Hon’s expression completely hardened. He finished his ice water and set the glass down roughly. “Your father, my friend, is in some big-time trouble. We don’t know where he is. And all you want to know is how much money he has?”
“That’s not all I want to know,” Benicio said. “That’s all that you can tell me.”
Hon moved his tongue over his teeth. He pulled a little pencil out of his suit pocket—it looked like something a bookie would use, or a mini-golfer—and carefully etched a number on the syrup-smeared cocktail napkin. He slid the napkin across the table and snapped his hands back, like it was a dirty note passed in class. Alice made a show of not looking at it.
Benicio picked up the napkin and counted zeroes—five, six, seven of them—enough to render the preceding digit almost meaningless. Enough to make this situation with Solita and June a lot more complicated than it had been. Hon patted down his lapels and pants pockets in preparation to leave. “That’s only more or less,” he said. “Not counting his private investments or bonds, which I don’t know about. Not our establishments either, which are all half-half, anyway. Howie’s very liquid.” He stood and looked down at them, quietly. It was plain that he wanted to say something else before leaving and was working out the wording. Finally he mumbled: “Maybe Howie doesn’t deserve better than you. But I wish he had it.”
“Hey,” Alice said. “Hey. You’re upset. But that’s enough.”
“That’s right,” Hon said, turning to her as though he could persuade her to switch sides. As though there were sides. “Yes. I’m upset. I shouldn’t be the only one.”
“You’re not the only one,” Benicio said.
“Well …” Hon’s chin crinkled. Another tear jumped down his cheek. “Good, I guess.” They were all quiet for a moment and then, without another word, Hon left. A busboy came by and cleared the mug and cherry bowl off the table. He must have been watching them, because he knew not to touch the napkin. Benicio folded it over a few times and put it into his pants pocket.
“I knew there was a woman,” Alice said. “That’s why you two didn’t talk for so long, isn’t it? You never said as much, but I knew it.” She touched his leg under the table again. “What happened?”
“I caught him,” Benicio said. “Not with this woman—she’s a new one. But I caught him having sex with our dive instructor in Costa Rica. It was on my last trip, just before I moved down to school. It doesn’t even sound so bad to me now. But it was different then. She was only a few years older than me, and I had a thing for her. It was silly—an infatuation. But I’d had it for years, and my dad knew. And all that time, he was fucking her. I was so humiliated. I was so goddamn angry.”
“I would have cut his balls off,” Alice said. Her frankness startled him.
“If you’d been me?”
“If I’d been your mother. Did she know about this dive-girl?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
“It wouldn’t be, if you’d told her,” Alice said.
“Hey, I told her he was a cheat, but I didn’t do specifics. If she wanted specifics, she could have found them out herself.” He stood and noticed that the cherry syrup from the napkin had bled through the lining of his pants pocket. “I don’t want to talk about this.”
Alice stayed seated. “You know, just because something bad happened … I mean, what he did—what he was doing—it’s still lousy. You can be mad at him and worried for him at the same time. It doesn’t mean you love him less. Don’t think that you have to choose.” She slowly got up from her chair. “Have you met this other one? His new girl?” she asked.
“No,” Benicio said. “I haven’t. And I don’t want to.” He made for the exit, eager to put the scene with Hon behind him. Alice caught up and took his hand. They made it halfway across the boulevard before a waiter from the restaurant caught up with them. The cherries, the ice water, had to be paid for.
THE NEXT DAY WAS SATURDAY, but with nowhere else to go they returned to the embassy. Alice continued to plow through back-issue papers, expanding her search to include articles about the recent election, and Charlie Fuentes, and Howard’s glittering circle of friends. Meanwhile Benicio dozed in front of the computer, still tired from a night spent chasing away that goddamn silly dream about Howard in the snow. By afternoon the annex was deserted, and they explored a little. They examined framed photos of long-dead soldiers at the VA. They stood behind bulletproof glass at the visa lines. They fucked in a restroom and called each other filthy names. One of the names he called her was “Solita.” He couldn’t get his father’s woman, or June, or all that cash out of his head. He was still thinking about her when Edilberto came to pick them up in the evening.
