Moondogs

by Alexander Yates

  “My father wouldn’t do that.”

  “Your father did. Your father does. How else did I get into his room? We are regular.”

  “Stop talking.” Benicio hadn’t realized that he’d shouted until other people in the lounge started looking his way. “I don’t mean he wouldn’t be with you,” he said, half-mastering his voice. “Because he would. But if he had a kid, if your kid was his kid …” he paused to get better control of himself. He didn’t know how good the boy’s English was and didn’t want to say anything too devastating. Or rather, he was looking for a soft way to say a devastating thing. “If that boy was my father’s, then you wouldn’t have to do what you do. You wouldn’t be you.”

  His vitriol took them both off guard and Solita seemed to lose her balance for a moment. She took another step forward and the boy lost hold of her skirt and stood frozen—stranded atop the plush carpet. “He gives me some extra,” she said. “Not enough that I don’t have to work. School, for June. Food, for June. Some books. He’s late with the money.”

  “Then it’s his business,” Benicio said. “Whatever arrangement you have with my father, you’ll have to sort out with him. He’ll be back any day now. But I don’t want to hear about it. I don’t care.” He turned his back on them, grabbed his dive bag and headed for the bank of elevators below the mezzanine stair, going just slow enough so he didn’t feel like he was running. After a moment Solita collected her son—if it even was her son and not her baby brother, cousin or just some kid who lived on her street—and followed him. When Benicio stepped into an open elevator she jammed her elbow against the door to keep it from closing.

  “He’s a week late,” she said. “They’ll take June out of his class.”

  “Talk to Howard about it.”

  “Howard’s not here.” The elevator door bounced lightly off of Solita’s elbow as it tried and failed to close. A pair of small speakers began releasing a pleasant chiming noise. Benicio felt trapped. Like there was no way today for him to act like, look like or feel like a good person.

  “Please,” he said. “Go away.” He held down the close-door button. When Solita still wouldn’t move her elbow he moved it for her—a measured shove just strong enough to send her a half step backward. The doors closed, and even through them he heard her shouting. First English and then Tagalog.

  Once in his room he dropped his dive gear more roughly than he should have. There were three messages on his hotel room phone, but rather than anything from his father they were all just notifications from the front desk that a woman had arrived at the hotel and needed to speak with him, urgently. After listening to all three Benicio pulled the cord out of the wall and threw the phone, handset and all, across the room. When he heard hard, determined knocking on his door he felt about ready to explode.

  “I don’t know how to say it better,” he almost screamed. “Leave me the fuck alone.” He swung the door open, his fist tight around the handle.

  “Mr. Bridgewater?” A white woman in business attire stood in his doorway. Benicio stared at her. He didn’t know her, but he knew why she was here. She introduced herself as Monique Thomas and said something or other about American Citizen Services. Benicio said nothing at all. He imagined soldiers, on a doorstep, in America, in the forties. Their hats were in their hands. That’s how real this was to him.

  “Do you mind if I come in?” she asked. “I think it’s better that we talk in private.”

  “He’s dead, isn’t he?” Benicio said. Hearing it in his own voice made it final, and then he was sure. “My father is dead.”

  Chapter 20

  CONTACT PEOPLE

  The Marine manning Post One seemed to know something was up. He slid an after-hours sign-in ledger under the bulletproof glass and opened the blast door leading into the chancery. “Am I the last one here?” Monique asked.

  “Yes, ma’am.” He had to lean down in his elevated booth to get his soft pink lips to a microphone. He couldn’t have been more than six years older than Shawn. “They’ve been coming in for the past hour. Ambo’s chopper touched down a few minutes ago.” Well, that was just great. Monique rushed though the blast door.

