Moondogs

by Alexander Yates

  “Is that what I said?”

  “You remember who they were escaping from in that movie? Nazis.”

  “I see. Are you going to be like this all evening?”

  She chewed her lip and watched him sip his soda. She knew she was being awful, and wanted to be even worse. “You know, if you just came in with me, if you stuck with it for a week, your time here might feel less like torture. The construction job in the annex is a big deal, and Jeff needs all the trailing spouses he can get. He’s got more than enough work to keep you busy. You don’t even have to think of it as a job—it’d just be a way to fill up the day.”

  “Sweetheart.” Joseph put his palms together and rested his nose on his middle fingers. Like prayer, but condescending. “You lay off the kids when they try something once. Please, could you extend me the same courtesy?”

  To be fair, he had tried. He applied for his security clearance even before they packed out. He got his Interim Secret clearance pretty quick—prior drug use and a failed marriage, but no financial debts or questionable publications—and he spent a full month as an escort. He led Filipino cleaning crews through controlled-access areas, making sure they didn’t slip printouts into their watering cans, getting snubbed by officers when he tried to make small talk. He was no star among his colleagues back at American University, but the step down still humiliated him.

  “It even sounds demeaning.” Joseph opened his palms and laid them flat. “Trailing spouse. Like toilet paper stuck on your shoe when you walk out of a public restroom. How embarrassing. Besides, Jeff is a Neanderthal.”

  The waiter returned to see if they were ready to order. Monique said something in Tagalog that made him leave the terrace.

  “I can’t go on vacation next week,” she said.

  Joseph stared at her.

  “We’re already understaffed, and with Chuck in Kabul I’m the only one left who can run American Citizen Services. I took over this afternoon. They need me here.”

  He opened his lips and sucked air through clenched teeth. “So, we have to postpone a little?”

  “A lot. Chuck doesn’t come back until September, and by then the kids are in school.”

  “Can someone else do it? We have been planning this for months.”

  “There’s no one else. It’s summer. Everyone’s on their way out, and the replacements haven’t arrived yet. I don’t have a choice. And besides that, it’s a big move for me. It’s a lot of responsibility. You should be happy for me.”

  “Happy for you?” He sounded the words out. He put his calamansi soda to his lips and set it down again. Was he shaking? Was he tearing up? “No. No. In the shuttle—Jeff already knew about this, didn’t he? Your whole office knows about this. And you have got me packing. I’m finding someone to look after the goddamn gecko and lovebird. I’m picking up traveler’s checks.” His voice rose with each sentence. People in the courtyard began to look up. “This is my vacation and I’m the last to find out? What the hell is the matter with you? How long have you known?”

  “Just a week. I—”

  “A week? Seven times you have gone to bed with me and failed to mention this? You have let me plan weekends with our friends. You have let me invite my sister down. I ask again: What is the matter with you?”

  He’d never pushed back so hard on anything before, and it took Monique by surprise. But it didn’t come out of his strength. It came out of his weakness. His total ineptness when caught anywhere other than Georgetown, or maybe Adams Morgan. He felt like a loser here, and for good reason.

  When she didn’t answer he just glared at her. “We are still going.”

  “Don’t you tell me what I’m doing,” she said.

  “I’m not. We are going. Shawn and Leila and I.”

  “I told you I—” she caught herself. “What did you say?”

  “It is just five weeks. We will be back before you know it.”

  She stared at him. She breathed out and it felt like her ribs were bending.

  “The kids need a break.”

  She tried to contrive a laugh but instead just said “Ha” like it was a word. “Don’t hide behind them. You need a break.”

  “I do. They do, too. And what would you know about it? You are at work when they come home from school. Shawn’s friends drive him here. They follow him upstairs and he makes them sandwiches they don’t eat. His voice changes around them. They call him … I don’t like the nicknames they call him.” For someone so precise, Joseph’s vagueness was conspicuous. Again he was talking and not talking about the race thing. “Anyway, it is not good for him. It is not healthy. Not for Leila either. These rich kids treat them like pets.”

  “I can’t be away from them that long.” Monique almost blushed hearing how unconvincing she sounded.

  “Then don’t be. And don’t pretend like it is not your choice.”

