Because he was dreaming, Juan Diego probably didn’t remember that the bathroom was the only place he could find to plug in his cell phone; there was only one outlet next to the night table in the bedroom, and Dorothy had beaten him to it — she was such an aware young woman, technologically speaking.
Juan Diego wasn’t at all aware. He still didn’t understand how his cell phone worked, nor could he access the things on (or not on) his cell phone’s irritating menu — those things other people found so easily and stared at with such transfixed fascination. Juan Diego didn’t find his cell phone very interesting — not to the degree that other people did. In his routine life in Iowa City, there had been no younger person to show him how to use his mysterious phone. (It was one of those already-old-fashioned cell phones that flipped open.)
It irked him — even half asleep, and dreaming, and peeing while he was sitting down — that he still couldn’t find the photo the young Chinese man had taken in the underground of Kowloon Station.
They could all hear the train coming — the boy had to hurry. The photo caught Juan Diego, and Miriam and Dorothy, by surprise. The Chinese couple seemed to think it was a disappointing picture — perhaps out of focus? — but then the train was there. It was Miriam who’d snatched the cell phone away from the couple, and Dorothy who — even more quickly — had taken it from her mom. When Dorothy gave him back his phone, it was no longer in the camera mode.
“We don’t photograph well,” was all Miriam had said to the Chinese couple, who’d seemed unduly disturbed by the incident. (Perhaps the pictures they took usually turned out better.)
And now, sitting on the toilet in his bathroom at El Escondrijo, Juan Diego discovered — completely by accident, and probably because he was half asleep and dreaming — that there was an easier way to find that photo taken at Kowloon Station. Juan Diego wouldn’t even remember how he found the picture the young Chinese man took. He’d unintentionally touched a button on the side of his cell phone; suddenly his screen said, “Starting Camera.” He could have taken a photo of his bare knees, extending from the toilet seat, but he must have seen the “My Pics” option — that was how he saw the photo taken at Kowloon Station, not that he would remember doing this.
In fact, in the morning, Juan Diego would think he’d only dreamed about the photograph, because what he’d seen when he was sitting on the toilet — what he’d seen in the actual photo — couldn’t have been real, or so he thought.
In the photo Juan Diego had seen, he was alone on the train platform at Kowloon Station — as Miriam had said, she and Dorothy truly didn’t “photograph well.” No wonder Miriam had said that she and Dorothy couldn’t stand the way they looked in photographs — they didn’t show up in photos, at all! No wonder the young Chinese couple, who’d seen the picture, seemed unduly disturbed.
But Juan Diego wasn’t really awake in the present moment; he was in the grip of the most important dream and memory in his life — the sprinkling part. Besides, Juan Diego couldn’t have accepted (not yet) that Miriam and Dorothy hadn’t been captured in the photo at Kowloon Station — the one that caught all three of them by surprise.
And when Juan Diego, as quietly as possible, flushed the toilet in his bathroom at The Hiding Place, he failed to see the young ghost standing anxiously under the outdoor shower. This was a different ghost from the one Dorothy saw; this one was wearing his fatigues — he looked too young to have started shaving. (Dorothy must have left the shower light on.)
In the split second before this young ghost could vanish, forever missing in action, Juan Diego had limped back into the bedroom; he would have no memory of seeing himself alone on the train platform at Kowloon Station. Knowing that he hadn’t been alone on that platform was sufficient to make Juan Diego believe he’d merely dreamed he was making this journey without Miriam and Dorothy.
As he lay down beside Dorothy — at least it seemed to Juan Diego that Dorothy was really there — perhaps the journey word reminded him of something before he could fall back to sleep and fully return to the past. Where had he put that round-trip ticket to Kowloon Station? He knew he’d saved it, for some reason; he’d written something on the ticket with his ever-present pen. The title for a future novel, perhaps? One Single Journey—was that it?
Yes, that was it! But his thoughts (like his dreams) were so disjointed, it was hard for him to focus. Maybe it was a night when Dorothy had dispensed a double dose of the beta-blockers — not a night to have sex, in other words, but one of those nights to make up for the beta-blockers he’d skipped? If so — if he’d taken a double dose of his Lopressor prescription — would it have mattered if Juan Diego had seen the young ghost standing anxiously under the outdoor shower? Wouldn’t Juan Diego have believed he was only dreaming he saw the soldier’s ghost?
One Single Journey—it almost sounded like the title for a novel he’d already written, Juan Diego was thinking as he drifted back to sleep, more deeply into his lifelong dream. He thought of “single” in the sense of unaccompanied by others — in the sense of lone or sole—but also “single” in the sense of having no equal (in the sense of singular, Juan Diego supposed).
Then, as suddenly as he’d gotten up and gone back to bed, Juan Diego wasn’t thinking anymore. Once again, the past had reclaimed him.
30. The Sprinkling
The sprinkling part of Lupe’s last requests did not have a very spiritual start. Brother Pepe had been talking to an American immigration lawyer — this was in addition to Pepe’s talks with the authorities in Mexico. The legal guardian words weren’t the only ones in play; it would be necessary for Edward Bonshaw to “sponsor” Flor for “permanent residency,” Pepe was saying as discreetly as possible. Only Señor Eduardo and Flor could hear him.
Naturally, Flor objected to Pepe’s saying she had a criminal record. (This would call for more bending of the rules.) “I haven’t done anything criminal!” Flor protested. She’d had a run-in or two — the Oaxaca police had busted her once or twice.
According to police records, there’d been a couple of beatings at the Hotel Somega, but Flor said she’d “only” beaten up Garza—“that thug-pimp had it coming!”—and, another night, she’d kicked the shit out of César, Garza’s slave boy. These weren’t criminal beatings, Flor had maintained. As for what had happened to Flor in Houston, the American immigration lawyer told Pepe that nothing had turned up. (The pony in the postcard, which Señor Eduardo would forever keep secret, in his heart, didn’t amount to a matter of criminal record — not in Texas.)
And before the sprinkling got started in the Jesuit temple, some unspiritual attention was paid to the contents of the ashes.
“Exactly what was burned, if we may ask?” Father Alfonso began with the dump boss.
“We hope there are no foreign substances this time,” was the way Father Octavio put it to Rivera.
“Lupe’s clothes, a lanyard she wore around her neck, a couple of keys — plus an odd this or that from Guerrero,” Juan Diego told the two old priests.
“Mostly circus things?” Father Alfonso asked.
“Well, the burning was done at the basurero — burning is a dump thing,” el jefe answered warily.