Moondogs

by Alexander Yates

  When they were done Alice gave him an open kiss on the mouth, the kind that usually means there’s more to come, and got up to find her keys. He walked her out to her pickup. He said the word love with gameless honesty and she said “me, too.”

  Benicio spent the rest of that evening pouring leftover soup down his garbage disposal and waterlogging his houseplants. He called his father’s cell phone and then his hotel room phone but couldn’t get through on either and didn’t bother leaving messages. It was the second time he’d tried and failed to make contact since missing those two calls last week, but rather than worrying him, it was actually a relief. After all, the arrangements were set—he had tickets, a tourist visa, plenty of cash, hotel reservations in a room next to his father’s—and beyond that there really wasn’t anything to talk about. All that remained was to go.

  AFRAID OF MISSING HIS CONNECTION, he decided to stay up and get some coffee. At the far end of the terminal he found one of those ubiquitous airport café-bars. There was a menu in English plastered to the wall, along with prices in yen. He stared at it for a while, trying to make the clumsy conversions.

  “If you want it, just go ahead and buy it, but if I were you I wouldn’t do the math.” The man seated at the bar spoke in a brittle smoker’s voice. Benicio recognized him as a fellow passenger on the flight over from LAX. “Knowing that my Budweiser cost eight bucks means I ain’t enjoying it half as much as I could be.” Benicio smiled vaguely, ordered a coffee and joined him at the bar, leaving an empty stool between them. For a while they sipped in silence.

  “So what brings you to Japan?” the man asked.

  “Nothing does,” Benicio said, “I’m on my way to Manila.”

  “The Philippines? No shit. Me, too. We must be waiting for the same connection. The name’s Doug.” He offered his hand and Benicio shook it. Doug finished his beer and ordered another from the woman behind the counter. He scrutinized the silver can draped in red calligraphy with a kind of suspicion before opening it. “So what brings you to the warmer world, then?”

  “My father lives there.”

  “That’s not bad,” Doug said. “Not a bad place for a grown man to live in.” He squinted awkwardly—maybe he was trying to wink? Either way, it was creepy. “I’ve got family there, too. I’ve got a wife there.”

  Benicio nodded, looking into his coffee.

  “Yep. She’s staying in this little place called Tay-Gay-Tay, or something like that. Looks real nice … hang on, I got a picture right here.” He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a folded postcard that he slid down the bar to Benicio. It was a familiar picture; he had almost the exact same shot on the front cover of his paperback history. The ridges of an enormous crater were visible around the edges of the postcard. They were high, and stony-green, with dense little bushels of fog collecting along them like droplets of water on the rim of a glass. Inside the massive crater was a lake, marked here and there by the irregular grid lines of fish nurseries. In the middle of the lake another crater sprouted up, smaller but steeper, and inside that was still another lake. The craters and lakes made up a series of rings, like a giant, irregular bull’s-eye on the surface of the earth. The sun burned orange under clouds on the horizon, and as he examined the postcard Benicio wondered if it was rising or setting.

  “Ain’t that something?” Doug said. “Living right on a volcano. Living on the edge.”

  “It’s beautiful.” He returned the postcard. Doug folded it up again, careful not to make any new crease lines, and put it back into his pocket. They both stared out into the terminal. Drowsy families wandered, towing bags and children, parting for stewardesses in smart pastel uniforms who walked succinctly in stilettos. The Buddhist monk had moved to a nearby lounge and sat before a bubbling fish tank that he watched like a television. A Japanese voice erupted over the loudspeaker, announcing an arrival, a departure, or a delay. Outside the sun finally skidded on the horizon. Doug must have noticed Benicio staring.

  “We ain’t gonna catch it,” he said, pointing out the window. “We’ve been racing after it all day, chasing it over the whole country, over the whole damned Pacific Ocean to the other side of the world.” He tapped the bar with his finger to indicate which side of the world he meant. “But it’s no use. Watch it now, getting away, while we pit stop here. It’ll be night before we know it, and the moon’ll be out, and you know what? We ain’t gonna catch that either.”

