Avenue of Mysteries

20. Casa Vargas

In Juan Diego’s dream, it was impossible to tell where the music came from. It did not have the hard-sell sound of a mariachi band, working its way among the outdoor café tables at the Marqués del Valle — one of those annoying bands that might have been playing anywhere in the zócalo. And although the circus band at La Maravilla had its own brass-and-drum version of “Streets of Laredo,” this was not their moribund and dirgelike distortion of the cowboy’s lament.

For one thing, Juan Diego heard a voice singing; in his dream, he heard the lyrics — if not as sweetly as the good gringo used to sing them. Oh, how el gringo bueno had loved “Streets of Laredo”—the dear boy could sing that ballad in his sleep! Even Lupe sang that song sweetly. Though her voice was strained and difficult to understand, Lupe did have a girl’s voice — an innocent-sounding voice.

The amateur vocalizing from the beach club had ceased, so it couldn’t have been the shopworn karaoke music that Juan Diego heard; the New Year’s Eve celebrants at the Panglao Island beach club had gone to bed, or they’d drowned taking a night swim. And no one was still ringing in the New Year at the Encantador — even the Nocturnal Monkeys were mercifully silent.

It was pitch-dark in Juan Diego’s hotel room; he held his breath because he could not hear Miriam breathing — only the mournful cowboy song in a voice Juan Diego didn’t recognize. Or did he? It was strange to hear “Streets of Laredo” sung by an older woman; it didn’t sound right. But wasn’t the voice itself borderline recognizable? It was just the wrong voice for that song.

“ ‘I see, by your outfit, that you are a cowboy,’ ” the woman was singing in a low, husky voice. “ ‘These words he did say as I slowly walked by.’ ”

Was it Miriam’s voice? Juan Diego wondered. How could she be singing when he couldn’t hear her breathing? In the darkness, Juan Diego wasn’t sure she was really there.

“Miriam?” he whispered. Then he said her name again, a little louder.

There was no singing now—“Streets of Laredo” had stopped. There was no detectable breathing, either; Juan Diego held his breath. He was listening for the slightest sound from Miriam; maybe she’d returned to her own room. He might have been snoring, or talking in his sleep — occasionally, Juan Diego talked when he dreamed.

I should touch her — just to feel if she’s there or not, Juan Diego was thinking, but he was afraid to find out. He touched his penis; he smelled his fingers. The sex smell shouldn’t have startled him — surely he remembered having sex with Miriam. But he didn’t, not exactly. He had definitely said something — about the way she felt, how it felt to be inside her. He’d said “silky” or “silken”; this was all he could recall, only the language.

And Miriam had said: “You’re funny — you need to have a word for everything.”

Then a rooster crowed — in total darkness! Were roosters crazy in the Philippines? Was this stupid rooster disoriented by the karaoke music? Had the dumb bird mistaken the Nocturnal Monkeys for nocturnal hens?

“Someone should kill that rooster,” Miriam said in her low, husky voice; he felt her bare breasts touch his chest and his upper arm — the fingers of her hand closed around his penis. Maybe Miriam could see in the dark. “There you are, darling,” she told him, as if he’d needed assurance that he existed — that he was really there, with her — when all the while he’d been wondering if she were real, if she actually existed. (That was what he’d been afraid to find out.)

The crazy rooster crowed again in the darkness.

“I learned to swim in Iowa,” he told Miriam in the dark — a funny thing to say to someone holding your penis, but this was how time happened to Juan Diego (not only in his dreams). Time jumped ahead or back; time seemed more associative than linear, but it wasn’t exclusively associative, either.

“Iowa,” Miriam murmured. “Not what comes to mind when I think of swimming.”

“I don’t limp in the water,” Juan Diego told her. Miriam was making him hard again. When he wasn’t in Iowa City, Juan Diego didn’t meet many people who were interested in Iowa. “You’ve probably never been in the Midwest,” Juan Diego said to Miriam.

“Oh, I’ve been everywhere,” Miriam demurred, in that laconic way she had.

Everywhere? Juan Diego wondered. No one’s been everywhere, he thought. But in regard to a sense of place, one’s individual perspective matters, doesn’t it? Not every fourteen-year-old, upon encountering Iowa City for the first time, would have found the move from Mexico exhilarating; for Juan Diego, Iowa was an adventure. He was a boy who’d never emulated the young people he saw around him; suddenly there were students everywhere. Iowa City was a college town, a Big Ten town — the campus was downtown, the city and the university were one and the same. Why wouldn’t a dump reader find a college town fascinating?

Granted, it would soon strike any fourteen-year-old boy that the Iowa campus heroes were its sports stars. Yet this was consistent with what Juan Diego had imagined about the United States — from a Mexican kid’s perspective, movie stars and sports heroes seemed to be the zenith of American culture. As Dr. Rosemary Stein had told Juan Diego, he was either a kid from Mexico or a grown-up from Iowa all the time.

For Flor, the transition to Iowa City from Oaxaca must have been more difficult — if not the magnitude of misadventure Houston had represented for her. In a Big Ten university town, what opportunities existed for a transvestite and former prostitute? She’d already made a mistake in Houston; Flor was disinclined to take any chances in Iowa City. Meekness, keeping a low profile — well, it wasn’t in Flor’s nature to be tentative. Flor had always asserted herself.

When the deranged rooster crowed a third time, his crowing was cut off mid-squawk. “There, that does it,” Miriam said. “No more heralding of a false dawn, no more untruthful messengers.”

