What a strong girl! was all Juan Diego thought about it. He turned to reach for his suitcase, not his carry-on, and was surprised to see that Miriam had taken it--together with her own big bag. What a strong mother! Juan Diego was thinking. He limped out into the hallway of the hotel, hurrying to keep up with the two women; he almost didn't notice that he scarcely limped at all.
THIS WAS PECULIAR: IN the middle of a conversation he couldn't remember, Juan Diego became separated from Miriam and Dorothy as they were going through the security check at Hong Kong International. He stepped toward the metal-detection device, looking back at Miriam, who was removing her shoes; he saw that her toenails were painted the same color as Dorothy's. Then he passed through the metal-screening machine, and when he looked for the women again, both Miriam and Dorothy were gone; they had simply (or not so simply) disappeared.
Juan Diego asked one of the security guards about the two women he'd been traveling with. Where had they gone? But the security guard was an impatient young fellow, and he was distracted by an apparent problem with the metal-detection device.
"What women? Which women? I've seen an entire civilization of women--they must have moved on!" the guard told him.
Juan Diego thought he would try to text or call the women on his cell phone, but he'd forgotten to get their cell-phone numbers. He scrolled through his contacts, looking in vain for their nonexistent names. Nor had Miriam written her cell-phone number, or Dorothy's, among the notes she'd made on his itinerary. Juan Diego saw just the names and addresses of alternative Manila hotels.
What a big deal Miriam had made about "the second time" he would be in Manila, Juan Diego was thinking, but he stopped thinking about it and made his slow way to the gate for his flight to the Philippines--his first time in Manila, he was thinking to himself (if he was thinking about it at all). He was preternaturally tired.
It must be the beta-blockers, Juan Diego was pondering. I guess I shouldn't have taken two--if I did.
Even the green-tea muffin on the Cathay Pacific flight--it was a much smaller plane this time--was a little disappointing. It wasn't such a heightened experience as eating that first green-tea muffin, when he and Miriam and Dorothy were arriving in Hong Kong.
Juan Diego was in the air when he remembered the love letter Dorothy had put in his jacket pocket. He took out the envelope and opened it.
"See you soon!" Dorothy had written on the Regal Airport Hotel stationery. She had pressed her lips--apparently, with fresh lipstick--to the page, leaving him the impression of her lips in intimate contact with the soon word. Her lipstick, he only now noticed, was the same color as her toenail polish--and her mother's. Magenta, Juan Diego guessed he would call it.
He couldn't miss seeing what was also in the envelope with the so-called love letter: the two empty foil wrappers, where the first and second condom had been. Maybe there was something wrong with the metal-screening machine at Hong Kong International, Juan Diego considered; the device hadn't detected the foil condom wrappers. Definitely, Juan Diego was thinking, this wasn't quite the sentimental journey he'd been expecting, but he was long on his way and there was no turning back now.
* 9 *
In Case You Were Wondering
Edward Bonshaw had an L-shaped scar on his forehead--from a childhood fall. He'd tripped over a sleeping dog when he was running with a mah-jongg tile clutched in his little hand. The tiny game block was made of ivory and bamboo; a corner of the pretty tile had been driven into Edward's pale forehead above the bridge of his nose, where it made a perfect check mark between his blond eyebrows.
He'd sat up but had felt too dizzy to stand. Blood streamed down between his eyes and dripped from the end of his nose. The dog, now awake, had wagged her tail and licked the bleeding boy's face.
> Edward found the dog's affectionate attention soothing. The boy was seven; his father had labeled him a "mama's boy," for no better reason than that Edward had expressed his dislike of hunting.
"Why shoot things that are alive?" he'd asked his father.
The dog didn't like hunting, either. A Labrador retriever, she'd blundered into a neighbor's swimming pool when she was still a puppy, and had almost drowned; thereafter, she was afraid of water--not normal for a Lab. Also "not normal," in the unwavering opinion of Edward's dictatorial father, was the dog's disposition not to retrieve. (Neither a ball nor a stick--certainly not a dead bird.)
"What happened to the retriever part? Isn't she supposed to be a Labrador retriever?" Edward's cruel uncle Ian always said.
But Edward loved the nonretrieving, never-swimming Lab, and the sweet dog doted on the boy; they were both "cowardly," in the harsh judgment of Edward's father, Graham. To young Edward, his father's brother--the bullying uncle Ian--was an unkind dolt.
This is all the background necessary to understand what happened next. Edward's father and Uncle Ian were hunting pheasants; they returned with a couple of the murdered birds, barging into the kitchen by the door to the garage.
This was the house in Coralville--at the time, a distant-seeming suburb of Iowa City--and Edward, bloody-faced, was sitting on the kitchen floor, where the nonretrieving, never-swimming Lab appeared to be eating the boy head-first. The men burst into the kitchen with Uncle Ian's Chesapeake Bay retriever, a thoughtless male gundog of Ian's own aggressive disposition and lack of discernible character.
"Fucking Beatrice!" Edward's father shouted.
Graham Bonshaw had named the Lab Beatrice, the most derisively female name he could imagine; it was a name suitable for a dog that Uncle Ian said should be spayed--"so she won't reproduce herself and further dilute a noble breed."
The two hunters left Edward sitting on the kitchen floor while they took Beatrice outside and shot her in the driveway.
This was not quite the story you were expecting when Edward Bonshaw, in his later life, pointed to the L-shaped scar on his forehead and began, with disarming indifference, "In case you were wondering about my scar--" thereby leading you to the brutal killing of Beatrice, a dog young Edward had adored, a dog with the sweetest disposition imaginable.
And for all those years, Juan Diego remembered, Senor Eduardo had kept that pretty little mah-jongg tile--the block that had permanently checkmarked his fair forehead.
Was it the inconsequential cut from the towel rod on Juan Diego's forehead, which had finally stopped bleeding, that triggered this nightmarish memory of Edward Bonshaw, who'd been so dearly beloved in Juan Diego's life? Was it too short a flight, from Hong Kong to Manila, for Juan Diego to sleep soundly? It was not as short a flight as he'd imagined, but he was restless and half awake the entire two hours, and his dreams were disjointed; Juan Diego's fitful sleep and the narrative disorder of his dreams were further evidence to him that he'd taken a double dose of beta-blockers.
He would dream intermittently all the way to Manila--foremost, the horrible history of Edward Bonshaw's scar. That is exactly what taking two Lopressor pills will get you! Yet, tired though he was, Juan Diego was grateful to have dreamed at all, even disjointedly. The past was where he lived most confidently, and with the surest sense of knowing who he was--not only as a novelist.
*