The words leaked out of Naya too; obviously this was an anger that was very well articulated, already in her head, probably constantly. She gave him a once-over, and it was like she stopped herself from saying more. “Okay then. Wanting hearts and rainbows during these times is a perfectly valid response to trash world.”
“I understand, yes.”
Then she let out a long breath. “That said, I’m perfectly aware Manila’s a hard sell even when things are good. Plus we’re absolute experts at I’m sorry my house is shit, come inside, have you eaten. I can’t change a thing about that. So…now we’re going to lunch.”
“Look at mine!” The voice came from one of the guys from the tour, and his timing would have been better a minute ago, but Ben was going to take it. The guy was holding his card up to Ben and Naya. Today is the first day of the rest of our lives.
“Dexter,” Naya whispered, taking the card out of his hands. Were the cards supposed to be secret? Not that anyone watched Ben be all moody with his. “You’re sure about this?”
“Yes. Yes. I’m sorry I took forever.” Dexter was serious about his statement.
Naya smiled, and it seemed warmer when it was directed at someone else. “All right. Let me just close up here? You two can head to the van now.”
At least the dismissal wasn’t just for Ben, so he took it, and walked with Dexter in the direction of the driveway of the gallery. They were the last of the group to leave the building, it seemed—everyone else was already back in the van.
“So, did you do it?” Dexter asked him.
Ben couldn’t even hide properly, could he? No one cared who Ben was, frankly, throughout his career. Any instincts he had were trained to help his boss, or a project, or an advocacy. His own survival skills needed a lot of work. “Did I do what?”
“Get fired for engaging in dirty politics.”
“Probably.” And maybe he shouldn’t have said that to a stranger just now, but it was already an odd day. “What do you do, Dexter?”
“Advertising…which has its own dirt and politics. But you’re on the hot seat now.”
Ben shrugged. “I did get fired, and all politics is dirty. So…yes?”
“I thought David Alano was one of the better ones.”
If he were on the job, that comment would have been considered a gold star. A complicated one, but they didn’t get anything in black and white anyway. If anyone thought David was principled, that was a good enough start. This time the implication was that he wasn’t, and Ben felt the sting even now.
“He is,” Ben couldn’t help but say. “I was an intern for him for a while before I joined his staff. That’s years of watching him work. I wouldn’t have been able to continue as I did if I didn’t believe he’s one of the better ones. And see it myself.”
“But you’re here now,” Dexter said. “Unemployed. And that thing they leaked? The basis of the attack on Buena’s campaign? That’s low. It’s sexist as fuck. Not the best look from someone who’s supposed to be better.”
“That’s not him. It really isn’t.”
“Is it you?”
Ben sighed. But did he have to? Who the hell was he protecting even? “It’s not me. I have no power or connections so if there’s anyone who gets to be thrown under the bus, I’m the best candidate. No one will miss me. But any dirty political player will say the exact same thing so you probably won’t believe me, and that’s your right, Dexter.”
“Well you’re cheerful,” Dexter said.
5
She found him in the kitchen, arranging wide-mouth glasses on a tray.
Naya thought she had settled in everyone in the tour group for lunch, then noticed she had lost her extra guy. He wasn’t at the dining room, or the van. Maybe he left and didn’t say goodbye?
Not that he had to say goodbye. He didn’t owe her anything. She’d have to give him his money back, even, if he skipped half the tour. But he wasn’t out there on the driveway of the Bayona home, so Naya went back inside.
And found him in the kitchen.
“He paid for the lunch, Chef,” Naya said. “You don’t need to put him to work.”
Chef Grace laughed, and so did her new “assistant.” Ben had taken off his blazer and maybe undid the top button of his shirt and rolled up his sleeves…whatever the change, it was a more casual look. Less “legislative branch.”
“I know this young man, Naya,” the chef said, placing a bowl of calamansi in front of him. “I’m sure he doesn’t mind helping out.”