  A small crowd was gathered in the Country Team conference room upstairs. The ambassador sat at the end of a long Philippine-mahogany table, reading a stack of papers and looking incongruous in denim and plaid. Beside him was the deputy chief in a bowling league jersey, who’d be taking over next week as chargé d’affaires when the ambassador flew back to Texas to attend his own divorce proceedings. Tom, who was filling in for Joyce, represented Public Affairs. He chatted with Jeff and the new legal attaché, whose name Monique hadn’t learned yet and who was still green from the food-poisoning he’d gotten on the flight over. They all looked at her as she sat, flushed and sweating. The ambassador’s secretary passed out paper cups half-filled with cold coffee.

  “Thanks for coming,” the ambassador said. “It’s late, so I’ll get right to it. An American businessman named Howard Bridgewater has been kidnapped. The National Police don’t have a timeline yet but they suspect it happened about a week ago, and the thinking is that he’s still in Manila. No one has reported Mr. Bridgewater missing, and the police were only alerted to the kidnapping when an Imam from Cavite called in about some suspicious characters. They were purportedly hoping to sell an American hostage to the Abu Sayyaf.”

  Those last two words turned the air around the conference table to gelatin. The SuperFerry bombing in late February was still fresh in everybody’s minds. Jeff, who’d been stationed in Manila long enough to remember the Sobero beheading, shifted in his chair. The new legal attaché excused himself to vomit in the adjoining washroom, but probably more because of the food poisoning than because he was overcome.

  “Is the story public?” Tom, who was filling in for Joyce, asked.

  “Not yet,” the ambassador said, “but they want to include it in their weekly brief on Tuesday. It’ll leak before then, of course. Let’s do what we can to contact next of kin before that happens. Mona?” He looked at Monique and it took her a moment to look back. He slid a sheet of paper to her, which glided across the desk almost playfully, like a puck on an air-hockey table. It was a faxed copy of Howard Bridgewater’s driver’s license. “I know that’s not much to go off of, but see if you can find a contact person for him. He may have registered with us when he arrived in country. If he’s got a wife, we should let her know. If he’s got an ex-wife, let’s just skip it, am I right?” The ambassador laughed. “But no,” he said, “this is nothing to joke about.”

  Monique left the fax on the table so it wouldn’t shake in her hands. She stared into Howard’s grainy, black-and-white face. He was a heavy man, not ugly but close to it, and just a few years younger than Joseph. Big people never look good in little pictures, but his was especially bad. He filled the square frame, a bewildered, almost worried expression on his face, as though he’d known when they took his picture at the DMV that some day it’d be used as evidence. Staring down at the picture, Monique couldn’t help but imagine him reading a long list of demands in a pixelated Internet video. A slogan-spattered drop cloth would hang inert behind his head. He’d be flanked by men in masks with rockets on their shoulders. She imagined newscasters explaining how they’d come to the decision to air—or not to air—the execution, imagined Howard’s headshot transposed onto the upper right corner of her television, a death date accompanying the birth date, bracketing his life. As she looked down at the picture she longed for it to be nothing more than that; one of the dramatic evils gravely celebrated in the news. Of course she felt pity, tenderness, terror, but a louder part of her said: No thanks. I’m full right now. I have an affair to enjoy and then end. I have a marriage to rebuild, and children to rescue from themselves and from others. This kidnapped man doesn’t belong anywhere near my life.

  UNFORTUNATELY, IT WASN’T ALL that hard to find a contact person. When the meeting was over Monique unlocked her office in the annex and w
aded through smudgy registration files. After working her way back to February she gave up and started cold-calling luxury hotels—there were only so many, after all. She got lucky on her third try. Yes, Howard Bridgewater was a guest at the Shangri-La. Yes, they did have an emergency contact person on file. They could even do her one better; the contact person was in the Philippines and was also staying at the Shangri-La. Perfect. It was Howard’s son. Even better. The concierge transferred her and she was so, so thankful that the kid didn’t pick up. How the hell was she going to tell him anyway? She decided to write up a script when she got home and practice it before going to bed. Then, tomorrow morning, she’d give that boy the news.

