Before Benicio had a chance to respond a bellboy opened his door and welcomed him to the Shangri-La Makati. He insisted on wheeling Benicio’s suitcase and escorted him past more guards with sniffing dogs, their noses pressing against luggage and legs, and into the cool air of the hotel. The lobby was immense and almost indescribably opulent. Above him was an open mezzanine, from which he could hear clanging glasses and flatware, as well as a piano and a woman’s voice singing softly. Twin curved and carpeted staircases led down from the mezzanine and met at opposite ends of a huge round rug, in the middle of which sat a marble vase big as a Jacuzzi and overflowing with vegetation. Beyond the principal lobby was a second, much larger chamber decked out with green couches, tables and potted plants and filled with nicely dressed men and women. The far wall of the chamber was all made of glass and looked out on the hotel gardens. A small man-made stream ran outside among a cluster of reddish boulders and beautiful plants that looked both wild and arranged. Footlights hidden in the pebbles and grass illuminated everything, dimly.
“Welcome to the Shangri-La Makati.” The concierge at the front desk repeated the greeting. She had a British accent and never broke eye contact or stopped clicking away at her computer while she spoke to Benicio. She told him that his father had reserved a single room adjacent to his own suite with a connecting door, and put up a slim, flat hand when Benicio slid his MasterCard across the desk. “It’s already taken care of, sir. Your father asked that the bill be added to his own.”
“I insist,” Benicio said. The concierge hesitated only briefly before accepting the card from him. “My father didn’t meet me at the airport like we’d planned,” he added. “I think he may have forgotten to tell me about a last-minute trip. Did he leave any forwarding details?”
She continued clicking away at the computer, glanced for a moment at the screen and told Benicio politely that they didn’t have anything. “Your father’s suite is reserved through next January, but it’s not at all irregular for him to leave it empty due to unexpected travel. Just in case, we’ll slide a note under his door tonight. If you still have trouble reaching him just contact our business center and they’ll put you in touch with your father’s company.” Benicio thanked her and collected his key-card. “Your father is one of our very special guests,” she went on. “You’ll find everyone here very eager to accommodate you.”
He wished her a good evening and followed the bellboy to a bank of elevators beneath the mezzanine stairs. Up in his room, the full weight of his exhaustion hit him. He’d planned to take a shower before sleeping, but there was nothing doing. The room was cool and the bed soft, and he fell into it with his clothes on. Just as he was about to drift off, he remembered something Doug had said in the Osaka airport. He pushed himself back up and stumbled over to the window, pulling the curtain back and gazing out at the night sky. He was looking for the moon, but Doug was right, he’d already missed it.
Chapter 7
SAMPAGUITA
Monique was the last to leave the office on Friday afternoon. She turned off lights, spun combination locks on filing cabinets and retrieved her cell phone from a heavy metal safe by the door. She was about to set the alarm when she noticed that she’d left something on her desk—an envelope with the words: From the other man in your life, scrawled across the front in red marker. How careless of her. Marines roved the offices at night, and any of them could have seen it! The envelope had arrived that afternoon and contained a flyer picturing a pair of illustrated dancers waltzing over a hardwood floor. The Shangri-La Hotel Presents: Summer Ballroom Nights. Both cartoon dancers were faceless, like mannequins in an upscale boutique. The self-described “other man in her life” had embellished the pictures, penciling his likeness over the man, and filling out the breasts and butt of the woman. He’d added the words me and you beneath their feet. On the back were several partially erased attempted haikus, and one that had been filled in with pen:
Slick shoes, shiny floor.
Let’s forget for a night that
this will not end well.
The envelope was for official embassy interoffice memos, and she had no idea how he’d gotten hold of it. He was Filipino—a person of some importance to city politics, which was a professional reason to keep their relationship quiet on top of all the personal ones.