Chef Grace had always been Tita Grace to Naya. Grace Bayona and Naya’s mom were lifelong friends. Naya remembered occasional Sunday meals at this very place, home to the chef and her parents and siblings. Those siblings and Chef Grace eventually chose to live elsewhere, and the large house in Quezon City served only to host larger family reunions. In some cases, private meals, like the one Naya arranged for her tours.
Naya loved this kitchen too. Large and old. The oven-and-range set was shiny and new, but the white-and-blue tiles and painted-over brick were from back in the day. The counter in the middle had a new surface but it was the same island for food prep. She would grab a mango or an orange from the fruit basket when she saw one—they never had fresh stuff at home so it was such a novelty.
“I like helping out,” Ben said. “You need me to slice these?”
“In half, like this.” Chef Grace sliced one citrus globe in half with a small knife, then handed him both the knife and the chopping board. “I’ll need them later for something.”
This wasn’t standard procedure, but…at least Ben was getting something to do? She parked herself on a stool by the counter as she tried to wrap her brain around this. “So how do you know Ben, Chef?” she said, pulling a grape from the counter and popping it into her mouth.
“Was it five years ago?” Chef Grace turned around from sending the appetizers out and joined them back at the counter. “Fundraiser for that livelihood center. I catered that.”
“Four years,” Ben corrected her, though his attention seemed to be on the calamansi. “I had just formally joined the senator’s staff. But he was in congress at the time.” He paused in his slicing and laughed, to himself like he was remembering a past love, and Naya’s heart broke a little. “Seems like a long time ago.”
Then she reminded herself that it shouldn’t. One didn’t mourn the loss of a job that made them compromise their principles. If they missed the position, it was because they were probably earning something off it, and not the above-board salaries because those were measly compared to what they could have been getting elsewhere. It meant they were probably cheating the people, or wasting those hard-earned taxes at the very least. Ben shouldn’t be sad—this was the beginning of the rest of his life.
“You hid in the kitchen!” The memory came to Chef Grace right that second, and Ben flinched. “Now I remember how I met you.”
“No, we met when David introduced us. I was his new speechwriter.”
“I don’t remember anyone that way. You went right into the kitchen and offered to do things. Like right now. That’s how we met.”
“Well that’s why Chef Grace likes you,” Naya said. “She likes volunteers.”
He was blushing. Was he blushing? Did slicing calamansi induce a reaction that made one’s forehead and cheeks a little pink? Of course not. Ben Cacho was blushing. Also very intently slicing, evading this topic of conversation as much as he could. “I get weird around some people, that’s all.”
She popped another grape in her mouth. They didn’t need her outside yet, did they? Melly would be calling for her if she was needed. “Who was at this fundraiser, Chef?”
The main course was Chef Grace’s kare-kare and she had begun ladling single-serving portions into wide bowls. It smelled divine, and Naya instantly wanted to curl up into one of the bowls and have the peanut stew poured all over her. Chef Grace, she knew, remembered things through food too. “I served nilaga that day. I remember, because that’
s what Ben helped me with.”
“I love that nilaga too, Tita,” Naya said.
“And banana fritters. And…oh it was the event with the Vice President. Several bank presidents.”
“Only the fanciest people eat Chef Grace’s food, right?”
“I remember David especially. So handsome. And he sounded so smart. He was talking to this beautiful lady…I think she was with some NGO…”
“I think I should help you do that instead,” Ben said. No, he demanded it, and he all but grabbed the ladle from the chef’s hand. But he was too quick, and he set down his paring knife a little too quickly, so it spun in a circle on his chopping board and slid toward Naya.
“Oh my God!” Naya said.
“Naya!” said Chef Grace.
It looked scary but Naya had it under control, for sure. She had jumped out of the way of the spinning knife right on time and she had knocked it toward a safer trajectory and a full stop using the bowl of grapes.
She couldn’t say the same for her Tita Grace, whose hand holding the ladle also tried to reach for the knife, and instead flung kare-kare sauce on the counter—and Ben. Ben’s hand, Ben’s forearm, Ben’s nice work shirt.
