The Son of Good Fortune

by Lysley Tenorio

  “I don’t understand,” Jerry says, looking worried, even scared. “What’s she saying, Perfecto? What’s happening?”

  Excel looks directly into the camera. “She says she can accept a hard life for herself, but not for me. So if she must leave me in order to find a job, to pay for my school, then it’s okay, because it’s for my future.” Which is the plight Maxima finally chose for Perfecto; instead of a wound or an illness, Perfecto’s tragedy is his future—no school, no job, no hope. That, she’s betting, is the thing Jerry will want to save, the thing that will convince him to send, sooner than later, fifteen thousand dollars.

  Maxima nods. “Talaga,” she says, “it’s true, it’s true.” She rests her head on Excel’s shoulder, then reaches her arms around him, keeps him in a tight embrace, like she never wants to let him go. Excel sees the two of them together in the smaller window at the bottom corner of the screen, and it all looks so real.

  AT SEVEN A.M., EXCEL FINALLY TELLS JERRY GOOD-BYE. MAXIMA AND Jerry continue talking.

  He goes to his room, lies down. The conversation, he thinks, was perfect; they hit all the notes they’d meant to hit. Excel has never acted before, but if that was acting, he thinks he did a pretty good job; anyone watching would’ve been convinced. He thinks of the Sharma family above, wonders if they could hear them through the floor, if they might have believed, too.

  He closes his eyes, tries to rest.

  The heartbeat sound of Maxima pummeling The Bod wakes him. It’s almost three p.m. He gets out of bed, goes to the living room.

  “How long was I asleep?” he asks.

  “A long time,” Maxima says.

  “You talked to Jerry more? After I left?”

  She nods.

  He sits on the couch. “What did he say?”

  “He said he’s worried for us. That he wants to help. And that he doesn’t like us to be apart.”

  “You and Jerry?”

  “Perfecta and Perfecto.” She throws one more punch, then tells Excel the rest: Jerry can spare the fifteen thousand, send it instantaneously, if he wished, but said they need to be honest with themselves. How well do they really know each other? He swears he cares for the both of them, but that this is becoming real emotional territory; at his age, he must protect his own heart, too. So before he sends the money, he wants to meet in person, in real life, and is willing to fly all the way to the Philippines within the next month. “He told me he’s done crazy things before,” Maxima says, “but never for love. So he wants to make sure that you and I are a good investment. Investment. Like we’re real estate or stocks.”

  Excel takes a breath, tries to stay positive. “Okay. So what’s our best option?”

  “Option? There’s no option. What do you think? We’ll fly to Manila and meet him?” She sits on the coffee table, across from Excel. “Ka sayang,” she says, “what a waste. Most times, I’m the one who’s supposed to fly to the men, like going to Nebraska or Delaware is a ticket to paradise. But Jerry offered to come to me.”

  “So that’s it? After all that work. We’re done?”

  “What else is there?” She says she can try to find someone else online, look for more odd jobs that pay in cash; maybe Excel should do the same.

  But he’s tired of plans falling through, of coming close to finishing things after a promising start, then abandoning them in the end. Waiting for someone or something better to come along is no way to live. “We know Jerry and Jerry knows us,” he says, “and we’re so close. I know we are. There has to be a way.” He looks at Maxima; if there’s someone in the world who can make this work, it’s her. He believes it, 100 percent. “Think of something. Please.”

  Maxima looks at Excel, then goes back to The Bod and strikes.

  Someone knocks on the door. Neither of them moves. Excel thinks it’s Roxy—no one else visits—but then imagines that it’s Jerry who, somehow, has found them out.

  More knocking. “Who is it?” Excel asks. He gets up, opens the door, and it’s Sab.

  28

  As soon as Sab steps onto the fire escape, Excel wonders if a pregnant woman is meant to be so high above the ground. This is her first time at the apartment, and when he found Sab at the door, he was so stunned to see her that when she said, “Hello,” he could only state the obvious: “You’re here.”

