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  Then I feel it again. That sensation of being watched. Like when you sit through a horror film then come home to an empty apartment. I gaze through the dark tint of the taxi and into the cars beside us. In one, a woman is at the wheel, singing her heart out, her hairbrush as a microphone. In another, a driver is gazing ahead as if willing the traffic forward with his mind; his employer in the backseat picks his nose then examines what he’s found.

  The radio blares laser sounds, then the breakneck reporting in Tagalog: “My compatriots, this just in. It is reported that Wigberto Lakandula has taken the Changco family hostage in their Binondo home. My compatriots, it is believed that upon entering the domicile, Lakandula shot and slew two men in the employ of the family, a bodyguard and a driver. He immediately took the couple, their six-year-old son, and two maids captive. A police cordon has been established around the area and SWAT team members have been deployed to the scene. Already a crowd of girls has gathered at the site, screaming for a glimpse of their hero. Police psychologists say Lakandula is acting out his lifelong frustrations against society, and will therefore be violent and unpredictable. Authorities ask all members of the public to stay away to avoid getting hurt.”

  *

  Eventually, the American dream comes true for Erning Isip. He returns victoriously to his hometown for his first vacation, proudly wielding the greenbacks he earned from his new job working tech support at Lehman Brothers. Upon arriving, however, he contracts a stomach virus from drinking Philippine water, which he is no longer used to. He goes to see a doctor at the Makati Medical Center. The doctor examines him. “I have bad news,” the doctor says, “and good news.” Erning asks for the bad news first. “The bad news,” the doctor says, “is you require a small procedure.” Erning asks for the good news. “The good news is it only requires a local anesthetic.”

  Alarmed, Erning replies: “Local?! Can’t I have imported instead?”

  *

  When they reach Makati, the taxi driver asks, “Hotel Happy International Inn, is that right, sir?” He’s asked it four times now. “Yes,” our exasperated protagonist says, before turning to the window. He can’t wait to get out of the car.

  Familiar sites grind by as pedestrians blur past, faster than his stranded cab. The gleaming, splendiferous malls. The guarded gates of Forbes Park, where our prodigal protagonist grew up. The Manila Polo Club, where he and Jerald learned to play tennis, always swinging for over the back fence to see the ball boys climb like monkeys after the balls. The large home of the U.S. Ambassador, with its cameras and high walls. The larger home of the Sultan of Brunei’s brother’s Filipina mistress. Santuario de San Antonio Church, where all his relatives and friends are, and always will be, baptized, communioned, wedded, waked, interred. The brawny ten-lane Edsa Boulevard, host to four peaceful revolutions. All who return to Manila love to say nothing changes, but that’s not true. More soaring overpasses are stacked atop each other. More rows of billboards stand like upright dominoes, sporting pretty Brobdingnagian mestizas in low-cut jeans or lingerie. There is now a Starbucks across from Santuario (you can wash down the host with a grande Mocha Frappuccino). From where he sits, he counts six towering cranes, pirouetting, and four new skyscrapers, each striving higher than the other and those that were there before. The pace of Asian progress is ostentatious. Here in Makati, this is not a poor country.

  The Shell station outside Forbes Park, where he used to get gas, the flashing lights of police cars and fire trucks—blue, then red, then black, then blue, then red—urge spectators beyond a cordon. Commuters at a safe distance stare at something beside the gas pumps. A duffel bag. Two policemen approach it sheepishly. They edge sideways like adolescent boys along the wall at a school dance. Their brown uniforms and caps make them look cruelly vulnerable. One cop crouches beside the bag, unzips it tentatively, holding himself at arm’s length, face turned away. “Oh my God!” says the taxi driver, “Don’t do it, don’t do it!” The other cop cranes his neck and peeks in. The taxi driver makes the sign of the cross. Both cops jump back. Everyone stares at the bag. Nothing happens. The two cops approach again slowly. Drag it carefully away from the pumps. They are near the wall of Forbes Park. A sudden flash of light, smoke, the rattling of the taxi windows, a thunderclap, and the two men are no more. Car alarms scream. Nobody moves. Suddenly everyone is moving. The cabbie leans on his horn, cursing at the cars in front, who do the same to those in front of them. Now that it’s done, nobody wants to be involved. The boy bends over, breathing gingerly, trying not to vomit into the taxi’s Power Rangers tissue-box holder.