“I’m so sorry,” Ben said. “Chef. I shouldn’t have—I’m sorry.”
“No one’s hurt?” Chef Grace asked, but she was looking at Naya, who tried to make light of it by checking her fingers.
“All complete,” she said. “Ben, don’t worry. I have a shirt for you to wear.”
If Ben knew what he had signed up for that day, he would know that he was really actually going to get a shirt. Part of the tour and the Today statement exhibit was an activity involving students of the gallery’s ongoing watercolor and calligraphy workshop. Their visit was scheduled and timed precisely on a class day, and Naya had arranged for the students to get their first commission—creating art from the “today” statements of her tour group and printing it onto shirts for the tour guests to take home as a souvenir. The idea was suggested on one of Naya’s visits, and they set up the process for it pretty quickly, and tested it on her next tour. She lived for this kind of collaboration, and loved when it landed on her lap because people wanted it to happen, and made it happen, instead of writing letters to layers of powers that be.
No one liked doing that. Ugh, it made her skin crawl just remembering how she had to turn each idea into a piece of paper, how it always morphed into something a little bit different, to fit someone else’s agenda.
Ugh.
The “today” shirts meanwhile—that was a fun project, and quick to execute. The designs were produced within the hour class period, then immediately photographed, printed, and transferred onto shirts that were sent over by motorbike courier to Chef Bayona’s house, arriving just as they finished their appetizer course. Which was great timing because Naya and Ben had stayed behind in the kitchen while the chef talked her guests through what to expect for lunch.
Naya cut open the courier package and searched inside for Ben’s shirt. She saw it, and giggled. It was his statement all right, but in beautiful cursive, framed by gorgeous, large, red flowers.
Today sucks because I suck.
“Here,” she said.
He looked at it and she heard the sound of ironic pain. “Wow.”
“I told you, you’re getting a shirt.”
“This truly is mine.” Ben unfolded the gray round-neck shirt, and held it up to get a full view of the art. He had to hold it gingerly, and very far from his body. He had washed his hands and arms but his shirt still had a kare-kare stain, a brown-orange blotch on the left side near the waist and another on the left sleeve around the elbow. “It’s beautiful though.”
“Of course it is. The artist is credited on a little card in the bag.”
“I…I’m probably going to send the artist a thank-you note. This truly is art out of my crap. It’s as confused about itself as I am.”
“I gave you a chance to change your statement.”
“No,” Ben said, with more conviction. “It’s the truth.”
He set the shirt down on the corner of the counter and began undoing his buttons with the same conviction, and Naya blinked, but did not look away. Then he was shirtless, very fit, a little sweaty and red like he had blushed all the way underneath his clothes. Shirtless right there in the chef’s kitchen.
“I don’t think you’re supposed to do that here.” It came out as a stage whisper, hushed but not enough.
He had caught her looking. “I’ve made you uncomfortable.”
She realized that she maybe shouldn’t have been caught looking. “Well I just meant it’s a kitchen. Sanitation rules, I’m sure.”
“Of course. I’ll—” He motioned to the door to the “dirty kitchen” in the back, when really he could have just worn the shirt on the spot, and now spent more seconds walking around without a shirt.
Naya pushed another grape into her mouth to keep another giggle in. Thirty-one years old and on the job; she shouldn’t spend this much time giggling. And ogling.
Today is the day.
6
“Nice shirt.”
Ben smiled at his Tita Mari. “Thank you.” He joined them at their table set for seven, assuming that the empty spot was for him. Tita Mari and her daughter, Melly the driver, Naya, the two who weren’t Filipinos, and him. Dexter and the other guy, and he was assuming they were a couple, were sharing a smaller table closer to the large window. The discussion was lively and thankfully about another topic altogether, and he was able to sit down and start eating without having to say much.
He could not believe he sacrificed a good shirt for essentially nothing. Old habits died maybe never. He was going to have to learn to do some killing.
