here enough,” the daughter sullenly said. “It feels like we’re here year-round,” she told Juan Diego.

They were on an ascending escalator, passing a crèche. To Juan Diego, it seemed strange that they’d not once been outdoors — not since he’d arrived at JFK in all the snow. The crèche was surrounded by the usual cast of characters, humans and barn animals — only one exotic creature among the animals. And the miraculous Virgin Mary could not have been entirely human, Juan Diego had always believed; here in Hong Kong she smiled shyly, averting her eyes from her admirers. At the crèche moment, wasn’t all the attention supposed to be paid to her precious son? Apparently not — the Virgin Mary was a scene-stealer. (Not only in Hong Kong, Juan Diego had always believed.)

There was Joseph — the poor fool, as Juan Diego thought of him. But if Mary truly was a virgin, Joseph appeared to be handling the childbirth episode as well as could be expected — no fiery glances or suspicious looks at the inquisitive kings and wise men and shepherds, or at the manger’s other gawkers and hangers-on: a cow, a donkey, a rooster, a camel. (The camel, of course, was the one exotic creature.)

“I’ll bet the father was one of the wise guys,” Dorothy offered.

“Enough sex, Dorothy,” her mother said.

Juan Diego wrongly surmised he was alone in noticing that the Christ Child was missing from the crèche — or buried, perhaps smothered, in the hay. “The Baby Jesus—” he started to say.

“Someone kidnapped the Holy Infant years ago,” Dorothy explained. “I don’t think the Hong Kong Chinese care.”

“Maybe the Christ Child is getting a face-lift,” Miriam offered.

“Not everyone gets a face-lift, Mother,” Dorothy said.

“That Holy Infant is no kid, Dorothy,” her mother remarked. “Believe me — Jesus has had a face-lift.”

“The Catholic Church has done more to cosmetically enhance itself than a face-lift,” Juan Diego said sharply — as if Christmas, and all the crèche promotion, were strictly a Roman Catholic affair. Both mother and daughter looked inquiringly at him, as if puzzled by his angry tone. But surely Miriam and Dorothy couldn’t have been surprised by the sting in Juan Diego’s voice — not if they’d read his novels, which they had. He had an ax to grind — not with people of faith, or believers of any kind, but with certain social and political policies of the Catholic Church.

Yet the occasional sharpness when he spoke surprised everyone about Juan Diego; he looked so mild-mannered, and — because of the maimed right foot — he moved so slowly. Juan Diego didn’t resemble a risk-taker, except when it came to his imagination.

At the top of the escalator, the three travelers arrived at a baffling intersection of underground passages — signs pointing to Kowloon and Hong Kong Island, and to somewhere called the Sai Kung Peninsula.

“We’re taking a train?” Juan Diego asked his lady admirers.

“Not now,” Miriam told him, seizing his arm. They were connected to a train station, Juan Diego guessed, but there were confusing advertisements for tailor shops and restaurants and jewelry stores; for jewels, they were offering “endless opals.”

“Why endless? What’s so special about opals?” Juan Diego asked, but the women seemed strangely selective about listening.

“We’ll check into the hotel first, just to freshen up,” Dorothy was telling him; she’d grabbed his other arm.

Juan Diego limped forward; he imagined he wasn’t limping as much as he usually did. But why? Dorothy was rolling Juan Diego’s checked bag and her own — effortlessly, the two bags with one hand. How can she manage to do that? Juan Diego was wondering when they came upon a large floor-length mirror; it was near the registration desk for their hotel. But when Juan Diego quickly assessed himself in the mirror, his two companions weren’t visible alongside him; curiously, he did not see these two efficient women reflected in the mirror. Maybe he’d given the mirror too quick a look.

“We’ll take the train to Kowloon — we’ll see the skyscrapers on Hong Kong Island, their lights reflected in the water of the harbor. It’s better to see it after dark,” Miriam was murmuring in Juan Diego’s ear.

“We’ll grab a bite to eat — maybe have a drink or two — then take the train back to the hotel,” Dorothy told him in his other ear. “We’ll be sleepy then.”

Something told Juan Diego that he had seen these two ladies before — but where, but when?

Was it in the taxi that had jumped the guardrail and got stuck in the waist-deep snow of the jogging path that ran alongside the East River? The cabbie was attempting to dig out his rear wheels — not with a snow shovel but with a windshield scraper.

