"Do I look like your mother?" Flor asked. She was a transvestite prostitute. There weren't so many transvestite prostitutes in Oaxaca in those days; Flor really stood out, and not only because she was tall. She was almost beautiful; what was beautiful about her truly wasn't affected by the softest-looking trace of a mustache on her upper lip, though Lupe noticed it.
"You look like our mom, a little," Juan Diego answered Flor. "You're both very pretty."
"Flor's a lot bigger, and there's the you-know-what," Lupe said, passing her finger over her upper lip. There was no need for Juan Diego to translate this.
"You kids shouldn't be here," Flor told them. "You should be in bed."
"Our mother's name is Esperanza," Juan Diego said. "Maybe you've seen her here--maybe you know her."
"I know Esperanza," Flor told them. "But I don't see her around here. I see you around here, all the time," she told the kids.
"Maybe our mom is the most popular of all the prostitutes," Lupe said. "Maybe she never leaves the Hotel Somega--the men just come to her." But Juan Diego didn't translate this.
"Whatever she's babbling about, I can tell you one true thing," Flor said. "Everybody who's ever been here has been seen--I can promise you that. Maybe your mother hasn't been here at all; maybe you kids should just go to sleep."
"Flor knows a lot about the circus--it's on her mind," Lupe said. "Go on--ask her about it."
"We have an offer from La Maravilla--just a sideshow act," Juan Diego said. "We would have our own tent, but we would share it with the dogs--they're trained dogs, very smart. I don't suppose you see any circus people, do you?" the boy asked.
"I don't do dwarfs. You have to draw the line somewhere," Flor told them. "The dwarfs have an unreasonable interest in me--they're all over me," she said.
"I won't be able to sleep tonight," Lupe told Juan Diego. "The thought of dwarfs all over Flor will keep me awake."
"You told me to ask her. I won't be able to sleep, either," Juan Diego said to his sister.
"Ask Flor if she knows Soledad," Lupe said.
"Maybe we don't want to know," Juan Diego said, but he asked Flor what she knew about the lion tamer's wife.
"She's a lonely, unhappy woman," Flor answered. "Her husband is a pig. In his case, I'm on the lions' side," she said.
"I guess you don't do lion tamers, either," Juan Diego said.
"Not that one, chico," Flor said. "Aren't you Ninos Perdidos kids? Doesn't your mother work there? Why would you move into a tent with dogs if you don't have to?"
Lupe began to recite a list of reasons. "One: love of dogs," she started. "Two: to be stars--in a circus, we might be famous. Three: because the parrot man will come visit us, and our future--" She stopped for a second. "His future, anyway," Lupe said, pointing to her brother. "His future is in the parrot man's hands--I just know it is, circus or no circus."
"I don't know the parrot man--I've never met him," Flor told the kids, after Juan Diego had struggled to translate Lupe's list.
"The parrot man doesn't want a woman," Lupe reported, which Juan Diego also translated. (Lupe had heard Senor Eduardo say this.)
"I know lots of parrot men!" the transvestite prostitute said.
"Lupe means that the parrot man has taken a vow of celibacy," Juan Diego tried to explain to Flor, but she wouldn't let him finish what he was going to say.
"Oh, no--I don't know any men like that," Flor said. "Does the parrot man have a sideshow act at La Maravilla?"
"He's the new missionary at the Templo de la Compania de Jesus--he's a Jesuit from Iowa," Juan Diego told her.
"Jesus Mary Joseph!" Flor exclaimed again. "That kind of parrot man."
"His dog was killed--it probably changed his life," Lupe said, but Juan Diego left this untranslated.
Their attention was then diverted by a fight in front of the Hotel Somega; the altercation must have started in the hotel, but it had progressed from the courtyard into Zaragoza Street.
"Shit, it's the good gringo--that kid is a liability to himself," Flor said. "He might have been safer in Vietnam."
There were more and more of the American hippie boys in Oaxaca; some of them came with girlfriends, but the girlfriends never stayed long. Most of the draft-age boys were alone, or they ended up alone. They were running away from the war in Vietnam, or from what their country had become, Edward Bonshaw said. The Iowan reached out to them--he tried to help them--but most of the hippie boys weren't religious types. Like the rooftop dogs, they were lost souls--they were running wild, or they drifted around town like ghosts.