The fundraiser that Chef Grace was talking about, he did remember that. It was one of the first society events of that level he’d had to attend, and he hadn’t yet mastered how to handle himself when introduced to this celebrity, that rich person, those politicians. Ben could handle himself when speaking in public, or saying complete sentences to an important person. Just…there had been a lot of them in one place, you know? It was a bit much. Chef Grace seemed to understand that, and she let him stay in the kitchen, and do random things like sort napkins and stack glasses.
Then he went and ruined it, the theme of the day really, when the chef mentioned Tana, and Ben’s instinct of keeping that quiet kicked in. Well, Tana’s name hadn’t been said, but David and the lady from the NGO? That was Tana Cortes, and Ben went right into we don’t talk about Tana mode.
Which was for nothing, really. Not just because Ben no longer had that job, but seriously, who the fuck cared if the senator liked the woman? He was single, and people expected him to date and marry and all that.
Because it’s complicated. All the right answers, work-related, came pouring in, because Ben knew all this in his mind but he also knew that fuck all that, did it even matter. They had so many rules to follow at work; he had to get used to not having to follow them.
Still, one of his best work shirts had kare-kare spots on it now. And for what.
“This is good,” he said, to no one in particular, as he ate. “Definitely better in my stomach than on my clothes.”
“And this is considered comfort food, right?” someone at the table asked.
“Yes, Anil,” Naya answered. “Chef Bayona’s family is known for comfort food, the kind we eat at holidays and celebrations.”
“I love that, about your food trip videos,” Rochelle said. “I’m just as sick as you are of the stunt food, like when they bring something out just to gross out the tourists.”
Ben remembered that, again, from his short exposure to that project she was in. A debate precisely about the stunt food, whether making videos about them was cute or perpetuated stereotypes. It had divided the teams, somehow escalated to his boss’s desk, and David told him to form the reply. They said no to funding videos of white people being freaked out by balut.
&nbs
p; “If you want balut, or fried insects, we can do that,” Naya said, her tone measured. “There are people who seriously enjoy them, and make them. If you’re going to ask for them so you can make a face and insult those who make them and eat them, I’m not here for it.”
“Well, this kare-kare is perfect. Is this available at the chef’s restaurant?” Tita Mari asked the tour guides.
“No,” Naya said. “Our lunch today is off-menu, but if she caters for you one day maybe you can ask for any of these.”
“Naya knows the most awesome people,” Rochelle gushed to her mother, but the entire table was witness to it. “She knows chefs, surfers, those guys who protect forests and animals, people who work in hotels, everyone! On my birthday last year, we went to Bacolod and I did half the things I saw on her videos and it was all awesome.”
“Naya fangirl,” Tita Mari explained, unnecessarily at that point. “Naya knows Ben too, from work. Small world.”
Naya cleared her throat. “Big world,” she said, “but all connected. It gets easier to find people you need when you know who they work or collab with.”
“And I’m not an awesome person,” he said. “We don’t get called awesome, in my line of work. We get called a lot of other names, but not that.”
“Ben is an exception!” Tita Mari declared with so much conviction that Ben noted that it was a mistake being self-deprecating near her. “I’ve known him since he was a child and he’s a sharp one. So talented and smart. So interested in history—which you know is rare for kids—and has an excellent memory. His parents were so proud of him.”
Past tense, not because he had done something to lose that status, but because they had both already died within the last decade. Usually, remembering that fact ranged from painful to bittersweet, but right then he was relieved that they both didn’t have to wake up to the news that he had resigned for suggesting a sexist and ultimately baseless attack on a rival candidate. He had never experienced parental discipline in his life, but he would have gotten an ear twisting and a lecture about respecting women’s choices. He would also have to explain to both parents that he didn’t fail them, but he happened to be the guy with the least political clout. The law degree, the years of loyal and hard work, memorizing all the presidents and reciting the sequence to astounded relatives...none of those mattered.
What Kind of Day Page 3