He booked his flight the next day.
They would need documents. Maxima’s passport had expired long before; Excel never had one. But Roxy knew a guy in San Jose who could make passable passports for cheap, for whatever country you wished. “His work is the best,” she said. Roxy drove them down, and within an afternoon Maxima and Excel each possessed a maroon-colored passport, one for Perfecta, one for Perfecto, the word Pilipinas in yellow letters at the top and Pasaporte at the bottom, the Philippines coat of arms in the middle. The passports only needed to look real enough to convince Jerry, should for some reason he ask to see them, but Maxima was genuinely impressed. Excel didn’t know if they looked real or not, but he was surprised, a little bitter, that such a flimsy and near-weightless booklet could give you so much of the world.
THEY SEE HIM BEFORE HE SEES THEM.
“Jerry!” Maxima calls out. “Darling! Over here!”
He turns, walks toward them. Though his face in real life matches the face on-screen, he’s taller than Excel imagined, six feet at least, and pretty fit for fifty-five. In his blazer–polo shirt combo and khaki pants, he reminds Excel of certain substitute teachers in high school. Semiprofessional and pleasant, competent enough to get through the day, never to be seen again.
Maxima and Excel get to their feet. “Perfecta, Perfecto,” he says, a little out of breath. “We made it. We’re all here.”
Maxima takes the lead, kisses Jerry on the cheek, then gives him a long, tight hug, like old sweethearts finally reunited. Excel takes this as his cue, holds out his hand. “Hello Sir Jerry,” he says, then catches himself, “I mean, Jerry!” The flub was planned to lighten the mood, and it works perfectly: Jerry laughs and pulls him into a hug.
“Jerry, if we may,” Excel says, “we would like to give you a pasalubong.” He unzips the O Magazine duffel bag and pulls out three packs of Oh Fresh! dried mango, two tins of Ding-Ding mixed nuts, and a white T-shirt that says THRILLA FROM MANILA: CUTE-CUTE! in red, blue, and yellow letters. “Pasalubong,” Maxima says, “it means a souvenir from the place you’re coming from. These are beloved snacks from the Philippines, and see these colors?”—she points to the T-shirt—“that’s like our flag. We hope you enjoy.”
Jerry examines each gift, smiling and nodding, but Excel worries that the stickers and tags from the Dollar Tree in Colma might still be attached. He thought the whole pasalubong thing was going overboard, and told Maxima that Jerry wouldn’t care if they showed up empty handed, and weren’t Perfecta and Perfecto supposed to be dirt poor anyway? “Of course they’re poor,” Maxima shot back, “but they’re not tacky. Of course they’ll bring pasalubong!” If he didn’t like her plan, she told him, he was welcome to strike out on his own.
“Well, I think pasa”—Jerry pauses, tries again—“pasa-loo-bong is wonderful and generous, and these gifts are very, very dear. Thank you.”
Jerry checks his watch, apologizes for his flight’s twenty-five minute delay. They exit the terminal and get into a taxi, Jerry up front, Maxima and Excel in the back. “San Francisco Marriott, Fourth and Market,” he tells the driver. “And fast as you can, please. Our time is precious”—he turns around, smiles, and winks—“di ba?”
JERRY BOOKED TWO ROOMS AT THE MARRIOTT, ONE FOR EXCEL AND Maxima, one for himself. Jerry checks them in and gives them their room keys, and they take an elevator to the sixteenth floor. “Meet in the lobby in thirty minutes?” he says, stepping off, and Maxima says, “Perfect.”
Maxima and Excel get off on the twenty-second floor, find room 2270 at the end of the hall. Excel fumbles with the key—it’s like a credit card, not an actual key, which seems unnecessarily confusing—but finally figures it out, and the room inside is airy and clean. Against one wall are two queen-size beds with wall-mounted leather headboards (“It’s like they’re floating,” Excel says) and against the other, a mahogany dresser and marble-top desk, with the sleekest office chair Excel has ever seen. He sits on it and spins, rolls himself to the window, tall and wide as a wall with a view of the city, the water, the sky. He leans his forehead against the glass. He’s never been this high up, never seen so much at once.
He wishes Sab were here to see it.
He turns to Maxima. She’s on the far bed, lying on top of the covers, staring at the ceiling. “So what do you think?” he asks.
“About?”