They’d just gotten back to the Shangri-La when Benicio announced that he’d forgotten his wallet and cell phone with the Marine at Post One.
“No biggie,” Alice said. “We’ll go back.”
“It’s silly for us both to go,” Benicio said. “Why don’t Berto and I drop you off? It shouldn’t take us more than an hour.”
Alice was sleepy—still not over her jet lag—and she didn’t put up a fight. She kissed him and got out of the car. Then, once they were safely out of sight, Benicio took his wallet out of his back pocket and set it in his lap. He unbuckled his seatbelt, leaned forward and told Edilberto that they weren’t really going back to the embassy.
“Sir?”
“I want you to take me somewhere else.”
“Where, sir?”
“I don’t know where yet, but I think you know.” He paused. “My father sometimes takes girls home with him, doesn’t he?”
Edilberto sat motionless in the front, his eyes avoiding the rearview mirror. The jeepney ahead lurched forward, and when he didn’t follow a motorized tricycle zipped into the void. “I’m sorry, sir, I don’t really …” he paused and glanced back. His expression hardened. “It’s not your business.”
Benicio shifted in his seat. He didn’t expect Edilberto to be forthcoming about his father’s nightlife, but the direct rebuff was startling. “You’re right,” he said as he opened the wallet in his lap, pulled out four thousand-peso notes and dropped them into the front passenger seat. Two of the notes got caught in a gust from the air-conditioning vent and fluttered inelegantly into the crack between the seat and door. Benicio tried not to let it faze him. “I’m making it my business,” he said.
Edilberto glanced at the bills riding shotgun and let out a sudden laugh. He mimicked Benicio, poorly: “I make it my business. You act like you’re on TV.” He retrieved the two bills from the seat and then unbuckled his seatbelt, leaned below the dash and rooted around for the other two that had blown to the floor. The traffic light ahead turned green but it made no difference because no one was going anywhere anyway. “Not many girls,” he said, straightening back up. “One girl. Many times. Sometime she come to him, sometime I bring him to her. You want one for yourself? I know the best place. One on P. Burgos, up Makati Ave, by the old international school. Another in Ermita, along Roxas.”
“I don’t want to take any girl home.”
“Some boy then? Some boys?” He grinned disconcertingly into the rearview. Benicio had felt ready for this conversation—it was supposed to be the easy part of the night. Edilberto was supposed to be polite and demure and do what he asked.
“No,” Benicio said. “No. I just want you to take me to her. To my father’s girl.”
Edilberto turned fully around in the front seat and gaped at him.
“It’s not for that,” Benicio said. “But, I don’t have to tell you what it’s for. If you don’t want to do it you can give me those bills back.”
A fissure opened in the brake lights ahead and the windowless bus behind them honked like a foghorn. Edilberto spun back around and accelerated through the broken congestion, making a sharp right onto Roxas Boulevard. It was the same route they took to the embassy, but it looked different in the dark. Buildings he’d thought abandoned now bu
rned with neon signage and light ropes slung like Spanish moss. Clubs poured music while cigarette vendors and idling taxicabs loitered out front. Edilberto maneuvered into the outer lane and stopped abruptly by a stretch of squat buildings that looked like houses made of nail polish and stucco. Their signs competed like saplings for altitude. “That one,” Edilberto said, pointing to the banana-yellow and headband-pink building in the middle. “Your father’s girl works in that one.”
“Thanks,” Benicio said. “I won’t be long.”
“Good, sir. And what about Alice, sir?”
Benicio’s foot was already out the door, but he froze. “What about her?”
“Does she need me to take her someplace?”
“She’s sleeping.”
“I don’t mind, I can bring her anyplace. When you finish, we can meet you. We can meet you right here. And afterward, I could take the two of you for dancing. I know the best place. All in Malate. All close by.”