While Juan Diego tried to comprehend exactly what Miriam had meant — she sounded so authoritative — one dog began to bark; soon other dogs were barking. “Don’t hurt the dogs — nothing is their fault,” Juan Diego told Miriam. It was what he imagined Lupe would have said. (Here was another New Year, and Juan Diego was still missing his dear sister.)

“No harm will come to the dogs, darling,” Miriam murmured.

Now a breeze could be felt through the open seaward windows; Juan Diego thought he could smell the salt water, but he couldn’t hear the waves — if there were waves. He only then realized that he could swim in Bohol; there was a beach and a pool at the Encantador. (The good gringo, the inspiration for Juan Diego’s trip to the Philippines, had not inspired thoughts of swimming.)

“Tell me how you learned to swim in Iowa,” Miriam whispered in his ear; she was straddling him, and he felt himself enter her again. A feeling of such smoothness surrounded him — it was almost like swimming, he thought, before it crossed his mind that Miriam had known what he was thinking.

Yes, it had been a long time ago, but, because of Lupe, Juan Diego knew what it was like to be around a mind reader.

“I swam in an indoor pool, at the University of Iowa,” Juan Diego began, a little breathlessly.

“I meant who, darling — I meant who taught you, who took you to the swimming pool,” Miriam said softly.

“Oh.”

Juan Diego couldn’t say their names, not even in the dark.

Señor Eduardo had taught him to swim — this was in the swimming pool in the old Iowa Field House, next to the university hospitals and clinics. Edward Bonshaw, who had left academia to pursue the priesthood, was welcomed back to the English Department at the University of Iowa—“from whence he’d come,” Flor was fond of saying, exaggerating her Mexican accent with the whence word.

Flor wasn’t a swimmer, but after Juan Diego had learned to swim, she occasionally took him to the pool — it was used by the university faculty and staff, and by their children, and also popular with townies. Señor Eduardo and Juan Diego had loved the old Field House — in the early seventies, before the Carver-Hawkeye Arena was built, most of Iowa’s indoor sports took place in the Field House. In addition to swimming there, Edward Bonshaw and Juan Diego went to see the basketball games and the wrestling matches.

Flor had liked the pool but not the old Field House; there were too many jocks running around, she said. Women took their kids to the pool — women were uneasy around Flor, but they didn’t stare at her. Young men couldn’t help themselves, Flor always said — young men just stared. Flor was tall and broad-shouldered — six-two and 170 pounds — and although she was small-breasted, she was both very attractive (in a womanly way) and very masculine-looking.

At the pool, Flor wore a one-piece bathing suit, but she was only viewable above her waist. She always wrapped a big towel around her hips; the bottom of her bathing suit was not in view, and Flor never went in the water.

Juan Diego didn’t know how Flor managed the dressing and undressing part — this would have happened in the women’s locker room. Maybe she never took off the bathing suit? (It never got wet.)

“Don’t worry about it,” Flor had told the boy. “I’m not showing my junk to anyone but Señor Eduardo.”

Not in Iowa City, anyway — as Juan Diego would one day understand. It would one day also be understandable why Flor needed to get away from Iowa — not a lot, just occasionally.

If Brother Pepe had happened to see Flor in Oaxaca, he would write to Juan Diego. “I suppose you and Edward know she’s here—‘just visiting,’ she says. I see her in the usual places — well, I don’t mean all the ‘usual’ places!” was how Pepe would put it.

Pepe meant he’d seen Flor at La China, that gay bar on Bustamante — the one that would become Chinampa. Pepe also saw La Loca at La Coronita, where the clientele was mostly gay and the transvestites were dressed to kill.

Pepe didn’t mean that Flor showed up at the whore hotel; it wasn’t the Hotel Somega, or being a prostitute, that Flor missed. But where was a person like Flor supposed to go in Iowa City? Flor was a party person — at least occasionally. There was no La China — not to mention no La Coronita — in Iowa City in the seventies and eighties. What was the harm in Flor going back to Oaxaca from time to time?

Brother Pepe wasn’t judging her, and apparently, Señor Eduardo had been understanding.

When Juan Diego was leaving Oaxaca, Brother Pepe had blurted out to him: “Don’t become one of those Mexicans who—”

Pepe had stopped himself.

“Who what?” Flor had asked Pepe.

“One of those Mexicans who hate Mexico,” Pepe managed to say.

“You mean one of those Americans,” Flor said.

“Dear boy!” Brother Pepe had exclaimed, hugging Juan Diego to him. “You don’t want to become one of those Mexicans who are always coming back, either — the ones who can’t stay away,” Pepe added.

Flor just stared at Brother Pepe. “What else shouldn’t he become?” she asked Pepe. “What other kind of Mexican is forbidden?”

But Pepe had ignored Flor; he’d whispered in Juan Diego’s ear. “Dear boy, become who you want to be — just stay in touch!” Pepe pleaded.

“You better not become anything, Juan Diego,” Flor had told the fourteen-year-old, while Pepe was weeping inconsolably. “Trust us, Pepe — Edward and I won’t let the kid amount to beans,” Flor said. “We’ll be sure he becomes one of those Mexican nobodies.”

Edward Bonshaw, overhearing all this, had only understood his name.

“Eduardo,” Edward Bonshaw had said, correcting Flor, who’d just smiled at him understandingly.

“They were my parents, or they tried to be!” Juan Diego attempted to say out loud, but the words wouldn’t come in the darkness. “Oh,” was all he managed to say — again. The way Miriam was moving on top of him, he couldn’t have said more than that.

