John Irving - Avenue of Mysteries

“That’s enough, Carmen,” Dr. Quintana told her aunt. “Your precious aquarium is not dinner-table conversation. You say ‘no sex, ’ I say ‘no fish. ’ Got it?”

“It was my fault, Auntie,” Clark started in. “The aquarium was my idea—”

“I was freezing cold,” Juan Diego explained to the eel woman. “I hate air-conditioning,” he told everyone. “I probably did have too much beer—”

“Don’t apologize,” Josefa said to him. “They were just fish.”

“ Just fish!” Auntie Carmen cried.

Dr. Quintana leaned across the table, touching Auntie Carmen’s leathery hand. “Do you want to hear how many vaginas I’ve seen in the last week — in the last month ?” she asked her aunt.

“Josefa!” Clark cried.

“No fish, no sex,” Dr. Quintana told the eel woman. “You want to talk about fish, Carmen? Just watch out.”

“I hope Morales is okay,” Juan Diego said to Auntie Carmen, in an effort to be pacifying.

“Morales is different — the experience changed him,” Auntie Carmen said haughtily.

“No eels, either, Carmen,” Josefa said. “You just watch out.”

Women doctors — how Juan Diego loved them! He’d adored Dr. Marisol Gomez; he was devoted to his dear friend Dr. Rosemary Stein. And here was the wonderful Dr. Josefa Quintana! Juan Diego was fond of Clark, but did Clark deserve a wife like this?

She “just appears,” the little girl with pigtails had said about the mystery lady. And hadn’t the boy driver confirmed that the lady just appeared ?

Yet the aquarium conversation had been intense; no one, not even Juan Diego, was thinking about the uninvited guest — not at that moment when the little gecko fell (or dropped) from the ceiling. The gecko landed in the untouched ceviche next to Juan Diego; it was as if the tiny creature knew this was an unguarded salad plate. The gecko appeared to drop into the conversation at the only empty seat.

The lizard was as slender as a ballpoint pen, and only half as long. Two women shrieked; one was a well-dressed woman seated directly opposite the mystery guest’s unoccupied seat — she had her eyeglasses spattered with the citrus marinade. A wedge of mango slipped off the salad plate in the direction of the older man who’d been introduced to Juan Diego as a retired surgeon. (He and Juan Diego sat on either side of the empty seat.) The surgeon’s wife, one of those readers of “a certain age,” had shrieked more loudly than the well-dressed woman, who was now calm and wiping her eyeglasses.

“ Damn those things,” the well-dressed woman said.

“Just who invited you ?” the retired surgeon asked the little gecko, who now crouched (unmoving) in the unfamiliar ceviche. Everyone but Auntie Carmen laughed; the anxious-looking little gecko was no laughing matter to her, apparently. The gecko looked ready to spring, but where?

Later everyone would say that the gecko had distracted all of them from the slender woman in the beige silk dress. She had just appeared, they would all think later; no one saw her approaching the table, though she was very watchable in that perfectly fitted, sleeveless dress. She seemed to glide unnoticed to the chair that was waiting for her — not even the gecko saw her coming, and geckos are acutely alert. (If you’re a gecko and you want to stay alive, you’d better be alert.)

Juan Diego would remember seeing only the briefest flash of the woman’s slim wrist; he never saw the salad fork in her hand, not until she’d stabbed the gecko through its twig-size spine — pinning it to a wedge of mango on her plate.

“Got you,” Miriam said.

This time, only Auntie Carmen cried out — as if she’d been stabbed. You can always count on the children to see everything; maybe the kids had seen Miriam coming, and they’d had the good sense to watch her.

“I didn’t think human beings could be as fast as geckos,” Pedro would say to Juan Diego another day. (They were in the second-floor library, staring at the Saint Ignatius Loyola painting, waiting for the giant gecko to make an appearance, but that big gecko was never seen again.)

“Geckos are really, really fast — you can’t catch one,” Juan Diego would tell the little boy.

“But that lady—” Pedro started to say; he just stopped.

“Yes, she was fast,” was all Juan Diego would say.

In the hushed dining room, Miriam held the salad fork between her thumb and index finger, reminding Juan Diego of the way Flor used to hold a cigarette — as if it were a joint. “Waiter,” Miriam was saying. The lifeless gecko hung limply from the glistening tines of the little fork. The boy driver, who was a clumsy waiter, rushed to take the murder weapon from Miriam. “I’ll need a new ceviche, too,” she told him, taking her seat.

“Don’t get up, darling,” she said, putting her hand on Juan Diego’s shoulder. “I know it hasn’t been long, but I’ve missed you terribly,” she added. Everyone in the dining room had heard her; no one was talking.

“I’ve missed you, ” Juan Diego said to her.

“Well, I’m here now,” Miriam told him.

So they knew each other, everyone was thinking; she wasn’t quite the mystery guest they’d been expecting. Suddenly, she didn’t look uninvited. And Juan Diego didn’t seem exactly neutral .

“This is Miriam, ” Juan Diego announced. “And this is Clark — Clark French, the writer. My former student,” Juan Diego said.

“Oh, yes,” Miriam said, smiling demurely.

“And Clark’s wife, Josefa — Dr. Quintana,” Juan Diego went on.

“I’m so glad there’s a doctor here,” Miriam told Josefa. “It makes the Encantador seem less remote .”

A chorus of shouts greeted her — other doctors, raising their hands. (Mostly men, of course, but even the female doctors put up their hands.)

“Oh, wonderful — a family of doctors,” Miriam said, smiling to everyone. Only Auntie Carmen remained less than charmed; no doubt, she’d taken the gecko’s side — she was a pet person, after all.

And what about the children? Juan Diego was wondering. What did they make of the mystery guest?

He felt Miriam’s hand graze his lap; she rested it on his thigh. “Happy New Year, darling,” she whispered to him. Juan Diego thought he also felt her foot touch his calf, then his knee.

“Hi, Mister,” Consuelo said, from under the table. This time, the little girl in pigtails was not alone; Pedro had crawled under the table with her. Juan Diego peered at them.

Josefa had not seen the children — she was leaning across the table, involved in some unreadable sign language with Clark.

Miriam looked under the table; she saw the two children peering up at them.

“I guess the lady doesn’t love geckos, Mister,” Pedro was saying.

“I don’t think she misses geckos,” Consuelo said.

“I don’t love geckos in my ceviche,” Miriam told the children. “I don’t miss geckos in my salad, ” she added.

“What do you think, Mister?” the little girl in pigtails asked Juan Diego. “What would your sister think?” she asked him.

“Yeah, what would—” Pedro started to say, but Miriam leaned down to them; her face, under the table, was suddenly very close to the kids.

“Listen, you two,” Miriam told them. “Don’t ask him what his sister thinks — his sister was killed by a lion.”

That sent the kids away; they crawled off in a hurry.

I didn’t want to give them nightmares, Juan Diego was trying to tell Miriam, but he couldn’t speak. I didn’t want to frighten them! he tried to tell her, but the words wouldn’t come. It was as if he’d seen Lupe’s face under the table, although the girl with pigtails, Consuelo, was much younger than Lupe had been when she died.