  Lantern light refracted in the corners of her eyes. She excused herself, went to the bathroom and stood in front of the mirror. She was exhilarated, overwhelmed and terrified of the joy creeping over her. Five weeks without feeling like shit in front of Shawn’s locked room? Five weeks without tearing up at the thought of how lonely Leila was? Five weeks without making excuses to and for her insomniac husband? Five weeks alone, with him. Knowing it was a selfish, lousy thing to feel didn’t make her feel it any less. This couldn’t have gone better if she’d planned it.

  She bumped into Joseph on her way out of the bathroom, catching him walking out on her. They faced off, awkwardly. She put a hand on his chest. “You can go if you want to. You should.”

  “I am not asking for permission. I don’t need it.”

  “You have it.”

  “Well, I don’t need it.” He seemed ready to storm off, but lingered a moment longer. “Tell me there is nothing else going on here. Nothing funny.”

  She stared at him, and he repeated himself. That was it. It was out there. “There is nothing funny going on here,” she said, almost believing her own shocked voice. “I resent the implication.” And the funny thing was, she did resent it. She sensed that, on a visceral level, being wrongly accused would feel very much the same as this.

  “Fine,” Joseph said, glancing down at his feet. “Good. Sorry.”

  And with that he left the restaurant. Monique returned to the table and watched him exit through the courtyard below. Two hookers followed but gave up after a few paces. The lead singer got up on stage and said, “Hi, my name is Erwin,” and the early diners said, “Hi, Erwin.” Erwin tapped his microphone twice, making a static sound like distant explosions. The band burst into song.

  Chapter 8

  TASK FORCE KA-POW

  Efrem Khalid Bakkar knows his life just changed forever. He’s in a fast-moving jeep with the brigadier general of Southern Command, the biggest movie star in the republic, and the real-life supercop those movies are based on. Reynato, grinning wide, hasn’t said anything since they left the marching green. No one has—they speed quietly through a tunnel of palm and bamboo. Efrem stares out back. He watches the Boxer Boys break formation, lean against one another, share hand-rolled cigarettes. He sees each of their faces through the impossibly woven jungle. It wasn’t hard to leave them, but still, he’s a little sad.

  The jeep bounces on the rough dirt track. They pass the semi-paved plantation road leading to the city, but don’t take it, pushing further into the overgrown dark. Reynato stays quiet, his breath heavy and slow, his loose smile giving him an open kind of look. Finally Efrem works up the courage to speak.

  “Where are we going, sir?”

  “My questions come first,” Reynato says.

  Efrem waits, but Reynato just keeps staring. It lasts minutes. They rumble silently past the mud lane leading to the airfield, past the last access road for the Bukidnon-Davao highway, without slowing. The forest thickens into a quiet blur of ferns slapping at the jeep. Reynato moves the unlit cigar from one corner of his mouth to the other. He sucks and puffs.

&nbs
p; “So … there’s got to be a limit,” he says.

  “I’m sorry, sir?”

  “No sirs. That rapist you just killed … or suspected rapist, rather. Innocent until proven, right?” Reynato winks. “He couldn’t have been closer than thirty kilometers away. Not to mention all the trees, hills, buildings, people and God-knows what else filling up the line that runs between you and him. So there’s no way a shot out of your gun lands anywhere near him. Bullets don’t go that far.”

  Efrem thinks for a moment, trying to find an answer that doesn’t sound boastful. He can’t. “Mine do.”

  Renato nods, like he’s thinking about this really hard. “Sure, hey … that much is clear. But, then, what the hell? Does that mean the rule’s flat-out broke? I mean, can you shoot someone in Zamboanga City from here? In Cebu? Can you bag me a jeepney driver in Manila?”

  Now it’s Efrem’s turn to pause, and think. “I don’t know. I can shoot as far as I can see.”

  “Well, can you see Manila?”

  “I never tried.”

  “Never tried?” Reynato sucks his unlit cigar again and clenches his teeth, as though savoring smoke. “Where’s your curiosity?”

  “I wouldn’t know what to look for,” Efrem says.

