John Irving - Avenue of Mysteries

“Lo siento, Señor Morales,” Juan Diego said again. The eel’s overworked gills weren’t merely undulating — they were flapping.

Juan Diego called the hotel manager to report the massacre; Auntie Carmen’s store for exotic pets in Makati City had to be alerted. Maybe Morales could be saved, if the pet-store crew came quickly enough — if they disassembled the aquarium and revived the moray in fresh seawater.

“Maybe the moray needs to be sedated for traveling,” the hotel manager suggested. (From the way Señor Morales was staring at him, Juan Diego thought the moray would not take kindly to sedation.)

Juan Diego turned on the air-conditioning before he left his hotel room in search of breakfast. At the doorway to his room, he took what he hoped would be a last look at the loaned aquarium — the fish tank of death. Mr. Morals watched Juan Diego leave, as if the moray couldn’t wait to see the writer again — preferably, when Juan Diego was on his deathbed.

“Lo siento, Señor Morales,” Juan Diego said once more, letting the door close softly behind him. But when he found himself alone in the stifling stink-box of an elevator — naturally, there was no air-conditioning there — Juan Diego shouted as loudly as he could. “ Fuck Clark French!” he cried. “And fuck you, Auntie Carmen — whoever the fuck you are!” Juan Diego yelled.

He stopped shouting when he saw that the surveillance camera was pointed right at him; the camera was mounted above the bank of the elevator buttons, but Juan Diego didn’t know if the surveillance camera also recorded sound. With or without his actual words, the writer could imagine the hotel security guards watching the lunatic cripple — alone and screaming in the descending elevator.

The hotel manager found the Distinguished Guest as he was finishing breakfast. “Those unfortunate fish, sir — they’ve been taken care of. The pet-store team, come and gone — they wore surgical masks,” the manager confided to Juan Diego, lowering his voice at the surgical-masks part. (No need to alarm the other guests; talk of surgical masks might imply a contagion.)

“Perhaps you heard if the moray—” Juan Diego started to say.

“The eel survived. Hard to kill, I imagine,” the manager said. “But very agitated. ”

“ How agitated?” Juan Diego asked.

“There was a biting, sir — not serious, I’m told, but there was a bite. It drew blood,” the manager confided, again lowering his voice.

“A bite where ?” Juan Diego asked.

“A cheek.”

“A cheek !”

“Not serious, sir. I saw the man’s face. It will heal — not a bad scar, just unfortunate. ”

“Yes— unfortunate, ” was all Juan Diego could say. He didn’t dare ask if Auntie Carmen had come and gone with the pet-store team. With any luck, she’d left Manila for Bohol — she might be in Bohol, waiting to meet him (with the Filipino side of Clark French’s whole family). Naturally, word of the slain fish would reach Auntie Carmen in Bohol — including the report on the agitated Señor Morales, and the unfortunate pet-store worker’s bitten cheek.

What is happening to me? Juan Diego wondered, upon returning to his hotel room. He saw there was a towel on the floor by the bed — doubtless where some of the seawater from the aquarium had spilled. (Juan Diego imagined the moray thrashing his tail and attacking the face of his frightened handler, but there was no blood on the towel.)

The writer was about to use the toilet when he spotted the tiny sea horse on the bathroom floor; the sea horse was so small that it must have escaped the attention of the pet-store team, at that moment when the little creature’s fellow fish were flushed away. The sea horse’s round and startled eyes still seemed alive; in its miniature and prehistoric face, the fierce eyes expressed an indignation at all humankind — like the eyes of a hunted dragon.

“Lo siento, caballo marino,” Juan Diego said, before he flushed the sea horse down the toilet.

Then he was angry — angry at himself, at the Makati Shangri-La, at the servile wheedling of the hotel manager. The fashion plate with his fussy mustache had given Juan Diego a brochure of the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial, a publication of the American Battle Monuments Commission, Juan Diego had learned (in a cursory reading of the little brochure, on the elevator after breakfast).

Who had told the busybody hotel manager that Juan Diego had a personal interest in the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial? Even Bienvenido knew Juan Diego intended to visit the graves of those Americans lost to “operations” in the Pacific.

Had Clark French (or his Filipino wife) told everyone about Juan Diego’s intentions to pay his respects to the good gringo’s hero father? Juan Diego had, for years, possessed a private reason for coming to Manila. Leave it to the well-meaning Clark French, in his devoted way, to make Juan Diego’s mission in Manila a matter of public knowledge!

Naturally, Juan Diego was angry at Clark French. Juan Diego had no desire to go to Bohol; he barely understood what or where Bohol was. But Clark had insisted that his revered mentor couldn’t be alone in Manila for New Year’s Eve.

“For God’s sake, Clark — I’ve been alone in Iowa City for most of my life !” Juan Diego had said. “Once you were alone in Iowa City!”

Ah, well — perhaps the well-meaning Clark hoped Juan Diego might meet a future wife in the Philippines. Just look what had happened to Clark! Hadn’t he met someone? Wasn’t Clark French (possibly because of his Filipino wife) insanely happy? Truthfully, Clark had been insanely happy when he was alone in Iowa City. Clark was religiously happy, Juan Diego suspected.

It might have been the wife’s Filipino family — maybe they had made a big deal of inviting Juan Diego to Bohol. But in Juan Diego’s opinion, Clark was capable of making a big deal out of the invitation all by himself.

Every year, Clark French’s Filipino family occupied a seaside resort at a beach near Panglao Bay; they took over the whole hotel for a few days following Christmas, through New Year’s Day and the day after.

“Every room in the hotel is ours —no strangers!” Clark had told Juan Diego.

I’m a stranger, you idiot! Juan Diego had thought. Clark French would be the only person he knew. Naturally, Juan Diego’s image as a murderer of precious underwater life would precede him to Bohol. Auntie Carmen would know everything; Juan Diego didn’t doubt that the exotic-pet person would (somehow) have communicated with the moray. If Señor Morales had been agitated, there was no telling what Juan Diego should expect for agitation from Auntie Carmen — a likely Mrs. Morals.

As for his rising anger, Juan Diego knew what his beloved physician and dear friend, Dr. Rosemary Stein, would say. She would surely have pointed out to him that anger of the kind he’d vented in the elevator, and was still experiencing now, was an indication that half a Lopressor tablet wasn’t enough.

Was not the level of anger he was feeling a sure sign that his body was making more adrenaline, and more adrenaline receptors? Yes. And, yes, there was a lethargy that came with the right dose of the beta-blockers — and the reduced blood circulation to the extremities gave Juan Diego cold hands and feet. And, yes, a Lopressor pill (the whole pill, not a half) could potentially give him as disturbed and vivid dreams as he’d had when he went off the beta-blockers altogether. This was truly confusing.