Moondogs

by Alexander Yates

  “That’s not completely foregone,” Bobby said.

  “The hell it isn’t,” Hon said. “Benny, I’m telling you, if you do anything that opens the door to the courthouse then you’ll make that bitch rich. Don’t look at me that way, Bobby, you know she’ll steal everything Howie ever had.”

  Benicio placed his hands flat on the table. “Well, what won’t open the door to the courthouse?”

  Hon paused. “A talk with the judge. I can arrange it by tomorrow morning.”

  “Define talk.”

  “You want me to spell it out?”

  “Yes. Spell it out.”

  “Ten thousand bucks. That’ll lift the injunction and buy a clerical error. They’ll misplace her petition and won’t find it until after Howie’s been sent to the crematorium in Sukot and scattered off of Mainit Point, just like he wanted. I’ll put the bills in a cookie tin and have it dropped off at the judge’s home in Ayala Alabang. He’s a friend of mine.”

  The young funeral director squirmed in his chair. This clearly wasn’t a discussion he’d signed up for. Bobby looked uncomfortable as well. But Benicio wasn’t about to let this happen. He wasn’t about to lose his father to this stranger. “We’ll give the judge twenty thousand,” he said.

  HOWARD’S FUNERAL, held as planned on the first of June, was well attended. Guests carpooled in sport utility vehicles and parked along the mud road, as far away as the Balayan Bay Dive Club. The land was rough, overgrown with ant-swarming bramble and deep-rooted bamboo, but hired men from the nearby village had used machetes to cut a narrow lane through the undergrowth. It led like a hallway down to a clearing by the water where Crespo Funeral Services arranged folding chairs and vases of cut flowers among the wild ones. Camera crews arrived and were turned away, instead setting up their tripods on a hill down-shore of the property, getting filthy as they tried to run extension cords through the brush. Charlie Fuentes came with his own little entourage, followed closely by the American chargé d’affaires. Monique introduced Benicio to her bloodshot husband and Hon hugged him and Alice tight, the chill of their first conversation by now completely forgotten. Bobby and Reynato arrived just before the service started and each sat alone in the back. For a moment Benicio didn’t recognize either of them—Bobby because his bandages had just been removed, and Reynato because he’d grown a scraggly beard and walked slowly with sunken shoulders.

  “Who’s that?” Alice asked, following Benicio’s gaze. “He looks familiar.”

  “You met him on your first day here. He’s the policeman who almost saved Dad.”

  “Not him, the other guy.” She stared at Bobby with an odd intensity.

  “A friend of my father’s. I spent some time with him, before I knew what happened. You haven’t met him.”

  “Is his name Robert something?”

  “Yeah. Bobby. How do you know?”

  Alice looked away from Bobby, as though the sight of him was a little unpleasant. “He was in some of the newspapers I read at the embassy,” she said. That was all she said. The specially hired secular officiant took the podium, and they sat.

  THE SERVICE WAS SHORT. When it was over Benicio collected his father’s urn and walked down to the beach. He pulled off his suit jacket and laid it out on the wet, rocky sand. He sat on it and made room for Alice who squeezed in alongside. It only took about thirty seconds for him to feel cold water soaking though to his butt and thighs. A small crowd followed and waited in silence to watch him scatter the ashes. The minutes became a half hour and they trickled away. Soon the only one left was Reynato, who’d begun to sob while glancing at the overcast sky above them.

  Benicio opened the urn and put his hand inside. Howard was soft and coarse at the same time, like the downy flakes that drifted after the eruption. He pressed his fingers in, knuckle-deep. It was more than he’d done with his mother. He’d never even cracked the lid of her casket. For all he knew it was empty or filled with salt. His mother, who just six months ago had been alive and dreaming up the useless future. He’d had two living parents then. Five years ago he’d spoken to both, often and with love. He’d had mild acne and a never-ending boner for the woman who taught him diving. Benicio tried to add up how much had changed since then, but he couldn’t do it. It was like trying to add apples and Monday.

