Brother Pepe had higher hopes of Vargas's skepticism succeeding with Juan Diego and Lupe. The dump kids were disillusioned with La Maravilla--at least Lupe was. Dr. Vargas took a dim view of reading lions' minds, as did Brother Pepe. Vargas had examined a few of the young-women acrobats; they'd been his patients, both before and after Ignacio got his hands on them. As a performer, being The Wonder--La Maravilla herself--could kill you. (No one had survived the fall from eighty feet without a net.) Dr. Vargas knew that the girl acrobats who'd had sex with Ignacio wished they were dead.
And Vargas had admitted to Pepe, somewhat defensively, that he'd first thought the circus would be a good prospect for the dump kids because he'd envisioned that Lupe, who was a mind reader, would have no contact with Ignacio. (Lupe wouldn't be one of Ignacio's girl acrobats.) Now Vargas had changed his mind; what Vargas didn't like about Lupe's reading the lions' minds was that this put the thirteen-year-old in contact with Ignacio.
Pepe had come full circle about the dump kids' prospects at the circus. Brother Pepe wanted them back at Lost Children, where they would at least be safe. Pepe had Vargas's support about Juan Diego's prospects as a skywalker, too. So what if the crippled foot was permanently locked in the perfect position for skywalking? Juan Diego wasn't an athlete; the boy's good foot was a liability.
He'd been practicing in the acrobats' troupe tent. The good foot had slipped out of the loops of rope in that ladder--he'd fallen a few times. And this was only the practice tent.
Lastly, there were the dump kids' expectations about Mexico City. Juan Diego and Lupe's pilgrimage to the basilica there was troubling to Pepe, who was from Mexico City. Pepe knew what a shock it could be to see Guadalupe's shrine for the first time, and he knew the dump kids could be finicky--they were hard kids to please when it came to public expressions of religious faith. Pepe thought the dump kids had their own religion, and it struck Pepe as unfathomably personal.
Ninos Perdidos would not let Edward Bonshaw and Brother Pepe accompany the dump kids on their trip to Mexico City; they couldn't give their two best teachers time off together. And Senor Eduardo wanted to see the shrine to Guadalupe almost as much as the dump kids did--in Pepe's opinion, the Iowan was as likely to be overwhelmed and disgusted by the excesses of the Basilica de Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe as the dump kids were. (The throngs who flocked to the Guadalupe shrine on a Saturday morning could conceivably run roughshod over anyone's personal beliefs.)
Vargas knew the scene--the mindless, run-amok worshipers were the epitome of everything he hated. But Pepe was wrong to imagine that Dr. Vargas (or anyone else) could prepare the dump kids and Edward Bonshaw for the hordes of pilgrims approaching the Basilica de Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe on the Avenue of Mysteries--"the Avenue of Miseries," Pepe had heard Vargas call it, in the doctor's blunt English. The spectacle was one los ninos de la basura and the missionary had to experience themselves.
Speaking of spectacles: a dinner party at Casa Vargas was a spectacle. The life-size statues of the Spanish conquistadors, at the top and bottom of the grand staircase (and in the hall), were more intimidating than the religious sex dolls and other statuary for sale at the virgin shop on Independencia.
The menacing Spanish soldiers were very realistic; they stood guard on two floors of Vargas's house like a conquering army. Vargas had touched nothing in his parents' mansion. He'd lived his youth at war with his parents' religion and politics, but he'd left their paintings and statues and family photos intact.
Vargas was a socialist and an atheist; he virtually gave away his medical services to the neediest. But the house he lived in was a reminder of his spurned parents' rejected values. Casa Vargas did not revere Vargas's dead parents as much as it appeared to mock them; their culture, which Vargas had rebuked, was on display, but more for the effect of ridicule than honor--or so it seemed to Pepe.
"Vargas might as well have stuffed his dead parents and let them stand guard in the family house!" Brother Pepe had forewarned Edward Bonshaw, but the Iowan was unhinged before he even arrived at the dinner party.
Senor Eduardo had not confessed his transgression with Flor to Father Alfonso or Father Octavio. The zealot persisted in seeing the people he loved as projects; they were to be reclaimed or rescued--they were never to be abandoned. Flor and Juan Diego and Lupe were the Iowan's projects; Edward Bonshaw saw them through the eyes of a born reformer, but he did not love them less for looking upon them in this fashion. (In Pepe's opinion, this was a complication in Senor Eduardo's process of "reorientation.")
Brother Pepe still shared a bathroom with the zealot. Pepe knew that Edward Bonshaw had stopped whipping himself, but Pepe could hear the Iowan crying in the bathroom, where he whipped the toilet and the sink and the bathtub instead. Senor Eduardo cried and cried, because he didn't know how he could quit his job at Lost Children until he'd arranged to take care of his beloved projects.
As for Lupe, she was in no mood for a dinner party at Casa Vargas. She'd been spending all her time with Hombre and the lionesses--las senoritas, "the young ladies," Ignacio called the three lionesses. He'd named them, each one for a body part. Cara, "face" (of a person); Garra, "paw" (with claws); Oreja, "ear" (external, the outer ear). Ignacio told Lupe he could read the lionesses' minds by these body parts. Cara scrunched up her face when she was agitated or angry; Garra looked like she was kneading bread with her paws, her claws digging into the ground; Oreja cocked one ear askew, or she flattened both her ears.
"They can't fool me--I know what they're thinking. The young ladies are obvious," the lion tamer said to Lupe. "I don't need a mind reader for las senoritas--it's Hombre whose thoughts are a mystery."
Maybe not to Lupe--that's what Juan Diego was thinking. Juan Diego was in no mood for a dinner party, either; he doubted that Lupe had been entirely forthcoming to him.
"What is on Hombre's mind?" he'd asked her.
"Not much--typical guy," Lupe had told her brother. "Hombre thinks about doing it to the lionesses. To Cara, usually. Sometimes to Garra. To Oreja, hardly at all--except when he thinks of her suddenly, and then he wants to do it to her right away. Hombre thinks about sex or he doesn't think at all," Lupe said. "Except about eating."
"But is Hombre dangerous?" Juan Diego asked her. (He thought it was odd that Hombre thought about sex. Juan Diego was pretty sure that Hombre didn't actually have sex, at all.)
"If you bother Hombre when he's eating--if you touch him when he's thinking about doing it to one of the lionesses. Hombre wants everything to be
the same--he doesn't like change," Lupe said. "I don't know if the lions actually do it," she admitted.
"But what does Hombre think about Ignacio? That's all Ignacio cares about!" Juan Diego cried.
Lupe shrugged their late mother's shrug. "Hombre loves Ignacio, except when he hates him. It confuses Hombre when he hates Ignacio. Hombre knows he's not supposed to hate Ignacio," Lupe answered.
"There's something you're not telling me," Juan Diego said to her.
"Oh--now you read minds, do you?" Lupe asked him.
"What is it?" Juan Diego asked her.
"Ignacio thinks the lionesses are dumb twats--he's not interested in what the lionesses are thinking," Lupe answered.
"That's it?" Juan Diego asked. Between what Ignacio thought and the vocabulary of the girl acrobats, Lupe's language was growing filthier on a daily basis.
"Ignacio is obsessed with what Hombre thinks--it's a guy-to-guy thing." But the next thing she said in a funny way, Juan Diego thought. "The tamer of the lionesses doesn't care what the lionesses are thinking," Lupe said. She hadn't said el domador de leones--that's what you called the lion tamer. Instead Lupe had said el domador de leonas.
"So what are the lionesses thinking, Lupe?" Juan Diego had asked her. (Not about sex, apparently.)