John Irving - Avenue of Mysteries

“Aren’t you going to answer your phone?” Dorothy was calmly asking him in English. She’d arched her back, with both hands held behind her head on the pillow, to make it easier for Juan Diego to reach over her for the phone on the night table. Was it the dimness of the light that made Dorothy’s skin appear darker than it really was? Or was she truly more dark-skinned than Juan Diego had noticed until now?

He had to stretch to reach the ringing phone; first his chest, then his stomach, touched Dorothy’s breasts.

“It’s my mother, you know,” the languid young woman told him. “Knowing her, she called my room first.”

Maybe three beta-blockers, Juan Diego was thinking. “Hello?” he said sheepishly into the phone.

“Your ears must be ringing,” Miriam told him. “I’m surprised you could hear the phone.”

“I can hear you,” Juan Diego said, more loudly than he’d intended; his ears were still ringing.

“The entire floor, if not the whole hotel, must have heard Dorothy,” Miriam added. Juan Diego couldn’t think of what to say. “If my daughter has recovered her faculties of speech, I would like to speak with her. Or I could give you the message,” Miriam continued, “and you could tell Dorothy — when she is once again herself. ”

“She is herself,” Juan Diego said, with an absurdly misplaced and exaggerated dignity. What a ridiculous thing this was to say about anyone! Why wouldn’t Dorothy be herself ? Who else would the young woman in bed with him be? Juan Diego wondered, handing Dorothy the phone.

“What a surprise, Mother,” the young woman said laconically. Juan Diego couldn’t hear what Miriam was saying to her daughter, but he was aware that Dorothy didn’t say much.

Juan Diego thought this mother-daughter conversation might be an opportune moment for him to discreetly remove the condom, but when he rolled off Dorothy, and lay on his side with his back turned to her, he discovered — to his surprise — that the condom had already been removed.

It must be a generational thing — these young people today! Juan Diego marveled. Not only are they able to make a condom appear out of nowhere; they can, as quickly, make a condom dis appear. But where is it? Juan Diego wondered. When he turned toward Dorothy, the girl wrapped one of her strong arms around him — hugging him to her breasts. He could see the foil wrapper on the night table — he’d not noticed it before — but the condom itself was nowhere to be seen.

Juan Diego, who’d once referred to himself as a “keeper of details” (he meant as a novelist ), wondered where the used condom was: perhaps tucked under Dorothy’s pillow, or carelessly discarded in the disheveled bed. Possibly, disposing of a condom in this fashion was a generational thing, too.

“I am aware that he has an early-morning flight, Mother,” Dorothy was saying. “Yes, I know that’s why we’re staying here.”

I have to pee, Juan Diego was thinking, and I mustn’t forget to take two Lopressor pills the next time I’m in the bathroom. But when he tried to slip away from the dimly lit bed, Dorothy’s strong arm tightened around the back of his neck; his face was pressed against her nearest breast.

“But when is our flight?” he heard Dorothy ask her mother. “ We aren’t going to Manila next, are we?” Either the prospect of Dorothy and Miriam being with him in Manila, or the feeling of Dorothy’s breast against his face, had given Juan Diego an erection. And then he heard Dorothy say: “You’re kidding, right? Since when are you ‘expected in’ Manila?”

Uh-oh, Juan Diego thought — but if my heart can handle being with a young woman like Dorothy, surely I can survive being in Manila with Miriam. (Or so he thought.)

“Well, he’s a gentleman, Mother — of course he didn’t call me,” Dorothy said, taking Juan Diego’s hand and holding it against her far breast. “Yes, I called him. Don’t tell me you didn’t think about it,” the caustic young woman said.

With one breast pressed into his face and another held fast in his inadequate hand, Juan Diego was reminded of something Lupe liked to say — often inappropriately. “No es buen momento para un terremoto,” Lupe used to say. “It’s not a good moment for an earthquake.”

“Fuck you, too,” Dorothy said, hanging up the phone. It may not have been a good moment for an earthquake, but it also wouldn’t have been an appropriate time for Juan Diego to go to the bathroom.

“There’s a dream I have,” he started to say, but Dorothy sat up suddenly, pushing him to his back.

“You don’t want to hear what I dream about — believe me,” she told him. She’d curled up, with her face on his belly but turned away from him; once again, Juan Diego was looking at the back of Dorothy’s dark-haired head. When Dorothy began playing with his penis, the novelist wondered what the right words were for this —this postcoital play, he imagined.

“I think you can do it again,” the naked girl was saying. “Okay — maybe not immediately, but pretty soon. Just look at this guy!” she exclaimed. He was as hard as the first time; the young woman didn’t hesitate to mount him.

Uh-oh, Juan Diego thought again. He was thinking only about how much he had to pee — he wasn’t speaking symbolically — when he said, “It’s not a good moment for an earthquake.”

“I’ll show you an earthquake,” Dorothy said.

THE NOVELIST AWOKE WITH the certain feeling that he had died and gone to Hell; he’d long suspected that if Hell existed (which he doubted), there would be bad music playing constantly — in the loudest possible competition with the news in a foreign language. When he woke up, that was the case, but Juan Diego was still in bed — in his brightly lit and blaring room at the Regal Airport Hotel. Every light in his room was on, at the brightest possible setting; the music on his radio and the news on his TV were cranked to the highest possible volume.

Had Dorothy done this as she was leaving? The young woman was gone, but had she bequeathed to Juan Diego her idea of an amusing wake-up call? Or perhaps the girl had left in a huff. Juan Diego couldn’t remember. He felt he’d been more soundly asleep than he’d ever been before, but for no longer than five minutes.

He hit the panel of push-buttons on his night table, hurting the heel of his right hand. The volume on the radio and TV were muted sufficiently for him to hear, and answer, the ringing phone: it was someone yelling at him in an Asian-sounding language (whatever “Asian-sounding” sounds like).

“I’m sorry — I don’t understand you,” Juan Diego replied in English. “Lo siento—” he started to say in Spanish, but the caller didn’t wait.

“You asswheel!” the Asian-sounding person shouted.

“I think you mean ass hole —” the writer answered, but the angry caller had hung up. Only then did Juan Diego notice that the foil wrappers for his first and second condom were missing from his night table; Dorothy must have taken them with her, or thrown them in a wastebasket.

Juan Diego saw that the second condom was still on his penis; in fact, it was the only evidence he had that he’d once more “performed.” He had no memory past that moment when Dorothy had mounted him for another try. The earthquake she’d promised to show him was lost in time; if the young woman had again broken the sound barrier in a language that sounded like Nahuatl (but it couldn’t have been), that moment hadn’t been captured in memory or in a dream.

The novelist knew only that he’d been asleep and hadn’t dreamed — not even a nightmare. Juan Diego got out of bed and limped to the bathroom; that he didn’t have to pee forewarned him that he already had. He hoped he hadn’t peed in the bed, or in the condom, or on Dorothy, but he could see — when he got to the bathroom — that the cap on his Lopressor prescription was off. He must have taken one (or two) of the beta-blockers when he’d gotten up to pee.