“Jerry.”
“Jerry? Jerry’s fine. Better looking than I thought. Nice body, too. But his cologne smells cheap. Old Spice, maybe.”
“Do you think he believes us?”
“If he doesn’t now,” she says, turning to the wall, “he will by the end.” Her answer sounds like something between a bet or a promise, maybe even a threat. None of them as reassuring as he’d hoped.
Maxima says no more talking. She needs sleep, ten minutes, maybe fifteen. Excel turns back to the window, still amazed by the view. Years from now, he wonders which view he’ll remember more: the galaxies and stars above Hello City, or the thousands of people twenty-two floors below.
ON THEIR DESCENT TO THE LOBBY, MAXIMA AND EXCEL LOOK AT themselves in the elevator mirrors. She wears a pale yellow blouse and a long gray skirt, a wool wrap borrowed from Roxy, and a gold necklace with a silver crucifix. He’s in his gray Target shirt—tucked in, sleeves cuffed—and his Converse high-tops, the ones Maxima gave him as a gift out of nowhere, when she first made money from the men online. He’s cleaned them so well that no one would guess he wore them for nine months in the desert. “We look nice,” he says.
Jerry is in the lobby, polo shirt switched out for a white shirt and blue tie. To keep things simple, they have dinner at The Peppercorn & The Caper, the restaurant right off the lobby, where the cheapest entrée, Excel notices, is a $24 burger. “Cheese is extra?” he says, his Perfecto accent almost slipping.
“It’s so expensive, Jerry,” Maxima says, “I will pay, okay?” but he says absolutely not, that this short trip is their welcome to America. “I want to be a good ambassador,” he says. “Consider tonight my . . . pasa-loo-bong.” Maxima laughs, kicks Excel under the table. He starts laughing, too.
Dinner is what Excel dreads the most; the possibility for awkward lulls in conversation, and the fear that, in an attempt to fill that silence, he’ll screw up Perfecto’s story. But as soon as their food and drinks arrive (Jerry and Maxima order steak, Excel gets the burger after all) Maxima takes the lead, telling Jerry about Auntie Fritzie’s funeral, how devastated the family was, but how lovely and youthful she looked in the casket. “Gone too soon,” Maxima says, voice quivering, “but her lifelong dream was to be buried in America. The home of her heart. It’s what she always said, swear to God.”
“She sounds like an amazing woman,” Jerry says.
She nods emphatically. “And she’s so lucky too, because her son was with her, right until the end. Mother and child”—she places her hand on the table and, just as they’d rehearsed, Excel squeezes it tight—“should be together.” Maxima dabs tears with her pinky and Excel checks Jerry’s face, hoping it registers a look of approval or sympathy, some sign to indicate that saving Perfecta from a life in Saudi Arabia, and keeping her together with Perfecto, is worthy of his investment.
“Know what?” Jerry says, raising his wineglass, “I think so, too. So let’s toast. To mother and child.” Excel raises his Coke and Maxima her frozen piña colada, and the three of them toast, almost aggressively, the clink of their glasses so loud it startles them all.
DINNER MOVES SMOOTHLY, LIKE ONE OF THEIR ONLINE CONVERSATIONS. Jerry follows up on Perfecto’s report on the history of Mount Pinatubo, recommends a good book on volcanology that he’d be happy to send. Excel asks if Jerry’s company won the bid to build that proposed elementary school; no word yet, he says, but he’s crossing his fingers. Maxima stays cheerful (the piña colada helps) but remembers to bring up daily hardships—the flooded kitchen, the closed market, the reality that no jobs are in sight. “You’ll be just fine,” Jerry promise
s, “we’ll get through it together,” and Excel, for some reason, feels reassured, finds himself genuinely smiling, even laughing, throughout the meal (Jerry’s Forrest Gump impression—his favorite movie—is dead on). Later, after the waiter clears their table, Excel catches their reflection in the adjacent mirrored wall, the three of them relaxing in their chairs, comfortable in their momentary silence, like people who easily belong together—a son, a mother, a father. Excel imagines himself a father too, kneeling on the floor of the bus, arms open as Sab helps guide the baby’s first steps toward him. When he learned Sab was pregnant, this scenario kept playing out in his mind: maybe he’d seen it in a diaper commercial, or at someone’s family picnic at the cemetery. Maybe it’s a moment that just makes sense—a baby learning to walk a steady path, ready to be held at the end.