“Where are you from, you jerk-off — fuckin’ Mexico?” Juan Diego’s limo driver had shouted.

The peering faces of two women were framed in the rear window of that taxi; they could have been a mother and her daughter, but it seemed highly unlikely to Juan Diego that those two frightened-looking women could have been Miriam and Dorothy. It was difficult for Juan Diego to imagine Miriam and Dorothy being afraid. Who or what would frighten them? Yet the thought remained: he’d seen these two formidable women before — he was sure of it.

“It’s very modern,” was all Juan Diego could think of saying about the Regal Airport Hotel when he was riding on the elevator with Miriam and Dorothy. The mother and daughter had registered for him; he’d only had to show his passport. He didn’t think he’d paid.

It was one of those hotel rooms where your room key was a kind of credit card; after you’d entered your room, you stuck the card in a slot that was mounted on the wall just inside the door.

“Otherwise, your lights won’t work and your TV won’t turn on,” Dorothy had explained.

“Call us if you have any trouble with the modern devices,” Miriam told Juan Diego.

“Not just trouble with the modern shit—any kind of trouble,” Dorothy had added. On Juan Diego’s key-card folder, she’d written her room number — and her mom’s.

They’re not sharing a room? Juan Diego wondered when he was alone in his room.

In the shower, his erection returned; he knew he should take a beta-blocker — he was aware he was overdue. But his erection made him hesitate. What if Miriam, or Dorothy, made herself available to him — more unimaginable, what if both of them did?

Juan Diego removed the beta-blockers from his toilet kit; he put the tablets beside the water glass, next to his bathroom sink. They were Lopressor tablets — elliptical, a bluish gray. He took out his Viagra tablets and looked at them. The Viagra were not exactly elliptical; they were somewhat football-shaped, but four-sided. The closer similarity, between the Viagra and the Lopressor, was the color of the tablets — they were both a gray-blue color.

If such a miracle as Miriam or Dorothy making herself available to him were to happen, it would be too soon to take a Viagra now, Juan Diego knew. Even so, he removed his pill-cutting device from his toilet kit; he put it next to the Viagra tablets, on the same side of his bathroom sink — just to remind himself that half of one Viagra would suffice. (As a novelist, he was always looking ahead, too.)

I’m imagining things like a horny teenager! Juan Diego thought as he was getting dressed to rejoin the ladies. His own behavior surprised him. Under these unusual circumstances, he took no medication; he hated how the beta-blockers diminished him, and he knew better than to take half of one Viagra tablet prematurely. When he got back to the United States, Juan Diego was thinking, he must remember to thank Rosemary for telling him to experiment!

It’s too bad that Juan Diego wasn’t traveling with his doctor friend. “To thank Rosemary” (for her instructions concerning Viagra usage) was not what the writer needed to remember. Dr. Stein could have reminded Juan Diego of the reason he was feeling like a star-crossed Romeo, limping around in an older writer’s body: if you’re taking beta-blockers and you skip a dose, watch out! Your body has been starved for adrenaline; your body suddenly makes more adrenaline, and more adrenaline receptors. Those misnamed dreams, which were really heightened, high-definition memories of his childhood and early adolescence, were as much the result of Juan Diego not taking a single Lopressor tablet as was his suddenly supercharged lust for two strangers — a mother and her daughter, who seemed more familiar to him than strangers ever should.

THE TRAIN, THE AIRPORT Express to Kowloon Station, cost ninety Hong Kong dollars. Maybe his shyness prevented Juan Diego from looking closely at Miriam or Dorothy on the train; it’s doubtful he was genuinely interested in reading every word on both sides of his round-trip ticket, twice. Juan Diego was a little interested in comparing the Chinese characters to the corresponding words in English. SAME DAY RETURN was in small capitals, but there seemed to be no equivalent to small capitals in the unvarying Chinese characters.

The writer in Juan Diego found fault with “1 single journey”; shouldn’t the numeral 1 have been written out as a word? Didn’t “one single journey” look better? Almost like a title, Juan Diego thought. He wrote something on the ticket with his ever-present pen.

“What are you doing?” Miriam asked Juan Diego. “What can be so fascinating about a train ticket?”