PERRO MESTIZO, A.K.A. MONGREL, was quarantined and observed for ten days — if you’re looking for rabies, this is a common procedure for biting animals that don’t look sick. (Mongrel was not rabid, but Dr. Vargas, consistent with his giving Edward Bonshaw rabies shots, had wanted to be sure.) For ten days, the dog act wasn’t performed at Circo de La Maravilla; the baby-stealer’s quarantine was a disruption to the routine of the other dogs in the dump kids’ troupe tent.

Baby, the male dachshund, peed on the dirt floor of the tent every night. Pastora, the female sheepdog, whined ceaselessly. Estrella had to sleep in the dogs’ troupe tent, or Pastora would never have been quiet — and Estrella snored. The sight of Estrella sleeping on her back, her face shadowed by the visor of her baseball cap, gave Lupe nightmares, but Estrella said she couldn’t sleep bareheaded because the mosquitoes would bite her bald head; then her head would itch and she couldn’t scratch it without removing her wig, which upset the dogs. During Perro Mestizo’s quarantine, Alemania, the female German Shepherd, stood over Juan Diego’s cot at night, panting in the boy’s face. Lupe blamed Vargas for “demonizing” Mongrel; poor Perro Mestizo, “always the bad guy,” was once more a victim in Lupe’s eyes.

“The asshole dog bit Señor Eduardo,” Juan Diego reminded his sister. The asshole-dog idea was Rivera’s. Lupe didn’t believe there were asshole dogs.

“Señor Eduardo was falling in love with Flor’s penis!” Lupe cried — as if this new and disturbing development had caused Perro Mestizo to attack the Iowan. But this meant Perro Mestizo was homophobic, and didn’t that make him an asshole dog?

Yet Juan Diego was able to persuade Lupe to stay at La Maravilla — at least until after the circus had traveled to Mexico City. The trip mattered more to Lupe than it did to Juan Diego; scattering their mother’s ashes (and the good gringo’s ashes, and Dirty White’s, not to mention the remains of the Virgin Mary’s enormous nose) meant a lot to Lupe. She believed Our Lady of Guadalupe had been marginalized in Oaxaca’s churches; Guadalupe was a second fiddle in Oaxaca.

Esperanza, whatever her faults, had been “bumped off” by the Mary Monster, in Lupe’s view. The clairvoyant child believed the wrongness of the religious world would right itself — if, and only if, her sinful mother’s ashes were scattered at the Basílica de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe in Mexico City. Only there did the dark-skinned virgin, la virgen morena, draw busloads of pilgrims to her shrine. Lupe longed to see the Chapel of the Well — where Guadalupe, encased in glass, lay on her deathbed.

Even with his limp, Juan Diego looked forward to the long climb — the endless stairs leading to El Cerrito de las Rosas, the temple where Guadalupe wasn’t tucked away in a side altar. She was elevated at the front of the sacred El Cerrito, “The Little Hill.” (Lupe, instead of saying “El Cerrito,” liked to call the temple “Of the Roses”; she said this sounded more sacred than “The Little Hill.”) Either there or at the dark-skinned virgin’s deathbed in the Chapel of the Well, the dump kids would scatter the ashes, which they’d kept in a coffee can Rivera had found at the basurero.

The contents of the coffee can did not have Esperanza’s smell. They had a nondescript odor. Flor had sniffed the ashes; she’d said it wasn’t the good gringo’s smell, either.

“It smells like coffee,” Edward Bonshaw had said when he’d sniffed the coffee can.

Whatever the ashes smelled like, the dogs in the troupe tent weren’t interested. Maybe there was a medicinal odor; Estrella said anything that smelled like medicine would put off the dogs. Perhaps the unidentifiable smell was the Virgin Mary’s nose.

“It’s definitely not Dirty White,” was all Lupe would say about the smell; she sniffed the ashes in the coffee can every night before going to bed.

Juan Diego could never read her mind — he didn’t even try. Possibly Lupe liked to sniff the contents of the coffee can because she knew they would be scattering the ashes soon, and she wanted to remember the smell after the ashes were gone.

Shortly before Circus of The Wonder would travel to Mexico City — a long trip, especially in a caravan of trucks and buses — Lupe brought the coffee can to a dinner party they were invited to, at Dr. Vargas’s house in Oaxaca. Lupe told Juan Diego that she wanted a “scientific opinion” of the ashes’ smell.

“But it’s a dinner party, Lupe,” Juan Diego said. It was the first dinner party the dump kids had been invited to; in all likelihood, they knew, the invitation wasn’t Vargas’s idea.

Brother Pepe had discussed with Vargas what Pepe called Edward Bonshaw’s “test of the soul.” Dr. Vargas didn’t think Flor had presented the Iowan with a spiritual crisis. In fact, Vargas had offended Flor by suggesting to Señor Eduardo that the only reason to worry about his relationship with a transvestite prostitute might be a medical matter.

Dr. Vargas meant sexually transmitted diseases; he meant how many partners a prostitute had, and what Flor might have picked up from one of them. It didn’t matter to Vargas that Flor had a penis — or that Edward Bonshaw had one, too, and that the Iowan would have to give up his hope of becoming a priest because of it.

That Edward Bonshaw had broken his vow of celibacy didn’t matter to Dr. Vargas, either. “I just don’t want your dick to fall off — or turn green, or something,” Vargas had said to the Iowan. That was what offended Flor, and why she wouldn’t come to the dinner party at Casa Vargas.

