Ilustrado Page 30
“And?”
“And aw fucking fuck. Not him.” Sadie points behind me. Albon Alcantara is bounding exuberantly around the room, his camera flashing. He’s coming straight for us. “I’m not supposed to be out, remember?” Sadie pulls at my hand. Albon pauses to take a photo by the stairs. The couple really hams for the camera, their smiles carefully careless, looking sick to death of being in the society pages. “Quick,” Sadie says, “It’s dark there behind the pillar.” She takes my hand and tugs.
“Is this another ploy?” I say.
In the shadows I turn to her, fishing into my pocket for my baggie of coke. Suddenly her lips are against mine, feeling and biting. She’s leaning her body against me, swaying on her tiptoes, reaching my face with hers. Her arms wrap around my neck, her fingernails scratch against my nape. Oh, jeez. Our tongues touch. Oh, Lord. I hope she’s not just emboldened by coke. She pulls away and she’s suddenly that coy girl to whom I was first attracted.
But she’s crying. It’s definitely time for another line.
She kisses me again. Whispers in my ear: “I hope you don’t stay.”
“Why not?”
“I want you to take me with you.”
I don’t know what to say. So I say: “Um.” Then I say: “Shouldn’t you wait to graduate first?”
Sadie pushes me. She’s blushing and scowling.
Me: “No, I mean, it’s just . . . a college degree is an important thing.”
Sadie: “I have to piss.”
Me: “You want me to go with you? We can do anoth—”
Sadie: “No thanks, dad. That’s an awful lot of Paco Rabanne you’ve got on. You stink like my father.” She picks up her purse and hurries to the ladies’ room.
I try to follow, but Albon homes in. A few steps away from me, he flings himself backward, as if swept up by an original idea, to take my picture. Then he hugs me, hefting me off my feet and patting my back. He’s always had the demeanor of an Eastern European–born L.A. art gallery owner.
“Ow!” he says, pulling away, holding his forearm. “My new ink.” He has a tattoo across his wrist. It says V.I.P. and is made to look like a stamp bouncers give you upon entering a nightclub. It’s fresh and peeling a bit. “My gods, though, it’s so good to see you,” Albon says. “When’d you get back? So long without calling me? Are you staying for good? Why aren’t you sure? How long has it been? That long? Are you still decadent? What are you doing these days? . . . Oh! What kind of book is it? I’ll throw you a book launch. Why don’t you stay and, you know, help us. The scene is growing, people are really learning how to party. Manila’s becoming très sophisticated. We need your energy. I mean, my gods, our poor country and its brain drain. In fact, I’m working with the Department of Tourism, to rebrand Filipinos as the Brazilians of Asia. But instead of beaches and samba, we’re beaches and disco music. Listen, call me. Let’s play badminton at the Polo Club and we’ll talk more. I have to cover this event for my blog. Oh, speaking of. There’s a party tomorrow at my club. It’s a shindig we call ‘Clubbers of the World, Unite!’ Gods, I hope this rain will stop. Prada is sponsoring the fashion show, then open bar from ten until midnight. Stolichnaya. All proceeds go to the Philippine Literacy Project, because our kids need to read good. I’ll put you on the guest list.” Albon hands me his card. “Hey,” he says, looking at me earnestly, “that book you’re writing, I hope you give it a happy ending. We need more of those.” He winks then waddles away, camera lighting up the eager smiles of partiers.
*
The Communist Party of the Philippines had a very strict agenda, which Salvador quickly learned was vastly different from that of the foot soldiers actually waging the “protracted people’s war.” The time in the hills was, as he called it, “my schooling in the best and the worst of humanity.”
From Ka Arsenio, Salvador learned the skills he needed to survive: how to care for and fire his locally made Kalashnikov, which plants were edible, how to navigate by the stars, where to place the butterfly knife between the ribs to puncture an enemy’s lung, how to leap through an open window using the Flying Panther technique. In return, Ka Arsenio learned from Salvador how to read and write.
