With a beginning of this oppressive kind, how could the onstage interview hope to achieve a spontaneous liftoff? It was a wonder that the audience didn’t leave — except for Leslie, whose early exit was very visible. It was a mild success that the interview got a little better. There was some mention of Juan Diego’s novels, and it registered as a small triumph that the issue of Juan Diego’s being, or his not being, a Mexican-American writer was discussed without further reference to Freud, James, or Twain.
But poor Leslie hadn’t left alone, not entirely. If not everyone’s idea of a mother and her daughter, those two women with Leslie were certainly competent-looking, and the way they’d escorted Leslie up the aisle and out of the theater suggested they were used to taking charge. In fact, how Miriam and Dorothy had taken hold of the small, pretty woman might have caused some concern among the more observant members of the audience — if anyone even noticed, or had been paying attention. The unshakable grip Miriam and Dorothy had on poor Leslie could have meant they were comforting her or abducting her. It was hard to tell.
And where had Miriam and Dorothy gone? Juan Diego kept wondering. Why should he care? Hadn’t he wished they would just disappear? Yet what did it mean when your angels of death departed — when your personal phantasms stopped haunting you?
THE DINNER AFTER THE onstage event was in the labyrinth of the Ayala Center. To an out-of-towner, the dinner guests were not discernible from one another. Juan Diego knew who his readers were — they announced themselves by their familiarity with the details of his novels — but the dinner guests Clark identified as “patrons of the arts” were aloof; their sympathies toward Juan Diego were unreadable.
You shouldn’t generalize about those people who are patrons of the arts. Some of them have read nothing; they’re often the ones who appear to have read everything. The other ones have an out-of-it expression; they seem disinclined to speak or, if they talk at all, it’s only to make an offhand remark about the salad or the seating plan — and they’re usually the ones who’ve read everything you’ve written, and everyone else you’ve ever read.
“You have to be careful around patron-des-arts types,” Clark whispered in Juan Diego’s ear. “They are not what they seem.”
Clark was wearing thin on Juan Diego — Clark could grate on anyone. There were those known things Clark and Juan Diego disagreed about, but it was when Juan Diego most agreed with Clark that Clark grated on him more.
To be fair: Clark had prepared him to expect “a journalist or two” at the dinner party; Clark had also said he would warn Juan Diego about “the ones to watch out for.” But Clark didn’t know all the journalists.
One of the unknown journalists asked Juan Diego if the beer he was drinking was his first one, or his second.
“You want to know how many beers he’s had?” Clark asked the young man aggressively. “Do you know how many novels this author has written?” Clark further asked the journalist, who was wearing an untucked white shirt. It was a dress shirt, but one that had known fresher days. By its bedraggled appearance and a mélange of stains, the shirt — and the young man wearing it — signified, if only to Clark, a life of unclean disarray.
“Do you like San Miguel?” the journalist asked Juan Diego, pointing to the beer; he was deliberately ignoring Clark.
“Name two titles of novels this author has written — just two,” Clark told the journalist. “Of the novels Juan Diego Guerrero has written, name one you’ve read — just one,” Clark said.
Juan Diego could never (would never) behave like Clark, but Clark was redeeming himself with each passing second; Juan Diego was remembering what he liked best about Clark French — notwithstanding all the other ways in which Clark could be Clark.
“Yes, I like San Miguel,” Juan Diego told the journalist, holding up his beer as if he were toasting the unread young man. “And I believe this is my second one.”
“You don’t have to talk to him — he hasn’t done his homework,” Clark said to his former teacher.
Juan Diego was thinking that his nice-guy assessment of Clark French was not quite correct; Clark is a nice guy, Juan Diego thought, provided you’re not a journalist who hasn’t done your homework.
As for the unprepared journalist, the young man who was not a reader, he had wandered off. “I don’t know who he is,” Clark muttered; he was disappointed in himself. “But I know that one—I know her,” Clark told Juan Diego, pointing to a middle-aged woman who’d been eyeing them from afar. (She’d been waiting for the younger journalist to drift away.) “She is a horror of insincerity — imagine a venomous hamster,” Clark hissed to Juan Diego.
“One of the ones to watch out for, I guess,” Juan Diego said; he smiled knowingly at his former student. “I feel safe with you, Clark,” Juan Diego suddenly said. This was verily spontaneous and heartfelt, but until he said it, Juan Diego hadn’t realized how unsafe he had felt — and for how long! (Dump kids don’t take feeling safe for granted; circus kids don’t assume a safety net is there.)
For his part, Clark felt moved to wrap his big, strong arm around his former teacher’s slender shoulders. “But I don’t think you need my protection from this one,” Clark whispered in Juan Diego’s ear. “She’s just a gossip.”
Clark was talking about the middle-aged woman journalist, who was now approaching — the “venomous hamster.” Had he meant her mind ran in place, making repetitive rotations on the going-nowhere wheel? But what was venomous about her? “All of her questions will be recycled — stuff she saw on the Internet, the reiteration of every stupid question you were ever asked,” Clark was whispering in his former teacher’s ear. “She will not have read a single novel you’ve written, but she’ll have read everything about you. I’m sure you know the type,” Clark added.
“I know, Clark — thank you,” Juan Diego gently said, smiling at his former student. Mercifully, Josefa was there — the good Dr. Quintana was dragging her husband away. Juan Diego had not realized he’d been standing in the food line until he saw the buffet table; it was dead ahead.
“You should have the fish,” the woman journalist told him. Juan Diego saw that she’d inserted herself in the food line beside him, possibly the way venomous hamsters do.
“That looks like a cheese sauce, on the fish,” was all Juan Diego said; he helped himself to the Korean glass noodles with vegetables, and to something called Vietnamese beef.
“I don’t think I’ve seen anyone actually eat the mangled beef here,” the journalist said. She must have meant to say “shredded,” Juan Diego was thinking, but he didn’t say anything. (Maybe the Vietnamese mangled their beef; Juan Diego didn’t know.)
“The small, pretty woman — the one who was there tonight,” the middle-aged woman said, helping herself to the fish. “She left early,” she added, after a long pause.
“Yes, I know who you mean — Leslie someone. I don’t know her,” was all Juan Diego said.
“Leslie someone told me to tell you something,” the middle-aged woman told him, in a confiding (not quite motherly) tone.
Juan Diego waited; he didn’t want to appear too interested. And he was looking everywhere for Clark and Josefa; he realized he wouldn’t object if Clark bullied this woman journalist, just a little.