“He’s writing again,” Dorothy said to her mother. “He’s always writing.”

“ ‘Adult Ticket to City,’ ” Juan Diego said aloud; he was reading to the women from his train ticket, which he then put away in his shirt pocket. He really didn’t know how to behave on a date; he’d never known how, but these two women were especially unnerving.

“Whenever I hear the adult word, I think of something pornographic,” Dorothy said, smiling at Juan Diego.

“Enough, Dorothy,” her mother said.

It was already dark when their train arrived at Kowloon Station; the Kowloon harborfront was crowded with tourists, many of them taking pictures of the skyscraper-lined view, but Miriam and Dorothy glided unnoticed through the crowds. It must have been a measure of Juan Diego’s infatuation with this mother and daughter that he imagined he limped less when either Miriam or Dorothy held his arm or his hand; he even believed that he managed to glide as unnoticed as the two of them.

The snug, short-sleeved sweaters the women wore under their cardigans were revealing of their breasts, yet the sweaters were somehow conservative. Maybe the conservative part was what went unnoticed about Miriam and Dorothy, Juan Diego thought; or was it that the other tourists were mostly Asian, and seemingly uninterested in these two attractive women from the West? Miriam and Dorothy wore skirts with their sweaters — also revealing, meaning tight, or so Juan Diego would have said, but their skirts were not glaringly attention-getting.

Am I the only one who can’t stop looking at these women? Juan Diego wondered. He wasn’t aware of fashion; he couldn’t be expected to understand how neutral colors worked. Juan Diego didn’t notice that Miriam and Dorothy wore skirts and sweaters that were beige and brown, or silver and gray, nor did he notice the impeccable design of their clothes. As for the fabric, he may have thought it looked welcoming to touch, but what he noticed were Miriam’s and Dorothy’s breasts — and their hips, of course.

Juan Diego would remember next to nothing of the train ride to Kowloon Station, and not a bit of the busy Kowloon harborfront — not even the restaurant they ate their dinner in, except that he was unusually hungry, and he enjoyed himself in Miriam and Dorothy’s company. In fact, he couldn’t remember when he’d last enjoyed himself as much, although later — less than a week later — he couldn’t recall what they’d talked about. His novels? His childhood?

When Juan Diego met his readers, he had to be careful not to talk too much about himself — because his readers tended to ask him about himself. He often tried to steer the conversation to his readers’ lives; surely he would have asked Miriam and Dorothy to tell him about themselves. What about their childhood years, their adolescence? And Juan Diego must have asked these ladies, albeit discreetly, about the men in their lives; certainly he would have been curious to know if they were attached. Yet he would remember nothing of their conversation in Kowloon — not a word beyond the absurd attention paid to the train ticket when they were en route to Kowloon Station on the Airport Express, and only a bit of bookish conversation on the train ride back to the Regal Airport Hotel.

There was one thing that stood out about their return trip — a moment of awkwardness in the sleek, sanitized underground of Kowloon Station, when Juan Diego was waiting with the two women on the train platform.

The glassy, gold-tinted interior of the station with its gleaming stainless-steel trash cans — standing like sentinels of cleanliness — gave the station platform the aura of a hospital corridor. Juan Diego couldn’t find a camera or photo icon on his cell phone’s so-called menu — he wanted to take a photo of Miriam and Dorothy — when the all-knowing mother took the cell phone from him.

“Dorothy and I don’t do pictures — we can’t stand the way we look in photographs — but let me take your photo,” Miriam said to him.

They were almost alone on the platform, except for a young Chinese couple (kids, Juan Diego thought) holding hands. The young man had been watching Dorothy, who’d grabbed Juan Diego’s cell phone out of her mother’s hands.

“Here, let me do it,” Dorothy had said to her mom. “You take terrible pictures.”

But the young Chinese man took the cell phone from Dorothy. “If I do it, I can get one of all of you,” the boy said.

“Oh, yes — thank you!” Juan Diego told him.

Miriam gave her daughter one of those looks that said: If you’d just let me do it, Dorothy, this wouldn’t be happening.

They could all hear the train coming, and the young Chinese woman said something to her boyfriend — no doubt, given the train, that he should hurry up.