  Doug got up from his stool and moved over to the empty one that Benicio had left between them. Benicio took a burning gulp of coffee, eager to finish. “Say, do you feel like you’re missing something?” For an awful moment it seemed Doug would begin speaking about God. “Because you are,” he said. “You’ve lost a day. A whole day, gone just like that.” He snapped his fingers. “Like you jumped into the future and skipped yesterday. And I bet you didn’t even notice. Don’t worry, though, you’ll get it back. If you go home.”

  “The date line.”

  His participation pleased Doug, who laughed a little too loudly. “Sorry,” he said. “So little sleep has got me goofy. And I took these things, on account of I’m afraid to fly.” He paused to rub his chin. “You ever been there before? The Philippines, I mean. Not the date line. Because, of course you’ve been there. We were there together, just a few hours ago, you and I.”

  “No. I’ve never been to the Philippines.”

  “Me neither. I’m excited.”

  “Oh, I thought you said that your wife …” he thought better of it and stopped there. Doug didn’t turn away or look embarrassed. He patted Benicio on the shoulder and left his hand there.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “Mail order, right? Well it ain’t that way at all. We’ve been talking, more than six months now on the Internet and the telephone. I’m headed out there to pick her up, maybe stay a while myself. She says this Tay-Gay-Tay is a real outdoorsy kind of place; sounds right up my alley. Says her father is a councilman, whatever that means. I figure I’ll stay there for a while, maybe a few months, and then we can come back to civilization. Now, I know what you must be thinking. I’ve seen that mail order shit all over the Internet, too. You can’t hardly type in Philippines without that stuff coming up. But this is totally different. I guess you could call it carryout.” Doug laughed. It sounded deep and clogged, like wool over an amplifier.

  “I don’t think that’s funny,” Benicio said.

  “Well … hell, kid—”

  “I’m not a kid.” Benicio straightened up on his stool. This tipsy creep was like a worse version of his father. Talking back to him felt good.

  “You’re a kid to me.” Doug leaned in, smelling of beer and whatever the seafood option had been on the way over. “You should learn to take jokes as they’re given.”

  “Really? You’re going to lecture me, Doug?”

  Doug blinked, and got off his stool. The bartender stared at them. “Arguing in airports is a bad idea,” he said. “Everybody’s touchy.” He put more money down on the bar, even though he’d already paid, and left. Moments later a woman announced their boarding in halting English. Benicio grabbed his bag rushed to follow.

  AFTER HIS MOTHER had been taken away in a refrigerated van, he’d returned to the hospital to meet the person who’d killed her. It was a girl, just nineteen years old and a freshman at the University of Chicago. She’d come out of the accident with nothing more than a few scratches but shortly after being admitted she was diagnosed with viral meningitis. That’s what had caused the seizure, which caused her to lose control of her car, which caused Benicio’s mother to be plucked from the crosswalk and crushed against the red brick of a flower shop. The girl was inconsolable. She received treatment in a dark, quiet room that she filled up with sobbing as soon as Benicio entered and introduced himself. He visited twice—once two days after the accident and once again with Alice on his way to pick up his father from O’Hare. He wasn’t able to get a word in either time. The doctors believed—and Ben
icio let them—that he was visiting to assure the girl that she was forgiven. That whatever the police might decide about suspended licenses, about liability, he didn’t blame her for what had happened. But really he just wanted to ask a question. He wanted to know if his mother had looked. If she had seen it coming.

  “I don’t know,” the girl insisted two months later. “My head was below the dash. Please, can you please stop calling me?”

  The funeral was a big affair, and difficult to arrange. They delayed the event as long as possible to allow his three aunts and their children to fly in from Costa Rica, and in that time word of his mother’s death spread through a tremendous group of friends that Benicio had never known she had. The church service was filled with Latinas in heavy coats, a few of them Costa Riqueñas and the rest Dominicanas and Puerto Riqueñas. They got along with his aunts and cousins at once, exchanging tears and smeared eyeliner as they hugged cheek-to-cheek. Benicio tried his best to greet them all as they entered the church, but he was overcome with a sudden and intense self-consciousness about his accent and pronunciation, and so limited what he said to “Gracias por venir,” and “Dios te bendiga.” When the service started he took his place between his father and Alice, and though he wasn’t but one pew away from his mother’s family and friends he felt oddly distanced from them—as though he’d come to a big country wedding only to discover that he was the only guest sitting on the deserted groom’s side.