Monique folded the envelope twice, shoved it into the bottom of her purse and finished locking up. Joseph had come to the embassy that afternoon to pick up traveler’s checks at the cashier and work out at the gym, and they planned to catch the late shuttle to Makati together. His spirits had risen as the countdown to home-leave entered single digits, and he’d suggested a date night. She’d said yes on impulse—she always said yes when he wanted to do things, which was infrequently—but regretted it now. Despite running late, she didn’t rush. Her wedge heels echoed in the empty annex halls. She stopped to check her reflection in the one-way glass on the guard booth. Her new sandstone mock-neck dress had wilted in the afternoon heat, and the lilac jersey top underneath was dark at the collar with sweat. The catalogue had promised every-weather-ease. That was disappointing.
Outside the sun fell fast into the bay, sending streaks of color through the trees and across pastel towers along the boulevard. Drivers from the motor pool chatted beside the evening shuttles, all lined up in the roundabout with windows down. At the edge of the compound, out past the giant mechanical gates, some thirty protesters in surgical masks raised a racket. While never uncommon, the looming national elections had made this a daily occurrence. The protesters chanted the usual: “Go Home, Joe!” A refrain that’d freaked Joseph out until she explained that, in the Philippines, Joe was a standard soft slur for all Americans. Like Yankee, or Gringo.
The protesters shook rain-spotted signs at Monique as she crossed from the annex to the Chancery. She was normally good at ignoring them—she liked to think that their chants of “go home” weren’t really meant for her, because in her own roundabout way she’d thought of the Philippines as home—but today something caught her eye that made her stop. Something blue, about the size of a softball, flew through the gate and splashed against the base of a tree ahead. She recognized the smell—they were throwing water-balloons filled with pig’s blood again. Monique approached the bars even though she knew she shouldn’t. She saw a grinning boy no older than Shawn holding up an illustration of presidents Bush and Arroyo kissing sloppily atop a pile of brown stick-figure corpses. His free hand cupped another balloon and her stomach turned at the thought of how warm it must feel in his palm. She shouted at him in Tagalog. “What’s the matter with you? You can’t throw things in here. It’s serious trouble if they catch you!”
The boy shrank but everyone around him boiled. They beat their signs against the gates and shouted at Monique to go home. To go back where she was came from. That she wasn’t welcome here. “Bunch of idiots,” she said, in English now. “Do what you want, but get the kid away from the gate.”
Her mood worsened, Monique continued to the shaded chancery steps. Joseph met her with a hug and what he must have thought was an indulgent smile. “You have to fight with everybody?”
“Not everybody,” she said into his shoulder. She had to admit, he felt good. His long body, still damp from the workout, was lean and toned. He was coming up on fifty-five, so it wasn’t just about pride anymore. The age gap between them—Monique was only thirty-six—was almost as hard to see now as when they’d first met, she an undergraduate and he a teaching assistant who talked and gesticulated like a genius. Joseph was still as trim as he’d been then, maybe a little more so. On nights when his insomnia was especially bad he’d do an extra hour on the cross-country ski machine in the den, sweating into threadbare briefs, listening to a book on tape, sometimes arguing with the recorded speaker.
Monique and Joseph boarded the lead shuttle. Jeff, the security officer, sat in the front passenger seat but other than that it was empty. The evening caravan rolled out, pulling onto the bou
levard and through the throng of protesters. The boy hurled his balloon, but it bounced off the windshield and splashed on the curb. Moments later he was plucked roughly out of the crowd by a Filipino in fatigues. She’d warned them. “Well look at that,” Jeff said, waving at the protesters like they were old friends. He fist-pumped the air. He raised the roof. “You go, girls! That’ll get things done!”
Joseph inspected their signs and sighed in commiseration. “I suppose you can’t blame them.”
Jeff raised his hand in the front seat. “I can. I can blame them.” He treated arguments as games. To Joseph, they were matters of survival. He looked to Monique for support, but she pretended not to see. She didn’t want to look at the protesters either, and instead stared at her cell phone, painstakingly typing out a text message. Are you back yet? I miss you.
His response came quick—she doubted even Leila could compose a text that fast. Back & lonely. Can I c u 2nite?
