Avenue of Mysteries - Page 123

The coffee at the resort was overstrong, or perhaps it seemed strong because Juan Diego was drinking it black. "Have the green tea," Dorothy told him. But the green tea was very bitter; he tried putting a little honey in it. He saw that the honey was from Australia.

"Australia is nearby, isn't it?" Juan Diego asked Dorothy. "I'm sure the honey is safe."

"They dilute it with something--it's too watery," Dorothy said. "And where's the water come from?" she asked him. (It was her outer-islands theme, again.) "Is it bottled water, or do they boil it? I say fuck the honey," Dorothy told him.

"Okay," Juan Diego said. Dorothy seemed to know a lot. Juan Diego was beginning to realize that, increasingly, when he was with Dorothy or her mother, he acquiesced.

He was allowing Dorothy to give him his pills; she'd simply taken over his prescriptions. Dorothy not only decided when he should take the Viagra--always a whole tablet, not a half--but she told him when to take the beta-blockers, and when not to take them.

At low tide, it was Dorothy who insisted they sit overlooking the lagoon; low tide was when the reef egrets came to search the mudflats. "What are the egrets looking for?" Juan Diego had asked her.

"It doesn't matter--they're awesome-looking birds, aren't they?" was all Dorothy had said.

At high tide, Dorothy held his arm as they ventured onto the beach in the horseshoe-shaped cove. The monitor lizards liked to lie in the sand; some of them were as long as an adult human arm. "You don't want to get too close to them--they can bite, and they smell like carrion," Dorothy had warned him. "They look like penises, don't they? Unfriendly-looking penises," Dorothy said.

Juan Diego had no idea what unfriendly-looking penises resembled; how any penis could or might look like a monitor lizard was beyond him. Juan Diego had enough trouble understanding his own penis. When Dorothy took him snorkeling in the deep water outside the lagoon, his penis stung a little.

"It's just the salt water, and because you've been having a lot of sex," Dorothy told him. She seemed to know more about his penis than Juan Diego did. And the stinging soon stopped. (It was more like tingling than stinging, truthfully.) Juan Diego wasn't under attack from those stinging things--the plankton that looked like condoms for three-year-olds. There were no upright-swimming index fingers--those stinging pink things, swimming vertically, like sea horses, the jellyfish he'd heard about only from Dorothy and Clark.

As for Clark, Juan Diego started getting inquiring text messages from his former student before he and Dorothy left El Nido and Lagen Island.

"D. is STILL with you, isn't she?" the first such text message from Clark inquired.

"What should I tell him?" Juan Diego asked Dorothy.

"Oh, Leslie is texting Clark, too--is she?" Dorothy had asked. "I'm just not answering her. You would think Leslie and I had been going steady, or something."

But Clark French kept texting his former teacher. "As far as poor Leslie knows, D. has just DISAPPEARED. Leslie was expecting D. to meet her in Manila. But poor Leslie is suspicious--she knows you know D. What do I tell her?"

"Tell Clark we're leaving for Laoag. Leslie will know where that is. Everyone knows where Laoag is. Don't get more specific," Dorothy told Juan Diego.

But when Juan Diego did exactly that--when he sent Clark a text that he was "off to Laoag with D."--he heard back from his former student almost immediately.

"D. is fucking you, isn't she? You understand: I'm not the one who wants to know!" Clark texted him. "Poor Leslie is asking ME. What do I tell her?"

Dorothy saw his consternation as he stared at his cell phone. "Leslie is a very possessive person," Dorothy said to Juan Diego, without needing to ask him if the text was from Clark. "We have to let Leslie know she doesn't own us. This is all because your former student is too uptight to fuck her, and Leslie knows her tits won't stay perky forever, or something."

"You want me to blow off your bossy girlfriend?" Juan Diego asked Dorothy.

"I guess you've never had to blow off a bossy girlfriend," Dorothy said; without waiting for Juan Diego to admit that he hadn't had a bossy girlfriend--or many other kinds of girlfriends--Dorothy told him how he should handle the situation.

"We have to show Leslie that she doesn't have an emotional ball-and-chain effect on us," Dorothy began. "Here's what you say to Clark--he'll tell Leslie everything. One: Why shouldn't D. and I do it? Two: Leslie and D. did it, didn't they? Three: How are those boys doing--that one kid's poor penis, especially? Four: Want us to say hi to the water buffalo for the whole family?"

"That's what I should say?" Juan Diego asked Dorothy. She really did know a lot, he was thinking.

"Just send it," Dorothy told him. "Leslie needs to be blown off--she's begging for it. Now you can say you've had a bossy girlfriend. Fun, huh?" Dorothy asked him.

He sent the text, per Dorothy's instructions. Juan Diego was aware he was blowing off Clark, too. He was having fun, all right; in fact, he couldn't remember when he'd had this much fun--the quickly passing stinging sensation in his penis notwithstanding.

"How is this guy doing?" Dorothy then asked him, touching his penis. "Still stinging? Still tingling a tiny bit, maybe? Want to make this guy tingle some more?" Dorothy asked him.

He could barely manage to nod his head, he was so tired. Juan Diego was still staring at his cell phone, thinking about the uncharacteristic text message he'd sent to Clark.

"Don't worry," Dorothy was whispering to him; she kept touching his penis. "You look a little tired, but not this guy," she whispered. "He doesn't get tired."

Dorothy now took his phone away from him. "Don't worry, darling," she said to him in a more commanding fashion than before--the darling word impossibly sounding the way it had when Miriam had said it. "Leslie won't bother us again. Trust me: she'll get the message. Your friend Clark French does everything she wants--except fuck her."

Juan Diego wanted to ask Dorothy about their trip to Laoag and Vigan, but he couldn't form the words. He couldn't possibly have expressed to Dorothy his doubts about going there. Dorothy had decided--because Juan Diego was an American, and one of the Vietnam generation--that he should at least see where those young Americans, those frightened nineteen-year-olds who were so afraid of being tortured, went to get away from the war (when, or if, they could manage to get away from it).

Tags: John Irving Fiction
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