  It was past midnight when Monique left the annex, motion sensors brightening empty halls as she passed, tracing a trail of lights through the building that ended at the main exit. She signed out with the young Marine at Post One and returned to the promenade. She walked south on Roxas, past the yachts waltzing darkly in their moorings. The moon was out, and though it was almost full it looked aloof; excluded and humiliated by the brighter skyline. There was a dark shape ahead; a car parked in the middle of the promenade. Reynato’s car. They’d been out to dinner when the call came in, and he’d dropped her off a few blocks away so as not to be seen. He sat on the hood, elbows on his knees, chin propped on his little hands.

  “You didn’t need to wait for me,” she said, so thankful that he had.

  “Don’t be silly,” he said, hopping off the hood. He reached into the open passenger-side window and produced her purse, dangling from his rigid finger by a leather shoulder strap. “Besides, you forgot this.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me.” He kissed her lightly and handed over her phone, which was supposed to be in her purse. “Your husband has been trying to call,” he said. “Don’t look at me like that. I joke plenty, but I would never answer it. I was just trying to turn it on silent.”

  She looked at the screen and saw five missed calls from Joseph. He knew how late it was here. Something must be wrong. Monique took a few quick steps over to the seawall—for privacy—and called Joseph back.

  “Are the kids all right?” she asked, stepping on his “hello.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Joe? Can you hear me? Is everything okay?”

  “What are you talking about? Everything’s fine here.”

  Air rushed out of her lungs, pushing up words. “Shit, Joe. Why are you calling me in the middle of the night? You had me scared to death.”

  “What?” He always said “what” when he was hurt. Like he couldn’t believe you’d hurt him. “I was calling to check on you. Jeffrey phoned a few hours ago and he told me what happened.”

  “Oh.” She put a hand on the seawall, the concrete moist under her fingertips.

  “I thought you would want to talk.”

  She did want to talk, but not now. And not over the telephone. And maybe not even to him, but admitting that felt lousy. “Thanks. Thank you.”

  “Listen …” he sighed. He must have been sitting, because she heard him stand. She imagined light coming through the windows, a closed book on the table beside their recliner. “I have been thinking about this. I have been giving this a lot of thought. And I want to say I’m sorry. I’m still angry, though, about the way you treated me. You should have told me, Monique.” He paused, maybe giving her time to concede the point. “I don’t regret leaving. But I didn’t think about you, not as much as I should have, at least. I regret that. I know that being there is hard on you, too. I know it’s not … really what you were expecting, I guess. I know how important it was for you to have that place feel like home. I’m sure my complaining all the time did not make it easier. And now I have left you there alone, with so much extra work … with this horrible thing to deal with.”

  “The thing wouldn’t be less horrible if you were here. But thank you. And you’re right not to feel bad about going. Leaving made sense, for you and for the kids.”

  “Of course it did.” She heard the crumpling sound of leather as he sat again. Then the metal-spring creak of the leg rest extending. “So, would you like to talk about it? I cannot imagine how it feels to work on something like this.”

  “It doesn’t feel like anything, yet. Oh—” she jumped a bit when Reynato touched her lower back. She hadn’t noticed him join her at the seawall. His hard little fingers pushed up and down her spine like he was sewing crops. “I’m seeing the man’s son tomorrow,” she said. “I’m the one who has to tell him.”

  Reynato made a sound like “piff-piff” and she glanced at him, turning the phone into her chest. His fingers were pinched before his lips, puffing an invisible joint, reminding her about the pot they’d discovered in Shawn’s room that morning. What the fuck—he was helping her parent now? She was working up to it.

  Monique brought the phone back to her ear and came in on Joseph advising her how best to break it to the kid. “They should be the first words out of your mouth. You should be direct and honest. It isn’t your job to console anybody. When my father—”

  She cut him off by saying his name a bunch of times. Then, without letting him interrupt, she told him what she’d found in Shawn’s room. The new clothes. The cell phone. The pipe and baggies swollen with pot. Joseph was quiet for a while.

  “I’m going to murder him.”