In Oaxaca, anyone who had an ax to grind with Vargas called his house “Casa Vargas.” This included people who disliked him for his family wealth, or thought it was insensitive of him to have moved into his parents’ mansion after they’d been killed in a plane crash. (By now, everyone in Oaxaca knew the story of how Vargas was supposed to have been on that plane.) And among the people who played the “Casa Vargas” card were those who’d been offended by how brusque Vargas could be. He used science like a bludgeon; he was inclined to club you with a strictly medical detail — the way he’d relegated Flor to a potential sexually transmitted disease.

Well, that was Vargas — that was who he was. Brother Pepe knew him well. Pepe thought he could count on Vargas to be cynical about everything. Pepe believed the dump kids and Edward Bonshaw could benefit from some of Vargas’s cynicism. This was why Pepe had prevailed upon Vargas to invite the Iowan and the dump kids to the dinner party.

Pepe knew other scholastics who’d failed their vows. There could be doubts and detours on the road to the priesthood. When the most zealous students abandoned their studies, the emotional and psychological aspects of “reorientation,” as Pepe thought of it, could be brutal.

No doubt Edward Bonshaw had questioned whether or not he was gay, or if he was in love with this particular person who just happened to have breasts and a penis. No doubt Señor Eduardo had asked himself: Aren’t a lot of gay men not attracted to transvestites? Yet Edward Bonshaw knew that some gay men were attracted to trannies. But did that make him, Señor Eduardo must have wondered, a sexual minority within a minority?

Brother Pepe didn’t care about those distinctions within distinctions. Pepe had a lot of love in him. Pepe knew that the matter of the Iowan’s sexual orientation was strictly Edward Bonshaw’s business.

Brother Pepe didn’t have a problem with Señor Eduardo’s belatedly discovering his homosexual self (if that’s what was going on), or his abandoning the quest to become a priest; it was okay with Pepe that Edward Bonshaw was smitten by a cross-dresser with a penis. And Pepe didn’t dislike Flor, but Pepe had a problem with the prostitute part — not necessarily for Vargas’s sexually transmitted reasons. Pepe knew that Flor had always been in trouble; she’d lived surrounded by trouble (not everything could be blamed on Houston), while Edward Bonshaw had scarcely lived at all. What would two people like that do together in Iowa? For Señor Eduardo, in Pepe’s opinion, Flor was a step too far — Flor’s world was without boundaries.

As for Flor — who knew what she was thinking? “I think you’re a very nice parrot man,” Flor had said to the Iowan. “I should have met you when I was a kid,” she’d told him. “We might have helped each other get through some shit.”

Well, yes — Brother Pepe would have agreed to that. But wasn’t now too late for the two of them? As for Dr. Vargas — specifically, his “offending” Flor — Pepe might have put Vargas up to it. Yet no litany of sexually transmitted diseases was likely to scare Edward Bonshaw away; sexual attraction isn’t strictly scientific.

Brother Pepe had higher hopes of Vargas’s skepticism succeeding with Juan Diego and Lupe. The dump kids were disillusioned with La Maravilla — at least Lupe was. Dr. Vargas took a dim view of reading lions’ minds, as did Brother Pepe. Vargas had examined a few of the young-women acrobats; they’d been his patients, both before and after Ignacio got his hands on them. As a performer, being The Wonder — La Maravilla herself — could kill you. (No one had survived the fall from eighty feet without a net.) Dr. Vargas knew that the girl acrobats who’d had sex with Ignacio wished they were dead.

And Vargas had admitted to Pepe, somewhat defensively, that he’d first thought the circus would be a good prospect for the dump kids because he’d envisioned that Lupe, who was a mind reader, would have no contact with Ignacio. (Lupe wouldn’t be one of Ignacio’s girl acrobats.) Now Vargas had changed his mind; what Vargas didn’t like about Lupe’s reading the lions’ minds was that this put the thirteen-year-old in contact with Ignacio.

Pepe had come full circle about the dump kids’ prospects at the circus. Brother Pepe wanted them back at Lost Children, where they would at least be safe. Pepe had Vargas’s support about Juan Diego’s prospects as a skywalker, too. So what if the crippled foot was permanently locked in the perfect position for skywalking? Juan Diego wasn’t an athlete; the boy’s good foot was a liability.

He’d been practicing in the acrobats’ troupe tent. The good foot had slipped out of the loops of rope in that ladder — he’d fallen a few times. And this was only the practice tent.

Lastly, there were the dump kids’ expectations about Mexico City. Juan Diego and Lupe’s pilgrimage to the basilica there was troubling to Pepe, who was from Mexico City. Pepe knew what a shock it could be to see Guadalupe’s shrine for the first time, and he knew the dump kids could be finicky — they were hard kids to please when it came to public expressions of religious faith. Pepe thought the dump kids had their own religion, and it struck Pepe as unfathomably personal.

Niños Perdidos would not let Edward Bonshaw and Brother Pepe accompany the dump kids on their trip to Mexico City; they couldn’t give their two best teachers time off together. And Señor Eduardo wanted to see the shrine to Guadalupe almost as much as the dump kids did — in Pepe’s opinion, the Iowan was as likely to be overwhelmed and disgusted by the excesses of the Basílica de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe as the dump kids were. (The throngs who flocked to the Guadalupe shrine on a Saturday morning could conceivably run roughshod over anyone’s personal beliefs.)

Vargas knew the scene — the mindless, run-amok worshipers were the epitome of everything he hated. But Pepe was wrong to imagine that Dr. Vargas (or anyone else) could prepare the dump kids and Edward Bonshaw for the hordes of pilgrims approaching the Basílica de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe on the Avenue of Mysteries—“the Avenue of Miseries,” Pepe had heard Vargas call it, in the doctor’s blunt English. The spectacle was one los niños de la basura and the missionary had to experience themselves.