  Benicio pulled a handful of ash from the urn and looked at it. Seeing the ash, Reynato sobbed louder. It made gray little lines where it stuck in rivulets to the webbing between his fingers. He poured it back into the urn, careful not to let a single grain stray. He dusted his hands off over the open urn and sealed it shut. He stood. Alice looked at him.

  “Aren’t you going to?”

  “No, I’m not.” He reached down to help her up. “I’m bringing him home with me.” He left his soaking suit jacket on the beach. He held Alice by the arm and walked quickly, nodding to Reynato as they left. He didn’t slow until they were back on the road, off his father’s land.

  ALICE LEFT THE NEXT EVENING. He’d wanted to ride with her to the airport but she preferred a shorter goodbye in the lobby. Benicio couldn’t say when he’d be coming home—didn’t know if he’d make the July network upgrade or the beginning of the school year at all. Hon thought it best he stay in the country while they figured out the estate and applied for a special investment visa. Alice thought that was best as well. She played it very cool as they waited for her ride to the airport, but once she was buckled into the backseat her resolve broke and she cried a little, and they kissed through the open window.

  After seeing her off Benicio returned to his room and found that she’d left something on the bed. It was an old Inquirer from earlier that spring with a sticker in the upper-right corner indicating that Alice had taken it from the media center in the embassy. On the front page she’d written a note that read: He seems like he made it through all right. Under her handwriting was a headshot of Bobby Dancer. The story was highlighted.

  DANCER AND DOGS ABDUCTED, FOUND BEATEN

  Political consultant Robert Danilo Cerrano, aka Bobby Dancer, was found badly beaten and unconscious early this morning in Luneta Park, just ten hours after his mother reported him missing. He had last been seen walking his two male Labradors, both runners-up in this season’s showing at the Manila kennel club, some blocks from his family home in Dasmariñas village. Several witnesses reported that Dancer and his dogs were forced by armed men into a purple van and police suspect that these abductors held the young consultant for most of that night. Dancer sustained multiple blows to the side of his head that have resulted in a concussion, a shattered cheek and significant dental damage. Doctors at Makati Medical report that Dancer also sustained injury to his right knee, and that they are treating him for poisoning that occurred when his abductors made him ingest a combination of Fuentes campaign posters, kerosene and other things that this reporter will not mention here. Both dogs were found a short distance from Dancer, castrated and bludgeoned, and both were humanely euthanized on the spot.

  Best known as the young mastermind of Senator Amoroso’s sweeping electoral victories in the late 1990s, Dancer had recently bid farewell to the Koalisyon Demokratiko ng Pilipinas to join the fledgling campaign of actor turned senate-seat-challenger Charlie Fuentes. Insiders from the Fuentes campaign have confided to this reporter that former Senator Amoroso was furious at the departure of her protégé, and one source who will remain anonymous even went so far as to accuse the Senator herself of involvement in the attack. The Fuentes campaign has vowed to see that …

  Benicio stopped reading and dropped the newspaper back on the bed. The story wasn’t new to him, of course, but the details were. And God, the details were awful. He’d had enough of awful details. He wasn’t going to think about it.

  He looked at the paper again just once before throwing it out, and then it was just at the file photo of Bobby’s face before the attack. The photo was black and white and very grainy, but still, it looked remarkably different from the Bobby who’d been at th
e funeral. It wasn’t that there were horrible scars—he’d actually healed beautifully. It was more the fact that the good side looked different once it had been seen next to the broken side. Handsome as Bobby still was, the symmetry that existed in this photo was gone, and it wouldn’t be coming back. Even the part that hadn’t changed had changed.

