Page 97 of Avenue of Mysteries


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Mister Goes Swimming

"Believing in ghosts isn't the same thing as believing in God," the former dump reader said aloud. Juan Diego spoke more confidently than Dr. Vargas ever had of his family ghosts. But Juan Diego had been dreaming that he was arguing with Clark French--though not about ghosts or believing in God. They were at each other's throats, again, about that Polish pope. The way John Paul II had associated both abortion and birth control with moral decline made Juan Diego furious--that pope was on the everlasting warpath against contraception. In the early eighties, he'd called contraception and abortion "modern enemies of the family."

"I'm sure there was a context you're overlooking," Clark French had said to his former teacher many times.

"A context, Clark?" Juan Diego had asked (he'd also asked this when he was dreaming).

In the late eighties, Pope John Paul II had called condom use--even to prevent AIDS--"morally illicit."

"The context was the AIDS crisis, Clark!" Juan Diego had cried--not only that time but in his dream.

Yet Juan Diego woke up arguing that believing in ghosts was different from believing in God; it was disorienting, the way those transitions from dreaming to being awake can be. "Ghosts--" Juan Diego continued, sitting up in bed, but he suddenly stopped speaking.

He was alone in his bedroom at the Encantador; this time, Miriam had truly vanished--she was not in bed beside him while (somehow) managing not to breathe. "Miriam?" Juan Diego said, in case she was in the bathroom. But the door to the bathroom was open, and there was no answer--only the crowing of another rooster. (It had to be a different rooster; the first one had been killed mid-squawk, from the sound of it.) At least this rooster wasn't crazy; the morning light flooded the bedroom--it was the New Year in Bohol.

Through the open windows, Juan Diego could hear the children in the swimming pool. When he went to the bathroom, he was surprised to see his prescriptions scattered on the countertop surrounding the sink. Had he gotten up in the night, and--half asleep, or in a sexually sated trance--scarfed down a bunch of pills? If so, how many had he taken--and which pills? (Both the Viagra and Lopressor containers were open; the tablets dotted the countertop--there were some on the bathroom floor.)

Was Miriam a prescription-pill addict? Juan Diego wondered. But not even an addict would find the beta-blockers stimulating, and what would a woman want with Viagra?

Juan Diego cleaned up the mess. He took an outdoor shower, enjoying the cats who skittishly appeared on the tile roof, yowling at him. Perhaps a cat, in the cover of darkness, had killed that misguided rooster mid-squawk. Cats were born killers, weren't they?

Juan Diego was dressing when he heard the sirens, or what sounded like sirens. Maybe a body had washed ashore, he imagined--one of the perpetrators of the late-night karaoke music at the Panglao Island beach club, a night swimmer who'd danced all night and then drowned with cramps. Or the Nocturnal Monkeys had gone skinny-dipping, with disastrous results. Thus Juan Diego indulged his imagination with diabolical death scenes, the way writers will.

But when Juan Diego limped downstairs for breakfast, he saw the ambulance and the police car in the driveway of the Encantador. Clark French was officiously guarding the staircase to the second-floor library. "I'm just trying to keep the kids away," Clark said to his former teacher.

"Away from what, Clark?" Juan Diego asked.

"Josefa is up there--with the medical examiner and the police. Auntie Carmen was in the room diagonally across the hall from your woman friend. I didn't know she was leaving so soon!"

"Who, Clark? Who left?" Juan Diego asked him.

"Your woman friend! Who would come all this way for one night--even for New Year's Eve?" Clark asked him.

Juan Diego hadn't known Miriam was leaving; he must have looked surprised. "She didn't tell you she was leaving?" Clark said. "I thought you knew her! The desk clerk said she had an early flight; a car picked her up before dawn. Someone said all the doors to the second-floor rooms were wide open after your woman friend had gone. That's why they found Auntie Carmen!" Clark blathered.

"Found her--found her where, Clark?" Juan Diego asked him. The story was as chronologically challenging as one of Clark French's novels! the former writing teacher was thinking.

"On the floor of her room, between her bed and the bathroom--Auntie Carmen is dead!" Clark cried.

"I'm sorry, Clark. Was she sick? Had she been--" Juan Diego was asking, when Clark French pointed to the registration desk in the lobby.

"She left a letter for you--the desk clerk has it," Clark told his former teacher.

"Auntie Carmen wrote me--"

"Your woman friend left a letter for you--not Auntie Carmen!" Clark cried.

"Oh."

"Hi, Mister," Consuelo said; the little girl with the pigtails was standing beside him. Juan Diego saw that Pedro was with her.

"No going upstairs, children," Clark French cautioned the kids, but Pedro and Consuelo chose to follow Juan Diego as he limped through the lobby to the registration desk.

"The aunt with all the fish has died, Mister," Pedro began.

"Yes, I heard," Juan Diego told the boy.

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