Speaking of spectacles: a dinner party at Casa Vargas was a spectacle. The life-size statues of the Spanish conquistadors, at the top and bottom of the grand staircase (and in the hall), were more intimidating than the religious sex dolls and other statuary for sale at the virgin shop on Independencia.

The menacing Spanish soldiers were very realistic; they stood guard on two floors of Vargas’s house like a conquering army. Vargas had touched nothing in his parents’ mansion. He’d lived his youth at war with his parents’ religion and politics, but he’d left their paintings and statues and family photos intact.

Vargas was a socialist and an atheist; he virtually gave away his medical services to the neediest. But the house he lived in was a reminder of his spurned parents’ rejected values. Casa Vargas did not revere Vargas’s dead parents as much as it appeared to mock them; their culture, which Vargas had rebuked, was on display, but more for the effect of ridicule than honor — or so it seemed to Pepe.

“Vargas might as well have stuffed his dead parents and let them stand guard in the family house!” Brother Pepe had forewarned Edward Bonshaw, but the Iowan was unhinged before he even arrived at the dinner party.

Señor Eduardo had not confessed his transgression with Flor to Father Alfonso or Father Octavio. The zealot persisted in seeing the people he loved as projects; they were to be reclaimed or rescued — they were never to be abandoned. Flor and Juan Diego and Lupe were the Iowan’s projects; Edward Bonshaw saw them through the eyes of a born reformer, but he did not love them less for looking upon them in this fashion. (In Pepe’s opinion, this was a complication in Señor Eduardo’s process of “reorientation.”)

Brother Pepe still shared a bathroom with the zealot. Pepe knew that Edward Bonshaw had stopped whipping himself, but Pepe could hear the Iowan crying in the bathroom, where he whipped the toilet and the sink and the bathtub instead. Señor Eduardo cried and cried, because he didn’t know how he could quit his job at Lost Children until he’d arranged to take care of his beloved projects.

As for Lupe, she was in no mood for a dinner party at Casa Vargas. She’d been spending all her time with Hombre and the lionesses — las señoritas, “the young ladies,” Ignacio called the three lionesses. He’d named them, each one for a body part. Cara, “face” (of a person); Garra, “paw” (with claws); Oreja, “ear” (external, the outer ear). Ignacio told Lupe he could read the lionesses’ minds by these body parts. Cara scrunched up her face when she was agitated or angry; Garra looked like she was kneading bread with her paws, her claws digging into the ground; Oreja cocked one ear askew, or she flattened both her ears.

“They can’t fool me — I know what they’re thinking. The young ladies are obvious,” the lion tamer said to Lupe. “I don’t need a mind reader for las señoritas — it’s Hombre whose thoughts are a mystery.”

Maybe not to Lupe — that’s what Juan Diego was thinking. Juan Diego was in no mood for a dinner party, either; he doubted that Lupe had been entirely forthcoming to him.

“What is on Hombre’s mind?” he’d asked her.

“Not much — typical guy,” Lupe had told her brother. “Hombre thinks about doing it to the lionesses. To Cara, usually. Sometimes to Garra. To Oreja, hardly at all — except when he thinks of her suddenly, and then he wants to do it to her right away. Hombre thinks about sex or he doesn’t think at all,” Lupe said. “Except about eating.”

“But is Hombre dangerous?” Juan Diego asked her. (He thought it was odd that Hombre thought about sex. Juan Diego was pretty sure that Hombre didn’t actually have sex, at all.)

“If you bother Hombre when he’s eating — if you touch him when he’s thinking about doing it to one of the lionesses. Hombre wants everything to be the same — he doesn’t like change,” Lupe said. “I don’t know if the lions actually do it,” she admitted.

“But what does Hombre think about Ignacio? That’s all Ignacio cares about!” Juan Diego cried.

Lupe shrugged their late mother’s shrug. “Hombre loves Ignacio, except when he hates him. It confuses Hombre when he hates Ignacio. Hombre knows he’s not supposed to hate Ignacio,” Lupe answered.

“There’s something you’re not telling me,” Juan Diego said to her.

“Oh — now you read minds, do you?” Lupe asked him.

“What is it?” Juan Diego asked her.

“Ignacio thinks the lionesses are dumb twats — he’s not interested in what the lionesses are thinking,” Lupe answered.

“That’s it?” Juan Diego asked. Between what Ignacio thought and the vocabulary of the girl acrobats, Lupe’s language was growing filthier on a daily basis.

“Ignacio is obsessed with what Hombre thinks — it’s a guy-to-guy thing.” But the next thing she said in a funny way, Juan Diego thought. “The tamer of the lionesses doesn’t care what the lionesses are thinking,” Lupe said. She hadn’t said el domador de leones — that’s what you called the lion tamer. Instead Lupe had said el domador de leonas.

“So what are the lionesses thinking, Lupe?” Juan Diego had asked her. (Not about sex, apparently.)

“The lionesses hate Ignacio — all the time,” Lupe answered. “The lionesses are dumb twats — they’re jealous of Ignacio because they think Hombre loves Ignacio more than the asshole lion loves them! Yet if Ignacio ever hurts Hombre, the lionesses will kill Ignacio. The lionesses are all dumber than monkey twats!” Lupe shouted. “They love Hombre, even though the asshole lion never thinks about them — unless he remembers that he wants to do it, and then Hombre has trouble remembering which one he wants to do it to more!”

