Excel and Sab wandered off to explore. Despite working for Red, Excel had seen little of Infinity Inc. and didn’t know what to make of what he saw—a twenty-foot-high arch made out of toilets, a small grove of trees with mannequin arms for branches, a row of flashlights planted into the ground, shining beams up into the night sky (“Waste of batteries,” Sab said). There was nothing in Colma like this. Just cemeteries, Targets, and The Pie, those come-and-go planes at SFO, all those flights he’d never take.
They gathered at Red’s helipad at midnight. He looked as he always did—ratty T-shirt and ratty jeans—but he wore a bright green bow at the bottom of his beard. Behind him, the stacked televisions looked like giant blocks, configured into a silhouette of a squat city skyline. He thanked everyone for coming and his fellow Infinity Inc. artists for their camaraderie. “And special thanks”—he searched the crowd—“to Excel for all the help. Where are you, Excel? Raise your hand.” Excel didn’t expect acknowledgment, and though he was embarrassed he waved quickly to the crowd, which drew a few claps.
Red cleared his throat. “This is Unaired Television Pilot,” he said. He stepped behind the wall of television sets, plugged several cords into a generator. The whole thing lit up, the screens emanating a gray and ghostly light, and in the middle of each one were different words and phrases. They were the headlines Excel had cut up, and though most were rearranged by Red—“I am Not the Invasion,” “POTUS Crowned Miss America,” “We Are Not the Friend”—Excel recognized one of his own: “End of an Era Still to Come,” glowing on a flat screen in the middle of the top tier of TVs. He led Sab through the crowd for a closer look.
Red approached, patted Excel on the back. “Don’t worry,” he said, “you’ll get credit for that one.” Excel said there was no need, that payment for his work was enough, but he couldn’t help but feel proud, to see something he’d done, out in the world, glowing.
He pointed at the screen, looked at Sab. “I did that,” he said.
DAYS WENT BY, AND A CROSS-EYED JACK-O’-LANTERN IN THE FRONT window of Lucia’s Airstream made Excel realize it was Halloween, a big deal in Hello City: that night, a banner that read HELLO-WEEN CITY hung in the Square, and Rosie and her band played country versions of “Monster Mash,” “Thriller,” and the theme song from Ghostbusters, over and over. People came in costume: Heddy and Ned, the couple who did the headstands, were dressed in business suits streaked with dirt (“We’re dressed as corporate scum,” Heddy said), and a group of Infinity Inc. artists wore capes, gloves, and boots, and called themselves the H-Men, Hello City’s resident superhero mutants. Excel had actually trick-or-treated only once, his freshman year, with Renzo. They dressed up as Tomo and Kon, two characters from You Don’t Say, Junichi! In orange-and-green striped T-shirts and blue shorts, they found that nobody knew what they were supposed to be.
By November, Sab had taken more responsibility for Pink Bubble, was in charge of boxing and shipping, driving to Whyling and El Centro for pickups and deliveries. And though she still hadn’t received it, she’d stopped mentioning her mother’s picture, a sign, Excel thought, that they were finally and truly settled. Excel worked on and off for Red—they made papier-mâché scarecrows resembling the last five US presidents, used the TV screen shards to make a mosaic on the side of Red’s trailer, and made a miniature sculpture garden out of old bathroom fixtures, toilets, bathtubs, and sinks half-buried in the ground at obscure angles. In between, Excel would pick up odd jobs here and there—cleaning people’s RVs, working shifts at the B&Q, sometimes washing dishes for Hot Food. Once, he helped an ex–tech guy pack all his belongings into a U-Haul; after a decade in Hello City, he was ready to rejoin the world. When he asked how long Excel planned to stay, Excel said, without hesitating, “Forever.”
