John Irving: Avenue of Mysteries

“WHAT onstage interview with you Monday, Clark — WHAT dinner afterward?” Juan Diego immediately texted Clark French, before addressing the satanic situation that had so excited his former writing student.

Clark called to explain. There was a small theater in Makati City, very near Juan Diego’s hotel—“small but pleasant,” Clark described it. On Monday nights, when the theater was dark, the company hosted onstage interviews with authors. A local bookstore provided copies of the authors’ books, for signing; Clark was often the interviewer. There was a dinner afterward for patrons of the writers’ onstage series—“not a lot of people,” Clark assured him, “but a way for you to have some contact with your Filipino readers.”

Clark French was the only writer Juan Diego knew who sounded like a publicist. And, like a publicist, Clark mentioned the media last. There would be a journalist or two, at the onstage event and the dinner, but Clark said he would warn Juan Diego about the ones to watch out for. (Clark should just stay home and write ! Juan Diego thought.)

“And your friends will be there,” Clark suddenly said.

“Who, Clark?” Juan Diego asked.

“Miriam and her daughter. I saw the guest list for dinner — it just says ‘Miriam and her daughter, friends of the author.’ I thought you would know they were coming,” Clark told him.

Juan Diego looked carefully around his hotel suite. Miriam was in the bathroom; it was almost midnight — she was probably getting ready for bed. Limping his way to the kitchen area of the suite, Juan Diego lowered his voice when he spoke on his cell phone to Clark.

“D. is for Dorothy, Clark — Dorothy is Miriam’s daughter. I slept with Dorothy before I slept with Miriam,” Juan Diego reminded his former writing student. “I slept with Dorothy before she met Leslie, Clark.”

“You admitted you didn’t know Miriam and her daughter well, ” Clark reminded his old teacher.

“As I told you, they’re mysteries to me, but your friend Leslie has her own issues — Leslie is just jealous, Clark.”

“I don’t deny that poor Leslie has issues —” Clark started to say.

“One of her boys was trampled by a water buffalo — the same boy was later stung by pink jellyfish swimming vertically,” Juan Diego whispered into his cell phone. “The other boy was stung by plankton resembling condoms for three-year-olds.”

“Stinging condoms — don’t remind me!” Clark cried.

“Not condoms — the stinging plankton looked like condoms, Clark.”

“Why are you whispering?” Clark asked his old writing teacher.

“I’m with Miriam,” Juan Diego whispered; he was limping around the kitchen area, trying to keep an eye on the closed bathroom door.

“I’ll let you go,” Clark whispered. “I thought Tuesday would be a good day for the American Cemetery—”

“Yes, in the afternoon,” Juan Diego interrupted him.

“I’ve booked Bienvenido for Tuesday morning, too,” Clark told him. “I thought maybe you would like to see the National Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe — the one here, in Manila. There are only a couple of buildings, just an old church and monastery — nothing as grand as your Mexico City version. The church and monastery are in a slum, Guadalupe Viejo — the slum is on a hill above the Pasig River,” Clark carried on.

“Guadalupe Viejo — a slum,” was all Juan Diego managed to say.

“You sound tired. We’ll decide this later,” Clark abruptly said.

“Guadalupe, sí—” Juan Diego started to say. The bathroom door was open; he saw Miriam in the bedroom — she had only a towel around her, and she was closing the bedroom curtains.

“That’s a ‘yes’ to Guadalupe Viejo — you want to go there?” Clark French was asking.

“Yes, Clark,” Juan Diego told him.

Guadalupe Viejo didn’t sound like a slum — to a dump kid, Guadalupe Viejo sounded more like a destination. It seemed to Juan Diego that the very existence of the National Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Manila was more of a reason for his taking this trip to the Philippines than the sentimental promise he’d made to the good gringo. More than the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial, Guadalupe Viejo sounded like where a dump reader from Oaxaca would end up —to use Dorothy’s blunt way of putting it. And if it was true that an aura of fate had marked him, didn’t Guadalupe Viejo sound like Juan Diego Guerrero’s kind of place?

“You’re shivering, darling — do you have a chill?” Miriam asked him when he came into the bedroom.

“No, I was just talking to Clark French,” Juan Diego told her. “There’s an onstage event Clark and I are doing — an interview together. I hear you and Dorothy are coming.”

“We don’t get to go to a lot of literary events,” Miriam said, smiling. She’d spread the towel for her feet on the carpet, on her side of the bed. She was already under the covers. “I put out your pills,” she said matter-of-factly. “I didn’t know if it was a Lopressor or a Viagra night,” Miriam told him in that insouciant way of hers.

Juan Diego was aware he’d been alternating nights: he chose the nights when he wanted to feel adrenalized; he resigned himself to those other nights, when he knew he would feel diminished. He was aware that his skipping a dose of the beta-blockers — specifically, to unblock the adrenaline receptors in his body, to give himself an adrenaline release — was dangerous. But Juan Diego didn’t remember when it became routine for him to have either “a Lopressor or a Viagra night,” as Miriam had put it — a while ago, he imagined.

Juan Diego was struck by what was the same about Miriam and Dorothy; this had nothing to do with how they looked, or their sexual behavior. What was the same about these two women was how they were able to manipulate him — not to mention that whenever he was with one of them, he was inclined to forget about the other one. (Yet he forgot and obsessed about both of them!)

There was a word for how he was behaving, Juan Diego thought — not only with these women but with his beta-blockers. He was behaving childishly, Juan Diego was thinking — not unlike the way he and Lupe had behaved about the virgins, at first preferring Guadalupe to the Mary Monster, until Guadalupe disappointed them. And then the Virgin Mary actually had done something — enough to get the dump kids’ attention, not only with her nose-for-a-nose trick but with her unambiguous tears.

The Ascott was not El Escondrijo — no ghosts, unless Miriam was one, and any number of outlets where Juan Diego could have plugged in and charged his cell phone. Yet he chose an outlet in the area of the bathroom sink, because the bathroom was private. And Juan Diego hoped that — whether she was a ghost or not — Miriam might have fallen asleep before he was finished using the bathroom.

“Enough sex, Dorothy,” he’d heard Miriam say — that oft-repeated line — and, more recently, “it’s never as much about sex as you seem to think it is.”

Tomorrow was Sunday. Juan Diego would be flying home to the United States on Wednesday. He’d not only had enough sex, Juan Diego was thinking — he’d had enough of these two mysterious women, whoever they were. One way to stop obsessing about them was to stop having sex with them, Juan Diego thought. He used the pill-cutting device to slice one of the oblong Lopressor tablets in half; he took his prescribed dose of the beta-blockers, plus this additional half.

Bienvenido had said it was “best to lie low” on Sunday; Juan Diego would lie low, all right — he would miss most of Sunday in a diminished state. And it wasn’t the crowds or the religious insanity of the Black Nazarene procession Juan Diego was intentionally missing. He wished Miriam and Dorothy would just disappear; it was feeling diminished, as usual, that he wanted.