  “A couple more steps,” he says as Sab climbs. “Just don’t look down.”

  She makes it to the roof, Excel right behind. She turns in a slow circle, taking in the view—the 280 freeway and the Targets on each side, the row of car dealerships, the endless green spread of cemeteries and Old Hoy Sun Ning Yung, just down below. The wind is strong, billowing her pink and black-checkered flannel shirt, whipping around her hair so that he sees faint strands of blue, color he’s never seen.

  He takes the two lawn chairs leaned up against the satellite dish, unfolds and dusts them off. He faces the chairs toward SFO, where a plane, small as a bird, rises in the sky.

  They sit.

  “So that’s what she looks like,” Sab says of Maxima. “She’s beautiful. Though I thought she’d be super tall for some reason.”

  “Nope,” Excel says, “just normal.”

  “Maybe it’s the way you’d described her. But she does throw a mean punch. I almost felt sorry for that blue dummy guy.”

  “He’s used to it.”

  “Your apartment is cute,” she says, “cozy. And those are some crazy action photos in the living room. I can’t believe you never told me she was a movie star.”

  “She did a few films,” he says, “before I came along.”

  “Well, it was nice of her to offer me a wine cooler. I hope she wasn’t offended that I said no.” Excel assures her that Maxima was fine with it, which seemed true: though she looked caught off guard by Sab’s arrival, she was polite and hospitable, without going overboard. There was no sense that she was acting.

  The wind picks up and Sab hugs herself, rubs her arms up and down. Excel unzips his hoodie, wraps it around her. “Thanks,” she says. “It was one hundred and two degrees in Hello City. I should be grateful for this weather.”

  “I can grab a blanket, if you want.”

  “This is good. But now you’re cold.”

  He shakes his head. “Not at all.”

  Moments pass, silent. Sitting side by side like this almost feels like being on the helipad.

  “So,” she says, “this is where you’d hang out when you were a kid?”

  He nods. “When I found out I was TNT, it’s the first place I went when I got home.”

  “Who else hangs out up here?”

  “Just me.”

  “I wish I’d had a place like this,” she says. “When I was a kid, if I wanted to get away, I’d just go to the garage and wedge myself between the busted washing machine and the wall.”

  He asks again if she wants a blanket, but what he really wants to ask is, How are you? Simple as that. He wants to know if she’s nauseated, if her back aches or feet swell, if she really does find herself craving weird combinations of food. Since Sab told him she was pregnant, since he learned he could be a father, they’ve barely been together. He has no real sense of what her life has been like.

  “Excel,” she says, “you’re staring at me.”

  “I am? Sorry. I’m just really glad you’re here.”

  She takes his hand, the first they’ve touched since she left him at the Greyhound station in El Centro. “Me, too,” she says.

  “So, when did you get back?”

  “Day before yesterday. The drive up was faster than the drive down, for some reason.”

  “Are you staying awhile?” He thinks: Let’s leave tonight.

  “I moved back in with my aunt. She kicked the tarantula-collecting boyfriend out, so there’s room again. The rent’s cheap, free parking. It’s good enough for now.”

  “You’re back? What does that mean?”

  “It means what it means.” She pauses, lets go of Excel’s han
d. “It means I’m done. With Hello City. With the bus. With—”

  “Sab, I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry that our last call went badly, and I’m sorry for sending the baby shirt. It was wrong of me. You need time and space to figure things out, and I’ll give them to you, I swear. As much as you need.”

  The wind speeds up. She wraps herself tighter in the hoodie. “I’m not pregnant, Excel,” she says. “Not anymore. I went to a clinic.”

  Only the sounds register at first—sharp c at the beginning, sharp c at the end. “A clinic?”

  “Nine days ago. In El Centro. Lucia took me.”

  He imagines Sab inside a small waiting room, windowless and gray, a low stack of Time magazines atop a near-empty watercooler, like the room he’d sat in years before, in that downtown San Francisco office where Maxima and Joker paid a lawyer seven hundred dollars to see what could be done about their situation, their future. He imagines Sab being led into a sterile white room, disappearing behind a door.