They celebrated Thanksgiving in Lucia’s Airstream. Lucia roasted quail and fried up some brussels sprouts, then they ate sweet potato pie by the firepit outside. It had been a long, lazy day, and because he’d never celebrated Thanksgiving before, he didn’t think of Maxima once, not at all. But the next morning, knowing Christmas was only a month away, he began feeling uneasy, a little anxious, knowing how much time had gone since he’d communicated with Maxima. They were never extravagant or overcelebratory, had done a Christmas tree only a handful of times, but Maxima and Joker had always made sure to give Excel a few presents, usually things he needed—underwear, a six-pack of socks, a new toothbrush. Excel did the same, gave each of them similar necessary things. But even the previous Christmas, their first without Joker, Maxima had done her best to make the holiday a little festive. She’d brought home a poinsettia (nabbed from the cemetery, Excel knew) and strung some lights, even put a Santa hat on The Bod and set him in front of the window. On Christmas Day, Maxima cooked pancit for lunch, and when they finished eating, she gave Excel two presents—a pack of white undershirts and, for reasons he couldn’t understand, a gold fountain pen, solid and heavy, the kind with a tip that looked like he should write in calligraphy. “For when you sign important things,” she said. “But it’s not from me. It’s from Joker, okay?” She smiled, eyes filling, and Excel thought he might cry too. He clenched his jaw, dug his feet into the rug, and the feeling passed.
This year would be different. He wouldn’t call Maxima—he didn’t want to talk, not yet—but he told himself he would send her a Christmas card, in which he’d write a message saying he was fine, that he hoped she was too, and they would see each other again, one day soon.
17
Always. Fucking. Hydrate.” Gunter slams a fist against the wall, so hard the whole break room thumps. “What are the kids supposed to think, watching Sloth the Sleuth go down like that? That he died? And what about the parents? They’ll sue my ass for giving that Indian kid emotional trauma. What if some asshole called 911, like with the Svetlana incident? I’d be in deep shit, and you, Mr. No-Papers, would be in deeper shit.” Excel almost flinches at the profanity, not for himself but for Z, who stays quiet at the break table, reading through his dictionary while giving Excel quick, concerned looks, like a bystander who wants to help but can’t.
“I’m sorry,” Excel says. He takes a sip of flat Sprite, his body still damp inside the costume. “I was drinking water at first, but I lost track.”
“Lost track? Your ‘lost track’ could mean lost business for me. But you know what’s worse? You broke the dream. These idiot kids think they’re in a world of real goddamn animal spies, and you go fainting on them. You think they’ll give me repeat business? Fat fucking chance.” But the Sharma family hadn’t seemed traumatized or offended. The father helped Excel off the floor, the mother carefully removed the headpiece, the grandfather fanned him with a menu. Even the grandmother poured him a glass of water. Excel kept his head down as he collected himself, worried Ranjit would recognize him from the night he entered their apartment. But when they did make eye contact, Ranjit just blinked a few times, then looked away. He didn’t know who Excel was at all.
“The family is fine,” Excel says, standing up slowly. “I’ll go check on them.”
“Uh-uh, no way,” Gunter says. “You’re done for the day. Go home. And if you think I’m paying you for today, you’ve got donkey balls for brains.”
It’s almost six p.m. Excel has been here since ten, and the shift was meant to be time and a half, almost a hundred dollars. “You’re not paying me?”
“Nope.”
Excel smiles, briefly, at the ridiculousness of it all. “You have to pay me.”
Gunter shrugs with open palms, like there’s nothing he, or anyone in the world, can do.
Excel stands up, moves toward Gunter. “You have to pay me.”
“Step back,” Gunter says.
Excel doesn’t.
“Step back, shit-wipe.”
Z sits up. “No shit-wipe, Gunter. You pay X. Please.”
“You stay out of this,” he says to Z, who slips into Serbian, gesturing toward Excel with shaky clasped hands. Gunter answers back,
shouting and moving toward Z, his finger in his face. “Leave him alone,” Excel says, stepping between them. Gunter shoves him aside but Excel steps back in, pushes Gunter back once, twice, telling him to back off, then to fuck off, and Excel thinks Maximattack—kick to the knee, bring the body down. But it’s Excel who falls, the force of Gunter’s fist on his face so hard his head slams against the employee lockers, metal clanging. Numb at first, the pain settles in, then courses like electricity through his skull, and when he finally catches his breath, he swallows blood.
Z steps toward him. “I’m fine,” Excel says, hands up like he’s surrendered. He gets to his feet slowly, cautiously, regains balance. Without a word, he changes out of the costume, back into his normal clothes. “I’m fine,” he says again, to no one in particular, and on his way out he catches a glimpse of next week’s schedule above the watercooler. He’ll be back, he knows.