One moonless evening in December, their Sparrow Unit was walking single file between two dried-out rice paddies, sneaking home from a meeting with government soldiers. The rebels had just purchased crates of ammunition from their foes—Philippine Army officers who needed money for the Christmas season. Feeling satisfied and safe after the amiable transaction—and tipsy from the Red Horse Beer the soldiers drank with them—the comrades walked quietly but slowly, intent on enjoying the night air. They carried the boxes on their shoulders while the one woman among them, Ka Helen, balanced hers on her head. When Salvador tried to do the same, his fell and clattered into the paddy.
Shots rang out from across the open space, bursts of bright light bloomed along the far embankment of the paddy. Salvador felt somebody jump on him and hold him down. The bullets thudded into the berm between them and their attackers. Ka Arsenio hissed in his ear: “Did you tip them off?”
The shooting stopped. Ka Arsenio looked Salvador in the eye, unsure of what to do. Salvador could see Ka Helen lying a few feet away, but couldn’t tell if she was dead. As he recounted in his memoir: “I’d never heard a night so frightened into silence.”
Ka Arsenio kissed Salvador gently on the cheek. Then he held out a finger, then a second one, then a third. They stood up suddenly, took aim, and fired at the shadows moving toward them. Bullets flashed by their heads, “fireflies on a mission, but sounding like killer bees.” Salvador sighted carefully at an approaching figure. He saw the soldier was “holding a rifle in one hand and crossing himself repeatedly with the other.” Salvador couldn’t pull the trigger. The soldier got on one knee and took aim. Salvador fired. The soldier fell backward and lay still. “I hoped he would move,” Salvador wrote in Autoplagiarist, “but he didn’t.”
That was the first person he ever killed.
Salvador and Ka Arsenio fired until they ran out of ammunition.
More figures moved across the paddy, rapidly closing the distance.
—from the biography in progress, Crispin Salvador:
Eight Lives Lived, by Miguel Syjuco
*
In Sadie’s car she acts like nothing happened. “Fuck, I’m so glad we bailed. Same shit, different week,” she says. “You really think this party will be cool?”
“They’re good friends of mine. Their band’s really good. The Cool Kids of Death. Have you heard of them? Punk. Their set starts at four-thirty.”
“I’m worried about the weather.”
“They’ve got a hit. You know, ‘Sabotage Love! Sabotage Love! This is my reality, I am who I want to be . . .’”
“Um, okay, thanks. Hey, I’m sorry about . . .”
“Sadie, it’s okay. Don’t be. But if you don’t mind my asking, your dad . . .”
“Yeah, really sorry, the driver forgot to put the cartridge back in after I changed the CDs this afternoon. We’ll have to stick to radio.”
“Oh.” How is it possible I can have such a great connection with someone so quickly and that we can become awkward so quickly as well? She ons the radio and navigates static while trying to find a station. The rain hasn’t let up. “This storm’s something, huh?”
“Don’t,” she says firmly. “We’re better than small talk.” Then, warmly: “So, why’s the band starting so late?”
“They’re gigging at a Christmas party for one of the call centers on Libis. That’s when the staff gets off work. They deal with customers in the States.”
“Weird.”
“Yeah. My friend, he’s the guitarist, he told me these people keep schedules like vampires. Some restaurants and bars there open after the workers’ shifts. At like four in the morning.”
“I’ve never heard of that. And I live in this city.”
“Because you don’t leave Makati,” I joke. “Hey Sadie, you
want another bump?”
“I think you should cool it with that shit.”
“I’m okay. I can stop whenever I want to. Listen, you okay with catching The Cool Kids of Death?”
“Sure, it’s a different gimmick. Beats going to Where Else? or Venezia. Where the fuck are all the stations?” Sadie twists the knob and goes up and down the FM band.
“Are there no streetlights?” I ask. “Or is it your dark tint?”
“Usually there are. I don’t know what’s going on. Maybe another blackout?”
“Don’t tell me more jellyfish.”
“Coup d’Etat had power.”
“Probably the mall’s generator. The Lupases wouldn’t want to lose a centavo of revenue.”
The lights are on in the hotels. The Peninsula’s fountain is lit and gushing. The InterContinental glows obliviously. Shangri-la has a giant wreath of green and red lights on its facade. Other buildings, however, stand like black monuments to the ashy sky. I open my window a crack and hear generators rumbling defiantly. Water comes in and I shut it.
