The Son of Good Fortune

by Lysley Tenorio

  On the way home he stops at the other Target (in Serramonte, the one where he didn’t almost shoplift). He grabs a basket and searches the dollar bins, picks up two packs of Kit Kats and two packs of gummy bears, some AA batteries, always useful in Hello City. He agreed not to call Sab, but neither of them had said a thing about letters or care packages, so what does he have to lose? He picks up a set of ballpoint pens for $2.49, two pairs of women’s wool socks for $3 each; it’s warm now, but they’ll help in the Hello City winter. He wanders the store, and the sight of an old Vietnamese man comparing prices between a bottle of Tide detergent with the Target brand reminds him so much of Joker that he has to stop and shut his eyes tight, keep it together until the feeling passes. When it does, he finds himself wandering toward the baby section, where he sees the Nirvana onesie hanging at the end of a rack. He finds the same size—0–3 months—lays it flat on his palms, stunned again by its smallness, and the fact that a person could, at some point in life, take up so little space in the world.

  STANDING IN LINE AT THE POST OFFICE, EXCEL THINKS THAT THE care package to Sab is like a mini-version of a balikbayan box. Like many Filipinos, Joker would send one every Christmas to the two siblings he still had in the Philippines, filling a television-size box with cans of corned beef and Spam, dish towels, toothpaste, cheap San Francisco T-shirts purchased at flea markets, five for ten bucks. The post office lines were horrifically long, and Excel would whine, ask Maxima why Joker couldn’t just send a card with a McDonald’s gift certificate. “Knock it off,” she’d say, twisting his ear, “or I’ll put you in a balikbayan box and send you back too,” which, Excel realizes as he approaches the counter, was a shitty thing to say to a kid TNT.

  The clerk takes the box, sets it on the scale, asks if there are liquids or flammable materials. “No,” Excel says, “just candy, snacks, and some socks.” He doesn’t mention the onesie, and isn’t sure what sending it actually means. It’s not pressure, he tells himself, just a nudge maybe, a way to help Sab see the possibilities.

  “Five to seven business days,” the clerk says, then drops the package on the long metal table behind her. Excel pays and, just before exiting the post office, takes another look at the box, knows it’s officially en route to Sab. He feels desperate; he feels hopeful. Like a castaway firing a last flare, or flinging his one bottle into the ocean, tiny SOS rolled up inside.

  RESTLESS TONIGHT, SAD IN WAYS HE CAN’T QUITE PINPOINT, EXCEL sits on the roof, watching Colma. It’s Friday, and both Target parking lots are full, even after store hours have ended. Though the cemeteries have gone black, more than a few cars keep looping through them, like they’re desperate to visit graves they can’t find. He imagines all the flower-chomping deer stunned by their sweeping headlights, then darting off to hide.

  Past midnight, planes still take off from SFO.

  Finally tired, Excel climbs down the fire escape, pauses at the Sharmas’ living room window. It’s open again, lights on inside. He wonders if Ranjit will appear; he seems like the kind of kid who might stay awake after everyone else falls asleep. Excel has no intention of going in or saying hello, but after he collapsed at the Sharmas’ table at The Pie, he wants to make sure Ranjit is okay.

  Ranjit never shows.

  Excel goes back down the fire escape. Just as he’s about to climb through his bedroom window, Maxima appears in her own. “I found a way,” she says.