“The lionesses want to kill Ignacio?” Juan Diego asked Lupe.

“They will kill him,” she said. “Ignacio has nothing to fear from Hombre — it’s the lionesses the lion tamer should be afraid of.”

“The problem is what you tell Ignacio, or what you don’t tell him,” Juan Diego told his little sister.

“That’s your problem,” Lupe had said. “I’m just the mind reader. You’re the one the lion tamer listens to, ceiling-walker,” she said.

That was truly all he was, Juan Diego was thinking. Even Soledad had lost confidence in him as a future skywalker. The good foot gave him trouble; it slipped in the rope rungs of the ladder, and it wasn’t strong enough to bear his weight in that unnatural right-angle position.

What Juan Diego saw of Dolores was often upside down. Either she was upside down or he was; in the acrobats’ troupe tent, there could be only one skywalker practicing at a time. Dolores had never had any confidence in him as a skywalker — like Ignacio, Dolores believed Juan Diego lacked the balls for it. (For balls, apparently, only the main tent — the skywalk at eighty feet, without a net — was a true test.)

Lupe had said Hombre liked you if you were afraid of him; maybe this was why Ignacio told the girl acrobats that Hombre knew when the girls got their periods. This made the girls fear Hombre. Since Ignacio made the girls feed the lion (and the lionesses), possibly this made the girls safer?

It was sick that Hombre liked the girls because they were afraid of him, Juan Diego thought. But this made no sense, Lupe had said. Ignacio just wanted the girl acrobats to be afraid, and he wanted them to feed the lions. Ignacio thought if he fed the lions, they would think he was weak. The part about the girls’ periods mattered only to Ignacio. Lupe said Hombre didn’t think about the girls’ periods — not ever.

Juan Diego was afraid of Dolores, but this didn’t make Dolores like him. Dolores did say one helpful thing to him, about skywalking — not that Dolores had meant to be helpful. She was just being cruel to him, which was her nature.

“If you think you’re going to fall, you will,” Dolores told Juan Diego. He was upside down in the practice tent, his feet in the first two rope rungs of the ladder. The loops of rope dug into the creases where the tops of his feet bent at his ankles.

“That’s not helpful, Dolores,” Soledad had told The Wonder, but it was helpful to Juan Diego; at the moment, however, he’d been unable to stop thinking that he was going to fall — hence he’d fallen.

“See?” Dolores had told him, climbing up to the ladder. Upside down she seemed especially desirable.

Juan Diego had not been allowed to bring his life-size Guadalupe statue to the dogs’ troupe tent. There was no room for it, and when Juan Diego tried to describe the Guadalupe figure to Estrella, the old woman had told him that the male dogs (Baby, the dachshund, and Perro Mestizo) would piss on it.

Now, when Juan Diego thought about masturbating, he thought about Dolores; she was usually upside down, when he thought of her this way. He’d said nothing to Lupe about masturbating to the image of an upside-down Dolores, but Lupe caught him thinking about it.

“Sick!” Lupe said to him. “You imagine Dolores upside down with your penis in her mouth — what are you thinking?”

“Lupe, what can I say? You already know what I’m thinking!” Juan Diego said in exasperation, but he was also embarrassed.

It was terrible timing: their move to La Maravilla, and their respective ages at that time; it was suddenly painful to both of them — namely, that Lupe didn’t want to know what her brother was thinking, and Juan Diego didn’t want his little sister to know, either. They were estranged from each other for the first time.

THUS (IN THEIR UNFAMILIAR states of mind) the dump kids arrived, with Brother Pepe and Señor Eduardo, at Casa Vargas. The statues of the Spanish conquistadors caused Edward Bonshaw to stagger on the stairs, or perhaps it was the grandeur of the foyer that unbalanced him. Brother Pepe took hold of the Iowan’s arm; Pepe knew that Señor Eduardo’s long list of the things he’d denied himself had shortened. In addition to having sex with Flor, Edward Bonshaw now permitted himself to drink beer — it was almost impossible to be with Flor and not drink something—but even a couple of beers could unbalance Edward Bonshaw.

It didn’t help that Vargas’s dinner-party girlfriend was there to greet them on the grand staircase. Dr. Vargas didn’t have a live-in girlfriend; he lived alone, if you could call living in Casa Vargas living “alone.” (The statues of the Spanish conquistadors amounted to an occupying force — a small army.)

For dinner parties, Vargas always came up with a girlfriend who could cook. This one was named Alejandra — a bosomy beauty whose breasts must have been a hazard around a hot stove. Lupe took an instant dislike to Alejandra; in Lupe’s harsh judgment, Vargas’s lustful thoughts about Dr. Gomez should have obligated Vargas to fidelity to the ENT doctor.

“Lupe, be realistic,” Juan Diego whispered to his sullen little sister; she’d merely scowled at Alejandra, refusing to shake the young woman’s hand. (Lupe didn’t want to let go of the coffee can.) “Vargas isn’t supposed to be faithful to a woman he hasn’t slept with! Vargas only wants to sleep with Dr. Gomez, Lupe.”

“It’s the same thing,” Lupe pronounced in biblical fashion; naturally, she hated passing the Spanish army on the stairs.

“Alejandra, Alejandra,” Vargas’s dinner-party girlfriend kept repeating, introducing herself to Brother Pepe and the staggering Señor Eduardo on the treacherous staircase.