Sadie’s cell phone chirps. Poo-tee-weet. She looks at it. “A friend passing on a text,” she says. The phone is like the moon and her face is being bathed in it. “It says we should stay home tonight because there’s shit brewing.” Sadie puts her cell on the dashboard.
When we get to Edsa, it is lightless and empty, its wide ten lanes a deserted valley of concrete. The Lexus’s headlights slice a pallid, claustrophobic section from the thick rain. Sadie drives slowly. Occasionally, a bus roars past like a train, sending a slap of water against our car.
“Try the AM band,” I suggest. She finds Radyo Veritas. The commentator sounds like he’s had more than his fair share of coke this evening.
“. . . carefully this evening compatriots the roads are flooded in many locations around the metropolis. And returning to our top story Reverend Martin has mysteriously disappeared from his cell in Camp Crame gone without a trace. Authorities are baffled and inquiries are being conducted presently to determine his whereabouts . . .”
Sadie turns the knob. “Makes me nervous, all that bad news,” she says. “Aren’t there any music stations on AM?” We find one playing a ballad, “Dahil Sa Iyo.” The crooner’s voice makes love to the Tagalog words. “Because of you, I live. Because of you, until I die.” When the song ends, the DJ comes on, whispering seductively in English: “Dat was Julio Iglesias, uh, singing his wonderpul rendition of da beautipul, uh, ninetin-sebenty-tree classics kundiman to keep you company on dis rainiest of ebening. Next we hab—”
Sadie reaches for the radio knob and turns it off. The silence is like a bell.
*
The young man looked at the dead man at his feet, then at the red fedora perched there on the cardboard box. This image in the alley was only his, this young Miguel’s, even as he accepted the metal cuffs around his wrists with a steely resolve beyond his years. He reminds himself: This will be forever one of the many things I will be glad is mine. All this, the finality of this one evening, the image of that one hat, the weight of that one stone, the cleaving of two lives on a dark, lonesome road.
—from the 1989 short story “One Stone for Two Birds,” by Crispin Salvador
*
At the top of the hill where Makati ends and Edsa enters Mandaluyong, we hit traffic. It’s at a standstill. “Maybe an accident?” Sadie says.
“Why aren’t cars coming south into Makati?”
“Maybe a huge accident.”
We spend fifteen minutes in the same spot. Five minutes bitching, five minutes telling dirty jokes, five minutes making out.
“Since we’re not going anywhere,” Sadie says, clicking open her seat belt. “Let me get that seat belt for you.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Push your seat back, sweetie.”
“Here, Sadie, let me . . . How do I adjust it . . . There.”
“Next is . . . your, fuck . . . grrr . . . buckle . . . it’s kinda diffic—”
“Your hands might work better than your teeth.”
“There you go. Damn belt. Now I’ll just unzip this . . .”
“Ow!”
“Sorry, Miguel. It’s these leather pants, they’re . . .”
“Just a sec.”
“. . . really tight. How’d you get them on in the fir—”
“Yeah, hold on. There’s a tech—”
“They’re stuck for good.”
“—nique to them.”
“You’re free! Why don’t you lean back?”
“’kay.”
“Miguel?”
“Yes?”
“Nothing.”
“What?”
“Nice boxers. I didn’t know you liked sailboats.”
“That’s not what you wanted to say.”
“Really. It’s nothing. Shhh. Oh, look, a nesting Balzac.”
“You like it?”
“Sure. But maybe you’ll think less of me.”
“Why would I?”
“You know, a prim and proper Assumption girl.”
“Maybe I’ll think more of you.”
“Yeah? Or at least more often. Mmm. Tastes good.”
“Oh, God.”
“And so hard! Mmph . . .”
Poo-tee-weet.
“Sadie, your cell phone . . . Um, should we get that?”
“Nope.”
“Seriously, what if it’s important.”
“Mmph. You read it. I’m occupied. Mrrph.”
“Okay, it’s, ah, from, uh, Tita Saqy.”
“My mom’s sister. Mmph.”
