Page 46 of Avenue of Mysteries


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Flor had reached out to the young American draft dodgers, too; all the lost boys knew her. Maybe they liked her because she was a transvestite--like them, she was still a boy--but the lost Americans also liked Flor because her English was excellent. Flor had lived in Texas, but she'd come back to Mexico. Flor never changed the way she told that story. "Let's just say my only way out of Oaxaca took me to Houston," she would always begin. "Have you ever been to Houston? Let's just say I had to get out of Houston."

Lupe and Juan Diego had seen the good gringo around Zaragoza Street before. One morning Brother Pepe had found him sleeping in a pew of the Jesuit temple. El gringo bueno was singing "Streets of Laredo," the cowboy song, in his sleep--just the first verse, over and over again, Pepe had said.

As I walked out in the streets of Laredo

As I walked out in Laredo one day,

I spied a young cowboy, all wrapped in white linen,

Wrapped up in white linen and cold as the clay.

The hippie boy was always friendly to the dump kids. As for the fracas that had started in the Hotel Somega, it appeared that el gringo bueno hadn't been given time to get dressed. He lay curled on the sidewalk in a fetal position, to protect himself from being kicked; he wore just a pair of jeans. He was carrying his sandals and a dirty long-sleeved shirt, the only shirt the dump kids had seen him wear. But Lupe and Juan Diego had not seen the boy's big tattoo before. It was a Christ on the Cross: the bleeding face of Jesus, crowned with thorns, filled the slender hippie's bare chest. Christ's torso, including the pierced part, covered the hippie's bare belly. Christ's outstretched arms (Jesus's sorely abused wrists and hands) were tattooed over the hippie boy's upper arms and forearms. It was as if the upper body of Christ had been violently affixed to the upper body of the good gringo. Both the crucified Christ and the hippie boy needed to shave, and their long hair was similarly matted.

There were two thugs standing over the boy on Zaragoza Street. The dump kids knew Garza--the tall, bearded one. Either he let you in the lobby of the Somega or he didn't; he was usually the one who told the kids to get lost. Garza had a territorial attitude concerning the hotel courtyard. The other thug--the young, fat one--was Garza's slave boy, Cesar. (Garza fucked everything.)

"Is this how you get your rocks off?" Flor asked the two thugs.

There was another prostitute on the sidewalk of Zaragoza Street, one of the younger ones; she had badly pockmarked skin, and she wasn't wearing much more than the good gringo was. Her name was Alba, which means "dawn," and Juan Diego thought she looked like a girl you might meet for a moment as short-lived as a sunrise.

"He didn't pay me enough," Alba told Flor.

"It was more than she told me it was going to be," el gringo bueno said. "I paid her what she first told me."

"Take the gringo with you," Flor said to Juan Diego. "If you can sneak out of Lost Children, you can sneak in--right?"

"The nuns will find him in the morning--or Brother Pepe or Senor Eduardo or our mother will find him," Lupe said.

Juan Diego tried to explain this to Flor. He and Lupe shared a bedroom and a bathroom; their mother, unann

ounced, came to use the bathroom, and so on. But Flor wanted the dump ninos to get the good gringo off the street. Ninos Perdidos was safe; the kids should take the hippie boy with them--no one at the orphanage would beat him. "Tell the nuns you found him on the sidewalk, and you were just doing the charitable thing," Flor said to Juan Diego. "Tell them the boy didn't have a tattoo, but when you woke up in the morning, the Crucified Christ was all over the good gringo's body."

"And we heard him singing in his sleep--that cowboy song--for hours, but we couldn't see in the dark," Lupe improvised. "El gringo bueno must have been getting that tattoo in the dark all night!"

As if on cue, the half-naked hippie boy had begun to sing; he was not asleep now. He must have been singing "Streets of Laredo" to taunt the two thugs who'd been harassing him--just the second verse, this time.

"I see, by your outfit, that you are a cowboy."

These words he did say as I slowly walked by.

"Come sit down beside me and hear my sad story,

Got shot in the breast, and I know I must die."

"Jesus Mary Joseph," was all Juan Diego said softly.

"Hey, how's it going, man on wheels?" the good gringo asked Juan Diego, as if he'd just noticed the boy in his wheelchair. "Hey, fast-drivin' little sister! You got any speedin' tickets yet?" (Lupe had bumped the good gringo with the wheelchair before.)

Flor was helping the hippie boy into his clothes. "If you touch him again, Garza," Flor was saying, "I'll cut your cock and balls off while you're asleep."

"You got the same junk between your legs," Garza told the transvestite prostitute.

"No, my junk is a lot bigger than yours," Flor told him.

Cesar, Garza's slave boy, started to laugh, but the way both Garza and Flor looked at him made him stop.

"You ought to say what you're worth the first time, Alba," Flor said to the young prostitute with the bad skin. "You shouldn't change your mind about what you're worth."

"You can't tell me what to do, Flor," Alba said, but the girl had waited until she'd slunk back inside the courtyard of the Hotel Somega before she said it.

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