  Benicio’s father blubbered throughout the service, and when he reached down for his hand, Benicio let him take it. “I’m sorry,” his father said. It came out as breathy and loud, but he seemed to think he was whispering. “Benny, I’m so sorry.”

  “Please,” Benicio said. “Please, don’t call me that.”

  His father’s hand loosened but Benicio held on to it. They were quiet for a while.

  “I’m going to forgive you,” Benicio said. A tremble ran from Howard’s fingers into his. “I haven’t yet. But I will.”

  IT WAS DARK BY THE TIME Benicio landed in Manila, got through customs and exited the airport. Sliding glass doors opened out under an ugly concrete overhang, and as soon as he stepped through he could feel hot moisture in the air. People crowded all around, pressing themselves against metal barriers and gazing hopefully into the cavernous airport behind him. They looked like families, mostly—young women with infants in their arms and children hanging on the hems of their skirts. They reached out to wave, call and touch. A Filipino man who left the airport at the same time as him ran up to the barrier and was swallowed by arms. A uniformed woman on Benicio’s side of the barrier came up to him and asked if he needed a taxi. Benicio blinked. “Do you need a taxi?” she asked, slower this time. Her English took him by surprise.

  “No,” he said. His father had warned against the airport taxis and promised to pick him up. Benicio wandered beyond the barrier and into the crowd, a little overwhelmed by the voices, the faces, the smells, the heat. He searched out his father in the crowd and didn’t find him. He waited. He set his suitcase against one of the concrete columns, sat on it, and waited more. Doug emerged from the airport, so sleepy he looked strung out, and was set upon by a pretty, middle-aged woman and her family. There were hugs and handshakes all around. They’d taken the bus there, she explained, but if he was tired they could squeeze into a taxi. No, Doug said, the bus sounded great.

  After a little over an hour of waiting, Benicio returned to the airport. He exchanged money at an unreasonable rate, called his father’s room and got no answer. He called the front desk, and forty hot minutes later a hotel car arrived to pick him up. The driver was young and wore black slacks, a white button-down shirt and a red bowtie. He held a sign high above his head that read: Mr. Bridgewater. Benicio brusquely handed over his suitcase and didn’t help as the young driver struggled to get it into the trunk. He boarded the white sedan and slammed the door behind him, regretting the petulant display almost immediately.

  The car was cool, almost cold on the inside and smelled strongly of citrus. The driver got in and glanced at him in the rearview before releasing the hand brake and crawling down the airport ramp onto a four-lane road that ran alongside a wide storm drain. Benicio saw buildings in the smoggy distance, a few massive clusters to the north and west. The road ahead was packed with the red brake lights of trucks, air-conditioned taxicabs and loudly painted jeepneys that overmatched the descriptions from the book his father had sent. Motorcycles sputtered past, weaving through the traffic. Everything that moved spat out velvety black smoke.

  The driver was quiet up front. Benicio unbuckled his seatbelt and scooched up, casually. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I was rude to you back there. I didn’t mean to be.”

  “You were not rude,” the driver said. They knew it was a lie, but it relaxed them both. Benicio leaned back in his seat and the driver grinned. “Is this your first time in the Philippines, sir?” he asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “But my father lives here.”

  “That’s good,” the driver said. “Where does he stay?”

  Benicio hesitated for a moment, watching as they passed the golden arches of a McDonald’s. “At the Shangri-La.”

  “Ah-ha.” The driver sounded pleased with himself. “Is your father’s name Howard, sir?”

  Benicio looked up at him in the rearview. “Yes, it is.”

  “I recognized your name,” he said, “but I’m not sure … maybe Bridgewater very common in the States? Also, you don’t look very much …” he trailed off. “I mean, your father is very …” he stopped completely.

  “Pale.”

