Dorothy, even as she settled herself so solidly on Juan Diego’s penis — her breasts, falling forward, brushed the novelist’s face — was the one who reiterated that part of the tale. When the flowers fell out of the cloak, there in their place, imprinted on the fabric of the poor peasant’s rustic cape, was the very image of the Virgin of Guadalupe, her hands clasped in prayer, her eyes modestly downcast.
“It wasn’t so much that the image of Guadalupe was imprinted on the stupid cloak,” the young woman, who was rocking back and forth on top of Juan Diego, was saying. “It was the virgin herself — I mean, the way she looked. That must have impressed the bishop.”
“What do you mean?” Juan Diego managed to say breathlessly. “How did Guadalupe look?”
Dorothy threw back her head and shook her hair; her breasts wobbled over him, and Juan Diego held his breath at the sight of a rivulet of sweat that ran between them.
“I mean her demeanor!” Dorothy panted. “Her hands were held in such a way that you couldn’t even see her boobs, if she actually had boobs; her eyes looked down, but you could still see a spooky light in her eyes. I don’t mean in the dark part—”
“The iris—” Juan Diego started to say.
“Not in her irises — in her pupils!” Dorothy gasped. “I mean in the center part — there was a creepy light in her eyes.”
“Yes!” Juan Diego grunted; he’d always thought so — he’d just not met anyone who agreed with him until now. “But Guadalupe was different — not just her dark skin,” he struggled to say; it was becoming harder and harder to breathe, with Dorothy bouncing on him. “She spoke Nahuatl, the local language — she was an Indian, not Spanish. If she was a virgin, she was an Aztec virgin.”
“What did the dipshit bishop care about that?” Dorothy asked him. “Guadalupe’s demeanor was so fucking modest, so Mary-like!” the hardworking young woman cried.
“¡Sí!” Juan Diego shouted. “Those manipulative Catholics—” he’d scarcely started to say, when Dorothy grabbed his shoulders with what felt like supernatural strength. She pulled his head and shoulders entirely off the bed — she rolled him over, on top of her.
Yet in that instant when she was still on top of him, and Juan Diego was looking up at her — into her eyes — he’d seen how Dorothy was regarding him.
What was it Lupe had said, so long ago? “If you want to worry about something, you ought to worry about how Guadalupe was looking at you. Like she’s still making up her mind about you. Guadalupe hasn’t decided about you,” the clairvoyant child had told him.
Wasn’t that how Dorothy was looking at Juan Diego in the half-second before she wrestled him over and pulled him on top of her? It had been, albeit briefly, a scary look. And now, beneath him, Dorothy resembled a woman possessed. Her head thrashed from side to side; her hips thrust against him with such a powerful, upward force that Juan Diego clung to her like a man in fear of falling. But falling where? The bed was huge; there was no danger of falling off it.
At first, he imagined that his nearness to an orgasm was responsible for how acute his hearing had become. Was that the muted radio he heard? The unknown language was both disturbing and strangely familiar. Don’t they speak Mandarin here? Juan Diego wondered, but there was nothing Chinese about the woman’s voice on the radio — nor was this voice muted. In the violence of their lovemaking, had one of Dorothy’s flailing hands — or her arm, or a leg — struck the panel of push-buttons on the night table? The woman on the radio, in whatever foreign language she was speaking, was — in fact—screaming.
This was when Juan Diego realized that the screaming woman was Dorothy. The radio had remained as muted as before; it was Dorothy’s orgasm that was amplified, above any expectation and beyond all reason.
There was an unwelcome confluence of Juan Diego’s next two thoughts: coincident to his strictly physical awareness that he was coming, in a more sensational manner than he’d ever done so before, was the conviction that he should definitely take two beta-blockers — at the earliest opportunity. But this unexamined idea had a brother (or a sister). Juan Diego thought he knew what language Dorothy was speaking, although it had been many years since he’d last heard someone speak it. What Dorothy was screaming, just before she came, sounded like Nahuatl — the language Our Lady of Guadalupe spoke, the language of the Aztecs. But Nahuatl belonged to a group of languages of central and southern Mexico and Central America. Why would — how could — Dorothy speak it?
“Aren’t you going to answer your phone?” Dorothy was calmly asking him in English. She’d arched her back, with both hands held behind her head on the pillow, to make it easier for Juan Diego to reach over her for the phone on the night table. Was it the dimness of the light that made Dorothy’s skin appear darker than it really was? Or was she truly more dark-skinned than Juan Diego had noticed until now?
He had to stretch to reach the ringing phone; first his chest, then his stomach, touched Dorothy’s breasts.
“It’s my mother, you know,” the languid young woman told him. “Knowing her, she called my room first.”
Maybe three beta-blockers, Juan Diego was thinking. “Hello?” he said sheepishly into the phone.
“Your ears must be ringing,” Miriam told him. “I’m surprised you could hear the phone.”
“I can hear you,” Juan Diego said, more loudly than he’d intended; his ears were still ringing.
“The entire floor, if not the whole hotel, must have heard Dorothy,” Miriam added. Juan Diego couldn’t think of what to say. “If my daughter has recovered her faculties of speech, I would like to speak with her. Or I could give you the message,” Miriam continued, “and you could tell Dorothy — when she is once again herself.”
“She is herself,” Juan Diego said, with an absurdly misplaced and exaggerated dignity. What a ridiculous thing this was to say about anyone! Why wouldn’t Dorothy be herself? Who else would the young woman in bed with him be? Juan Diego wondered, handing Dorothy the phone.
“What a surprise, Mother,” the young woman said laconically. Juan Diego couldn’t hear what Miriam was saying to her daughter, but he was aware that Dorothy didn’t say much.
Juan Diego thought this mother-daughter conversation might be an opportune moment for him to discreetly remove the condom, but when he rolled off Dorothy, and lay on his side with his back turned to her, he discovered — to his surprise — that the condom had already been removed.
It must be a generational thing — these young people today! Juan Diego marveled. Not only are they able to make a condom appear out of nowhere; they can, as quickly, make a condom disappear. But where is it? Juan Diego wondered. When he turned toward Dorothy, the girl wrapped one of her strong arms around him — hugging him to her breasts. He could see the foil wrapper on the night table — he’d not noticed it before — but the condom itself was nowhere to be seen.
Juan Diego, who’d once referred to himself as a “keeper of details” (he meant as a novelist), wondered where the used condom was: perhaps tucked under Dorothy’s pillow, or carelessly discarded in the disheveled bed. Possibly, disposing of a condom in this fashion was a generational thing, too.