He did. The photo caught Juan Diego, and Miriam and Dorothy, by surprise. The Chinese couple seemed to think it was a disappointing picture — perhaps out of focus? — but then the train was there. It was Miriam who snatched the cell phone away from the couple, and Dorothy who — even more quickly — took it from her mom. Juan Diego was already seated on the Airport Express when Dorothy gave him back his phone; it was no longer in the camera mode.

“We don’t photograph well,” was all Miriam said — to the Chinese couple, who seemed unduly disturbed by the incident. (Perhaps the pictures they took usually turned out better.)

Juan Diego was once more searching the menu on his cell phone, which was a maze of mysteries to him. What did the Media Center icon do? Nothing I want, Juan Diego was thinking, when Miriam covered his hands with hers; she leaned close to him, as if it were a noisy train (it wasn’t), and spoke to him as if they were alone, though Dorothy was very much with them and clearly heard her — every word.

“This isn’t about sex, Juan Diego, but I have a question for you,” Miriam said. Dorothy laughed harshly — loudly enough to get the attention of the young Chinese couple, who’d been whispering to each other in a nearby seat of the train. (The girl, though she sat in the boy’s lap, seemed to be upset with him for some reason.) “It truly isn’t, Dorothy,” Miriam snapped.

“We’ll see,” the scornful daughter replied.

“In A Story Set in Motion by the Virgin Mary, there’s a part where your missionary — I forget his name,” Miriam interrupted herself.

“Martin,” Dorothy quietly said.

“Yes, Martin,” Miriam quickly said. “I guess you’ve read that one,” she added to her daughter. “Martin admires Ignatius Loyola, doesn’t he?” Miriam asked Juan Diego, but before the novelist could answer her, she hurried on. “I’m thinking about the saint’s encounter with that Moor on a mule, and their ensuing discussion of the Virgin Mary,” Miriam said.

“Both the Moor and Saint Ignatius were riding mules,” Dorothy interrupted her mom.

“I know, Dorothy,” Miriam dismissively said. “And the Moor says he can believe that Mother Mary has conceived without a man, but he does not believe that she remains a virgin after she gives birth.”

“That part is about sex, you know,” Dorothy said.

“It isn’t, Dorothy,” her mother snapped.

“And after the Moor rides on, young Ignatius thinks he should go after the Muslim and kill him, right?” Dorothy asked Juan Diego.

“Right,” Juan Diego managed to say, but he wasn’t thinking about that long-ago novel or the missionary he’d named Martin, who admired Saint Ignatius Loyola. Juan Diego was thinking about Edward Bonshaw, and that life-changing day he arrived in Oaxaca.

As Rivera was driving the injured Juan Diego to the Templo de la Compañía de Jesús, when the boy was grimacing in pain with his head held in Lupe’s lap, Edward Bonshaw was also on his way to the Jesuit temple. While Rivera was hoping for a miracle, of a kind the dump boss imagined the Virgin Mary could perform, it was the new American missionary who was about to become the most credible miracle in Juan Diego’s life — a miracle of a man, not a saint, and a mixture of human frailties, if there ever was one.

Oh, how he missed Señor Eduardo! Juan Diego thought, his eyes blurring with tears.

“ ‘It was extraordinary that Saint Ignatius felt so strongly about defending Mother Mary’s virginity,’ ” Miriam was saying, but her voice trailed off when she saw that Juan Diego was about to cry.

“ ‘The defaming of the Virgin Mary’s postbirth vaginal condition was inappropriate and unacceptable behavior,’ ” Dorothy chimed in.

At that moment, fighting back his tears, Juan Diego realized that this mother and her daughter were quoting the passage he’d written in A Story Set in Motion by the Virgin Mary. But how could they so closely remember the passage from his novel, almost verbatim? How could any reader do that?

“Oh, don’t cry — you dear man!” Miriam suddenly told him; she touched his face. “I simply love that passage!”

“You made him cry,” Dorothy told her mom.

“No, no — it’s not what you think,” Juan Diego started to say.

“Your missionary,” Miriam went on.

“Martin,” Dorothy reminded her.

“I know, Dorothy!” Miriam said. “It’s just so touching, so sweet, that Martin finds Ignatius admirable,” Miriam continued. “I mean, Saint Ignatius sounds completely insane!”

“He wants to kill some stranger on a mule — just for doubting the Virgin Mary’s postbirth vaginal condition. That’s nuts!” Dorothy declared.