  Chapter 33

  SUMMER

  On the morning after the eruption Monique dusted off Reynato’s sooty Honda and drove back to Manila. News of the eruption—her eruption—was all over the morning radio shows. It wasn’t so bad, thank God. No deaths or injuries; only minor property damage. A tremor had run like a shock down the archipelago’s spine, causing Mount Pinatubo, Taal and Mount Apo to expel plumes of ash. Southwesterly winds carried most of the debris into the South China Sea, but areas downwind of the three peaks saw a few inches, including Subic, Manila and Manila Bay and most of Basilan. It wasn’t until she got back onto the expressway that they even mentioned Howard’s rescue on Corregidor Island. Very few had survived the firefight. Reynato Ocampo, inspiration for the Ocampo Justice films, was in the hospital, but his injuries were not life-threatening. How could they be, after all? He was Reynato Ocampo. The announcer actually said this.

  Monique tried to visit him as soon as she returned to the city—because she was concerned, but also because the news hadn’t dampened her resolve to break things off with him. The guard at the door turned her away. Her protests of being with the embassy, of being a close personal friend, of having a message for Reynato were all met with the same mute headshake. Finally, after allowing a handful of reporters into the room without similar scrutiny, the guard admitted that he’d been instructed to keep her, specifically, away. He had a picture of her in his wallet—a picture Reynato had taken—with a note on the back that said she wasn’t to enter.

  Furious, Monique waited for the shift change and snuck past when the new guy was in the bathroom. She understood right away why Reynato had wanted her out. He shared the double hospital suite with a second patient. It was the scarred man. The one with the face like hamburger; the one who had attacked them at Subic Bay; the one she’d pepper-sprayed in the eyeballs and chased into the bamboo thicket. His bed was surrounded by bouquets of artificial flowers, just like Reynato’s. The chart tied to the bedrail identified him as Lt. Racha Casuco.

  “It’s not that I didn’t want to see you.” She turned to face Reynato, who was trying to sit up. “But I was afraid that this would be awkward.”

  She walked toward him, slowly.

  “Aaaaand … it is. Shocker.”

  Still he was being cute? After what they’d both been through? She reached out quick and slapped him across the face. The sharp sound echoed in the tile room.

  Reynato ran a finger under his lip and examined it for blood. There wasn’t any. “I deserve that.”

  “I don’t need you to tell me.” She looked back at Racha, immobile and flower-decked. “You arranged for him to attack us?”

  Reynato shifted in bed. It looked like shifting hurt him. “Me. He just attacked me. And he wouldn’t have hurt either of us. I was just hoping … I wanted to make some magic happen. I wanted you to see what you really are. I thought that if he attacked me, then maybe that’d be the kick in the pants you needed. Maybe you’d use your bruha—”

  “Don’t call me that,” she hissed. “I don’t need you to show me who I am. I know who I am.” Saying this aloud, it felt like she really believed it for the first time in a long time.

  “I see that,” Reynato said, nodding. “I do. I figure the tremor means you figured it out all by yourself.” He paused, regarding her cautiously. She realized that even now he thought he had a chance with her. It suddenly became impossible to comprehend how just a few days ago the sight and smell and sound of him had been so pleasant. “I knew it was only a matter of time until you did, and if you focus—”

  “What are you talking about?” she cut him off. “I mean, what are you even saying? I have a life. I have a husband and I have children.”

  He stared at her for a moment, eyes darting about as he tried to get his bearings. “I have a life, too,” he said. “And I share it with people that I love, but who will never know me the way that you do. Just like no one will ever know you the way …” he trailed off here, sensing this was a losing tack. “This is what you came back to the Philippines for. Tell yourself it was to find home, or whatever, but you came here because you didn’t fit in—”

  She cut him off again, her voice not forgiving in the least: “Are you for real? You have no idea why I came back. And if you actually think I’m going to stay with you, then you don’t know half of what you think you do about me.”

  Reynato reared up in bed, the hope in his face eroding. “Half is a lot, bruha.”

  “God, enough with the bruha crap.” She waved him off. “What are you, five? Is this all just a game to you?”

  Reynato laughed and winced and grabbed at his stitches. When he looked back up his expression had completely closed. “Everything is a game to me,” he said, his voice irritatingly high. “Why should you be any different?” He spoke slowly, almost sadly, as though inviting her to seek a promised undercurrent of ironic poignancy. But it wasn’t poignant—it was just a truism. With Reynato, face value was the only value. Monique felt drenched in revulsion like sea spray.