“Um, she says—ah that’s good—she says everyone should go to the protesters and bring them food and water, or—ah, wow, that’s nice—or at least say prayers.”
“Fuck that. We’ve got better things to do. Mmph.”
“Oh, shit.”
“Mmm.”
“Sadie?”
“Mm-hm?”
“Is the car in park?”
“Mm-hm.”
“Seriously. The car’s moving.”
“Oops. Now it’s in park. Relax. Mmph.”
“Ooh Jesus!”
“You like?”
“I’m getting boosegumps.”
“You’re funny.”
“That feels amaz—Ah! Wow. Ahhrrm! . . . Shit. I . . . uh, I think I just chipped my tooth.”
Poo-tee-weet.
“Slurp.”
“No, I’m serious, it’s so good I’m gritting too hard.”
“Mmphmm.”
“Wow.”
“Why don’t you, mmph, bring me to New York, mmph, with you? Mmph. Wouldn’t that be nice? Mmph.”
“Uh, yeah. Sure. Of course. Ah, that feels amazing . . .”
“. . .”
“. . .”
“Miguel, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing. It’s okay. Why don’t you rest for a whi—”
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing, it’s just . . .”
Poo-tee-weet.
“Am I doing it wrong?”
“No, it’s so right.”
“Then why’d it stop working?”
“I’m just nervous.”
“Is it me? Am I bad at it?”
“No, the first time . . . I always have a hard time.”
“Don’t make puns.”
Poo-tee-weet.
“I didn’t mean to. I’m just nervous. Or coked up.”
“You didn’t like it? Let me just try . . . Mmph . . .”
“Come up here. Kiss me. I’d rather kiss.”
“You poor thing. Look, you’re blushing. Why are you so nervous?”
“Let’s take things slow.”
“Okay. We’ve got all the time in the world.”
“Really?”
Poo-tee-weet.
*
Three college girls are walking along the street, one from International School Manila, one from Saint Scholastica, and the th
ird, Girly Bastos, from Assumption. The trio is startled by a large lizard that crosses the path.
Screams the girl from I.S. Manila: “Oh no, an iguana!”
Squeals the girl from Saint Scho: “Ay, butiki!”
Shrieks Girly Bastos, from Assumption: “Shet, Lacoste!”
*
We read the text messages together.
The first is from Ned, Sadie’s dressage coach: Rev Mart is free! Rally bhind hm. R rewrd wil b in heaven. He prmses 2 trade hs post as Apostle of da People & run 4 prsidnt. Spred da gud wrd.
The second is from Georgie, Sadie’s classmate: “Countrymen! Take to the streets for Lakandula. But keep the peace. Quiet defiance is louder than angry shouts.”—Respeto Reyes.
Traffic inches forward about half a mile.
The third is from Pye, Sadie’s yoga instructor: Bansamoro, Estregan, and Reverend Martin to stage Christmas play with Vita Nova. Unfortunately, show’s canceled—script called for three wise men and a virgin! Hwehwehweh. A rose, for you @}--;------We crest the hill to where Edsa slopes down to the bridge spanning the Pasig.
The fourth is from Tita Daqy, Sadie’s other aunt: Estregan and Department of Health warn Chinese Flu contagious in crowds. Stay safe @ home n pray for the cuntry. Pls pas 2 as mny ppl as posible. God bless!
A phalanx of red taillights meets us. Extinguished billboards and neon signs glow with what luminosity they can suck from our headlights. Several vehicles at the front of the gathering cast their beams into a river of oily water.
“Fuck,” Sadie says. “Where’s the bridge?”
“I think it’s there. See the lampposts?”
A bus gingerly enters the water and slowly plows through. The water’s over its wheels.
“Whoa. It’s risen that high?”
The bus makes it to the other side, climbs up the incline, and continues north on Edsa. It’s followed by a semi pulling a trailer stacked with sewer pipes. A jeepney follows. It stops midway. Two figures get out, pale in the headlights of the row of hesitating vehicles. The pair tries to push the jeepney across. One of the men falls and disappears. He resurfaces a few yards downstream. The two men clamber to the roof of the jeepney and wave their arms.