Page 115 of Avenue of Mysteries


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According to Dorothy, it was entirely Leslie's idea that Dorothy come with her and the wild boys to El Nido.

"I'm not exactly nanny material," Dorothy had written to Juan Diego. But Leslie was pretty, Juan Diego was thinking. And if Leslie liked women--whether or not Leslie was a lesbian, or just confused--Juan Diego didn't doubt that Dorothy would have figured her out. Whatever Dorothy was, she wasn't confused about it.

Naturally, Juan Diego didn't tell Clark and Josefa that Dorothy had hooked up with poor Leslie--if, indeed, Dorothy had. (In her fax, Dorothy wasn't exactly saying if she had.)

Given the disparaging way Clark had called Dorothy "D."--not to mention with what disgust he'd referred to Dorothy as "the daughter," or how turned off Clark had been by the whole mother-daughter business--well, why would Juan Diego have made Clark more miserable by suggesting that poor Leslie had hooked up with "D."?

"What happened to those children wasn't my fault," Dorothy had written. As a writer, Juan Diego usually sensed when a storyteller was purposely changing the subject; he knew Dorothy hadn't gone to El Nido out of her desire to be a nanny.

He also knew that Dorothy was very direct--when she wanted to be, she could be very specific. Yet the details of exactly what happened to Leslie's little boys were vague--perhaps purposely so?

This was what Juan Diego was thinking when his flight from Bohol landed in Manila, jolting him awake.

He couldn't understand, of course, why the young woman seated beside him--she was in the aisle seat--was holding his hand. "I'm so sorry," she said to him earnestly. Juan Diego waited, smiling at her. He hoped she would explain what she meant, or at least let go of his hand. "Your mother--" the young woman started to say, but she stopped, covering her fac

e with both hands. "The dead hippie, a dead dog--a puppy--and all the rest!" she suddenly blurted out. (In lieu of saying "the Virgin Mary's nose," the young woman seated beside him touched the nose on her own face.)

"I see," was all Juan Diego said.

Was he losing his mind? Juan Diego wondered. Had he talked the whole way to the stranger next to him? Was he somehow destined to meet mind readers?

The young woman was now scrutinizing her cell phone, which reminded Juan Diego to turn on his cell phone and stare at it. The little phone rewarded him by vibrating in his hand. He liked the vibration mode best. He disliked all the "tones," as they called them. Juan Diego saw he had a text message from Clark French--not a short one.

Novelists aren't at their best in the truncated world of text messages, but Clark was a persevering type--he was dogged, especially when he was indignant about something. Text messages were not meant for moral indignation, Juan Diego thought. "My friend Leslie has been seduced by your friend D.--the daughter!" Clark's message began; he'd heard from poor Leslie, alas.

Leslie's little boys were nine and ten--or seven and eight. Juan Diego was trying to remember. (Their names were impossible for him to remember.)

The boys had German-sounding names, Juan Diego thought; he was right about that. The boys' father, Leslie's ex-husband, was German--an international hotelier. Juan Diego couldn't remember (or no one had told him) the German hotel magnate's name, but that was what Leslie's ex did: he owned hotels, and he bought out blue-ribbon hotels that were in financial straits. And Manila was a base of the German hotelier's Asian operations--or so Clark had implied. Leslie had lived everywhere, the Philippines included; her little boys had lived all over the world.

Juan Diego read Clark's text message on the runway, following his flight from Bohol. A kind of Catholic umbrage--a feeling of pique--emanated from it, on Leslie's behalf. After all, poor Leslie was a person of faith--a fellow Catholic--and Clark sensed that she'd been wronged, yet again.

Clark had texted the following message: "Watch out for the water buffalo at the airport--not as docile as it appears! Werner was trampled, but not seriously injured. Little Dieter says neither he nor Werner did anything to incite charge. (Poor Leslie says Werner and Dieter are 'innocent of provoking buffalo.') And then little Dieter was stung by swimming things--the resort called them 'plankton.' Your friend D. says stinging things were the size of human thumbnails--D., swimming with Dieter, says so-called plankton resembled 'condoms for three-year-olds,' hundreds of them! No allergic reaction to miniature stinging condoms yet. 'Definitely not plankton,' D. says."

D. says, Juan Diego thought to himself; Clark's account of the water buffalo and the stinging things differed only slightly from Dorothy's. The image of those "condoms for three-year-olds" was consistent, but Dorothy--in her vague way--had implied the water buffalo was provoked. She didn't say how.

There was no water buffalo to be wary of at the airport in Manila, where Juan Diego changed planes for his connecting flight to Palawan. The new plane was a twin-engine prop--cigar-shaped, with only one seat on either side of the aisle. (Juan Diego would be in no danger of telling a total stranger the story of the ashes he and Lupe didn't scatter at the Guadalupe shrine in Mexico City.)

But before the propeller plane taxied away from their gate, Juan Diego felt his cell phone vibrate again. Clark's text message seemed hastier or more hysterical than before: "Werner, still sore from buffalo trampling, stung by pink jellyfish swimming vertically (like sea horses). D. says they were 'semi-transparent and the size of index fingers.' Necessary for poor Leslie and her boys to evacuate the island posthaste, due to Werner's immediate allergic reaction to see-through finger things--swelling of lips, tongue, his poor penis. You will be alone with D. She is staying behind to settle cancellations of room reservations--poor Leslie's, not yours! Avoid swimming. See you in Manila, I hope. Watch yourself around D."

The prop plane had begun to move; Juan Diego turned off his cell phone. Regarding the second stinging episode--the pink jellyfish swimming vertically--Dorothy had sounded more like herself. "Who needs this shit? Fuck the South China Sea!" Dorothy had faxed Juan Diego, who was trying to imagine being alone with Dorothy on an isolated island, where he wouldn't dare to swim. Why would he want to risk the stinging condoms for three-year-olds or the pink, penis-swelling jellyfish? (Not to mention the monitor lizards the size of dogs! How had Leslie's wild boys managed to escape an encounter with the giant lizards?)

Wouldn't he be happier returning to Manila? Juan Diego mused. But there was an in-flight brochure to look at; he looked longest at the map, with disquieting results. Palawan was the farthest westward of the Philippine islands. El Nido, the resort on Lagen Island--off the northwestern tip of Palawan--was the same latitude as Ho Chi Minh City and the mouths of the Mekong. Vietnam was due west across the South China Sea from the Philippines.

The Vietnam War was why the good gringo had run away to Mexico; el gringo bueno's father had fallen in an earlier war--he lay buried not far from where his son could have died. Were these connections coincidental or predetermined? "Now there's a question!" Juan Diego could hear Senor Eduardo saying--though, in his lifetime, the Iowan hadn't answered the question himself.

When Edward Bonshaw and Flor died, Juan Diego would pursue the same subject with Dr. Vargas. Juan Diego told Vargas what Senor Eduardo had revealed to him about recognizing Flor in the postcard. "How about that connection?" Juan Diego would ask Dr. Vargas. "Would you call that coincidence or fate?" was how the dump reader put it to the atheist.

"What would you say to somewhere in between?" Vargas asked him.

"I would call that copping out," Juan Diego answered. But he'd been angry; Flor and Senor Eduardo had just died--fucking doctors had failed to save them.

Maybe now Juan Diego would say what Vargas had said: the way the world worked was "somewhere in between" coincidence and fate. There were mysteries, Juan Diego knew; not everything came with a scientific explanation.

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.

Source: www.allfreenovel.com
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