  “Leave me alone,” she said, humiliated by how much she’d let this aging infant hurt her. “Don’t ever speak to me again.” She took a step backward. “You stay away from me and my family, or I’ll knock your goddamn house down.”

  “Oh my goodness. A whole new Monique.” He laughed again and put his hands in the air like he was being held up. “I’m terrified.” Sarcasm—but she could tell by the tinny ring to his laugh that he really was.

  A FEW DAYS LATER Howard died, and a few days after that Joseph came back. The proximity of those events would trouble Monique for years. Howard passing away in the predawn quiet. Joseph, without any kind of announcement, leaving the kids with his sister and returning to Manila early. Howard’s funeral on a patch of scrub overlooking a choppy strait. Joseph home, his bags already unpacked, fresh Baguio roses splayed loose over his wilted lap, their leaves and thorns, as well as a few droplets of his own blood, plastered to the bottom of the kitchen sink. She had the odd feeling that these events were mutually conditional. As though if she was to be thankful for one then she must be thankful for them both.

  She didn’t wake Joseph when she first found him. His worn loafers were propped up on the coffee table and his hands were folded over the roses, making his fingers look like pale wicker. He was still in his traveling clothes—his passport still in his shirt pocket. He stank just a little.

  There was no big, warm, enveloping hug when he finally woke up. He pressed his closed mouth to her closed mouth and they started on dinner. The freezer was still full of Amartina’s food, and they picked a pair of chops she’d bought at the Cavite market; rubbery white rims of skin and fat still hugging the lean. They defrosted the chops, dredged them in flour and fried them in corn oil. Joseph spread paper towels over a serving platter and as Monique took the dripping chops out of the pan she realized how long it had been since they’d cooked together. She remembered their first apartment in Columbia Heights, one elbow against the wall as she tended a half-size with electric burners. Joseph did prep on the other side of the kitchen. It was so small he could get at the stove, sink and fridge just by shifting his weight.

  They ate in silence. Joseph meticulously sliced open a calamansi fruit and sprinkled the sour juice onto his pork. Some round green seeds came out as well and he used the tip of his knife to roll them, one by one, to the rim of his plate. He finally asked where Amartina was—it was a weekday, after all. He asked what happened to the lovebird and gecko—he’d gone to feed them while Monique was still at work and found them missing. She told him that Amartina had quit. She said that there had been an earthquake and the animals escaped. The insufficiency of
these answers put him out, and he pouted.

  They hardly loosened up after dinner, sitting at either end of the couch, legs in almost perfunctory contact. When it got late, Joseph retrieved a blanket from the linen closet and tucked it under the couch cushions. He went into the bedroom and came back with his pillow. Monique realized that he meant to spend the night out there.

  “Don’t take this the wrong way,” he said, “but I’m going to be completely, brutally honest. I’m mad at you. And I’ll need space. Maybe for quite some time.”

  Mad at her? He had every right, she supposed, but he didn’t know that yet. All he could possibly have been mad about now was feeling forced to end his vacation early because she needed him. If that was enough to send him to the couch, what would coming clean about her affair do? Just thinking about it made her queasy.

  “That’s all right,” she said. “Have a good night. I love you.”

  They did the closed-mouth kiss again and Monique went into the master bedroom, leaving the door open behind her. She undressed and lay down in bed, trying to remember what it was about Joseph that had made Reynato seem like an appealing alternative—someone worth the risk of her life, as she knew it. It wasn’t just her wanderlust—her longing for and determination to find a connection in this city. The truth was that Reynato had lived up neatly to the cliché by being everything Joseph wasn’t. Confident, direct and singularly at home in the world. Just because she’d ended it with him, just because the thought of him now disgusted her, that didn’t make Joseph any more these things. He would still be neurotic. He would still be small and insecure and passive aggressive. Or at least he still could be. He could also be other things. He was capable of coming home early because he knew she needed him. And he was also capable of punishing her for it by sleeping on the couch.