by Glenn Diaz
“Good times,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said. “Impeccable call flow, that Mitch, you know, except the small talk.” There was client visit once, he explained, when some folks from the Naperville office did a random audit and picked one of Mitch’s calls. From their cubicles all over the operations floor, the supervisors and managers screamed inside in relief. One of the good ones! Finally! And the call was perfect. Just perfect, from opening to resolution to upselling. Then Mitch, well-meaning Mitch, began making small talk. Really detailed, pleasant small talk. Like she was genuinely interested. Thirty minutes later they were still talking about the customer’s heart-warming journey as a parent of a child with ADHD.
“That explains that memo on ‘Initiating Small Talk’ that came out of nowhere,” I said.
“I miss listening to calls sometimes,” he said.
“That’s also my problem,” I said.
“What?”
“The small talk. I just enjoy listening to people’s stories, you know? I’ve always believed that every single person on this earth is in a unique and special journey—”
“Isn’t your feedback always about volume. ‘Agent should modulate’ or ‘Why is agent shouting?’ I signed many of those, I remember.”
“This is literally the first time I heard that,” I whispered.
Eric said the QA people would always go up to him at the Lung Center and tell him how they knew someone was auditing my call by how he or she was wincing, their headphones wrenched a foot away from their ears. “Someone asks, ‘Manabat?’ Then they all laugh.”
“You’re making that up,” I said hopefully.
The logo of a gas station appeared in the far horizon. “Let me know if you need to pee,” he said. “By the way, have you gotten that bladder of yours checked?” He raised his hand and hiked his voice to a throaty Gremlin falsetto. “‘Eric? Restroom please—’”
“Even in my worst days I don’t sound like that,” I told him. “Besides, I don’t have a bladder problem. I only told you that so I could smoke, at the Lung Center, with people who apparently loathe me.”
“So dramatic,” he said, laughing. “Loathe is a strong word. I’m pretty sure they didn’t loathe you.”
“They didn’t?”
He smiled. “Maybe just a bit.”
“Did you?” he asked.
He didn’t say anything.
The windows of the huge jeepney in front of us brimmed with bananas, like a sleeping monster just bursting with evil and potassium. It accelerated with a sharp roar, leaving behind a billow of dark smoke. I covered my nose even if the air inside the car stayed pristine, if a little muggy. We gasped when a runaway bundle of banana suddenly shot from the window, grazing our side mirror.
That’s me, I wanted to say.
“I need to pee, actually,” he said, slowing down and shifting to the shoulder.
“Candaba Wetlands,” I read the signage fronting the commercial complex we just left.
He laughed and honked two times for no apparent reason. “Don’t you love capitalism? Because this used to be real wetlands—”
“It has its pros and cons, I guess,” I said.
He looked at me. “This used to be real wetlands. Now the cranes and the carabaos are gone, but it has Starbucks.”
I took a sip from my grande extra-hot hazelnut soy latte. The cup was smooth and warm. I asked him if he’d been to Singapore. The bus stops, I said, told you how long until the next bus arrived down to the second and how many seats were unoccupied in the lower and upper decks. “I mean, how the hell do they do it? Sensors in the seats? Motion-detecting cameras? Midgets in camo uniforms? Capitalism is like magic sometimes.”
He cleared his throat but didn’t say anything.
“Forgot to ask for two percent milk,” I said.
“Sugarcane,” he said, turning to the fields around us.
“Cumulonimbus clouds,” I said, gesturing heaven-ward.
He smiled.
“My legs are getting numb,” I said after a while.
One hand on the steering wheel, his other hand reached out to me, and I sat there frozen. “What are you doing?” I asked. He unlatched something under my seat. I slid back and thanked him, breathless.
He smiled again. “Remember when Tim Miller came to the office and he was surprised that everyone was so well-dressed. He didn’t know we got a tip about the client visit weeks before. What did he say? ‘I didn’t know it was like Cinderella’s ball in our Manila site every night!’”
“Karen and her tiara,” I said.
