“I’m working on the story that his Bleeding Christ tattoo is a miracle,” Juan Diego told her. (This was definitely an idea that would appeal to a dump reader.)
“It is a miracle, kind of,” el gringo bueno started to tell them. “I got the idea for this tattoo—”
Lupe wouldn’t let the lost young man tell his story, not then. “Promise me something,” she said to Juan Diego.
“Another promise—”
“Just promise me!” Lupe cried. “If I end up on Zaragoza Street, kill me — just kill me. Let me hear you say it.”
“Jesus Mary Joseph!” Juan Diego said; he was trying to exclaim this the way Flor had done it.
The hippie had forgotten what he was saying; he struggled with a verse of “Streets of Laredo,” as if he were writing the inspired lyrics for the first time.
“Get six jolly cowboys to carry my coffin,
Get six pretty maidens to bear up my pall.
Put bunches of roses all over my coffin,
Roses to deaden the clods as they fall.”
“Say it!” Lupe yelled at the dump reader.
“Okay, I’ll kill you. There, I said it,” Juan Diego told her.
“Whoa! Man on wheels, little sister — nobody’s killin’ anyone, right?” the good gringo asked them. “We’re all friends, right?”
The good gringo had mescal breath, which Lupe called “worm breath” because of the dead worm in the bottom of the mescal bottle. Rivera called mescal the poor man’s tequila; the dump boss said you drank mescal and tequila the same way, with a lick of salt and a little lime juice. The good gringo smelled like lime juice and beer; the night the dump kids sneaked him into Lost Children, the young American’s lips were crusty with salt, and there was more salt in the V-shaped patch of beard the boy had left unshaven beneath his lower lip. The niños let the good gringo sleep in Lupe’s bed; they had to help him undress, and he was already asleep — on his back, and snoring — before Lupe and Juan Diego could get themselves ready for bed.
Through his snores, the gutteral-sounding verse of “Streets of Laredo” seemed to emanate from el gringo bueno — like his smell.
“Oh, beat the drum slowly and play the fife lowly,
Play the dead march as you carry me along;
Take me to the valley, and lay the sod o’er me,
For I’m a young cowboy and I know I’ve done wrong.”
Lupe wet a washcloth and wiped the salty crust off the hippie boy’s lips and face. She meant to cover him with his shirt; she didn’t want to see his Bleeding Jesus in the middle of the night. But when Lupe smelled the gringo’s shirt, she said it smelled like mescal or beer puke, or like the dead worm — she just pulled the sheet up to the young American’s chin and made some effort to tuck him in.
The hippie boy was tall and thin, and his long arms — with Christ’s mangled wrists and hands imprinted on them — lay at his sides, outside the bedsheet. “What if he dies in the room with us?” Lupe asked Juan Diego. “What happens to your soul if you die in someone else’s room in a foreign country? How can the gringo’s soul get back home?”
“Jesus,” Juan Diego said.
“Leave Jesus out of it. We’re the ones who are responsible for him. What do we do if the hippie boy dies?” Lupe asked.
“Burn him at the basurero. Rivera will help us,” Juan Diego said. He didn’t really mean it — he was just trying to get Lupe to go to bed. “The good gringo’s soul will escape with the smoke.”
“Okay, we have a plan,” Lupe said. When she got into Juan Diego’s bed, she was wearing more clothes than she usually slept in. Lupe said she wanted to be “modestly dressed” with the hippie boy in their bedroom. She wanted Juan Diego to sleep on the side of the bed nearest the gringo; Lupe didn’t want the sight of the Agonizing Christ to startle her in the night. “I hope you’re working on the miracle story,” she said to her brother, turning her back to him in the narrow bed. “Nobody’s going to believe that tattoo is a milagro.”
Juan Diego would be awake half the night, rehearsing how he would present the lost American’s Bleeding Christ tattoo as an overnight miracle. Just before he finally fell sleep, Juan Diego realized that Lupe was still awake, too. “I would marry this hippie boy, if he smelled better and stopped singing that cowboy song,” Lupe said.
“You’re thirteen,” Juan Diego reminded his little sister.
In his mescal stupor, el gringo bueno could manage no more than the first two lines of the first verse of “Streets of Laredo”; the way the song just petered out almost made the dump kids wish the good gringo would keep singing.
As I walked out in the streets of Laredo
As I walked out in Laredo one day—
“You’re thirteen, Lupe,” Juan Diego repeated, more insistently.
“I mean later, when I’m older—if I get older,” Lupe said. “I am beginning to have breasts, but they’re very small. I know they’re supposed to get bigger.”
“What do you mean, if you get older?” Juan Diego asked his sister. They lay in the dark with their backs turned to each other, but Juan Diego could feel Lupe shrug beside him.
“I don’t think the good gringo and I get much older,” she told him.
“You don’t know that, Lupe,” Juan Diego said.
“I know my breasts don’t get any bigger,” Lupe told him.
Juan Diego would be awake a little longer, just thinking about this. He knew Lupe was usually right about the past; he fell asleep with the half-comforting knowledge that his sister didn’t do the future as accurately.
13. Now and Forever
What happened to Juan Diego with the bomb-sniffing dogs at the Makati Shangri-La can be calmly and rationally explained, though what transpired developed quickly, and in the panic-stricken eyes of the hotel doorman and the Shangri-La security guards — the latter instantly lost control of the two dogs — there was nothing calm or rational attending the arrival of the Distinguished Guest. Such was the lofty-sounding designation attached to Juan Diego Guerrero’s name at the hotel registration desk: Distinguished Guest. Oh, that Clark French — Juan Diego’s former student had been busy, asserting himself.
There’d been an upgrade to the Mexican-American novelist’s room; special amenities, one of which was unusual, had been arranged. And the hotel management had been warned not to call Mr. Guerrero a Mexican American. Yet you wouldn’t have known that the natty hotel manager himself was hovering around the registration desk, waiting to confer celebrity status on the weary Juan Diego — that is, not if you witnessed the writer’s rude reception at the driveway entrance to the Shangri-La. Alas, Clark wasn’t on hand to welcome his former teacher.
As they pulled into the driveway, Bienvenido could see in the rearview mirror that his esteemed client was asleep; the driver tried to wave off the doorman, who was hurrying to open the rear door of the limo. Bienvenido saw that Juan Diego was slumped against this same rear door; the driver quickly opened his own door and stepped into the hotel entranceway, waving both arms.
Who knew that bomb-sniffing dogs were agitated by arm-waving? The two dogs lunged at Bienvenido, who raised both arms above his head, as if the security guards held him at gunpoint. And when the hotel doorman opened the limo’s rear door, Juan Diego, who appeared to be dead, began to fall out of the car. A falling dead man further excited the bomb-sniffing dogs; both of them bounded into the limo’s backseat, wresting the leather handles of their dog harnesses from the security guards’ hands.
The seat belt kept Juan Diego from falling entirely out of the car; he was suddenly jerked awake, his head lolling in and out of the limo. There was a dog in his lap, licking his face; it was a medium-size dog, a small male Labrador or a female Lab, actually a Lab mix, with a Lab’s soft, floppy ears and warm, wide-apart eyes.