She tilted the phone slightly so that the screen faced the window. Tonight is bad. Dinner with my husband.
He wrote back: Where at? Ill met U. We can tell him 2gethr.
Don’t ever joke about that.
Sorry. Caried away. Miss you a lot. There was a pause before the next message came in. He kno vac8on off?
Not yet, she texted. Then, as always, she deleted all his messages. She also shut the phone off, just in case he got cute and tried to call at dinner. Joseph was staring by now, and she grunted: “It never ends,” replacing the phone in her purse.
“It will soon.” He cupped her cheek in his hand. “Just a few days, now.”
Traffic was heavy as usual and the drivers passed time by chuckling to one another over the CB. They used callsigns like Iceman and Rocket and discussed weekend plans. One of them observed that Monique was looking very fine today and another argued the she didn’t look so fine as she did yesterday. The first driver called the second driver dickless and said he wouldn’t know what to do with her in a dark room. Tagalog fluency was rare among the American staff, and Monique often thought of how surprised they’d be if she chimed in. But the pleasure of revealing herself would be short-lived, while the pleasure of going undiscovered was deep and lasting.
They drove south on Roxas, leaving the seaside promenade behind for grassy plains of reclaimed land. Palm trees dotted the median, draped here and there with sooty yellow flags commemorating the death anniversary of the oppositionist, Ninoy Aquino. By August they’d be replaced with new, cleaner flags, and Aquino would be another year dead. Shirtless men lay on their backs in slim shadows cast by the narrow trees. Their bare feet, a shade lighter than their dark shins, jutted out a few inches over the curb. Motorcycles passed by close, and Monique winced.
The shuttle came to a stoplight and Jeff turned to face the backseat. “So! Saw that cake in your office today. Your crew give the bossman a good sendoff?”
Monique bit her bottom lip and shook her head slightly. Joseph, who’d been gazing out the window, perked up. “Chuck’s gone? I didn’t know he was taking home-leave at the same time as us.”
“He’s not.” Jeff paused. “They sent him to Kabul.” He turned back to Monique. “You feel ready for the next few weeks?”
“We can’t wait,” Joseph said. “We’re heading out next Friday. Are you going anywhere interesting this summer, Jeffrey?”
Jeff looked from Monique to Joseph to Monique. “No. I’ll be here. Our office is plenty busy with all the new folks coming in.” His eyes went hard and he turned around in the front seat.
“That’s a shame …” Joseph trailed off, staring at the back of Jeff’s head. He turned to Monique, who met his gaze. Their silence was broken by a tapping sound; a little girl knuckling the windows. She looked a few years younger than Leila had been when they adopted her, but who knew. With lousy nutrition she could have been older. The girl held up a tattered string of sampaguita flowers. Joseph lowered his power window and told Monique to ask how much they cost.
“Don’t do that,” Jeff said from up front. He leaned over the driver and began to roll Joseph’s window back up from the master control on the captain’s chair. Joseph held his button down and the window stalemated halfway. He fumbled in his pockets for money. He passed a badly ripped twenty-peso note to the girl in exchange for the sampaguitas. The flowers fell apart when he laid them on his lap. He released the button and his window shot closed. The girl stayed where she was and kept tapping on the glass, now begging without pretense. She was joined by other girls. And boys. And men. All squatters living in the median. The light changed but the shuttle couldn’t move because it was surrounded. Women leaned across the hood hawking washcloths. Their hands left smudges on the metal and glass.
“You see that?” Jeff snarled. “Real smart. Real safe.”
The driver shouted at the squatters and leaned on his horn. He put the shuttle in reverse, pulled around them and grazed one with the sideview mirror hard enough to bend it. Monique watched out back as they scampered to the median. The woman they’d struck gave chase for a few paces, shouting angrily but still trying to make a sale.
“No need for all that,” Joseph said, not daring to look up at the front seat.
“No, there wasn’t. Not till you opened your window.”
