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"You took it," she whispered.
"I did?"
The dinner dishes had been cleared, though Juan Diego couldn't remember eating--not even the ceviche.
"You look tired," Miriam was telling him.
If he'd had more experience with women, wouldn't Juan Diego have known that there was something strange, or a little "off," about Miriam? What Juan Diego knew of women mostly came from fiction, from reading novels and writing them. The women in fiction were often alluring and mysterious; in Juan Diego's novels, the women were intimidating, too. And wasn't it normal--or not unusual, surely--for women in fiction to be a little bit dangerous?
If the women in Juan Diego's real life lagged behind those women he'd met only in his imagination--well, that might explain why women like Miriam and Dorothy, who were far beyond Juan Diego's experience with actual women, seemed so attractive and familiar to him. (Maybe he'd met them in his imagination many times. Was that where he'd seen them before?)
If the paper party hats had suddenly materialized on the heads of the New Year's Eve revelers at the Encantador, there was a similar lack of explanation for the equally spontaneous appearance of the band, beginning with three scruffy-looking young men with intermittent facial hair and starvation-symptom physiques. The lead guitarist had a neck tattoo that resembled a scalding injury, a burn-scar facsimile. The harmonica player and the drummer liked the tank-top look, which revealed their tattooed arms; the drummer fancied an insect theme, whereas the harmonica player preferred reptiles--nothing but scaly vertebrates, snakes and lizards, could crawl on his bare arms.
Miriam's comment on the young men was withering: "Lots of testosterone but few prospects." Juan Diego could tell that Clark French heard this, but Clark had his back turned to the boys in the band--Clark's slightly startled expression revealed that he thought Miriam had meant him.
"Those boys, behind you--the band, Clark," Dr. Quintana told her husband.
They were called (everyone knew) the Nocturnal Monkeys. The group's reputation, which was strictly local, rested on the bony bare shoulders of the lead singer--a skeletal waif in a strapless dress. Her breasts were not substantial enough to keep her dress from slipping down, and her lank black hair, savagely chopped at earlobe level, stood in stark contrast to her cadaverous pallor. There was an unnatural whiteness to her skin--not very Filipino, Juan Diego was thinking. That the lead singer looked like a freshly unearthed corpse made Juan Diego wonder if a tattoo or two might have helped--even an insect or a reptile, if not the grotesque damage done to the lead guitarist's neck.
As for the band's name, the Nocturnal Monkeys, naturally Clark had an explanation. The nearby Chocolate Hills were a local landmark. There were monkeys in the Chocolate Hills.
"No doubt the monkeys are nocturnal," Miriam said.
"Exactly," Clark answered her uncertainly. "If you're interested, and if it's not raining, a day trip to the Chocolate Hills can be arranged--a group of us go every year," Clark said.
"But we wouldn't see the monkeys in the daytime--not if they're nocturnal," Miriam pointed out.
"That's true--we never see the monkeys," Clark mumbled. He had trouble looking at Miriam, Juan Diego noticed.
"I guess these monkeys are the best we can do," Miriam said; she languidly waved her bare arm in the general direction of the hapless-looking band. They looked like Nocturnal Monkeys, all right.
"One night, every year, a group of us go on a riverboat cruise," Clark ventured, more cautiously than before. Miriam made him nervous; she just waited for him to continue. "We take a bus to the river. There are docks by the river, places to eat," Clark rambled on. "After dinner, we take a sightseeing boat up the river."
"In the dark," Miriam said flatly. "What's there to see in the dark?" she asked Clark.
"Fireflies--there must be thousands. The fireflies are spectacular," Clark said.
"What do the fireflies do--besides blink?" Miriam asked.
"The fireflies blink spectacularly," Clark insisted.
Miriam shrugged. "Blinking is what those beetles do for courtship," Miriam said. "Imagine if the only way we could come on to one another was to blink!" Whereupon she started blinking at Juan Diego, who blinked back at her; they both began to laugh.
Dr. Josefa Quintana also laughed; she blinked across the dinner table at her husband, but Clark French was not in a blinking mood. "The fireflies are spectacular," he repeated, in the manner of a schoolteacher who has lost control of the class.
The way Miriam was blinking her eyes at Juan Diego gave him a hard-on. He remembered (thanks to Miriam) that he'd taken the Viagra, and Miriam's hand on his thigh, under the table, might have contributed. Juan Diego found it disconcerting that he had the distinct impression someone was breathing on his knee--very near to where Miriam's hand rested on his thigh--and when he looked under the table, there was the little girl in pigtails, Consuelo, staring up at him. "Good night, Mister--I'm supposed to go to bed," Consuelo said.
"Good night, Consuelo," Juan Diego said. Both Josefa and Miriam looked under the table at the little girl. "My mother usually unbraids my pigtails before I go to bed," the child explained. "But tonight a teenager is putting me to bed--I have to sleep in my pigtails."
"Your hair will not die overnight, Consuelo," Dr. Quintana told the little girl. "Your pigtails can survive one night."
"My hair will be all twisted," Consuelo complained.
"Come here," Miriam told her. "I know how to unbraid pigtails."
Consuelo was reluctant to go to Miriam, but Miriam smiled and held out her arms to the little girl, who climbed into Miriam's lap. She sat there with her back very straight and her hands clasped tightly together. "You're supposed to brush it, too, but you don't have a brush," Consuelo was saying nervously.
"I know what to do with pigtails with my fingers," Miriam told the little girl. "I can brush your hair with my fingers."