He smiled. A moment of silence for Karen, wherever she was now. “Did you go to the wedding?” he asked.
“I was scared it was another entrapment operation,” I said. “You never know with her.”
“Sleeping with the enemy,” he said affectedly.
“And Tagaytay weddings are so—”
“What?”
“Virginal.”
A quiet chuckle.
“I heard Alvin went,” I lied.
He cleared his throat. “Well, he’s different.”
“Did you do it?” I asked.
“What?”
“With Alvin.”
“I think I could use a smoke right now,” he said. He laughed then stopped when he noticed he was alone in his put-on delight.
“How long until Canlubang?” I asked.
He checked his watch. “Fifteen minutes.”
“Great.”
“And our exit is Mabalacat.”
“Mabalacat, Canlubang, Catbalogan, Camarines, Cayman Islands, Cameroon.”
“All those years of watching Miss Universe—”
“You still haven’t told me why you know the way,” I said.
“Just wait,” he said. “So impatient.”
I looked outside. “Well, last time I tried waiting and look where it got me.”
He laughed again, this time nothing beyond a guarded two-syllable chortle.
A passing sign told us that it was 156 kilometers to Baguio. Next to it, on a shabbier signpost, was an old poster for last year’s Panagbenga with the enigmatic slogan at the bottom: “Our festival . . . yours too!”
My first and only time in Baguio was as jump-off point to Sagada. For a remote mountain town, Eric had said, Sagada was crawling with stupid tourists, Caucasian backpackers subsisting on yogurt and Marlboro lights. On our first day, he forced me to do the cave thing even if I told him I’d look like an idiot elephant trying to fit inside a wormhole. After an unsuccessful attempt, we made our way back to the mouth of the cave, and I told him I knew I shouldn’t have worn gray, which made our guide laugh. First time he saw someone quit so early, the guide said. I tipped him generously and asked him to be kinder to his clients, whose money obviously helped him buy those fake-ass Ray-Bans. I thought Eric would find it funny, but he cut me off. “That’s enough, Philip,” he had said.
Later, on the trail to the hanging coffins, the strap of one of my sandals broke. As if the fatigue and aching legs and the drenched shirt weren’t enough. I remembered smiling at the heavens, face dripping wet. What a cruel joke, this body, I thought. A joke that stopped being funny a long time ago. I sat on the nearest rock, and Eric saw me and dropped his bag. “I guess we can rest,” he said. He began to hum a song I didn’t recognize, and I knew that it was over between us.
I stood up half an hour later. “Are you sure you can continue?” he asked. I nodded. But because I had only one sandal, we moved slowly down the trail. Several groups passed us. After half an hour we found ourselves on a level field with a fantastic view of the lush mountains and the coffins. Tourists would shout to the vista of jutting rocks and treetops and wait for an echo. Mostly stupid stuff, like “Are you there?” and “Yes, I’m here!” and, from a harried-looking man obviously going through something, “Ayoko na!” We were ready to go when a dainty middle-aged woman emerged from a big tour group and started screaming animal noises to the age-old rocks. The basic chirps an
d barks and meows at first then growls and chortles and hisses, really imaginative stuff, wild stuff, which went on and on, silencing the other basic shouters. “Like she’s auditioning for Lion King the musical,” I said. The following day, Eric and I had breakfast after shift, just the two of us, and he told me he’d been thinking about our relationship lately—
“Wicked Little Town,’” I told him now.
“What?” he asked.
“The song you were humming in Sagada,” I said. “You know I haven’t gone back to Baguio since, you know.”
“They say it’s changed so much,” he said, like we were strangers in line at the bank.
We slowed down to join the cars neatly lined up to pay for toll. His hand dived to the cupholder between us for some change. “Can we make one stop before you do your good deed?” he asked.
I felt a joke coming, about a Victoria Court in the middle of sugarcane fields, but every time I began to say it, I changed my mind and ended up shrugging, and in the end I looked like Rain Man having an epileptic shock.
“You OK?” he asked.