  “Yes,” the driver said with audible relief. “And you’re darker. You look almost like a Pinoy. You know that word? Pinoy, that means Filipino. That’s good, because we Filipinos are very good-looking.” The driver chuckled. They arrived at an intersection clogged with trucks and jeepneys and he kept talking as he drove up with two wheels on the sidewalk, pulled around the stopped vehicles and cut in front of three lanes of traffic to make a left turn. Benicio gripped the leather handhold above his window. “I know your father for almost two years, ever since I’m working at the Shangri-La. Sometimes, if I’m lucky, I’m his driver. He’s a very nice man.” The driver turned completely around and extended his hand. “My name’s Edilberto, but please you can call me Berto.”

  Benicio gave his hand a quick shake. “When was the last time you saw my father?” he asked.

  Edilberto looked up at the roof of the car, as though he was thinking this over very hard. “I don’t know. I drove for him maybe one week ago … a little more?”

  “Do you know where he is now?”

  “He’s always traveling,” Edilberto said. “I’m taking him to the airport, usually, or to some bars.” This wasn’t really an answer, but Benicio didn’t push it. Things had been better since the funeral, but it was vintage fucking Dad to go on some last-minute trip the day Benicio arrived. “It’s always tough for families,” Edilberto said, as though reading his mind, poorly. “I travel a lot also. Not like you or your father, but … away. My family lives very far. It’s hard for my wife and for my daughters.”

  The word daughters surprised Benicio. He must have at least three or four years on Edilberto, who’d apparently gone from boy right to family man. Benicio felt self-consciously young by comparison. “Where do they live?” he asked.

  “In Cebu. Cebu City, it’s on an island to the south. Capital of Cebu province. That’s also a very big city.”

  “As big as Manila?”

  “No city’s as big as Manila, sir.” Edilberto smiled and adjusted his rearview mirror to get a better look into the backseat. They pulled up onto an overpass and soared above small concrete houses and palms. From this vantage Benicio saw people on the steps of huddled dwellings, ramshackle satellite dishes hanging off of corrugated roofs, and flashing neon signs above open doorways. They descended onto a road with no real lane markings that ran parallel to elevated light-rail tracks. A blue train passed the
m, lit from the inside and packed to bursting. Up ahead was a skyline that Benicio recognized from pictures his father had sent. “Is that Makati?” he asked, gesturing toward the brightness ahead.

  “Yes, sir. And that one,” Edilberto pointed to a pink building near the edge of the cluster, “is the Shangri-La.” Benicio looked at the building and imagined his father as a speck in one of its many distant lighted windows. “Makati’s a good place. If you like some nice restaurants and bars, they’re all close by. You just let me know, I can show you the bars. You like karaoke?”

  “I thought that was a Japanese thing?”

  Edilberto contorted his face into a comic look of disapproval. “Japanese are very bad singers. But Filipinos have beautiful voices. Me especially.”

  Benicio laughed at this and Edilberto grinned again. Entering Makati gave him the impression of entering deep woods out of a grassland. They turned onto a wide avenue lined with magnificent trees with lights slung about their trunks. Well-dressed mannequins gazed out from expensive-looking storefronts. The towering, grayish-pink Shangri-La hotel loomed just ahead, and as they pulled up to the entrance two armed guards approached and greeted Edilberto with cool nods. One of them walked all around the car shining a mirror-on-wheels at its underbelly while the other inspected the trunk and under the hood. When the guards were done they each gave a thumbs-up and waved the car through. Edilberto drove on, stopping finally at the enormous glass doors of the hotel. Benicio took out his wallet, unsure about the difference between a polite tip and overkill.

  “Thank you, Edilberto,” he said, erring on the side of overkill.

  “Please sir, just Berto.” He unbuckled his seatbelt and turned around, accepting the wadded bills without looking at them, and deftly shaking Benicio’s now empty hand. “It’s very good to meet you, sir. Just let me know if you want me to take you someplace. Sometimes guests want to go to the pearl market, or to lunch at Tagaytay. Maybe they want to know where to meet nice friends, or where to have a party.” He paused and stared at Benicio for a moment before continuing. “Just ask for Berto, sir, and if it’s my shift then I’m very happy.”