  “Problem solved; look for my wife. A name helps, right? She’s Lorna Ocampo. We live at …” Reynato glances at his watch, “no … she’ll be out now. Every week she does this damned expensive brunch with girlfriends at the Shangri-La hotel, corner of Makati Ave and Ayala. Should be there now. She’ll be the chubby one at the table, but don’t judge me for it. Lorna used to turn heads. Tell me what she looks like now.”

  Efrem grips the seat cushion to steady himself and faces the leaf mosaic above. His eyes open to shimmering black. There are so many shorelines between him and Lorna Ocampo, hundreds of islands with beaches and cliffs. Boats trace white as they motor through straits and into shallow green bays. Freighters hardly move. Efrem sees a long beach—a big island where the land rises up into mountains. A wet checkerboard of rice paddies. The concentric rings of a lake-filled volcano. Beyond is smog like morning mist and the peeking heads of towers. The Shangri-La is pinkish. Six women sit around plates of fruit. Lorna’s plate is nearly empty. Efrem describes her hair in a high beehive, the string of black pearls around her neck. He lists the colors sewn into her blouse, and reads out some of the letters engraved onto her wedding band.

  Reynato pats him once on the cheek and leaves his hand there. He can’t whistle but he makes a blowing sound that resembles whistling. “So, if you wanted to, you could shoot that far?”

  Efrem nods, rocking his face into Reynato’s sweaty palm. “Can I ask you a question now, sir?”

  “I said no sirs. You can ask me whatever you want.”

  “Do you have Truth with you?” He means, of course, the famous pistol from the Ocampo Justice movies. When he was a boy his prize possession was a knockoff plastic replica of that larger-than-life Colt, stolen off a market stall run by half-blind Chinese. “Can I see it?”

  There is subdued laughter from Charlie and Brig Yapha up front. “Truth? Mohammed … you should know better. I wouldn’t be caught dead with that queen pistol they got Charlie using in the movies.” Reynato lifts his shirt and pulls the handgun from his pant waist—a Glock, dull and wordless. “This is my gun. It’s no specialer than I am. So: very.”

  Efrem eyes the piece. Truth was a sixshooter, single-action army, name inlaid in gold along the cylinder, big enough to bludgeon, barrel long enough to parry and thrust in a swordfight, if you ever got into one, which Reynato did, in Ocampo Justice XIII, which he won, handily. But this gun is as regular as it gets, not even custom like Efrem’s Tingin. He tries to keep the disappointment out of his voice. “Does this one have a name?”

  “Sure does. Call it Glock.”

  Brig Yapha and Charlie laugh some more, and Efrem looks away, feeling foolish.

  AROUND MIDDAY THEY STOP at a cleared hill overlooking a banana grove. Succulent leaves and trunks extend below like chop on a small green sea. A stream runs some hundred meters north, and on its bank sits a large but only partially constructed house. Smoke rises from a tin chimney on the east wing, and Efrem sees food being prepared through an open kitchen window. The brigadier general and Charlie dismount, looking old as they rub their backs and knees. Reynato leaps out, opens the door for Efrem and helps him down, as though he needs help down. “You hungry?” he asks, not pausing for an answer. “I’m starving! Down we go.”

  The four descend the shallow, sunny crest, following a narrow path into a forest of banana trees laden with harvest-ready fruit. Charlie plucks one from a low-hanging bushel and eats loudly. It seems that Efrem’s unexpected presence and the magically outsized murder he’s just witnessed have left the actor-turned-politician a little off-balance, but nonetheless he tries to play the happy, confident host. The Fuentes family has owned this land since Spanish times, he says. They maintain the road and lease out water rights from their stream. His cousin started to build this house under pretense of supervising the harvest, but he almost never comes down and when he does it’s to hunt hornbills and macaques with shotguns or to impress his eco-cred on touristic white girlfriends.

  The house looms large as they emerge from the trees. Smoke coils in still air above the chimney, hardly rising. They hear water rush over stones out back, the musical sound of pots and voices from the kitchen. The building isn’t near finished; unused hardwood beams protrude from half-frames, looking like ship-ribs from some wreck dashed into the jungle by a tidal wave. Those parts that are complete are the sole survivors of calamity—not first progress. Charlie tosses his peel into a waste bin by the front door, sinking a swish. “Here we are,” he says. “You’re welcome … all of you.”