  19

  Despite a New Year’s Eve party at the Square that involved bottle rockets, a roasted pig, two kegs, and a bottle of absinthe (Sab took a sip, Excel spit his out), the new year already felt like the old—cold desert air, endless cheese sandwiches and instant ramen, evenings spent on lawn chairs on the helipad, staring at the sky. Sab’s days were especially monotonous; Pink Bubble orders were high in demand and only increasing (“I want that Whole Foods account,” Lucia would say, half-joking), so Sab worked well over forty hours a week, sometimes Saturdays, too. “I thought nine-to-five workdays were illegal in Hello City,” she said one night, so exhausted she nearly dozed off at the table. But they needed the money. Odd jobs for Excel became less frequent, and he tried killing time by cleaning the bus and finding cheap ways to eat (when Sab couldn’t take ramen anymore, he learned a box of couscous and a can of black beans, which he’d first had at the Hot Food cart, could last two, sometimes three meals). There were days when he’d sleep until noon, and spend afternoon to evening at Beans!, flipping through their stack of old newspapers and magazines. One day, sitting at a computer, he did a Google news search and typed “Colma” to see what, if anything, was happening back there. Not much, of course, though he saw a story about a new Japanese discount grocery store opening near the good Target, that the official grand opening was scheduled soon, an event he could imagine Maxima attending. She’d stroll through the aisles, accept any offers of free samples, wait ten minutes, then ask for more. If there was entertainment, like a singer on a stool strumming a guitar, or teenagers performing some kind of cultural dance, she’d find a spot in the shade and watch, applaud politely, then scan through the crowd in a way that looked like she was actually searching for someone, a thing she always did, though Excel never understood why.

  He finally wrote her in March. He’d never responded to her e-mail from the first weeks in Hello City, but she’d sent another in January. He searched his inbox, opened it. Happy New Year, Excel, it read, I hope you stood up, a reminder that you were supposed to be standing when midnight struck, that it would bring good luck in the new year to come. It was a Filipino superstition, one he’d done all his life (he couldn’t count the number of years Joker yanked him awake from the couch, forcing him to his feet), but this time, in all the noise and chaos of the Square’s New Year’s Eve party, he’d forgotten to stand, and was seated on a crowded bench, wedged between Sab and a Hello City person he didn’t know or even speak to.

  He typed his message to Maxima:

  Hi. Yes, I stood right when the year changed. Hope you did too. Things are fine here. Lots of work, very busy. I hope you are doing good. I’ll tell more soon.

  He reread it several times, tried to hear his voice in the words; like Maxima’s e-mail, they were just text on the screen. But he found himself cutting and rearranging the phrases and words, like the headlines he’d found in Red’s newspapers and magazines.

  Here I stood right

  soon more home

  when changed you are doing good

  He looked up from the screen, noticed the sun had set, but that the evening wasn’t cold anymore, not at all. Spring, he thought. He reread the e-mail a final time, clicked Send.

  THE FOLLOWING WEEK, RED ASKED FOR HELP AGAIN, AND EXCEL said yes.

  The Hello City Town Council had asked if Unaired Television Pilot could be moved to the back of the stage in the Square. They’d been looking for ways to rejuvenate the space; having Red’s piece there would be a first step. Red was reluctant at first, concerned that his art might be seen as merely decorative, like a painting loaned back and forth. He agreed to donate it to the Square on the stipulation that the piece become more interactive, that anyone in Hello City be allowed to make words and phrases to be projected on the plastic screens, which would be changed each month. “That way, it becomes an evolving, living thing,” Red said, “and that’s what art is all about, am I right?”

  Excel said yes, absolutely, though he was secretly disappointed by the idea that the phrase he’d come up with—End of an Era Still to Come—would be gone, his one contribution no longer on display.

  They dismantled the wall of TVs, one row at a time, loaded twenty sets onto the truck, drove them to the Square. They unloaded, and returning to the truck, Red tossed Excel the keys. “You drive,” he said.

  Excel felt his face warm up, more from embarrassment than all the lifting. “I don’t know how,” he said.

  “Then you’ll learn,” Red said, getting into the passenger’s seat. Excel opened the driver’s-side door. Far as he knew, there we
re never police in Hello City, but still. “We have work to do,” Red said, “c’mon.”

  Excel sat in the driver’s seat. The truck was an automatic, which Red said made driving a no-brainer. He pointed out the accelerator, the brakes, the gear shifts. Excel turned on the ignition, looked out the windshield and both side windows, but the strange logic of the rearview mirrors threw him; it made no sense to look behind you in order to move forward.

  “Excel,” Red said, almost sternly, “go.”

  He released his foot from the brake then stepped gently on the gas and took off. Hello City had no roads or lanes, just dirt, so there was nothing to swerve around or dodge. Still, he couldn’t believe how little strength, the near-zero effort, was required to move an object as big as the truck.

