Page 73 of Avenue of Mysteries


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"I hear you like whips," Flor said quietly to the hobbling missionary.

"You earlier mentioned a hose," Edward Bonshaw replied, somewhat stiffly. "Right now, I would like a hose."

"Tell the parrot man to check out the lion tamer's whip--it's a big one," Lupe was babbling.

Ignacio was watching them approach in the calmly calculating way he might have measured the courage and reliability of new lions. The lion tamer's tight pants were like a matador's; he wore nothing but a fitted V-necked vest on his torso, to show off his muscles. The vest was white, not only to accentuate Ignacio's dark-brown skin; if he were ever attacked by a lion in the ring, Ignacio wanted the crowd to see how red his blood was--blood shows up the brightest against a white background. Even when dying, Ignacio would be vain.

"Forget his whip--look at him," Flor whispered to the beshitted Iowan. "Ignacio is a born crowd-pleaser."

"And a womanizer!" Lupe babbled. It didn't matter if she failed to hear what you whispered, because she already knew what you were thinking. Yet the parrot man's mind, like Rivera's, was a hard one for Lupe to read. "Ignacio likes the lionesses--he likes all the ladies," Lupe was saying, but by now the dump kids were at the lion tamer's tent, and Soledad, Ignacio's wife, had come out of the troupe tent to stand beside her preening, powerful-looking husband.

"If you think you just saw the king of beasts," Flor was still whispering to Edward Bonshaw, "think again. You're about to meet him now," the transvestite whispered to the missionary. "Ignacio is the king of beasts."

"The king of pigs," Lupe said suddenly, but of course Juan Diego was the only one who understood her. And he would never understand everything about her.

* 17 *

New Year's Eve at the Encantador

Maybe it was nothing more than the melancholy of that moment when the dump kids arrived at La Maravilla, or else the unattached eyes in the darkness--those disembodied eyes surrounding the car speeding toward the beach resort with the bewitching name of Encantador. Who knows what made Juan Diego suddenly nod off? It might have been that moment when the road narrowed and the car slowed down, and the intriguing eyes vanished. (When the dump kids moved to the circus, there were more eyes watching them than they'd been used to.)

"At first, I thought he was daydreaming--he seemed to be in a kind of trance," Dr. Quintana was saying.

"Is he all right?" Clark French asked his wife, the doctor.

"He's just asleep, Clark--he fell sound asleep," Josefa said. "It may be the jet lag, or what a bad night's sleep your ill-advised aquarium caused him."

"Josefa

, he fell asleep when we were talking--in the middle of a conversation!" Clark cried. "Does he have narcolepsy?"

"Don't shake him!" Juan Diego heard Clark's wife say, but he kept his eyes closed.

"I've never heard of a narcoleptic writer," Clark French was saying. "What about the drugs he's taking?"

"The beta-blockers can affect your sleep," Dr. Quintana told her husband.

"I was thinking of the Viagra--"

"The Viagra does only one thing, Clark."

Juan Diego thought this was a good moment to open his eyes. "Are we here?" he asked them. Josefa was still sitting beside him in the backseat; Clark had opened the rear door and was peering into the SUV at his former teacher. "Is this the Encantador?" Juan Diego asked innocently. "Has the mystery guest arrived?"

She had, but no one had seen her. Perhaps she'd traveled a long way and was resting in her room. She seemed to know the room--that is, she had requested it. It was near the library, on the second floor of the main building; either she'd stayed at the Encantador before or she assumed that a room near the library would be quiet.

"Personally, I never nap," Clark was saying; he had wrestled Juan Diego's mammoth orange bag away from the boy driver and was now lugging it along an outdoor balcony of the pretty hotel, which was a magical but rambling assemblage of adjoining buildings on a hillside overlooking the sea. The palm trees obscured any view of the beach--even from the perspective of the second-and third-floor rooms--but the sea was visible. "A good night's sleep is all I need," Clark carried on.

"There were fish in my room last night, and an eel," Juan Diego reminded his former student. Here he would have a second-floor room, on the same floor as the uninvited guest--in an adjacent building that was easily reached by the outdoor balcony.

"About the fish--pay no attention to Auntie Carmen," Clark was saying. "Your room is some distance from the swimming pool. The children in the pool, in the early morning, shouldn't wake you up."

"Auntie Carmen is a pet person," Clark's wife interjected. "She cares more about fish than she does about people."

"Thank God the moray survived," Clark joined in. "I believe Morales lives with Auntie Carmen."

"It's a pity no one else does," Josefa said. "No one else would," the doctor added.

Below them, children were playing in the pool. "Lots of teenagers in this family--therefore, lots of free nannies for the little ones," Clark pointed out.

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