  Efrem steps toward the house but stops in his tracks. Something is wrong. He turns and sees them. Three men hide among the overgrown banana, staring at him. Reynato must know they’re there as well, because he smiles and presses a finger to his lips. He shapes his hand into a pistol and points it at the trees. Pulling his thumb back like a steel hammer, he fires and mimes recoil. “Ka-Pow,” he whispers.

  A maid with straight hair and a light blue uniform comes to the door. She’s seventeen maybe, no older. Charlie asks if lunch is ready and she nods, stepping aside and inviting them in with skinny arm and open palm. Charlie and Brig Yapha enter, brushing her as they pass. Reynato lingers on the lawn with Efrem, looking amused. The spies in the trees don’t know they’ve been discovered. One sits among rotting leaves, cradling a bushel of green bananas in his arms. He slices the fruits lengthwise with a kitchen knife and eats them, peels and all. Another, barefoot and nude save for a pair of tattered basketball shorts, stands slim against a trunk. The third, looking gnarled and old, squats behind a log. Life in the jungle, life in the army, have made Efrem suspicious of those who would watch him. He raises his custom Tingin.

  “Easy, Mohammed,” Reynato says, putting his hand over the muzzle. “They won’t give you any trouble. At least not the shooting kind of trouble.” He turns back to the trees and yells, his voice rebounding and doubling against the shallow hill. “Fuckers! Lunch!”

  Echo and return. Silence. Heavy leaves rustle and three men step out onto the grass before them. “Isn’t that nice?” Reynato says.

  The man in the middle still cradles his bushel of fruit. Knife dangling at his side, he speaks with a full mouth: “What’s that?”

  “His name is Efrem,” Reynato says. The man cocks his head, evidently favoring a good ear. Reynato repeats himself. “He’s my new friend. Maybe yours too, Lorenzo.”

  “Yeah? I got too many already.” The man, Lorenzo, pauses to chew. “Is he what I think he is?”

  Reynato does not answer, but he smiles.

  “I figured. He looks weird like that. So, what’s he do?”

  “He kills people.”

  Lorenzo swallows and smiles right back, his teeth pulpy. “We all do that.”

 
“Well, he does it better,” Reynato says. He turns to Efrem. “Treat these boys with care, Mohammed. They may someday be like family. This idiot ruining his appetite is Lorenzo Sayoc. The handsome one,” he points at the man with gnarled and twisted skin, “is Racha Casuco. And finally we have sweet, simple Elvis Buwan. They leave a little to be desired, as family goes. But I promise you’ve got more in common with them than any fucking soldier boy. They’re all bruhos, like you. And like me.”

  He claps once and rubs his hands together. “Let’s eat.”

  LUNCH AT THE UNFINISHED FUENTES house is a big affair. Efrem walks through the kitchen into an open dining area where the maid sets food out on a long table made of varnished Philippine mahogany and flanked by benches of the same wood. Brig Yapha and Charlie, already seated, seem to have been in the middle of a hushed conversation, but they clam up as everybody enters. Charlie, a little startled by the appearance of Reynato’s bruhos, signals to the maid to grab some extra plates. She adds them to the tabletop already covered with ceramic platters and stewpots, all set under the crossing breezes of electric fans to keep away flies. A big bowl of shredded purple banana flower fried with bits of pork fat, a crispy duck baked to near-blackness and served on layers of foil, beef-shank bulalo with chopped ampalaya and carrots sitting in a vat of oily broth, a whole braised grouper covered in diced garlic. There’s rice of course, heaped and steaming in a plastic tub beside a bowl of sliced calamansi, soy sauce and a bottle of peppered coconut vinegar. Under the table is a cooler of beer, and a pilsner is set behind every plate, shortnecks and caps glistening with icy sweat.

  At the sight of mismatched china and clean silverware, Efrem hesitates. He’s used to field-issue crockery, eating on the ground by the mess trailer. He’d rather go hungry than take a seat not meant for him. Lorenzo pushes past, discarding his bananas to get a spot near the bulalo. Racha sits as well, eyeing the maid’s threadbare dress. Elvis and Reynato join them. Efrem hovers.

  Lorenzo breaks his staring contest with the food to glance at Efrem. “Ain’t he even housetrained?”