You know the sun is in your eyes—
As landmarks went, I told him, “old church” was probably not the clearest or most helpful in the Philippine countryside. “There was this thing that happened in 1521, remember? Magellan and his posse came and they planted this cross—”
“Fuck you,” he said, smiling.
“Yes, please” bobbed up in my throat. I punched the glove compartment.
“What?” he asked.
I looked at him.
After an hour of driving around, asking for directions, and pretending that we knew where we were going and were just confused, we found ourselves entering another small town. There must have been a meeting in which they approved this generic dreariness of small towns: the number of bankrupt-looking businesses, the proximity to death of the skinny dogs loitering around, and the lost SUV—ours—that looked like it had just outrun billowing ash from Mount Pinatubo.
“I’m hungry,” I said, checking my watch. Half past three.
We parked in front of a near-deserted wet market, next to a row of cute boxy provincial buses awaiting passengers. On the other side was the usual row: a Cindy’s, a gadget store, a chicken rotisserie, a pawnshop, a Western Union.
“How about there?” I said, pointing at the Cindy’s. “For old time’s sake.”
He had a patient smile in his face. “We never ate at a Cindy’s,” he said. “Did we?”
“No,” I said. “I mean, there used to be Cindy’s in Manila, and now they’re all gone.”
“Ah,” he said.
“Is it the wrong expression?” I asked. “‘Old time’s sake?’”
“Let’s go, Philip,” he said.
Inside, we were greeted by cool air and stares that seemed to suggest mean, disparaging whispers of “city people, yuck.” We realized that the town wasn’t sleepy after all. The residents were just indoors, standing in front of air-conditioning units, waiting for their fries and halo-halo.
I elbowed Eric as we fell in line at the counter. “The town could use an SM,” I said.
He elbowed me back. “Nope.”
When our turn came, we returned the fake smile of the girl behind the cash register.
“I’ll have the chop suey,” I told her. “One rice. Brown, if available.”
She keyed in my order. “Are you sure, sir?”
“Excuse me?” I asked.
She closed her eyes. “Sorry, I mean, is that all?”
I nodded.
“Right,” Eric said. He leaned in to the counter and asked how long the porterhouse had been in the freezer, and be honest, because water in meat—
I surveyed the place, my eyes landing on a stack of boxes lined up on one side of the dining area. The section had been turned into a mini-office of sort, complete with a table, a filing cabinet, and a dozing employee. Obscured behind the boxes and the filing cabinet was a wall that looked out of place next to the restaurant’s pastel palette. It was brick, rough-looking and reddish brown. It curved upward like a dome, and sleek pendants dangled from the ceiling, again so different from the boring flourescent lamps that lit the rest of the place. I let out a gasp, rushed to the door, and crossed the road.
It took a while for Eric to emerge from the restaurant, giving me enough to think of the best line to articulate my discovery. When he did come out of the restaurant, he crossed and looked up. “Look,” I said, but he already saw.
The church behind the row of establishments was an empty, abandoned shell (a fire in 1997, we found out later). The façade looked intact, soiled by the usual ungrammatical vandalisms and bursts of growth in some parts. On one side of the church, away from the road, the entrances and windows had been boarded up with ugly GI sheets.
From under a nearby tree, I watched Eric hop over a rope cordon. He looked around and, finding no one else in the vicinity, lifted one of the sheets and took a peek inside. What could he have seen, I wondered. More undergrowth. Piles of uncollected garbage. Charred foundations.
That’s me, I wanted to shout.
I took out my phone and snapped a photo of his tiny trespass, his red shirt bright against the dull stone. In the picture, his eyes were shut, and I imagined that he was deep in prayer.
39
I t started to rain the moment we left the church. By the time we were back on the main road, there was that apocalyptic feel to things: cars crawling with their hazard lights on, commuters looking like drenched zombies, traffic aids probably having hot choco somewhere warm. We were trapped, drowsy, surrounded by liquid darkness.
“I feel like a fetus,” I said.
“Your feet hurt? I can’t do anything about this traffic.”
“Philip Manabat would be six feet under when we get there.”
“For a second I thought you just referred to yourself in the third person,” he said.
