Joy Williams - Honored Guest

The Guatemalan child, having been paid for the bottles, was threading his way back through the tables. He paused and gazed beseechingly at June’s pancake, which she had barely touched. Abby had not eaten hers either and was using the plate more or less as an ashtray.

“June,” Caroline said.

June looked at the boy. “Sure, sure,” she said. He plucked up the pancake with slender fingers and hurried outside. He crossed the street and stared at June as he ate.

“Is he scowling at us?” June said. “I mean, what is it exactly one is supposed to do?”

The others would often tease June for being so grave about everything. She wore oversized American clothes, a plaid shirt and brown shorts, and a woven necklace that her mother had bought her during her visit. June had wanted the necklace badly and had led her mother to the store, which was frequently closed, more than once. She affected ragged black and blond hair which she made sticky with shaving cream.

“Imagine him and Parker as playmates,” Caroline said. “Little playmates.”

“That is so radical,” Abby said.

The boy finished the pancake, then turned modestly away from them to urinate.

“Oh, gaaa,” June said.

“My mother is finally beginning to notice the public urination,” Abby said. “‘You know, honey,’ she said, ‘this is a lovely town, but so much public urination goes on. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much public urination. You walk through the park and men are urinating behind pieces of cardboard. Boys are urinating on flowers. We went to look at some churches and we were picking our way around the courtyard and an old man was urinating on a pile of sand. When he finished he flapped his hands at us. He scolded us! He said we were not supposed to be in the courtyard, we could only be in the church. He was the ostiary or something, or thought he was …’” Abby was mimicking her mother’s nasal, bemused way of speaking.

“They’re still here, your parents?” Caroline said.

“Oh god, yes,” Abby said. “I have to watch Parker tonight so they can go out. It’s their anniversary.”

“We’ll all watch him,” Caroline said. “We’ll sit around in a circle and blow smoke at him or something. Howard will ask him his opinion of death.”

“That is getting so old,” Abby said. “It’s like an old bar trick or something.”

“Morgan’s been the darlingest,” Caroline said to June. “Don’t you just love her?”

June blushed. “Do you know what my mother told me?” June said. “She told me she had always been emotionally indifferent to my father, from the very first, but now she had found happiness and she hoped that I would find such happiness and never have to spend long years with someone I was emotionally indifferent to.”

“Oh,” Caroline said. “It’s like a little blessing she gave you, isn’t it? That’s so nice.”

“I love watching June blush,” Abby said. “Really, June, you are so funny.”

Then she and Caroline talked about how they wished they had a car they could share. Then they began talking about how James claimed to have stolen a car in Texas and driven it through Mexico into Guatemala, where he’d sold it for a great deal of money in the capital. This was a difficult, virtually impossible feat and the story had always elicited considerable admiration. James also claimed that once, prior to stealing the car, he had been arrested in California for underage drinking, and that as part of his sentencing he was forced to attend the autopsy of a drunk driver. He described the way they had sawed off the top of the dead man’s head and lifted it like “a lid on a basket.”

“I think he made up that stuff about the cadaver,” Abby said.

“I didn’t believe that for one minute,” Caroline said.

“I don’t know about that car from Texas either,” Abby said. “He’s so enthusiastic about that experience, he probably didn’t have it.”

“What are you thinking, June?” Abby asked.

“I was thinking I have no sense of direction,” June said. “I can’t remember the names of flowers or ruins or saints. And I can’t keep a journal. Any journal I keep sucks.” She was thinking of Edith Holden’s precious Edwardian journal with all the lovely drawings. The one she had in prep school. Edith Holden had died tragically young, drowning in the Thames while collecting horse chestnut buds, the twit.

The bill arrived and June began to go over it painstakingly. “Excuse me, pardon me. Perdóneme?” she called to the waitress, “but no one here ordered the huevos revueltos .”

“Oh, just pay for it,” Abby said. “All that stuff is fifty cents or something, isn’t it? I’ll pay for it.”

“No, it’s my turn,” June said, counting out some coins. They then got up with a great scraping of chairs on the ugly tiles.

On the street, the dog strained toward a mound of burnt plastic in the gutter and managed to acquire something repellent before Caroline hauled him away.

“He is so dim,” she said. “I thought fixing him would make him smarter.”

“That is so funny,” Abby said.

They reached the heavy scarred wooden doors of their compound. They pushed them open and Caroline unknotted the rope from the dog’s collar. He leapt into the air and ran around the courtyard three times at remarkable speed before a bougainvillea stump snagged the basket and sent him sprawling. The parrot dropped the piece of mango he’d been toying with and crouched against the gnawed slats of his bench. The parrot’s name was Nevertheless as far as anyone could translate it. The dog didn’t have a name.

The fortune birds were not up yet. Customarily they rested until noon in their cage, beneath a clean dish towel. For them Easter week was one of the biggest weeks of the year. They had told a thousand fortunes. Their director, the man with the staggeringly large vein, was sitting at a card table in a corner of the courtyard writing new fortunes in an elegant script on blue pieces of paper. He wrote swiftly, without reflection or emotion. James and Howard were playing Hacky Sack on the grass with a tiny stitched ball that said I Jesus on it. They had bought it from some evangelicals who did massage. The boys had been so dumped the night before, clutching their glasses of aguardiente , that they could hardly ™find their mouths. Now here they were, sleek and quick.

June blushed when she saw James, for she had drunk a great deal of aguardiente last night as well and recalled asking him, “Do you think I have a personality?”

“No,” he had said.

“A personality,” she persisted.

“Why would you want one? You’re fine.”

“But I should,” June said.

“Look at my wallet,” he said. It was a long leather wallet clipped by a chain to his belt. “There was a whole bin of these at the airport on sale and the merchant said that each wallet had its own personality because it was natural material and the lines and colors and imperfections made each one unique.”

“That’s sick,” June had said.

“Personality is secondary to predicament,” James had said.

She was attracted to James, to his deep-set eyes and perfect skin, but none of them were lovers. That would have spoiled everything. Love was a compromise, they felt. They were not like their parents, who were always in love and who just went on and on with life, changing partners, acquiring new children, abandoning past interests and assuming new ones, always in love with someone or something.

It was almost noon. The boys continued to play Hacky Sack, thrusting out their long feet.

“I’m going to wash the dog,” Caroline announced. “After which we shall remove the basket.” She produced some special soap she had bought at the market. It came in a small box that had the drawing of an insect on it.