  “Faster,” Red said.

  “I can’t,” Excel said, eyes fixed straight ahead.

  “Go”—he slammed both hands on the dashboard—“now!” and Excel flinched and pressed hard on the gas, sending them down the dirt faster than he’d ever imagined he could move.

  Red had Excel drive the rest of that day, and when they returned to Infinity Inc.—Red always parked the truck just outside the front gate—he told Excel he could use it whenever he needed it. All he had to do was ask.

  “I don’t have a license,” Excel said.

  “It’s HC,” Red said. “Nobody cares.”

  Excel walked back home, buzzing from the high of driving for the first time in his life. He hadn’t gone far, drove what was essentially a straight-shot, back-and-forth route, and few, if anyone, had actually seen him. But should Sab know he’d driven? If so, she’d ask him to apply for a driver’s license, so that he could drive himself to possible jobs outside Hello City. Or she’d insist on returning to Colma to get her mother’s picture, the two of them taking shifts on the long drive up. She might plan road trips, destinations that crossed straight lines.

  He wouldn’t tell her, not yet, though she clearly suspected something was off. “Excel,” she said, as soon as he entered the bus, “why are you smiling like that?”

  EXCEL AND RED REBUILT UNAIRED TELEVISION PILOT THE NEXT DAY; at the town council meeting the following week, Red plugged the entire wall of TVs in again, this time showing new phrases and messages on each individual screen, put together by the people of Hello City.

  I Am Afraid

  SCOTUS Votes to Storm the World

  Takedown and Stay

  There were dozens more, too many to read. Rosie, still in charge of running meetings, asked the audience to vote either for or against keeping the wall of TVs as a temporary backdrop for the stage. She called for those in favor and everyone, including Excel, who had never voted on anything before (and had always assumed he never would) raised his hand. It was a unanimous decision, but Excel still felt he’d made a difference.

  After the meeting, Rosie and her band took the stage; with all the TV screens behind them, they really did look like they were performing in a new venue altogether, backlit by the glowing words and phrases. The TVs cast a cool and eerie light on the Oracle, which made her look even more mythical, like she truly possessed an otherworldly knowledge, and all her answers were unquestionably right. Volunteers went beyond overboard with decorations, stringing up even more lights, connecting everything with rainbow-colored streamers, paper flowers, even piñatas of the letter H. The Square was like a birthday party with no end in sight.

  20

  * * *

  NAME: Jerry Borger

  AGE: 55

  WEBSITE: Fil-Am Catholic Hearts Connections

  LOCATION: Concord, New Hampshire

  OCCUPATION: Civil Engineer

  EDUCATION: College (plus MASTER’S!!)

  STATUS: Single

  CHILDREN: None

  FAVORITE MOVIE: Forrest Gump

  FAVORITE TV SHOW: Gilligan’s Island, CNN

  FAVORITE SONG: You Needed Me by Anne Murray (learn Anne Murray!)

  FAVORITE FOOD: Tex-Mex, American

  HAPPIEST MEMORY: sailing with parents

  HOBBIES: Computer chess, Ship in a bottle, living life to the fullest

  GREATEST FEAR: Not living life to the fullest, trapped in small spaces, snakes

  LIFE GOAL: Living life to the fullest, visit all 7 continents

  MOTTO: Every day is another day to make the most out of life

  * * *

  Read it again,” Maxima says.

  Excel yawns, rubs his eyes. It’s past midnight and they’re in Maxima’s room—he’s sitting at her desk, she’s installing a pull-up bar in her doorway—and Excel is reviewing the file of Jerry Borger, the man Maxima thinks could give them the ten thousand dollars. On the first read, everything on the sheet seemed so vital, like the personal information on a driver’s license or passport, or any document guaranteeing your identity—things Excel doubts he’ll ever have. But on the third read, the facts of Jerry Borger’s life seem like a jumble of trivia. On paper, he’s just another of Maxima’s men.

  “All right,” he says, and tucks the sheet back into the manila folder, “done.”