“Perfecto?” Jerry says. “You okay?”
Excel blinks, shakes his head quickly. “Sorry, Sir Jerry,” he says, “I’m a little tired. From the travel.”
“No worries, my friend,” he says. “I get terrible jet lag when I travel. It’s like you’re here, but your body’s in another time.”
“Yes,” Excel says. “Thank you for your understanding.”
We’ll only take what we need, Maxima had said. Maybe they’ve already taken too much.
THEY END DINNER WITH A SHARED BROWNIE SUNDAE AND ESPRESSOS, and rack up a $200 bill. Jerry hands the waiter his credit card, but Maxima shakes her head. “You’re too generous,” she says.
“It’s worth every penny,” he says, then excuses himself to the bathroom. Once he’s out of sight, Excel leans in to Maxima. “How are we doing?” he asks. “Is this going well?”
She nods. “It’s going good.” She picks up her espresso spoon, slowly stirs the piña colada dregs.
“He seems to like everything we say.”
“He does.”
“And he’s actually kinda funny.”
“Good sense of humor,” she says, “yes.” She stops stirring, leaves the spoon in the glass but stares straight at it. She leans back, arms dropped at her sides. “Excel, how long have we been here now?”
“Since check-in?”
“No. How long have we been here. In the States. How many years now? What did Roxy say, when she dropped us off. ‘Look how far we’ve come.’ Ano ba? How far?”
Excel doesn’t know how to answer, if he should even try. “Don’t drink any more tonight,” he says. “It just messes with your head.”
She blinks twice, shuts her eyes, then flashes them wide open. “Yes. Okay. You’re right. There’s still more to do.” She shakes out her hair, pulls it back again into a ponytail, so tight that Excel sees what might be lines of gray or, possibly, just a catch of white light from the chandelier crystals above.
THEY WALK TO THE EMBARCADERO TO SEE THE BAY BRIDGE AT night. Standing at the rail overlooking the water, Jerry points to the sections damaged in the earthquake of 1989, explains the repairs made, how they’re meant to withstand any earthquake to come. “Talaga?” Maxima asks. “Really?” Excel worries she’s on the edge of overdoing her interest face, but Jerry believes it, not because he’s a fool, but because he’s earnest, and lives a life of positive thinking. What was it he’d written, in one of his e-mails to Perfecto? Every day is another day to make the most out of life.
You don’t know my life, Excel had wanted to reply. But after these hours with Jerry, he starts to see how that philosophy might work for a guy like him.
They head north along the water, pass restaurants, galleries, the numbered piers. Maxima and Jerry are holding hands now; Excel slows his pace to fall behind and give them privacy, but stays within earshot. Maxima tells Jerry that the village where she grew up had a pier and a bridge. “But made of bamboo!” she laughs. Jerry says he would still love to see the Philippines one day, and he’d love for her and Perfecto to see New Hampshire. “The spring is lovely,” he says, “autumn even lovelier. And people complain about it, but I think winter is pretty great. Have you ever seen snow?”
“I would love to see snow,” she tells Jerry, “on one condition. I don’t shovel!” They both laugh, but Excel knows that Maxima has used that line before.
Up ahead, throngs of people move toward bright lights, loud music. “Let’s go see,” Jerry says. He and Maxima walk ahead but Excel stops, realizes they’re approaching Pier 39. Last time he was there, the day had started well, better than all the birthdays before. But Maxima wrecked it; he’d left Pier 39 ten years old, a different person entirely.
“Perfecto!” Jerry waves him over. “Let’s have a picture!” He and Maxima are standing against the rail, Pier 39 and the darkening water in the background. Photoshop me in later, he wants to say, but knows he should pose for the photo. He catches up to them, and a blond woman with a hugely overstuffed backpack—she sounds like a German tourist—offers to take their picture, and the three of them rearrange themselves—Maxima, Jerry, then Excel. With a three-two-one countdown, they link arms and smile. “One more!” the German woman says, then hands the camera back to Jerry. “Lovely family,” she says, and Excel thinks this might be the strangest day of his life.
THEY HEAD BACK TO THE HOTEL JUST BEFORE TEN P.M. MAXIMA AND Jerry walk together, her arm in his, Excel a few steps behind.