Planet-stricken, Excel thinks, I feel planet-stricken, then walks out the door and goes home.
THE APARTMENT IS DARK BUT MAXIMA IS IN HER ROOM, WORKING. “No, I don’t believe it!” she says, and whoever is on the screen says, “It’s true! It’s true!” and the two of them laugh.
Excel goes to the kitchen and opens the freezer, the light so bright it hurts his face. He fills a plastic bag with ice and sits on the couch, carefully presses it over his eyes and the bridge of his nose. He’d felt hopeful when he woke this morning, was almost positive that he’d figured out a timeline and plan for returning to Hello City, for earning what he needed to pay for what he’d done, and to start again with Sab and, maybe, a baby.
He looks down, realizes there’s blood on his shirt.
He picks up the remote and turns on the TV, sees that the DVD player is already running. Ang Puso Ko VS. Ang Baril Mo is on the screen (of course), but he’s too tired to search for anything else. He lets it play.
A scene of Manila traffic switches to a high-class hotel lobby, everything marble and edged with gold, a fountain with twin life-size mermaids in the middle. Maxima, in a worn leather jacket, cutoff shorts, and boots, enters, approaches the front desk. The hotel clerk—sharp cheekbones, bloodred lips—eyes her suspiciously. “Itong babae,” Maxima says, showing a picture of her sister, the same one who gave her money at the start of the film. “Nasaan siya? Nandito ba?” The clerk shrugs, says she hasn’t seen her, demands that she leave. Maxima turns, and the camera zooms in on the photo and on her sister’s heart-shaped earrings, then zooms in on the hotel clerk, who wears the exact same pair. “Ang earrings mo!” Maxima says. She reaches for them but the clerk steps back, presses a red button under the counter. A man and a woman in black T-shirts and black tights emerge from an elevator and charge toward Maxima, who takes her purse and twirls it like a bola, smacking both in the face. She gives a karate chop to the man’s throat and a kick to the side of his head, then grabs a broom—out of nowhere, it seems—and thwacks the back of the woman’s legs so hard she flips backward in the air, head crashing onto the marble floor, knocking her out cold. The hotel clerk leaps over the counter, a dagger in each hand, but Maxima wraps the long strap of her purse around her neck, pulls her close then judo flips her, then yanks the heart-shaped earrings right off her earlobes, blood gushing as the hotel clerk screams. “Nasaan ang sister ko!” Maxima demands. “Mga hayop kayo!” Above them, a crystal chandelier starts swaying, and an earthquake suddenly hits. “Lindol!” someone screams. “Lindol!” The ceiling comes crashing down, everything now dust and debris. But from a pile of rubble, a hand appears, then the arm, then Maxima, who slowly, desperately, digs her way out.
She looks to the heavens and screams. “Hindi ako puwedeng patayin!”
Excel hears Maxima down the hall. He mutes the TV, plays the English subtitles.
—Who is there to help me? Nobody? Then so be it!
She pulls herself out, gets to her feet.
—I cannot give up.
—It’s true, by God! I will find my sister!
Covered in dust, legs scratched up and bloodied, she raises her fist to the sky, slowly reveals the earrings, gold and shining, still in her hand. She puts them on, staggers away from the ruins of the hotel lobby.
—I won’t be defeated. I won’t be killed. It’s not possible!
—I will defeat animal men who stand in my way!
From her bedroom, Maxima laughs.
—Wait for me. I will find you.
—Do you hear me, God? Do you hear me, life?
—Nobody can defeat me!
From her bedroom, Maxima weeps.
Excel leans back, head resting against the wall. He dozes off, the movie still playing, and sometime later wakes to a blank blue screen. The bag of ice is water now and his face throbs—he hurts even more than before. Maxima’s bedroom door opens, and she comes down the hallway, flips on the living room light, almost gasps at the sight of Excel’s face.
“I need your help,” he says, and Maxima, moving closer and without hesitation, says, “Of course.”
18
Excel tells Maxima part of the truth, the only part that matters. “I owe money.”