  “You didn’t call me,” he says.

  “I thought about it. I did. But I worried that, if we spoke, I’d back out.”

  “We could’ve just talked.”

  “I didn’t need to talk. I made the decision and it was the right one for me.”

  He gets up from his chair, stands near the edge of the roof. Below, a line of cars moves slowly into the complex—tenants back from work, after a long day gone. A blue sedan pulls into a parking spot, all four doors opening at once, the family inside stepping out and dispersing, then coming together as they file up the stairs. The father holds white plastic bags stacked with boxes of takeout, the mother tucks a bottle of wine under her arm as she digs for house keys. The kids—they look seven or eight—drag behind, taking turns socking each other in the arm, laughing.

  “I wasn’t ready,” Sab says. “My mom died when I was seven. My dad wasn’t around. My grandmothers, they basically housed me, that’s about it. I wasn’t raised, Excel. How can I raise a baby?”

  I wasn’t raised. Maxima always said the same of herself. But for better or worse, she raised Excel.

  “I can’t have a baby,” Sab says. “Not now. I need to be on my own.”

  “On your own?”

  She looks at the ground, moves a foot side to side in the rooftop gravel. “Without anyone.”

  When he saw Sab at the door, he wondered if she’d come for him, if she wanted him back in Hello City. He’d hoped she was there because she missed him, because she needed them to be together. He’d even thought that they might leave tonight, that they’d be back in the bus by morning.

  Excel sits back down and leans over, knees on elbows, forehead resting on clasped hands. He feels Sab’s fingers on the back of his neck, each one pressing into his skin. He wants to tell her to go, to let him be alone, but knows they might never be this close again.

  “You’re sure?” he asks. “This is what you want?”

  Sab, her hand still on his neck, says it is.

  Eyes shut, he thinks of the bus now, empty of their belongings, no evidence that they’d once called it home. But something always remains, and he wonders what he and Sab may have left behind—a balled-up ramen wrapper behind the trash can, a sample-size bar of Pink Bubble soap, unused headline clippings left on the floor. Who would discover them? Lucia? Or the weekend guests who rent out the bus? Whatever was forgotten, it’s lost to him now.

  Excel sits up, remembers suddenly that he took no pictures from his time in Hello City. Did Sab? He doesn’t ask.

  29

  Six days later, on an early Friday afternoon, Roxy drops off Maxima and Excel at the curb of the international terminal at San Francisco International Airport.

  Excel grabs their bags from the trunk, a black carry-on with wheels and a blue duffel bag (it says O, the Oprah Magazine on the side, a freebie with Roxy’s subscription). Maxima pulls boarding passes and passports from her purse, double-checks their names and confirmation numbers. A strong wind hits (from all those airplanes, Excel thinks) and tiny rectangles of paper come scattering along the ground. He picks one up, sees that they’re American Airlines luggage tags. “Do we need to fill these out?” He holds up the tag.

  “Not necessary,” Maxima says.

  He puts it in his pocket, a souvenir.

  “Picture-picture!” Roxy takes out a camera, scoots Maxima and Excel together. Maxima demands a minute to redo her ponytail and lipstick, then tugs and straightens Excel’s polo shirt, wipes off lint from his new corduroy pants. They stand side by side and smile. “Perfect,” Roxy says, then gives them each a hug.

  She steps back and fans her face with her hands, suddenly teary. “It’s just so much,” she says, “to be here again. This is where we arrived, all three of us. Nineteen years ago. Look how far we’ve come. And now, you look like you’re leaving . . .”

  “Don’t be tanga,” Maxima says, and gives a soft flick to Roxy’s temple. “We’re not going anywhere.”

  Roxy dabs her eyes. “I know,” she says, “but still,” then switches to Tagalog. Excel catches bits, but can barely hear. The curb is too crazy with taxis, cars, shuttle buses, and all the people coming out of them, nonstop. The whole world, it seems, is leaving today.