Taking his meaning, Benicio bristled. Just because he wanted to keep this trip—and the fact that his father might be letting his baby’s mother work in a whorehouse—private, that didn’t mean he had anything to be ashamed of. But then, even as he balked, he felt a grim awareness of his own hypocrisy. Because he was ashamed of plenty—the way he’d felt when he’d counted the zeros on Hon’s used napkin, for example. And the hard longing he had to watch Solita step out of his father’s shower again, glistening. So he opened his wallet back up and counted out four more thousand-peso bills. He didn’t let go when Edilberto grabbed hold, and for a moment the bills went taut and threatened to rip between their pinched fingers. “It’s a pretty good nice-guy act you’ve cultivated there, Berto.”
“Acting?” His pained expression looked sincere. “No, sir. No act. I am a nice guy. I just follow your lead tonight. And please, sir, it’s Edilberto.”
Benicio released the bills and Edilberto’s hand jerked back. He got out, closed the door behind him and headed toward the club. Three middle-aged men who sat on the curb passing around a single unfiltered cigarette got to their feet and rushed to intercept him. They called him “friend” and each pointed at a different brightly lit doorway. “All the best, all the best,” one of the men chanted, taking Benicio’s wrist and trying to lead him to a place called The Coconut Grove. “No charge, no door,” another insisted, pointing at another: Queen Bonobo’s. “Free first round and half-price lady drinks until midnight.”
Benicio pivoted to twist free and shoved his hands deep into his pockets to keep from being grabbed at. He quickened his pace toward the middle doorway and was followed all the way by the men from the other clubs who urged him to reconsider. They didn’t leave him alone until he was through the door, and even then they called after, each making offers that the other was quick to top.
Benicio had never been to a brothel before, but he imagined that this was what it should look like. A big room was filled with flimsy card tables and mismatched chairs where men, both foreigners and Filipinos, sat and sipped from brown short-neck bottles. They watched a two-foot-high stage set against the front wall where a girl with a face five years older than her body swayed in a way that wasn’t quite dancing. She wore no tassels of any kind, no thong or even high heel shoes—she was nude save the film of alternating red and green light that made her look young, then sick, then young again. Along the back wall was a row of eight doorframes, each draped over with thick black cloth, and as Benicio stood there trying to decide what to do with himself he saw a white man with whiter hair disappear behind one of the curtains towing behind him a Filipina wearing boy-shorts, high glossy boots and a plastic cowboy hat.
A pudgy woman with short hair approached Benicio and flashed him a big smile that alternated yellow and gold. “Welcome,” she said, leading him to an open table that was just about an arm’s length from the naked dancer. “Something to drink for you?”
“No, thank you.” Benicio had to shout to be heard over the music—Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire” remixed over a synthetic house beat. “I’m looking for someone. Is Solita here?”
The woman didn’t answer. She waddled back to a bar by the entrance, picked up a tin bucket filled with ice and three bottles of San Miguel and returned to Benicio’s table. She set the bucket down, and placed one of the bottles in front of him. All of them were pre-opened.
“Nothing to drink for me, thank you.”
“Compliment,” the woman said, sliding back a chair so she could sit beside him. She grinned and gestured to the dancer on stage with her chin and lips. The girl must have noticed the attention because her legs sprang out as though they’d been electrified. She squatted, pouted, and did things that would have looked better were she clothed.
“Just Solita,” Benicio said. “I’m just looking for Solita.”
The pudgy woman stared at him. She cocked her head, as though tipping water from her ear.
“I met her here a month ago,” he said. “She has a tattoo, of the sun, down here …” he pointed down at the inside of his own hip. “Does she still work here? She’s the only one I’m interested in.”
“I have,” she said, her face lighting up. “Very special, and with a tattoo. I have for you.” She got up and trotted over to the other side of the room, drawing a set of black curtains back and disappearing through them. The girl on the stage didn’t look disappointed or relieved that she hadn’t been chosen. She went back to flailing limply, her eyes on the chipped and shellacked wood beneath her bare feet.
The lady proprietor returned with her arm around the waist of a Filipina with dyed cherry-syrup hair and puffy nipples. She brought her right to Benicio’s table, spun her around and lifted up the hem of her Catholic schoolgirl plaid to show him Bugs Bunny munching a carrot on her left ass cheek. “Very special,” the woman repeated, peering around from behind the girl’s torso.