“What a penis-breath,” Lupe said to her brother. She meant that Alejandra was a penis-breath — Dolores’s favorite epithet. It was what The Wonder called the girl acrobats who were sleeping with, or had slept with, Ignacio. It was what Dolores called each of the lionesses, too, whenever she had to feed them. (The lionesses hated Dolores, Lupe said, but Juan Diego didn’t know if that was true; he only knew for sure that Lupe hated Dolores.) Lupe called Dolores a penis-breath, or Lupe implied that Dolores was a future penis-breath, which (Lupe said) Dolores was too much of a dumb monkey twat to know.

Now Alejandra was a penis-breath, just because she was one of Dr. Vargas’s girlfriends. Edward Bonshaw, out of breath, saw Vargas smiling at the top of the stairs — his arm around the bearded soldier in the plumed helmet. “And who is this savage?” Señor Eduardo asked Vargas, pointing to the soldier’s sword and his breastplate.

“One of your evangelicals in armor, of course,” Vargas answered the Iowan.

Edward Bonshaw eyed the Spaniard warily. Was it only Juan Diego’s anxiety for his sister that made the boy think the statue’s lifeless gaze came to life when the conquistador spotted Lupe?

“Don’t stare at me, rapist and pillager,” Lupe said to the Spaniard. “I’ll cut off your dick with your sword — I know some lions who would like to eat you and your Christian scum!”

“Jesus, Lupe!” Juan Diego exclaimed.

“What does Jesus matter?” Lupe asked him. “It’s the virgins who are in charge — not that they’re really virgins, not that we even know who they are.”

“What?” Juan Diego said to her.

“The virgins are like the lionesses,” Lupe told her brother. “They’re the ones you have to worry about — they run the show.” Lupe’s head was eye-level to the hilt of the Spaniard’s sword; her small hand touched the scabbard. “Keep it sharp, killer,” Lupe told the conquistador.

“They certainly were frightening, weren’t they?” Edward Bonshaw said, still staring at the conquering soldier.

“They certainly intended to be,” Vargas told the Iowan.

They were following Alejandra’s hips down a long and decorous hall. Of course they couldn’t pass a portrait of Jesus without comment. “Blessed are—” Edward Bonshaw began to say; the portrait was of Jesus delivering the Sermon on the Mount.

“Oh, those endearing beatitudes!” Vargas interrupted him. “My favorite part of the Bible — not that anyone pays attention to the beatitudes; they are not what most Church business is about. Aren’t you taking these two innocents to the Guadalupe shrine? A Catholic tourist attraction, if you ask me,” Vargas went on to Señor Eduardo but for everyone’s benefit. “No evidence of the beatitudes at that unholiest of basilicas!”

“Have tolerance, Vargas,” Brother Pepe pleaded. “You tolerate our beliefs, we’ll tolerate your lack thereof—”

“The virgins rule,” Lupe interrupted them, holding tight to the coffee can. “Nobody cares about the beatitudes. Nobody listens to Jesus — Jesus was just a baby. The virgins are the ones who pull the strings.”

“I suggest you don’t translate for Lupe — whatever she said. Just don’t,” Pepe said to Juan Diego, who was too transfixed by Alejandra’s hips to have been paying attention to Lupe’s mysticism — perhaps the contents of the coffee can contributed to Lupe’s irritating powers.

“Tolerance is never a bad idea,” Edward Bonshaw began. Ahead of them, Juan Diego saw another Spanish soldier, this one standing at attention by a double doorway in the hall.

“This sounds like a Jesuitical trick,” Vargas said to the Iowan. “Since when do you Catholics ever leave us nonbelievers alone?” As proof, Dr. Vargas gestured to the solemn conquistador standing guard at the doorway to the kitchen. Vargas put his hand on the soldier’s breastplate, over the conquistador’s heart — if the conquering Spaniard had ever had a heart. “Try talking to this guy about free will,” Vargas said, but the Spaniard seemed not to notice the doctor’s overfamiliar touch; once again, Juan Diego saw the statue’s distant gaze come into focus. The Spanish soldier was looking at Lupe.

Juan Diego leaned down and whispered to his sister, “I know you’re not telling me everything.”

“You wouldn’t believe me,” she told him.

“Aren’t they sweet — those children?” Alejandra said to Vargas.

“Oh, God — the penis-breath wants to have kids! This will ruin my appetite,” was all Lupe would say to her brother.

“Did you bring your own coffee?” Alejandra suddenly asked Lupe. “Or is it your toys? It’s—”

“It’s for him!” Lupe said, pointing to Dr. Vargas. “It’s our mother’s ashes. They have a funny smell. There’s a little dog in the ashes, and a dead hippie. There’s something sacred in the ashes, too,” Lupe added, in a whisper. “But the smell is different. We can’t identify it. We want a scientific opinion.” She held out the coffee can to Vargas. “Go on—smell it,” Lupe said to him.

“It just smells like coffee,” Edward Bonshaw tried to assure Dr. Vargas. (The Iowan didn’t know if Vargas had any prior knowledge of the contents of the coffee can.)

“It’s Esperanza’s ashes!” Brother Pepe blurted out.

“Your turn, translator,” Vargas said to Juan Diego; the doctor had taken the coffee can from Lupe, but he’d not yet lifted the lid.

“We burned our mother at the basurero,” Juan Diego began. “We burned a gringo draft dodger with her — a dead one,” the fourteen-year-old struggled to explain.

“There was a dog in the mix — a small one,” Pepe pointed out.

“That must have been quite a fire,” Vargas said.

“It was already burning when we put the bodies in it,” Juan Diego explained. “Rivera had started it — with whatever was around.”