  *

  I look out the window from the sixth floor of the Hotel Happy International Inn, reveling in the anonymity of my room hidden safely among the others. This is a space for faceless businessmen and other itinerants with credit cards. The thin white sheets, the bouquet of Tetley teas, the plastic electric kettle with calcified coil make me feel, strangely, at home.

  Outside, the night is neon. Signs flash like a row of pantyless chorus girls: Pussycat’s Karaoke and Grill, 7-Eleven, Bacchus Hydro-Massage, 8-Twelve, Tapa King, Ichiban Singalong Bar. The sostenuto whine of 150cc passenger trikes is accompanied by the ostinato bass from discotheques. Already, the loping Americans and Europeans go up and down the street, in and out of bars. They ogle and hold the teeny-tiny bodies of the GROs—an easy acronym for a clever euphemism: “Guest Relations Officer.” One looks like a little girl who got into her mother’s makeup. I wonder what her parents could have done differently.

  The laminated room-service menu offers “happy international delicacies inn the comfort of your hotel room.” I call for a bacon cheeseburger. A bellboy brings it up and lingers, bowing to me as if I were Japanese. I tip him in pesos, he frowns at the money, turns on his heel, and almost runs down the hall.

  Mechanically, thinking about the news I’ve discovered about Crispin’s child, I raise to my lips the bacon cheeseburger. No sooner does the gooey cheese and medium-rare beef touch my palate than a shudder runs through me and I stop midchew.

  Crispin and I shared a passion for hamburgers. His apartment was above the famous Corner Bistro, and he said it was like living upstairs from your favorite brothel. More than a few times, while working together in his study, the eroticism of grilling meat would waft through his open window, and we would grab our coats to go cross off yet another from our list of the great purveyors in New York City—Soup Burg, Peter Luger, JG Melon. It was as if we thought they could offer us some explanation of what we were looking for in America.

  One warm autumn day, we left our work to fetch takeout from the Burger Joint on West Fifty-seventh and walked to Central Park to continue our game. The last time we played, we’d adjourned with my rook and knight harassing his king, while my pawn was making a final sprint to queenhood. Crispin was almost as delighted as I was at the prospect of my beating him for the first time. “You’re quite the Bobby Fischer,” he’d teased. “We all need idols,” I’d countered.

  It started to rain, and he and I ran, like lovers in a romantic comedy, to the Chess and Checkers House. The place was empty, except for three children huddled in a doorway, impatiently looking at the sky. As soon as we set up our board, the rain stopped. The kids began jumping over the puddles, the eldest, about eleven, laughing like a seagull.

  We unwrapped our burgers. I moved my knight to queen-eight and waited for Crispin. I remember he took a long time, and I looked up from the board. He was watching the children play. He noticed me and smiled. “From time to time,” he said, “I wonder at the value of things such as those. Maybe I should have mustered the courage to raise one.”

  I studied the board. “I think you made the right choice,” I finally said. “The world’s overpopulated. Don’t you think we all have our roles? Your books will have a greater effect.” I bit into my burger.

  Crispin gestured with his thumb at the children. “If I’m not writing TBA for our offspring, then who for?” He watched them for a moment. “One da
y, you’ll understand.”

  “I get it now. It doesn’t mean I agree.”

  “I think you’ll find even literature has limitations. That will be a good thing, if you discover that.”

  “Limitations keep us striving.”

  “After the Tractatus, Wittgenstein became”—Crispin picked up his king, then put it back. I let it pass—“a primary school teacher. Rimbaud grew bored with poetry and left for Africa. Du champ gave up art for this very game we’re playing.” Crispin moved his king next to my knight. “With every year come new regrets, Miguel. You’ll have your collection of them.”

  “That’s condescending,” I said, surprised by the acid in my voice. “I have my own.”

  “I’m sorry that you didn’t know your parents. But there’s more to life than that.”

  “You wouldn’t understand.” I couldn’t look at him. I wish I had. Maybe I would have seen. But I went on. “That’s why with literature, at least I can control what happens. We can create, revise. Try better next time. If we fail, we only screw ourselves . . .”