“Like Brock,” I said.
He smiled.
I clapped my hands wearily. “‘Guys, guys, it has come to Brock’s attention that some people think he’s a tyrant. Brock is sad, guys. Brock is not happy.’”
I was in that slippery place before sleep when “Bato sa Buhangin” started to play on the radio. Like a stupid ghost casually strolling into a stupid dream. When I opened my eyes, it was dark and cold and Eric was next to me, and I could touch him if I reached out. I could touch him, again.
I pretended to yawn so I could wipe my eyes. Eric turned to me and started chuckling. “Sorry,” he said. The smile disappeared.
“I thought I was growing,” I said.
“What?”
“When I said yes to your proposal,” I said. “It sounded mature, you know? Something that an intelligent person, a thinking person, like you or Alvin, would say yes to. Yeah, I thought. It makes sense. A relationship founded purely on companionship and tenderness and emotions and all those adult things. And no filthy sex to ruin it.” I chuckled.
He honked. The intersection looked jammed beyond hope; probably some idiot in a ten-wheeler who couldn’t wait one stupid second to cross and was now stuck for half an hour.
“No sex?” I repeated, mostly to myself. “You know, you won’t believe how many times I’ve asked myself, ‘What were you thinking? No sex?’ At least now I know.”
A regime of information.
There was a brief let-up outside, and I had an urge to make a run for it, fly triumphantly in the rain, the way proper romantic comedies climaxed, even the dark ones like Breakfast at Tiffany’s . But those heroines didn’t have to think of logistics and bus schedules and bundles of money to give away so I changed the subject with a contrite, smiling “Anyway.”
It was night when we found my dead namesake’s neighborhood. There was a basketball game near the tree under which we parked. It went on under a yellow spotlight. The bulb was crowded by a swarm of post-rain moths.
I retrieved the envelope and handed it to Eric, looking at him as a way of say
ing he’d do it because he owed me. “Put it somewhere they’ll see,” I said. With a sigh he unlocked the doors and we got off.
The wake spilled to the street, one lane closed off to traffic, the extension of all Filipino living rooms. The tables for the card games and the mahjong were covered by white linen with hems dirtied by red soil. Eric asked a man idling by for Mr. Manabat. A series of shouts in Ilocano extracted a man from the house, looking exactly as I had pictured him in our six-hour odyssey. Short and hunched, skin leathery and battered by the sun. With him leading the way, Eric and I squeezed in between tables, dislodging beer bottles and ruining ongoing rounds of tong-its. I was not a fan of looking at dead people in caskets, but it was too late when I realized that that was where we were headed.
There it was: my name and the date of death, eerily recent. I hovered above the casket, not looking at the face directly, distracting myself with the amber lights on the candelabras on either side, the iridescent photo of Jesus, the ribbons bearing the names of family and loved ones, the parade of Manabats.
“We usually do the interviews here,” Mr. Manabat said, pointing to a chair a few feet away from the casket. “They want the coffin in the background.”
Eric looked at me.
“Oh, no, no, I’m not a reporter,” I told Mr. Manabat. He looked confused. I asked him if we could talk outside.
“You guys go ahead,” Eric said.
Mr. Manabat and I took two monoblocs and planted ourselves just beyond the gambling tables.
“How is your day going?” I asked.
He looked at me as if I just ate a live chicken.
“I always pass by that intersection,” I said. “I live in Manila and used to work in Ayala, so I’m familiar with that area in front of the fire station. My previous work, my office was right by that intersection. It’s a big intersection.”
He nodded. “Do you want coffee? Your friend, maybe he wants a beer.”
Of course, I thought, offer the straight-looking guy beer and the faggot coffee. I looked at the house. I shook my head and said thanks.
“I’ve never seen fog in that intersection,” I said. “I used to work nights so I was always there. We would go down during lunch, which was at three in the morning, yes, and we’d cross that street to get to McDonald’s, which is where we ate when we didn’t have any money and payday was far away. I don’t think I’ve seen the area foggy. Even in December or January.”