John Irving - Avenue of Mysteries

They were called (everyone knew) the Nocturnal Monkeys. The group’s reputation, which was strictly local, rested on the bony bare shoulders of the lead singer — a skeletal waif in a strapless dress. Her breasts were not substantial enough to keep her dress from slipping down, and her lank black hair, savagely chopped at earlobe level, stood in stark contrast to her cadaverous pallor. There was an unnatural whiteness to her skin — not very Filipino, Juan Diego was thinking. That the lead singer looked like a freshly unearthed corpse made Juan Diego wonder if a tattoo or two might have helped — even an insect or a reptile, if not the grotesque damage done to the lead guitarist’s neck.

As for the band’s name, the Nocturnal Monkeys, naturally Clark had an explanation. The nearby Chocolate Hills were a local landmark. There were monkeys in the Chocolate Hills.

“No doubt the monkeys are nocturnal,” Miriam said.

“Exactly,” Clark answered her uncertainly. “If you’re interested, and if it’s not raining, a day trip to the Chocolate Hills can be arranged — a group of us go every year,” Clark said.

“But we wouldn’t see the monkeys in the daytime — not if they’re nocturnal,” Miriam pointed out.

“That’s true — we never see the monkeys,” Clark mumbled. He had trouble looking at Miriam, Juan Diego noticed.

“I guess these monkeys are the best we can do,” Miriam said; she languidly waved her bare arm in the general direction of the hapless-looking band. They looked like Nocturnal Monkeys, all right.

“One night, every year, a group of us go on a riverboat cruise,” Clark ventured, more cautiously than before. Miriam made him nervous; she just waited for him to continue. “We take a bus to the river. There are docks by the river, places to eat,” Clark rambled on. “After dinner, we take a sightseeing boat up the river.”

“In the dark,” Miriam said flatly. “What’s there to see in the dark?” she asked Clark.

“Fireflies — there must be thousands. The fireflies are spectacular,” Clark said.

“What do the fireflies do — besides blink?” Miriam asked.

“The fireflies blink spectacularly, ” Clark insisted.

Miriam shrugged. “Blinking is what those beetles do for courtship,” Miriam said. “Imagine if the only way we could come on to one another was to blink !” Whereupon she started blinking at Juan Diego, who blinked back at her; they both began to laugh.

Dr. Josefa Quintana also laughed; she blinked across the dinner table at her husband, but Clark French was not in a blinking mood. “The fireflies are spectacular,” he repeated, in the manner of a schoolteacher who has lost control of the class.

The way Miriam was blinking her eyes at Juan Diego gave him a hard-on. He remembered (thanks to Miriam) that he’d taken the Viagra, and Miriam’s hand on his thigh, under the table, might have contributed. Juan Diego found it disconcerting that he had the distinct impression someone was breathing on his knee — very near to where Miriam’s hand rested on his thigh — and when he looked under the table, there was the little girl in pigtails, Consuelo, staring up at him. “Good night, Mister — I’m supposed to go to bed,” Consuelo said.

“Good night, Consuelo,” Juan Diego said. Both Josefa and Miriam looked under the table at the little girl. “My mother usually unbraids my pigtails before I go to bed,” the child explained. “But tonight a teenager is putting me to bed — I have to sleep in my pigtails.”

“Your hair will not die overnight, Consuelo,” Dr. Quintana told the little girl. “Your pigtails can survive one night.”

“My hair will be all twisted, ” Consuelo complained.

“Come here,” Miriam told her. “I know how to unbraid pigtails.”

Consuelo was reluctant to go to Miriam, but Miriam smiled and held out her arms to the little girl, who climbed into Miriam’s lap. She sat there with her back very straight and her hands clasped tightly together. “You’re supposed to brush it, too, but you don’t have a brush,” Consuelo was saying nervously.

“I know what to do with pigtails with my fingers,” Miriam told the little girl. “I can brush your hair with my fingers.”

“Please don’t make me fall asleep, like Pedro,” Consuelo said.

“I’ll try not to,” Miriam said in her deadpan, no-promises fashion.

When Miriam was unbraiding Consuelo’s pigtails, Juan Diego looked under the table for Pedro, but the boy had slipped unseen into Dr. Quintana’s chair. (Juan Diego also hadn’t noticed when Dr. Quintana had left her seat, but he saw now that the doctor was standing next to Clark, diagonally across the table.) Many of the adults had left their chairs at the tables in the center of the dining room; those tables were being carried away — the center of the dining-room area would become the dance floor. Juan Diego didn’t like to watch people dance; dancing doesn’t work for cripples, not even vicariously.

The little children were being taken to bed; the older children, the teenagers, had also left the tables at the perimeter of the dance floor. Some adults had already seated themselves at those perimeter tables. When the music started, no doubt the teenagers would be back, Juan Diego was thinking, but they had disappeared for the moment — doing whatever teenagers do.

“What do you suppose has happened to the big gecko behind that painting, Mister?” Pedro quietly asked Juan Diego.

“Well—” Juan Diego began.

“It’s gone. I looked. Nothing there,” Pedro whispered.

“The big gecko must be off on a hunting expedition,” Juan Diego suggested.

“It’s gone,” Pedro repeated. “Maybe the lady stabbed the big gecko, too,” Pedro whispered.

“No — I don’t think so, Pedro,” Juan Diego said, but the boy looked convinced that the big gecko was gone for good.

Miriam had unbraided Consuelo’s pigtails and was expertly running her fingers through the little girl’s thick black hair. “You have beautiful hair, Consuelo,” Miriam told the girl, who was sitting only slightly less rigidly in Miriam’s lap than before. Consuelo was fighting off sleep, suppressing a yawn.

“Yes, I do have nice hair,” Consuelo said. “If I were ever kidnapped, the kidnappers would cut off my hair and sell it.”

“Don’t think about that — it isn’t going to happen,” Miriam told her.

“Do you know everything that’s going to happen?” Consuelo asked Miriam.

For some reason, Juan Diego held his breath; he was waiting intently for Miriam’s answer — he didn’t want to miss a word.

“I think the lady does know everything,” Pedro whispered to Juan Diego, who shared the fearful-looking boy’s premonition about Miriam. Juan Diego had stopped breathing because he believed that Miriam did know the future, though Juan Diego doubted Pedro’s conviction that Miriam had done away with the big gecko. (She would have needed a more formidable murder weapon than a salad fork.)

And the whole time, while Juan Diego wasn’t breathing, both he and Pedro were watching Miriam massage Consuelo’s scalp. Not a single kink remained in the little girl’s luxuriant hair, and Consuelo herself was slumped against Miriam in a succumbed state; the drowsy-looking little girl had half-closed her eyes — she seemed to have forgotten that she’d ever asked Miriam an unanswered question.

Pedro hadn’t forgotten. “Go on, Mister — you better ask her,” the boy whispered. “She’s putting Consuelo to sleep — maybe that’s what she did to the big gecko,” Pedro suggested.

“ Do you—” Juan Diego started to say, but his tongue felt funny in his mouth and his speech was slurred. Do you know everything that’s going to happen? he’d meant to ask Miriam, but Miriam held a finger to her lips and silenced him.