  “That last part’s not necessarily precise.”

  “But if we succeed, we can change the world.” I moved my knight. “Check.” I looked up at him.

  Crispin’s face was like how I imagine my father’s to have been, magnanimous and amused. “Changing the world,” he said, “is good work if you can get it. But isn’t having a child a gesture of optimism in that world?”

  “Ugh. That’s a little twee for my taste.”

  “Seriously, intellectually speaking. Consider it a moment.”

  “Sometimes we just aren’t given a choice in the matter.” I heard myself. I’m ashamed of how I sounded.

  “We always are.” Crispin moved his king. “Checkmate,” he said. Sure enough, there was nowhere I could go. Crispin got up and looked at me with either naked disappointment or brutal pity. He put his hands in his pockets and went and watched the children splashing. I still remember the tune he started to whistle.

  *

  On one of the last few days before the city fell to the Japs, we lined Dewey Boulevard, scores of us along the broad avenue, the breeze off the bay just cool enough for goose bumps. I was perched on Tito Jason’s shoulders and I remember watching birds dueling recklessly in the blue sky above the long curve of water. They fled into the endless expanse when a bugle called. The sky then was still trying to retain its innocence.

  Then I saw the men on their mounts, arriving for their dramatic departure. Dividing the crowd, splendid, tall, like centaurs passing through wheat, they came, the Twenty-sixth Cavalry Regiment of the Philippine Scouts—Americans and Filipinos side by side in formation in two long columns. I still hear their equipment jangle, the slow clop of hooves, still see the sun reflecting on their horses’ polished martingales, on their own breast buckles and the insignia with the charging horse head and the saber raised above it. The metal on their bodies glowed like our hearts. The Japanese were to land at Lingayen and the cavalry began their journey to be among the first of the USAFFE to meet them. We, the people, were silent, then we cheered, women reaching hands to caress the soldiers’ boots and legs, to stroke the horses’ manes and flanks—the way hopeful believers hold their hands out to rub the feet of cathedral saints.

  I remember, and regret, I covered my ears from the cheers. I’ve never heard its equal since. Tito Jason handed me to one of the riders, his brother, my uncle, Tito Odyseo, who let me ride in front of him for some way. To this day the scent of leather and horse and male perspiration reminds me of that singular moment when I rode as one of them.

  When I was finally passed back from uncle to uncle, I struggled, not wanting to be left behind. I cried. The lines of cavalry took an eternal instant to pass among us. When the spectators closed the gap behind them, those around us shook their heads and made the sign of the cross. Many wept. I could feel Tito Jason shudder convulsively as he lost sight of his brother. All the nights Tito Jason had spent painfully rolling his ridiculously flat feet on Coca-Cola bottles had proved for naught when my father begged him to stay to help protect our family. I held on to my uncle as we all listened to the sound of hooves fading.

  My young boy’s memory may have inflated these details, but this is how I remember that day.

  Outside the town of Morong, on January 16, 1942, that group of brave men and strong steeds later made the final horseback cavalry charge in the history of the U.S. military. These were the last of an ancient tradition, many felled by the cowardly hail of anonymous lead and mortars from Japanese positions. Those of the Twenty-sixth who survived the charge fought on as infantry. Eventually, attrition forced General Wainwright, a cavalry man himself, to give the order to butcher the horses for food. How cruel that meat must have tasted. Since then, the U.S. and Philippine cavalry have been tanks and helicopters, machines that know not the sacrifices of courage and duty.

  —from Autoplagiarist (page 865), by Crispin Salvador

  *

  His Nokia tring-trings. Our forlorn protagonist sits up in bed and fumbles in the darkness. He looks at the bright screen of the cell phone. It’s a text message from his old pal Markus: Welcm bak, bro! Old skool tunes all week @ Club Coup d’Etat. Our crew will be there, with Charlie. My treat. DJ Supermodeldiva spinning phat beats . When the screen dims, the hotel room seems to get smaller.

  It would be fucking awesome—he says to himself—to go out, to see the old crew. I’ll just play it cool, be grateful but firm, gracious but not dorky, when they press the baggie into my hand. He knows he can’t use the self-righteous pose, that artificial form of fortitude, of the recovering user. They know him too well. Anyway, he says, I can have fun on just alcohol. I’ll buy a few rounds. Thank God for the mighty dollar. I should continue my nap before going out so I can keep up with everyone. Anyway, I don’t want it to be a late night.