  She laughed a little. “That’s exactly what I said when I found it.” Then she bit her lip, worried he might ask: To whom?

  “How could I have missed the smell?” he asked. “We know that smell. And the clothes. How did I not notice new clothes?”

  “Don’t beat yourself up,” she said. “You were surrounded by new everything.”

  “You, at least, had an excuse. You were so busy. I feel terrible, Monique.”

  “You have nothing to feel terrible about.” Saying this threw her off balance. She’d been sure his first response would fall along the lines of I-told-you-so. But he was being generous and empathetic. And she was standing there with Reynato working his fingers up and down her spine, getting closer to her ass each time, leaving a just-touched chill over her skin. She felt good and rotten.

  “It’s late,” she said. “I should go.”

  “You want input on his punishment?”

  “Let him explain himself. Depending on how he does, nuke him.”

  “I thought I might go easy. He’s had a tough year, too.”

  “This wasn’t a recreational amount, Joe. It was a distribution, expelled from school, me losing my job kind of amount.”

  “Shit.” He almost never swore. “I will talk to him.”

  They said good night and hung up. Reynato swallowed Monique in a hug, one hand still knuckling her backbone. He was shorter than her, so she had to bend down to put her face in the crook between his neck and shoulder. He smelled faintly of fireworks.

  “It’s the Bridgewater boy, isn’t it? The one you’re seeing tomorrow?”

  “You know about this?” she asked.

  “I do. News like that moves quick around the department, especially when the victim is the buddy of a newly minted senator. Even more especially when the victim is a white American …” Reynato trailed off, the corners of his lips twisting bitterly. “You tell that boy his father’s going to be just fine.”

  She brought her face up from his neck.

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Because I know he’s in trouble.” He emphasized the word I. “Tell the kid that he can bank on it.”

  “I’m not making any promises,” she said.

  “Well, I am.”

  MONIQUE GOT ALMOST no rest that night. She wrote out a script of what she’d say and practiced it for hours. When she finally got to bed it was nearly impossible to sleep for those goddamn animals making so much noise. She woke once to find the lovebird perched on the footboard, singing at her, and again some time later to see the gecko walking along the ceiling directly above, green and peach-colored feathe
rs jutting from its leathery mouth like fingers. She thought it was a nightmare until the next day around noon, when she woke to find a dusting of beautiful feathers on the hardwood, a severed foot, and a blood speck no bigger than a lentil. The gecko was still on the ceiling, digesting, but managed to escape when she went after it with a broom. Her loathing for the gecko tasted like a mouthful of batteries.

  It was a Sunday, but Monique dressed as though heading to the office. She wore a long-sleeved bolero—her blazers all needed cleaning—over a conservative, border-print skirt and blouse. She applied heavy makeup to cover the rings under her eyes and then washed some of it off, not wanting to look too severe or plasticky. Howard Bridgewater’s son wasn’t in when she arrived at the Shangri-La, so she waited, returning to his room every half hour or so to knock on it, hard. When he finally answered it was with a raised voice and a clenched fist, his hair standing up on end, looking crazy.

  Benicio Bridgewater took the news of his father’s kidnapping better than she thought he would—better, even, than she thought he should. She’d expected some glazed shock, sure. The kind of disbelief that paralyzes you. The kind of disbelief she felt when doctors told her that her son had died. But this didn’t seem like shock. Benicio Bridgewater sat on the edge of the bed and stared out at the hazy city. His eyes teared up a little and he wiped the tears away, as though embarrassed by them. Monique was embarrassed, too.

  She talked through her script, which sounded so much lamer now. She gave him contact information and reading materials—a local crisis hotline, a support group for expats, a long privacy statement he’d have to read and sign before the embassy could say anything on his behalf. She promised to be available whenever he needed her, even though the thought of keeping that promise was unpleasant. She collected her things to go. “I can’t imagine how awful this feels,” she said, even though she was pretty sure she could. “And I know it’s a lot to take in, all at once. But are you sure you don’t have any questions?”