Avenue of Mysteries

"!Que triste!" Beer Belly shouted, when he saw Juan Diego.

"Si, si, Lupe's brother--how sad, how sad," Paco repeated, giving Juan Diego a hug.

Now, amid the dirgelike din of "Streets of Laredo," was not the time for Senor Eduardo to confess his love for Flor to Father Alfonso and Father Octavio--whether or not the Iowan would ever find the balls for such a formidable confession.

As Dolores had said to Juan Diego, when The Wonder herself was talking him down from the top of the main tent: "I'm sure you're going to have the balls for lots of other stuff." But when, and what other stuff? Juan Diego was wondering, while the circus band played on and on--it seemed the dirge would never end.

The way "Streets of Laredo" was reverberating, the corner of las calles de Trujano y Flores Magon was shaking. Rivera might have felt it was safe to shout; the dump boss may have thought no one would hear him. He was wrong--not even the brass-and-drum version of the cowboy's lament could conceal what Rivera shouted.

The dump boss had turned to face the entrance to the Jesuit temple, off Flores Magon; he'd shaken his fist in the direction of the Mary Monster--he was so angry. "We'll be back, with more ashes for you!" el jefe had shouted.

"You mean the sprinkling, I assume," Brother Pepe said to the dump boss, as if Pepe were speaking conspiratorially.

"Ah, yes--the sprinkling," Dr. Vargas joined in. "Be sure you tell me when that's happening--I don't want to miss it," he told Rivera.

"There's stuff to burn--decisions to be made," the dump boss mumbled.

"And we don't want too many ashes--just the right amount this time," Juan Diego added.

"And only at the Virgin Mary's feet!" the parrot man reminded them.

"Si, si--these things take time," el jefe

cautioned them.

But not always in dreams--sometimes dreams go fast. Time can be compressed in dreams.

*

IN REAL LIFE, IT took a few days for Dolores to show up at Cruz Roja, presenting Vargas, as she did, with her fatal peritoneal infection. (In his dream, Juan Diego would skip that part.)

In real life, el hombre papagayo--the dear parrot man--would take a few days to find the balls to say what he had to say to Father Alfonso and Father Octavio, and Juan Diego would discover that he did have the balls for "lots of other stuff," as Dolores had tried to assure him when he just froze at eighty feet. (In his dream, of course, Juan Diego would skip how many days it took him and the Iowan to discover their balls.)

And, in real life, Brother Pepe spent a couple of days doing the necessary research: the rules regarding legal guardianship, pertaining (in particular) to orphans; the role the Church could play, and had played, in appointing or recommending legal guardians for kids in the care of Lost Children. Pepe had a good head for this kind of paperwork; constructing Jesuitical arguments from history was a procedure he understood well.

It was unremarkable, in Pepe's opinion, how often Father Alfonso and Father Octavio were on record for saying, "We are a Church of rules"; yet Pepe discovered that the two old priests were not once on record for saying they could or would bend the rules. What was remarkable was how frequently Father Alfonso and Father Octavio had bent the rules--some orphans weren't very adoptable; not every potential guardian was indisputably suitable. And, not surprisingly, Pepe's precisionist preparation and presentation regarding why Edward Bonshaw and Flor were (in Juan Diego's difficult case) the dump reader's most suitable guardians imaginable--well, you can understand why these academic disputations weren't dream material. (When it came to dreaming, Juan Diego would skip Pepe's Jesuitical arguments, too.)

Last but not least, in real life, it would take a few days for Rivera and Juan Diego to sort out the burning business--not only what went into the fire at the basurero, but how long to let it burn and how many ashes to take out. This time, the container for the ashes would be small--not a coffee can but just a coffee cup. It was a cup Lupe had liked for her hot chocolate; she'd left it in the shack in Guerrero, where el jefe had kept it for her.

There was, importantly, a second part to Lupe's last requests--the sprinkling-of-the-ashes part--but the preparation of those interesting ashes would also be absent from Juan Diego's dream. (Dreams not only can go fast; they can be very selective.)

His first night at El Escondrijo, Juan Diego got up to pee--he wouldn't remember what happened, because he was still dreaming. He sat down to pee; he could pee more quietly sitting down, and he didn't want to wake up Dorothy, but there was a second reason for his sitting down. He'd seen his cell phone--it was on the countertop next to the toilet.

Because he was dreaming, Juan Diego probably didn't remember that the bathroom was the only place he could find to plug in his cell phone; there was only one outlet next to the night table in the bedroom, and Dorothy had beaten him to it--she was such an aware young woman, technologically speaking.

Juan Diego wasn't at all aware. He still didn't understand how his cell phone worked, nor could he access the things on (or not on) his cell phone's irritating menu--those things other people found so easily and stared at with such transfixed fascination. Juan Diego didn't find his cell phone very interesting--not to the degree that other people did. In his routine life in Iowa City, there had been no younger person to show him how to use his mysterious phone. (It was one of those already-old-fashioned cell phones that flipped open.)

It irked him--even half asleep, and dreaming, and peeing while he was sitting down--that he still couldn't find the photo the young Chinese man had taken in the underground of Kowloon Station.

They could all hear the train coming--the boy had to hurry. The photo caught Juan Diego, and Miriam and Dorothy, by surprise. The Chinese couple seemed to think it was a disappointing picture--perhaps out of focus?--but then the train was there. It was Miriam who'd snatched the cell phone away from the couple, and Dorothy who--even more quickly--had taken it from her mom. When Dorothy gave him back his phone, it was no longer in the camera mode.

"We don't photograph well," was all Miriam had said to the Chinese couple, who'd seemed unduly disturbed by the incident. (Perhaps the pictures they took usually turned out better.)

And now, sitting on the toilet in his bathroom at El Escondrijo, Juan Diego discovered--completely by accident, and probably because he was half asleep and dreaming--that there was an easier way to find that photo taken at Kowloon Station. Juan Diego wouldn't even remember how he found the picture the young Chinese man took. He'd unintentionally touched a button on the side of his cell phone; suddenly his screen said, "Starting Camera." He could have taken a photo of his bare knees, extending from the toilet seat, but he must have seen the "My Pics" option--that was how he saw the photo taken at Kowloon Station, not that he would remember doing this.

In fact, in the morning, Juan Diego would think he'd only dreamed about the photograph, because what he'd seen when he was sitting on the toilet--what he'd seen in the actual photo--couldn't have been real, or so he thought.

In the photo Juan Diego had seen, he was alone on the train platform at Kowloon Station--as Miriam had said, she and Dorothy truly didn't "photograph well." No wonder Miriam had said that she and Dorothy couldn't stand the way they looked in photographs--they didn't show up in photos, at all! No wonder the young Chinese couple, who'd seen the picture, seemed unduly disturbed.