John Irving - Avenue of Mysteries

“Martin,” Dorothy repeated softly.

I think I need a beta-blocker — Juan Diego didn’t say it, but this was what he thought.

“She means, Was Martin real ?” Dorothy asked him; she’d seen the writer stiffen at her mother’s question, so noticeably that Miriam had let go of his hands.

Juan Diego’s heart was racing — his adrenaline receptors were receiving like crazy, but he couldn’t speak. “I’ve lost so many people, ” Juan Diego tried to say, but the people word was unintelligible — like something Lupe might have said.

“I guess he was real,” Dorothy told her mom.

Now they both put their hands on Juan Diego, who was shaking in his seat.

“The missionary I knew was not Martin,” Juan Diego blurted out.

“Dorothy, the dear man has lost loved ones — we both read that interview, you know,” Miriam told her daughter.

“I know, ” Dorothy replied. “But you were asking about the Martin character,” the daughter said to her mom.

All Juan Diego could do was shake his head; then his tears came, lots of tears. He couldn’t have explained to these women why (and for whom) he was crying — well, at least not on the Airport Express.

“¡Señor Eduardo!” Juan Diego cried out. “¡Querido Eduardo!”

That was when the Chinese girl, who was still sitting in her boyfriend’s lap — she was still upset about something, too — had an apparent fit. She began to hit her boyfriend, more in frustration than out of anger, and almost playfully (as opposed to anything approaching actual violence).

“I told him it was you!” the girl said suddenly to Juan Diego. “I knew it was you, but he didn’t believe me!”

She meant that she’d recognized the writer, perhaps from the start, but her boyfriend hadn’t agreed — or he wasn’t a reader. To Juan Diego, the Chinese boy didn’t look like a reader, and it couldn’t have surprised the writer that the boy’s girlfriend was . Wasn’t this the point Juan Diego had made repeatedly? Women readers kept fiction alive — here was another one. When Juan Diego had used Spanish in crying out the scholastic’s name, the Chinese girl knew she’d been right about who he was.

It was just another writer-recognition moment, Juan Diego realized. He wished he could stop sobbing. He waved to the Chinese girl, and tried to smile; if he’d noticed the way Miriam and Dorothy looked at the young Chinese couple, he might have asked himself how safe he was in the company of this unknown mother and her daughter, but Juan Diego didn’t see how Miriam and Dorothy utterly silenced his Chinese reader with a withering look — no, it was more of a threatening look. (It was actually a look that said: We found him first, you slimy little twat. Go find your own favorite writer — he’s ours !)

Why was it that Edward Bonshaw was always quoting from Thomas à Kempis? Señor Eduardo liked to make a little gentle fun of that bit from The Imitation of Christ: “Be rarely with young people and strangers.”

Ah, well — it was too late to warn Juan Diego about Miriam and Dorothy now. You don’t skip a dose of your beta-blockers and ignore a couple of women like this mom and her daughter.

Dorothy had hugged Juan Diego to her chest; she rocked him in her surprisingly strong arms, where he went on sobbing. He’d no doubt noticed how the young woman was wearing one of those bras that let her nipples show — you could see her nipples through her bra and through the sweater Dorothy wore under her open cardigan.

It must have been Miriam (Juan Diego thought) who now massaged the back of his neck; she had once more leaned close to him as she whispered in his ear. “You darling man, of course it hurts to be you! The things you feel ! Most men don’t feel what you feel,” Miriam said. “That poor mother in A Story Set in Motion by the Virgin Mary —my God! When I think about what happens to her—”

“Don’t,” Dorothy warned her mother.

“A statue of the Virgin Mary falls from a pedestal and crushes her! She is killed on the spot,” Miriam continued.

Dorothy could feel Juan Diego shudder against her breasts. “Now you’ve done it, Mother,” the disapproving daughter said. “Are you trying to make him more unhappy?”

“You miss the point, Dorothy,” her mom quickly said. “As the story says: ‘At least she was happy. It is not every Christian who is fortunate enough to be instantly killed by the Blessed Virgin.’ It’s a funny scene, for Christ’s sake!”

But Juan Diego was shaking his head (again), this time against young Dorothy’s breasts. “That wasn’t your mom — that wasn’t what happened to her, was it?” Dorothy asked him.

“That’s enough with the autobiographical insinuations, Dorothy,” her mother said.

“Like you should talk,” Dorothy said to Miriam.

No doubt, Juan Diego had noticed that Miriam’s breasts were also attractive, though her nipples were not visible through her sweater. Not such a contemporary kind of bra, Juan Diego was thinking as he struggled to answer Dorothy’s question about his mother, who hadn’t been crushed to death by a falling statue of the Virgin Mary — not exactly.

Yet, again, Juan Diego couldn’t speak. He was emotionally and sexually overcharged; there was so much adrenaline surging through his body, he couldn’t contain his lust or his tears. He was missing everyone he ever knew; he was desiring both Miriam and Dorothy, to the degree that he could not have articulated which of these women he wanted more.

“Poor baby,” Miriam whispered in Juan Diego’s ear; he felt her kiss the back of his neck.

All Dorothy did was inhale. Juan Diego could feel her chest expand against his face.

What was it Edward Bonshaw used to say in those moments when the zealot felt that the world of human frailties must yield to God’s will — when all we mere mortals could do was listen to whatever God’s will was, and then do it? Juan Diego could still hear Señor Eduardo saying this: “Ad majorem Dei gloriam — to the greater glory of God.”

Under the circumstances — cuddled against Dorothy’s bosom, kissed by her mother — wasn’t that all Juan Diego could do? Just listen to whatever God’s will was, and then do it? Of course, there was a contradiction in this: Juan Diego wasn’t exactly in the company of a couple of God’s- will kind of women. (Miriam and Dorothy were “ Spare me God’s will!” kind of women.)

“Ad majorem Dei gloriam,” the novelist murmured.

“It must be Spanish,” Dorothy told her mom.

“For Christ’s sake, Dorothy,” Miriam said. “It’s fucking Latin. ”

Juan Diego could feel Dorothy shrug. “Whatever it is,” the rebellious daughter said, “it’s about sex — I know it is.”

There was a panel of push-buttons on the night table in Juan Diego’s hotel room. Confusingly, these buttons dimmed — or turned on and off — the lights in Juan Diego’s bedroom and bathroom, but the buttons had a bewildering effect on the radio and TV.

The sadistic maid had left the radio on — this perverse behavior, often below levels of early detection, must be ingrained in hotel maids the world over — yet Juan Diego managed to mute the volume on the radio, if not turn it off. Lights had indeed dimmed; yet these same lights faintly endured, despite Juan Diego’s efforts to turn them off. The TV had flourished, briefly, but was once more dark and quiet. His last resort, Juan Diego knew, would be to extract the credit card (actually, his room key) from the slot by the door to his room; then, as Dorothy had warned him, everything electrical would be extinguished, and he would be left to grope around in the pitch-dark.