“But, as always,” Juan Diego reminded them, “Ignatius seeks God’s will on the matter.”

“Spare me God’s will!” Miriam and Dorothy spontaneously cried out — as if they were in the habit of saying this, either alone or together. (That got the young Chinese couple’s attention.)

“ ‘And where the road parted, Ignatius let his own mule’s reins go slack; if the animal followed the Moor, Ignatius would kill the infidel,’ ” Juan Diego said. He could have told the story with his eyes closed. It’s not so unusual that a novelist can remember what he’s written, almost word for word, Juan Diego was thinking. Yet for readers to retain the actual words — well, that was unusual, wasn’t it?

“ ‘But the mule chose the other road,’ ” mother and daughter said in unison; to Juan Diego, they seemed to have the omniscient authority of a Greek chorus.

“ ‘But Saint Ignatius was crazy — he must have been a madman,’ ” Juan Diego said; he wasn’t sure they understood that part.

“Yes,” Miriam said. “You’re very brave to say so — even in a novel.”

“The subject of someone’s postbirth vaginal condition is sexual,” Dorothy said.

“It is not—it’s about faith,” Miriam said.

“It’s about sex and faith,” Juan Diego mumbled; he wasn’t being diplomatic — he meant it. The two women could tell he did.

“Did you know someone like that missionary who admired Saint Ignatius?” Miriam asked him.

“Martin,” Dorothy repeated softly.

I think I need a beta-blocker — Juan Diego didn’t say it, but this was what he thought.

“She means, Was Martin real?” Dorothy asked him; she’d seen the writer stiffen at her mother’s question, so noticeably that Miriam had let go of his hands.

Juan Diego’s heart was racing — his adrenaline receptors were receiving like crazy, but he couldn’t speak. “I’ve lost so many people,” Juan Diego tried to say, but the people word was unintelligible — like something Lupe might have said.

“I guess he was real,” Dorothy told her mom.

Now they both put their hands on Juan Diego, who was shaking in his seat.

“The missionary I knew was not Martin,” Juan Diego blurted out.

“Dorothy, the dear man has lost loved ones — we both read that interview, you know,” Miriam told her daughter.

“I know,” Dorothy replied. “But you were asking about the Martin character,” the daughter said to her mom.

All Juan Diego could do was shake his head; then his tears came, lots of tears. He couldn’t have explained to these women why (and for whom) he was crying — well, at least not on the Airport Express.

“¡Señor Eduardo!” Juan Diego cried out. “¡Querido Eduardo!”

That was when the Chinese girl, who was still sitting in her boyfriend’s lap — she was still upset about something, too — had an apparent fit. She began to hit her boyfriend, more in frustration than out of anger, and almost playfully (as opposed to anything approaching actual violence).

“I told him it was you!” the girl said suddenly to Juan Diego. “I knew it was you, but he didn’t believe me!”

She meant that she’d recognized the writer, perhaps from the start, but her boyfriend hadn’t agreed — or he wasn’t a reader. To Juan Diego, the Chinese boy didn’t look like a reader, and it couldn’t have surprised the writer that the boy’s girlfriend was. Wasn’t this the point Juan Diego had made repeatedly? Women readers kept fiction alive — here was another one. When Juan Diego had used Spanish in crying out the scholastic’s name, the Chinese girl knew she’d been right about who he was.

It was just another writer-recognition moment, Juan Diego realized. He wished he could stop sobbing. He waved to the Chinese girl, and tried to smile; if he’d noticed the way Miriam and Dorothy looked at the young Chinese couple, he might have asked himself how safe he was in the company of this unknown mother and her daughter, but Juan Diego didn’t see how Miriam and Dorothy utterly silenced his Chinese reader with a withering look — no, it was more of a threatening look. (It was actually a look that said: We found him first, you slimy little twat. Go find your own favorite writer — he’s ours!)

Why was it that Edward Bonshaw was always quoting from Thomas à Kempis? Señor Eduardo liked to make a little gentle fun of that bit from The Imitation of Christ: “Be rarely with young people and strangers.”

Ah, well — it was too late to warn Juan Diego about Miriam and Dorothy now. You don’t skip a dose of your beta-blockers and ignore a couple of women like this mom and her daughter.

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 Señor 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.”