Page 88 of Avenue of Mysteries


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"Yes, I do," he told her, but the abruptness scared him. It was hard for him to imagine that she'd ever been pretty, but Juan Diego knew Soledad was a clear thinker; she understood her husband, perhaps well enough to survive him. Soledad understood that the lion tamer was a man who made mostly selfish decisions--his interest in Lupe as a mind reader was a matter of self-preservation. One thing was obvious about Soledad: she was a strong woman.

There'd been stress on her joints, no doubt, as Dr. Vargas had observed of the former trapeze artist. Damage to her fingers, her wrists, her elbows--these joint injuries notwithstanding, Soledad was still strong. As a flyer, she'd ended her career as a catcher. In trapeze work, men are usually the catchers, but Soledad had strong enough arms, and a strong enough grip, to be a catcher.

"The mongrel is male. I don't think it's fair that he's called Perro Mestizo--'Mongrel' shouldn't be the poor dog's name!" Lupe was saying. The mongrel, poor Perro Mestizo, wasn't wearing a costume. In the act for the dogs, Mongrel was a baby-stealer. Perro Mestizo tries to run off with the stroller with Baby in it--with the dachshund in the baby bonnet barking like a lunatic, of course. "Perro Mestizo is always the bad guy," Lupe was saying. "That's not fair, either!" (Juan Diego knew what Lupe was going to say next because it was an oft-repeated theme with his sister.) "Perro Mestizo didn't ask to be born a mongrel," Lupe said. (Naturally, Estrella, the dog trainer, hadn't the slightest idea what Lupe was saying.)

"I guess Ignacio is a little afraid of the lions," Juan Diego said cautiously to Soledad. It wasn't a question; he was stalling.

"Ignacio should be afraid of the lions--he should be a lot afraid," the lion tamer's wife said.

"The German shepherd, who is female, is called Alemania," Lupe was babbling. Juan Diego thought it was a cop-out to name a German shepherd "Germany"; it was also a stereotype to dress a German shepherd in a police uniform. But Alemania was supposed to be a policia--a policewoman. Naturally, Lupe was babbling about how "humiliating" it was for Perro Mestizo, who was male, to be apprehended by a female German shepherd. In the circus act, Perro Mestizo is caught stealing the baby in the stroller; the undressed mongrel is dragged out of the ring by the scruff of his neck by Alemania in her police uniform. Baby (the dachshund) and his mother (Pastora, the sheepdog) are reunited.

It was at this moment of realization--the dump kids' slim chances of success at Circo de La Maravilla, the fate of a crippled skywalker juxtaposed with the unlikelihood of Lupe becoming a mind reader of lions--when the barefoot Edward Bonshaw hobbled into the dogs' troupe tent. The tender-footed way the Iowan was walking must have set off the dogs, or perhaps it was the sheer ungainliness of the smaller Senor Eduardo clinging to the bigger transvestite for support.

Baby barked first; the little dachshund in the baby bonnet leapt out of the stroller. This was so off-script, so not the circus act, that poor Perro Mestizo became agitated and bit one of Edward Bonshaw's bare feet. Baby quickly lifted one leg, as most male dogs do, and peed on Senor Eduardo's other bare foot--the unbitten one. Flor kicked the dachshund and the mongrel.

Alemania, the police dog, disapproved of kicking; there was a tense standoff between the German shepherd and the transvestite--growls from the big dog, a no-retreat policy from Flor, who would never back down from a fight. Estrella, her flaming-redhead wig askew, tried to calm the dogs down.

Lupe was so upset to read (in an instant) what was on Juan Diego's mind that she paid no attention to the dogs. "I'm a mind reader for lions? That's it?" the girl asked her brother.

"I trust Soledad--don't you?" was all Juan Diego said.

"We're indispensable if you're a skywalker--otherwise, we're dispensable. That's it?" Lupe asked Juan Diego again. "Oh, I get it--you like the sound of being a Boy Wonder, don't you?"

"Soledad and I don't know if lions change their minds--assuming you can read what the lions are thinking," Juan Diego said; he was trying to be dignified, but the Boy Wonder idea had tempted him.

"I know what's on Hombre's mind," was all L

upe would tell him.

"I say we just try it," Juan Diego said. "We give it a week, just see how it goes--"

"A week!" Lupe cried. "You're no Boy Wonder--believe me."

"Okay, okay--we'll give it just a couple of days," Juan Diego pleaded. "Let's just try it, Lupe--you don't know everything," he added. What cripple doesn't dream of walking without a limp? And what if a cripple could walk spectacularly? Skywalkers were applauded, admired, even adored--just for walking, only sixteen steps.

"It's a leave-or-die-here situation," Lupe said. "A couple of days or a week won't matter." It all felt too abrupt--to Lupe, too.

"You're so dramatic!" Juan Diego told her.

"Who wants to be The Wonder? Who's being dramatic?" Lupe asked him. "Boy Wonder."

Where were the responsible adults?

It was hard to imagine anything more happening to Edward Bonshaw's feet, but the barefoot Iowan was thinking about something else; the dogs had failed to distract him from his thoughts, and Senor Eduardo could not have been expected to understand the dump kids' plight. Not even Flor, in her continuing flirtation with the Iowan, should be blamed for missing the leave-or-die-here decision the dump kids faced. The available adults were thinking about themselves.

"Do you really have breasts and a penis?" Edward Bonshaw blurted out in English to Flor, whose unspoken Houston experience had given her a good grasp of the language. Senor Eduardo had counted on Flor's understanding him, of course; he just hadn't realized that Juan Diego and Lupe, who'd been arguing with each other, would hear and understand him. And no one in the dogs' troupe tent could have guessed that Estrella, the old dog trainer--not to mention Soledad, the lion tamer's wife--also understood English.

Naturally, when Senor Eduardo asked Flor if she had breasts and a penis, the crazy dogs had stopped barking. Truly everyone in the dogs' troupe tent heard and appeared to understand the question. The dump kids were not the subject of this question.

"Jesus," Juan Diego said. The kids were on their own.

Lupe had clutched her Coatlicue totem to her too-small-to-notice breasts. The terrifying goddess with the rattlesnake rattles for nipples seemed to understand the breasts-and-penis question.

"Well, I'm not showing you the penis--not here," Flor said to the Iowan. She was unbuttoning her blouse and untucking it from her skirt. Children on their own make abrupt decisions.

"Don't you see?" Lupe said to Juan Diego. "She's the one--the one for him! Flor and Senor Eduardo--they're the ones who adopt you. They can take you away with them only if they're together!"

Flor had taken her blouse completely off. It was not necessary for her to remove her bra. She had small breasts--what she would later describe as "the best the hormones could do"; Flor said she was "not a surgery person." But, just to be sure, Flor took off her bra, too; small as they were, she wanted Edward Bonshaw to have no doubt that she indeed had breasts.

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