The job in the desert, he says, did not go as planned. He worked twice as many hours than he was being paid for, the pay itself far less than promised, which led to frequent fights with the archaeology professor who’d hired him. “I tried standing up for myself,” he says, “but it wasn’t enough.” Then one night, after an especially heated argument just outside the professor’s research tent, Excel smoked a cigarette to calm himself down (“I quit!” he promises Maxima), flicked it into the air when he was finished. But it wasn’t out, and the still-burning butt landed at the bottom edge of the tent, in what must have been a tiny puddle of oil or fuel. “The whole thing went up in flames. His research, his equipment. Worth almost ten thousand dollars.” That professor, he explains, has government contacts, is connected to high-powered law professors at his university. “If I don’t pay him back, and if he takes me to court—”
“Then they’ll know about you,” she says.
He nods, explains he’s back in Colma because The Pie is the best work he can find. But the pay isn’t enough, and the professor wants his money, sooner than later.
“Ten thousand dollars?” Maxima says, then mutters something in Tagalog Excel can’t quite hear and doesn’t understand. “I don’t have that kind of money.”
The men, Excel wants to say, ask the men.
“Give me time,” she says, “and I’ll find a way.”
His shoulders literally slump—he thought for sure Maxima had a large amount of cash stashed away somewhere. “Whatever you can do, would be a big help.”
She gets up from the table, her eyes on Excel. She looks like she believes his whole story. “But your face,” she says. “What happened?”
“This,” he says, putting the sandwich bag of melted ice back over his nose, “this was just me being stupid.”
She believes that, too.
EXCEL IS OFF THE NEXT DAY, STAYS IN BED PAST NOON. HIS WHOLE head throbs. His neck aches. Blinking hurts. He gets up only to pee, and when he looks in the mirror, half his face is swollen, blotched bluish-purple with shades of yellow. And yet there’s a part of him unfazed by what he sees, as if the reflection before him was somehow inevitable. Sooner or later, he thinks, someone was going to punch me in the face.
He takes four aspirin and goes back to bed.
The following morning he’s still bruised and hurt, but he’s scheduled for a shift and can’t afford to give it up. He goes to work, straight to the break room, finds Z already there, his dictionary closed on the table. “Your face,” he says, shaking his head.
Excel puts on his uniform. “I’m okay. Are you okay?”
“Yeah, yeah. Gunter yells at me,” he says, “but only yells.”
The shift schedule says “Lydia/FD,” which means Excel is working the front door, greeting customers all day as Peter the Greeter, Sloth the Sleuth’s chameleon sidekick. He goes to the front of the r
estaurant, sees Reynaldo, the assistant manager, loading tape into the cash register. “You can only take a twenty for lunch today, Gunter’s orders,” he says, then whispers, “but I’ll let you take thirty, it’s cool.” Excel says thanks, but knows the shift is another punishment. Peter the Greeter never gets tips, and while it’s nowhere as torturous as being the sloth, it’s more publicly humiliating. He puts on the trench coat (“Collar up,” Reynaldo reminds him), then the hat with giant chameleon eyes and horn in between, and ten minutes later welcomes the first customers, young twentysomething parents and their two screaming kids, one boy, one girl. “Welcome to The Pie Who Loved Me,” he says. “Should you choose to accept this mission of delicious pizzas, beverages, and desserts, please follow me and I’ll be happy to seat you.” The family follows him to the dining room and he hands out menus, wishes them luck on their mission, and as he walks away he hears the mother say to her husband, “His face. Nasty.”
The rest of the shift is no better, nor is the next day, or the day after. But he gets through them. Besides Maxima, the only person he talks to is Z, who’s back to learning and testing out words whenever Excel is on a break. Sentiment, perimeter, and unquestionable are the newest additions to his vocabulary, and though he uses each of them in a sentence correctly, the dictionary on the table looks heavy as a brick, its thousands of words a reminder that even if Z learns every one, he’ll never really be able to speak.
AT THE END OF THE WEEK, ON FRIDAY AFTERNOON, JUST AS HE’S about to leave work and head home, Excel looks at the break room calendar and counts ten days since he and Sab have spoken. On one hand, he’s proud of himself: he’s lonely and missing her voice, but he’s proving he can honor her need for time and space. On the other, he fears not calling Sab sends the message that he’s fine without her, that life in Hello City was a fluke, that whatever future they might have together is hypothetical, always has been.
The Son of Good Fortune Page 14