  Maxima jumps up, catches the bar. “You’ll want to review it again,” she says. “It’s good to memorize it in advance.”

  “In advance of what?”

  She does a pull-up, then another. “Of meeting him.”

  “Meeting him?”

  “Ano ba? I’m supposed to do this on my own? You’re part of this too.” Children, she says, are a hardship. You have to clothe and feed them, take them to the doctor, pay for their school; all those things are a justification to ask for money. And men who are open to the possibility of stepchildren are sometimes willing to give even more. Jerry Borger, she thinks, is that kind of man. “We talked twice, and he knows about you. And if things go right, he’ll want to meet.” Excel looks at Maxima’s computer, tries picturing himself talking to this Jerry Borger guy on the screen. Instead, he imagines talking to Sab as she sits at a Beans! computer terminal in Hello City, a baby wearing the Nirvana onesie bouncing on her lap.

  But maybe it’s a trick, talking to people through screens. A way to make you feel closer to someone than you really are, a denial of the actual distance between. Phone calls and text messages, even voice mails—those things are honest and real, remind you that you’re not together at all.

  “So when I meet this guy,” Excel says, “what am I supposed to say?”

  “Say hello,” she says, “and see what happens.”

  She does five more pull-ups then drops to the floor, does ten push-ups without breaking a sweat. She gets up and stands behind Excel, reaches over him, and flips on the webcam. “You need to acclimate,” she says, “learn to see yourself.” She grabs his head, positions it in view of the camera. For the first time, he sees himself on-screen. He’d imagined it was like looking in a mirror, but when Maxima shifts his face left and right, there’s the slightest second of a delay. The same thing happens when he waves, smiles, even blinks; it’s like the Excel on-screen is from a parallel timeline just one moment behind his own. And when he looks at himself, the Excel on-screen can’t look back; his eyes are slightly downcast, like he means to type something on the keyboard. Despite all this technology, you still can’t look yourself in the eye.

  “I get it,” he says. “Please let go of my head.”

  She steps back, sits on the edge of her bed. “Now, a few more things. First, work on your Filipino accent. But not too thick, okay? Americans don’t like it.”

  “Accent. Got it.”

  “And wear nice clothes. But not too nice. We don’t want to look too poor, but we don’t want to look like we have money. So when you meet, don’t wear that ugly drunk face shirt. Wear the Target one.”

  “I will.”

  “And don’t look too American.”

  No one has ever told him that before. “I don’t know what that means.”

  “It means . . .” She looks at him, tilts her head like she’s slightly perplexed by his face. “It means this.”
She slouches one shoulder, hunches over a little, lets her head hang to the side. “You look so casual, so lazy. Like everything is so easy. Stand up straight! Be tall! Look slender! Like you’re ready and willing to work hard! Tingan mo ako.” She straightens up and stretches her neck, smiles an almost disturbingly pleasant smile. “See? Like a good Filipino boy. Understand?”

  “A good Filipino boy. Got it.”

  She doesn’t look convinced, but there’s time to get it right.

  For now, the plan is to talk to Jerry a few more times before he and Excel meet. Excel’s job, in the meantime, is to practice. “And one last thing,” she says, “your name is Perfecto.”

  “Perfecto?”

  “Perfecto. P-E-R-F-E-C-T-O. Jerry thinks my name is Perfecta and that my son is Perfecto. We never use real names, don’t you know?”

  Perfecta. Perfecto. Excel thinks of amateur magicians or lion tamers. Maybe a washed-up pop duo from the Philippines. “Those names are ridiculous,” he says.

  Maxima looks offended, even hurt. Her great-great uncle on her father’s side was named Perfecto, and her family, she explains, had a long tradition of giving children names that suggested good fortunes to come. She lists names of far-off distant relatives (some living, most dead), people Excel has never heard of and will never meet: Royce, Princessa, Guggenheim, Beethoven, even a pair of third cousins, twin brothers named Harvard and MIT, who run an import-export business in Guam. “It’s always been like this,” she says, “since the beginning. It’s why I named you Excel, di ba?”

  THIS WON’T BE THE FIRST TIME EXCEL WAS SOMEONE ELSE.