“Just your usual dump fire, I suppose,” Vargas said; he was fingering the lid of the coffee can, but he still hadn’t lifted it.

Juan Diego would always remember how Lupe was touching the tip of her nose; she held one index finger against her nose when she spoke. “Y la nariz,” Lupe said. (“And the nose.”)

Juan Diego hesitated to translate this, but Lupe kept saying it, while she touched the end of her little nose. “Y la nariz.”

“The nose?” Vargas guessed. “What nose? Whose nose?”

“Not the nose, you little heathen!” Brother Pepe cried.

“Mary’s nose?” Edward Bonshaw exclaimed. “You put the Virgin Mary’s nose in that fire?” the Iowan asked Lupe.

“He did it,” Lupe said, pointing to her brother. “It was in his pocket, though it almost didn’t fit — it was a big nose.”

No one had told Alejandra, the dinner-party girlfriend, about the giant statue of the Virgin Mary losing its nose in the accident that killed the cleaning woman at the Jesuit temple. Poor Alejandra must have imagined, for a moment, the actual Virgin Mary’s nose in the awful fire at the basurero.

“Help her,” was all Lupe said, pointing to Alejandra. Brother Pepe and Edward Bonshaw managed to guide the dinner-party girlfriend to the kitchen sink.

Vargas lifted the lid of the coffee can. No one spoke, though they could all hear Alejandra breathing in through her nose and out through her mouth as she tried to suppress the urge to vomit.

Dr. Vargas lowered his mouth and nose into the open coffee can. They could all hear him take a deep breath. There was no other sound but the carefully measured breathing of his dinner-party girlfriend, who was struggling not to be sick in the sink.

The first conquistador’s sword was withdrawn from its scabbard and clanged against the stone floor in the foyer at the foot of the grand staircase. It was quite a loud clang, but far away from where the dinner par-tiers stood in the kitchen.

Brother Pepe flinched at the sound of the sword — as did Señor Eduardo and the dump kids, but not Vargas and Alejandra. The second sword clanged closer to them — the sword belonging to the Spaniard standing guard at the top of the stairs. You could not only hear the second sword clang against the stone stairs, as it slid down several steps before its descent of the staircase halted, but they had all heard the sound of the second sword being drawn from its scabbard.

“Those Spanish soldiers—” Edward Bonshaw began to say.

“It’s not the conquistadors — they’re just statues,” Lupe told them. (Juan Diego didn’t hesitate to translate this.) “It’s your parents, isn’t it? You live in their house because they’re here, aren’t they?” Lupe asked Dr. Vargas. (Juan Diego kept translating.)

“Ashes are ashes — there’s little smell to ashes,” Vargas said. “But this was a dump fire,” the doctor continued. “There’s paint in these ashes — maybe turpentine, too, or some kind of paint thinner. Maybe stain — something for staining wood, I mean. Something flammable.”

“Maybe gasoline?” Juan Diego said; he’d seen Rivera start more than a few dump fires with gasoline, including this one.

“Maybe gasoline,” Vargas agreed. “Lots of chemicals,” the doctor added. “What you smell are the chemicals.”

“The Mary Monster’s nose was chemical,” Lupe said, but Juan Diego grabbed her hand before she could touch her nose again.

The third clang and clatter was very near to them; except for Vargas, everyone jumped.

“Let me guess,” Brother Pepe cheerfully said. “That was the sword of our guardian conquistador by the kitchen doorway — the one right here, in the hall,” Pepe said, pointing.

“No — that was his helmet,” Alejandra said. “I won’t stay here overnight. I don’t know what his parents want,” the pretty young cook said. She seemed fully recovered.

“They just want to be here — they want Vargas to know they’re all right,” Lupe explained. “They’re glad you weren’t on the plane, you know,” Lupe said to Dr. Vargas.

When Juan Diego translated this, Vargas just nodded to Lupe; he knew, all right. Dr. Vargas put the lid back on the coffee can and handed it back to Lupe. “Just don’t put your fingers in your mouth or in your eyes, if you’ve touched the ashes,” he told her. “Wash your hands. Paint, turpentine, wood stain — they’re poisonous.”

The sword came sliding across the floor of the kitchen, where they were standing; there wasn’t much of a clang this time — it was a wooden floor.

“That’s the third sword — from the nearest Spaniard,” Alejandra said. “They always put it in the kitchen.”

Brother Pepe and Edward Bonshaw had gone into the long hall just to have a look around. The painting of Jesus delivering the Sermon on the Mount was askew on the wall; Pepe fussed with it until it hung right.

Without looking into the hall, Vargas said: “They like to draw my attention to the beatitudes.”

Out in the hall, they could hear the Iowan reciting the beatitudes. “Blessed are—” and so on, and on.

“Believing in ghosts isn’t the same thing as believing in God,” Dr. Vargas said to the dump kids a little defensively.

“You’re okay,” Lupe told him. “You’re better than I thought,” she added. “And you’re not a penis-breath,” the girl said to Alejandra. “The food smells good — we should eat something.” Juan Diego decided he would translate just the last part.

“ ‘Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God,’ ” Señor Eduardo was reciting. The Iowan wouldn’t have agreed with Dr. Vargas. Edward Bonshaw believed that believing in ghosts amounted to the same thing as believing in God; to Señor Eduardo, the two things were at least related.

What did Juan Diego believe, then and now? He’d seen what the ghosts could do. Had he actually witnessed detectable movement from the Mary Monster, or had he only imagined it? And there was the nose trick, or whatever one called it. Some unexplainable things are real.