AllFreeNovel
Share Us
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 Senor 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 Senor 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. (Senor Eduardo referred to Kinnick Stadium as the Roman Colosseum.)
Juan Diego wasn't interested in Ameri
