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"He must have had a heart attack, or something," was all Brother Pepe ever said.
Naturally, Vargas was the examining physician. "It may have been an intruder," Vargas said. "Someone who had an ax to grind--someone with strong hands," Dr. Vargas surmised. The bad boyfriend had been strangled while sitting at the kitchen table.
The doctor said Soledad couldn't possibly have strangled her boyfriend. "Her hands are a wreck," Vargas had testified. "She couldn't squeeze the juice out of a lemon!" was how Vargas had put it.
Vargas offered the prescription painkillers Soledad was taking as evidence that the "damaged" woman couldn't have strangled anyone. The medication was for joint pain--it was mostly for the pain in Soledad's fingers and hands.
"Lots of damage--lots of pain," the doctor had said.
Juan Diego didn't doubt it--not the damage and pain part. But, looking back--remembering Soledad in the lion tamer's tent, and the occasional glances Soledad sent in Ignacio's direction--Juan Diego had seen something in the former trapeze artist's eyes. There'd been nothing in Soledad's dark eyes resembling the yellow in a lion's eyes, but there'd definitely been something of a lioness's unreadable intentions.
* 29 *
One Single Journey
"Cockfighting is legal here, and very popular," Dorothy was saying. "The psycho roosters are up all night, crowing. The stupid gamecocks are psyching themselves up for their next fight."
Well, Juan Diego thought, that might explain the psycho rooster who'd crowed before dawn that New Year's Eve at the Encantador, but not the subsequent squawk of the rooster's sudden and violent-sounding death--as if Miriam, by merely wishing the annoying rooster were dead, had made it happen.
At least he'd been forewarned, Juan Diego was thinking: there would be gamecocks crowing all night at the inn near Vigan. Juan Diego was interested to see what Dorothy would do about it.
"Someone should kill that rooster," Miriam had said in her low, husky voice that night at the Encantador. Then, when the deranged rooster crowed a third time and his crowing was cut off mid-squawk, Miriam had said, "There, that does it. No more heralding of a false dawn, no more untruthful messengers."
"And because the cocks crow all night, the dogs never stop barking," Dorothy told him.
"It sounds very restful," Juan Diego said. The inn was a compound of buildings, all old. The Spanish architecture was obvious; maybe the inn had once been a mission, Juan Diego was thinking--there was a church among the half-dozen guesthouses.
El Escondrijo, the inn was called--"The Hiding Place." It was hard to discern what kind of place it was, arriving after ten o'clock at night, as they did. The other guests (if there were any) had gone to bed. The dining room was outdoors under a thatched roof, but it was open-sided, exposed to the elements, though Dorothy promised him there were no mosquitoes.
"What kills the mosquitoes?" Juan Diego asked her.
"Bats, maybe--or the ghosts," Dorothy answered him indifferently. The bats, Juan Diego guessed, were also up all night--neither crowing nor barking, just silently killing things. Juan Diego was somewhat accustomed to ghosts, or so he thought.
The unlikely lovers were staying on the sea; there was a breeze. Juan Diego and Dorothy were not in Vigan, or in any other town, but the lights they could see were from Vigan, and there were two or three freighters anchored offshore. They could see the lights from the freighters, and when the wind was right, they could occasionally hear the ships' radios.
"There's a small swimming pool--a kids' pool, I guess you would call it," Dorothy was saying. "You have to be careful you don't fall in the pool at night, because they don't light it," she warned.
There was no air-conditioning, but Dorothy said the nights were cool enough not to need it, and there was a ceiling fan in their room; the fan made a ticking sound, but given the crowing gamecocks and barking dogs, what did a ticking fan matter? The Hiding Place was not what you would call a resort.
"The local beach is adjacent to a fishing village and an elementary school, but you hear the children's voices only from a distance--with kids, hearing them from a distance is okay," Dorothy was saying, as they were going to bed. "The dogs in the fishing village are territorial about the beach, but you're safe if you walk on the wet sand--just stay close to the water," Dorothy advised him.
What sort of people stay at El Escondrijo? Juan Diego was wondering. The Hiding Place made him think of fugitives or revolutionaries, not a touristy place. But Juan Diego was falling asleep; he was half asleep when Dorothy's cell phone (in the vibrate mode) made a humming sound on the night table.
"What a surprise, Mother," he heard Dorothy say sarcastically in the dark. There was a long pause, while cocks crowed and dogs barked, before Dorothy said, "Uh-huh," a couple of times; she said, "Okay," once or twice, too, before Juan Diego heard her say, "You're kidding, right?" And these familiar Dorothyisms were followed by the way the less-than-dutiful-sounding daughter ended the call. Juan Diego heard Dorothy tell Miriam: "You don't want to hear what I dream about--believe me, Mother."
Juan Diego lay awake in the darkness, thinking about this mother and her daughter; he was retracing how he'd met them--he was considering how dependent on them he'd become.
"Go to sleep, darling," Juan Diego heard Dorothy say; it was almost exactly the way Miriam would have said the darling word. And the young woman's hand, unerringly, reached for and found his penis, which she gave an ambivalent squeeze.
"Okay," Juan Diego was trying to say, but the word wouldn't come. Sleep overcame him, as if on Dorothy's command.
"When I die, don't burn me. Give me the whole hocus-pocus," Lupe had said, looking straight at Father Alfonso and Father Octavio. That was what Juan Diego heard in his sleep--Lupe's voice, instructing them.
Juan Diego didn't hear the crowing cocks and the barking dogs; he didn't hear the two cats fighting or fucking (or both) on the thatched roof of the outdoor shower. Juan Diego didn't hear Dorothy get up in the night, not to pee but to open the door to the outdoor shower, where she snapped on the shower light.
"Fuck off or die," Dorothy said sharply to the cats--they stopped yowling. She s
poke more softly to the ghost she saw standing in the outdoor shower, as if the water were running--it wasn't--and as if he were naked, though he was wearing clothes.