  THEY ENTER THE AIRPORT, TAKE IN ALL THE SHINY MONITORS AND their glowing blue screens, the abstract metal structures suspended from the ceiling, even a monorail track curving along the building’s outer edge. “It’s like the future,” Excel says, but one without Sab, without the baby. The past days, he’s been so down, so lonely, he almost asked Maxima to call everything off, to end all contact with Jerry. Let’s just all move on, he’d thought. But there was Z to worry about, what Gunter did to him. And he remembered Rosie, how she thanked him when he gave her the hat full of cash, none of it from him.

  Maxima finds the Arrivals-Departures monitor, confirms that Philippine Airlines flight 714, coming from Tampa, will land on time at 3:12 p.m. Jerry, whose flight from Manchester, New Hampshire, is scheduled to land at 4:30 p.m. in the domestic terminal, will meet them here, near door 5.

  It’s 2:45 p.m. now. “We’re early,” Excel says, “maybe we should go to him?”

  Maxima shakes her head. “If we look for him and he looks for us then everybody just misses everybody. Stick to the plan.”

  They take seats near the long row of ticket counters. There’s Air China, Air Mexico, Air Canada, Air France, and Air New Zealand (“Everybody’s a copycat,” Maxima says), each one with snaking lines that grow longer by the minute. Most travel solo or in pairs, though the line for Air India is packed with whole families, and the one at the front of the line is its own crowd of loud and jumpy kids, the mother arguing with the woman behind the ticket counter while the father fumbles through a stack of travel documents, and grandparents who stand side by side, perfectly still and impossibly patient.

  He wonders if the Sharmas, the neighbors above their apartment, have ever stood in that line. He wonders if Ranjit has ever been on a plane.

  A pair of TSA agents (Transportation Security Administration—Excel had to Google what “TSA” meant, learned they were the ones to avoid) walks by, their shirts bright blue and covered with badges.

  “You’re sure this is right?” Excel whispers to Maxima. “What about customs or security. Shouldn’t we get our hands stamped?”

  “This isn’t a dance club,” Maxima says. “Tama na, enough. You’re making me nervous. Here”—she reaches into her purse for a roll of Mentos—“have one.”

  He takes two, chews them fast. The last time he was here, he’d just been born, and he’d always imagined that SFO would be a welcoming place. But as they wait for Jerry, the airport starts feeling packed and stuffy, TSA agents are everywhere, and the people who arrive look no different from the people who depart. He watches the endless, twisty lines of passengers waiting to pass through the security checkpoint, sees how they fan themselves with open passports, as if flaunting their ability to come and go as they please. But they have hours and
hours of travel ahead, some even have days; for them, the airport is only the beginning. For once, Excel and Maxima are the lucky ones, already at their destination.

  ALL OF THIS IS MAXIMA’S IDEA.

  The day after Jerry proposed visiting them in the Philippines, Maxima said yes, and suggested they start planning his visit ASAP. But the very next day, she shared tragic (“but maybe fortuitous?” she’d said) news: her beloved Auntie Fritzie, who’d only recently moved from Manila to Tampa to be with her son, Jojo-Boy, had died of a sudden brain aneurism. Jojo-Boy, knowing how close Perfecta and Perfecto were to Auntie Fritzie, insisted they attend the funeral, and bought them two round-trip tickets. The visit would be quick, just three or four days, but their return flight included a long layover in San Francisco, not quite a full day, but long enough that they could meet, have a meal or two together, get to know each other better in real life. Maybe, if flights were affordable and the timing was right, Jerry could meet them? “To see if we’re a worthy investment,” she’d said.

  Excel was crouched on the fire escape outside Maxima’s window as she waited for an answer, the switchblade twirling in her hand.

  “I’m so sorry about Auntie Fritzie,” Jerry had said, his face bright on the screen, “but maybe you’re right? Maybe this is the universe giving us a sign?” He sounded hesitant, almost nervous, but he said he would check his calendar, try to rearrange some meetings, see how many frequent flier miles he had. “I’ll let you know,” he said.