"Isn't San Miguel a Spanish beer?" Juan Diego asked Bienvenido in the limo; they were driving back to the hotel. Juan Diego must have had a few beers.
"Well, it's a Spanish brewery," Bienvenido said, "but their parent company is in the Philippines."
Any version of colonialism--Spanish colonialism, in particular--was certain to set off Juan Diego. And then there was Catholic colonialism, as Juan Diego thought of it. "Colonialism, I suppose," was all the writer said; in the rearview mirror, he could see the limo driver thinking this over. Poor Bienvenido: he'd imagined they were talking about beer.
"I suppose," was all Bienvenido said.
IT MUST HAVE BEEN a saint's day--which one, Juan Diego didn't remember. The responsive prayer, beginning in the chapel, didn't exist only in Juan Diego's dream; the prayer had drifted upstairs on the morning the dump kids woke up with el gringo bueno in their room at Ninos Perdidos.
"!Madre!" one of the nuns called; it sounded like Sister Gloria's voice. "Ahora y siempre, seras mi guia."
"Mother!" the orphans in the kindergarten responded. "Now and forever, you will be my guide."
The kindergartners were in the chapel, one floor below Juan Diego and Lupe's bedroom. On saints' days, the responsive prayers drifted upstairs before the kindergartners began their morning march. Lupe, either awake or half asleep, would murmur her own prayer in response to the kindergartners' ode to the Virgin Mary.
"Dulce madre mia d
e Guadalupe, por tu justicia, presente en nuestros corazones, reine la paz en el mundo," Lupe prayed--somewhat sarcastically. "My sweet mother Guadalupe, in your righteousness, present in our hearts, let peace reign in the world."
But this morning, when Juan Diego was barely awake, with his eyes still closed, Lupe said, "There's a miracle for you: our mother has managed to pass through our room--she's taking a bath--without ever seeing the good gringo."
Juan Diego opened his eyes. Either el gringo bueno had died in his sleep or he'd not moved; yet the bedsheet no longer covered him. The hippie and his Crucified Christ lay still and exposed--a tableau of an untimely death, of youth struck down--while the dump kids could hear Esperanza singing some secular ditty in the bathtub. "He's a beautiful boy, isn't he?" Lupe asked her brother.
"He smells like beer piss," Juan Diego noted, bending over the young American to be sure he was breathing.
"We should get him out on the street--at least get him dressed," Lupe said. Esperanza had already pulled the plug; the ninos could hear the sound the tub made when it was draining. Esperanza's singing was muffled--she was probably towel-drying her hair.
In the chapel, one floor below them, or perhaps in the poetic license taken in Juan Diego's dream, the nun who sounded like Sister Gloria once more exhorted the children to repeat after her: "!Madre! Ahora y siempre--"
" 'I want my arms and legs around you!' " Esperanza sang. " 'I want my tongue touching your tongue, too!' "
" 'I spied a young cowboy, all wrapped in white linen,' " the dead-asleep gringo was singing. " 'Wrapped up in white linen and cold as the clay.' "
"Whatever this mess is, it isn't a miracle," Lupe said; she got out of bed to help Juan Diego dress the helpless gringo.
"Whoa!" the hippie boy moaned; he was still asleep, or he'd completely passed out. "We're all friends, right?" he kept asking. "You smell great, and you're so beautiful!" he told Lupe, as she was trying to button his dirty shirt. But the good gringo's eyes never opened; he couldn't see Lupe. He was too hung over to wake up.
"I'll marry him only if he stops drinking," Lupe said to Juan Diego.
The good gringo's breath smelled worse than all the rest of him, and Juan Diego tried to distract himself from the bad smell by thinking about what present the friendly hippie might give the dump kids--last night, when he'd been more lucid, the young draft dodger had promised them a present.
Naturally, Lupe knew what her brother was thinking. "I don't believe the dear boy can afford to give us very extravagant presents," Lupe said. "One day, in about five to seven years, a simple gold wedding band might be nice, but I wouldn't count on anything special now--not when the hippie is spending his money on alcohol and prostitutes."
As if summoned by the prostitutes word, Esperanza came out of the bathroom; she was wearing her customary two towels (her hair bound in one, her body scarcely covered by the other) and carrying her Zaragoza Street clothes.
"Look at him, Mom!" Juan Diego cried; he began unbuttoning the good gringo's shirt, faster than Lupe had buttoned it up. "We found him on the street last night--he didn't have a mark on him. But this morning, look at him!" Juan Diego pulled open the hippie boy's shirt to reveal the Bleeding Jesus. "It's a miracle!" Juan Diego cried.
"It's el gringo bueno--he's no miracle," Esperanza said.
"Oh, let me die--she knows him! They've been naked together--she's done everything to him!" Lupe cried.
Esperanza rolled the gringo over on his stomach; she pulled down his underpants. "You call this a miracle?" she asked her children. On the dear boy's bare ass was a tattoo of the American flag, but the flag was purposely ripped in half; the crack of the hippie's ass divided the flag. It was pretty much the opposite of a patriotic picture.
"Whoa!" the unconscious gringo said in a strangled voice; he was lying facedown on the bed, where he appeared in danger of suffocating.
"He smells like upchuck," Esperanza said. "Help me get him into the bathtub--the water will bring him back to life."
"The gringo put his thing in her mouth," Lupe was babbling. "She put his thing in her--"