“No, you don’t understand, it’s supposed to be a sun.”
“No son.” The woman wrinkled her nose at him and spun the girl back around so that he could see the front of her. She patted a flat hand on the girl’s flat belly. “No children. Just new this month. Very special.”
“She’s not who I want,” Benicio said, his revulsion—in himself and in everything—rising. “I’m sorry.”
The woman shrugged and released the cherry redhead. She sat back down again and placed her hands flat on the table with a determined look that said: We’re going to work this out, you and I. “What did you say was her name?”
“Solita. So-Lee-Ta? Something like that.”
She shook her head slowly. “I don’t have. I have Soo. I have Linda.”
Then, with a jolt, Benicio remembered that he’d taken one of his father’s pictures of her and folded it up in his wallet—a proof and reminder of his own muddy intentions. He pulled it out, keeping the wallet below the table, and slid the picture over to the pudgy woman.
“Solita?” She smiled again, her gold crowns catching in the strobe. “She said her name was Solita?”
“I don’t care about her name. Is she here?”
The woman nodded. “She’s busy now.”
Benicio imagined busy meant: With a customer, and the thought of his father in this place made him want to catch the first flight home. “I’ll pay double if I can see her now,” he said.
“I don’t interrupt,” the woman said. “You can wait.”
“Triple, then. I only want to talk to her. And I won’t be long.”
The woman stood and disappeared again behind the far curtain. She emerged a moment later towing Solita—or the woman he knew as Solita—by the elbow. Her outfit was so clichéd it was embarrassing; panties, thigh-highs and a cheapo corset. As soon as she saw Benicio she set her weight on her heels and extended two middle fingers in his direction. She and the pudgy woman exchanged words. Solita kept her eyes on the floor as they spoke, but didn’t budge an inch as the woman tugged on her elbow and shoulder.
“My girls have a choice,” the woman said as she r
eturned to the table. “She says no.” Two men from behind the bar had accompanied her, their arms crossed over their too-tight shirts. “I’m sorry, but you have to leave now.”
Benicio stood. He felt something rising in him that at first he mistook for bravery but realized a breath later was just the certainty that he would get his own way. He reached into his pocket and grabbed a sum of money that he’d planted there with a scenario like this in mind. It was just over seven hundred dollars’ worth of his father’s pesos, a sum calculated to paralyze. Benicio dropped the wad of bills out on the table carelessly, as though he hadn’t counted every last one twice. “Just talking,” he said. “Just for a minute.”
The woman looked down at the blue and purple bills blossoming on the table. She stabbed them with her finger and overturned the pile to make sure it wasn’t padded with twenties and fifties. Then she said something in Tagalog that made the men behind her uncross their arms. She led Benicio to one of the curtained doorways at the back wall. “You wait inside,” she said, pulling the curtains open to reveal a space about the size of two bathroom stalls. It was hot and dark inside, despite an incandescent bulb that dangled from the ceiling and flickered faintly. As soon as Benicio went in the heavy curtains fell closed behind him. He sat down on the only piece of furniture, a foul loveseat that faced the entrance, and waited.
After about five minutes the curtains cracked open and Solita joined him. She ignored Benicio’s objection that he just wanted to talk and jumped roughly on his lap. Her panties rode low on her hips, and the scar tissue on her abdomen brushed his nose as she grinded and lifted. He saw her tattoo again. What he’d thought was a little sun was really a spider—the rays extending from the center were actually furry legs. He was so hard he could feel his pulse in his crotch. She felt it, too, and laughed at him.
“I don’t want to fuck you,” he managed.
“Then you’re in the wrong room.”
“I have a question. I just have a question.”
She took his chin in her hand and lifted it so they were face-to-face. For a moment he thought they’d hit her, but he realized it was just ketchup in the corner of her lip. “You cost me a lot of money,” she said. “They don’t let me into the Shangri-La anymore. That means more shifts here.”
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