  *

  The pain makes him dizzy. He fights to stay conscious. “That son of a gun,” Antonio growls. “He’s dead meat.” He leans against a tree and looks at the switchblade in his thigh. He starts to pull it out but it’s stuck. He fights not to cry aloud and give away his location. He’s lucky the blade didn’t hit his bone and he knows it. From atop the hill, two of Dominador’s lackeys appear. Uh-oh! They spot Antonio, point at him, and come running down the hill. One brandishes nunchuks, the other has drawn a jungle bolo. Antonio checks his gun to see how many bullets he has left. “Santa Banana,” he says, “only one.” The two men are getting closer, screaming all the way. Antonio’s reflection gets larger in their aviator sunglasses. The nunchuks blur around one goon. The razor-sharp jungle machete is held aloft by the other. Antonio takes Dominador’s knife, grits his teeth, and pulls it out of his leg. Pain sears up the right side of his body. Gasping to stay awake, Antonio holds the blade in front of the barrel of his gun. He pulls the trigger. The two attackers clutch their chests, cry out in pain, then tumble head over heels down the hill. Their lifeless bodies roll up to Antonio’s feet. “Not today, boys,” he says. “I’ve got a headache.” He retracts the knife then limps quickly away before more goons arrive. At the treeline, he searches for a place to bandage himself. He knows he can’t take too long, or he’ll never save his beloved Mutya from the slimy clutches of Dominador.

  —from Manila Noir (page 102), by Crispin Salvador

  *

  From Marcel Avellaneda’s blog, “The Burley Raconteur,” December 3, 2002:

  I don’t know what the media’s smoking, but let’s not get carried away by the kickback scandal from the proceeds of the popular Mr. Sexy Sexy Dance ringtones, and the alleged guilt of Vita Nova and her uber-agent Boy Balagtas. Let’s not even posit President Estregan’s hand in preempting her culpability before Nova could release the rumored sex tape linking el commandante-in-chief to the bombings. I, for one, cannot believe he’d be so stupid as to let the tape run while he takes a call from the Minister of the Interior.

  Let’s instead look at the certainty of things divine. Today we exam
ine the impact of Reverend Martin’s allegiance in two reports: In Pearls Before Swine, Felix Resureccion describes the ill effects of the El Ohim’s meddling—as a kingmaker, Reverend Martin may well be the most powerful man in the country. Resureccion goes as far as calling him “Our father, who art in a lucrative position.” In My Daily Vitamins Ricardo Roxas IV examines the church leader’s moral accountability—Reverend Martin has a present-world responsibility to all those hopes and aspirations he foments in his followers.

  Some posts from the message boards below:

  —I wanna lick Vita’s ass-crack. ([email protected])

  —What’s that got to do with the price of rice, anyway? ([email protected])

  —reverend martin is a saint! let him have his mansion. he’s inspired the nation and brought together people who are all too often alienated. problem with our country is we can’t stand to see people succeed. there’s perpetually some fault to find in others. it’s quite sad. it’s not just jealousy either. it’s more like a way of explaining to ourselves why we’re having such difficulty whilst others are attaining success. how petty is that rubbish? ([email protected])

  —Defence mechanisms may be justified, Ning. But we can’t just leave it at that. Symptoms indicate a disease beneath it all. Reverend Mart is preying—Ha! No pun intended—on the needs of the most vulnerable. There’s no justification for that. ([email protected])

  *

  Cristo keeps silent as Maria Clara bids the guests farewell. When he and Aniceto shake hands, the latter looks at him meaningfully, clasps his hand in both of his. Juan tilts his hat and strides down the steps with such pride Cristo can’t help but smile. Only Martin is also pensive and doesn’t say a word or offer a gesture as he steps into his carriage. His wife reaches over him to wave a final farewell, but Martin is oblivious.

  Maria Clara touches Cristo’s shoulder, then goes inside. He stands in front of the house until the clatter of the horses and the hiss of the carriages on the gravel fade completely. Then he goes to his room to consider his decision.