Jeff was quiet the rest of the trip. He disembarked at Magallanes with cool nods for them both. “Why do you always have to do stuff like that?” Monique asked as soon as the armored door slid shut.
“Do not speak to me in absolutes. I do not always do anything.”
“That woman could have been hurt.”
“I didn’t accelerate. I didn’t hit her. All I did was buy flowers from a little girl. And thanks, by the way, for backing me up.”
“That’s not my job, Joe.”
“Actually, yes, it is.”
The driver continued northeast, reporting about their bickering in a bemused voice over the CB. He let them out at Greenbelt—a multistory outdoor mall at the heart of Makati with air-conditioning so strong you could feel it a block away. Joseph hated what it represented. Monique hated that it was nothing like the home she remembered and had hoped for. But it was close, convenient, and the only place they could ever settle on.
MONIQUE’S CHILDHOOD HOME felt to her now like a different country. Subic Bay was leafy, clean and open. Her father had been stationed there when she was born. He still liked to joke raspily over the telephone that she’d been only minutes away from a Pinoy passport—her mother’s water broke a month early on a hike up nearby Pinatubo. The delivery wasn’t till later that evening, but the way he told it you’d think Monique popped out the moment his speeding jeep crossed the first MP checkpoint.
For most of the 1970s her family bounced around between Pacific bases—Monique still kept report cards from Guam and Hawaii in her scrapbook. She celebrated her first, seventh, tenth, and eleventh birthdays at Subic. On the last tour, the one she remembered best, they were assigned to a freestanding house some hundred yards down from the married officers quarters. It had a flagstone path lined with pink lava rocks and a back porch that opened out to sagging, vine-heavy woods. They shared a cleaning woman—or more of a girl, actually—with the family next door, and for reasons inexplicable to Monique, memories of this long-lost person held an intensity that nostalgia failed to account for. On some lucky afternoons, when her mother was away at the officers club or shopping at the PX, the cleaning woman would lead Monique on walks through the woods out back. Together they mapped out trees where flying foxes slept in the daytime, and discovered the little corner of All Hands Beach where hawksbill turtles laid their eggs. The cleaning woman threw stones at a troop of roadside macaques that kept getting too close. She taught Monique to coax spiders from their holes with balls of wax. Once, when the woman was away, Monique got bit by one of those spiders. She sat in the front yard bawling until her father came out and crushed it with his naked fingers. “Just like Peter Parker,” he said. “You’re a little hero now.”
Green
belt had nothing in common with that squat little house. The streams were artificial, the palms were potted, and guards flanked the flagstone paths leading in and out. There was a long line at the checkpoint that night. Men were frisked; women had their handbags searched. One of the guards noticed Monique and Joseph at the back of the line and tried to wave them through, but Joseph insisted on waiting like everybody else. They continued up a narrow neon alleyway and came to the door of their favorite restaurant—the only Italian place they’d found that didn’t overcook or oversweeten. They took a table on the second-floor terrace overlooking the main courtyard. Monique ordered a light beer. Joseph leafed through the menu for minutes. He asked the waiter if they had mango juice. He asked if it was fresh or from concentrate. He asked if the mango smoothie was blended with milk, ice cream or yogurt. He asked if it was low-fat yogurt. He ordered a calamansi soda.
When the waiter left Joseph announced that he wasn’t fighting anymore.
“You don’t get to end it by yourself,” Monique said.
“I did not say I was ending it. I just said I was done. You can keep fighting all you want.” He turned and stared deliberately over the balcony. The courtyard below wasn’t too crowded yet, though some of the first transvestite hookers already haunted the perimeter. Fountains gurgled and Chinese lanterns swayed from drooping palms. A restaurant band did a sound-check on a little stage, counting down into microphones, adjusting Panama hats and tuning acoustic guitars. Joseph tapped his fingers to the non-beat on the terrace railing.
Drinks arrived and Joseph raised his to make a toast. “To the great escape,” he said, clinking his glass against Monique’s beer.
“Uh-huh,” she said. “I get it. It’s so incredibly terrible here.”
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