They cross the lobby toward the elevators, but Jerry says he’s going to have a nightcap before heading up. He looks at Excel, puts a hand on his shoulder. “What a great day this was, Perfecto,” he says. “Thank you for letting us have this time together.”
“Thank you, Sir Jerry,” Excel says. “I’ll always have good memories of this day.”
“Me too. But guess what? We still have tomorrow morning. So sleep well, buddy.” He looks at Maxima and nods, heads to the bar. Maxima and Excel step into an elevator, return to their room on the twenty-second floor.
Once inside, Excel removes his shoes and sits on the bed, leans back against the leather headboard, just breathes. I could hide here for a week, he thinks, maybe two. A month, a year. He imagines Sab in a room at the Best Western, and understands why she checked in.
Maxima goes to the mirror above the dresser, reapplies lipstick. “I’m meeting Jerry in the bar,” she says. “You’ll be okay up here, on your own?”
“Sure,” he says. “Take your time.”
“Just one drink. To say good night.”
“Do you think you’ll ask him?”
“About what?”
“The money.”
“The money,” she says, “yes. If the timing is right.”
“What if you didn’t?”
She turns from the mirror, looks at Excel. “Ano ba? What do you mean?”
“I mean, what if we just get through this visit, then tell him we figured things out on our own, let him think Perfecta and Perfecto will be okay after all. Maybe he’ll believe it?”
“You have a debt to pay, Excel. And we’ve come this far already.”
Jerry has been generous. More than that, he’s been kind. But Excel thinks of the fire he started, of everything it burned down. He thinks of Z, the ticket he needs to get home. “What if Jerry says no?”
“If he says no?” Maxima puts her lipstick away, then stares at her reflection for several seconds, like she wants to remember who she is in this moment, long after it’s gone. “If he says no”—she grabs her purse, heads to the door—“then we had a nice night in San Francisco.”
30
They’re in a taxi by ten the next morning, Excel in front, Maxima and Jerry, who’s wearing the THRILLA FROM MANILA: CUTE-CUTE! T-shirt under his blazer, in the back. Maxima didn’t return to the room until after 7:00 a.m.; Excel heard her shower and change while he pretended to sleep. He doesn’t know if Jerry agreed to give them the money; he’ll ask when Jerry leaves. Whatever else happened last night is Maxima’s business.
Jerry tells the driver to take all three of them to the international terminal, though he should be departing from the domestic. “What about your flight?” Maxima s
ays. “You’ll be late, mahal.” But Jerry’s flight, it turns out, is delayed by ninety minutes. “Now I get to see you both off,” he says.
Excel looks back at Maxima. This isn’t part of the plan.
They pull up to the curb, gather their bags, enter the airport. “We’re checked in,” Maxima says, showing Jerry their boarding passes (fakes also purchased from Roxy’s guy in San Jose), and they walk to the departures board, find their outbound flight, San Francisco to Manila. “Would it be all right,” Jerry says, “to have a moment with Perfecto?” Maxima says of course, and he takes Excel aside.
“I’m going to be up front and to the point,” Jerry says. “I’m very fond of the both of you, and I hope our time together was the first of many, many more to come.”
“So do I,” Excel says.
“Now forgive me if I’m overstepping, but I need to tell you something. You’re a very bright young man, and I know your life is full of challenges. But you have to commit to yourself, do you understand?”
“I think so.”
“You need to work hard, stay in school. Make the most of your talents for you and Perfecta. You are her investment, so you need to be your own investment, too. Never forget that.”
“I won’t,” Excel says, “I promise.”
“And one last thing.” He puts his hands on Excel’s shoulders, gives them a firm squeeze. “Be good to your mother. The best you can be.”
Excel doesn’t know why Jerry says this, what he and Maxima might have discussed the night before; still, he promises to follow his advice. He steps forward, the first one to hug this time, and before Jerry lets him go, Excel whispers into his ear, “I’m sorry,” then pulls away.
“Don’t be sorry,” Jerry says. “Good-byes are sad, never easy.”
Jerry returns to Maxima. Excel stays behind to give them privacy, but he watches them whisper in each other’s ear, as if all their parting words are secrets. They kiss then embrace, slightly swaying and holding tight, like neither is ready for the other to fly away.
The Son of Good Fortune Page 22