32
There comes a stretch of days when life seems okay.
Excel works steady shifts at The Pie. Nothing torturous (Sloth the Sleuth has been retired again), just monotonous. He’s Peter the Greeter most days, sometimes the cashier—nothing that will earn him tips, but he’ll tolerate that for now. Gunter remains an asshole to everyone, though one day he comes to work humbled, with thick rubbery knee braces on each leg and a black eye. “Two nights ago I’m closing up late,” he tells the staff, “and in the parking lot, some crazy bitch with sticks jumps out like Michelle Yeoh, clubs me in the knees and left hooks my face. It’s a sad, fucked-up world out there, believe it.” The staff members eye each other, as though the assailant is among them, but when Excel gets home he asks Maxima point blank: “Did you beat up Gunter?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says, sitting on the couch and opening a key lime wine cooler. She takes a sip and grabs the remote, Ang Puso Ko VS. Ang Baril Mo playing again.
Gunter never mentions Z, doesn’t ask if anyone has seen him; Excel has no idea if they’ve communicated or not. But Z sends occasional e-mails to Excel (his daughter taught him to use the Internet, a thing Gunter never did), the messages brief and to the point, like talking to Z in person. How is the life. Did you learn the words.
Excel doesn’t hear Maxima at night. No flirty talk or lament of daily hardships, no laughing that changes split-second into weeping. Maybe all the men figured out who she really was, warned others to stay away. Maybe Maxima just sleeps.
Sometimes, if they’re both home, they eat dinner together—Spam fried rice, Taco Bell from Roxy. Twice, Excel makes them instant ramen with boiled egg, his go-to dinner back in the bus, and Maxima says it’s pretty good.
Excel has made no decisions about Hello City. With Sab gone, he doesn’t really have anyone, and there’s no one there who really misses him. He has the money to pay for the damages now, and he often thinks of what Rosie said, his first night at the Square. We don’t care where you come from, we’re just happy you came. But he remembers what Lucia said, too, that people aren’t always so forgiving. It’s not the bravest, most honorable thing, but he sends a cashier’s check for ten thousand dollars to Lucia’s Pink Bubble PO box, along with a note that says, “Please forward to the Town Council. Please don’t say it’s from me.” Even if he never moves back to Hello City, he hopes one day to be one of those curious weekend visitors, if only to see the Square, when it’s back up and thriving again.
LATE ONE NIGHT AND BACK FROM WORK, EXCEL REALIZES HE FORGOT his keys. He climbs the low wall of Old Hoy Sun Ning Yung and crosses over the graves, squeezes through the tear in the wire fence, climbs the fire escape. His bedroom window is open, Maxima’s is too. She’s sitting at her computer, dressed in a sweatshirt and denim cutoffs, switchblade twirling in her hand. For a second Excel thinks she’s online with a stranger (Jerry? he thinks), then sees that she’s just staring at her screen saver, not of the galaxy but of the sea, waves rising and falling, folding into themselves in slow motion.
Maxima turns, not startled but surprised. “You’re back,” she says.
He crouches down, crawls through her window. “Forgot my keys again,” he says. “Everything okay?”
She closes the switchblade, sets it next to her keyboard. “I want to talk to you.” She gestures to the edge of her bed, tells him to take a seat.
He thinks he’s in trouble, that he’s done something wrong. He sits.
“A couple days ago,” she says, “I talked to Auntie Queenie.”
“How’s she doing?”
“My sister is”—she pauses, brows crinkled like she’s stressed—“not so good.” Queenie had a second stroke, Maxima explains, one that left her right side completely paralyzed. “It’s hard for her to get around, to feed herself. Even just to breathe.”
“I’m really sorry to hear it. Can we send more money, maybe hire a full-time nurse?”
“We can try that,” she says. “But I think, maybe, it’s not enough.”
“What do you mean?”
“I want to help her, take care of her,” she says. “Be with her.”
“In the Philippines?”
She nods.
“When?”
“I don’t know. Sooner than later, maybe?”
“If you go”—he pauses—“how long would it be?”
“I don’t think I get to decide that,” she says, which, Excel realizes, might mean forever. If Maxima leaves, she may not be able to return.
For now it’s just a plan, she says, but one that’s been on her mind for some time, maybe longer than she realized. “Joker was gone. You were in the desert. I was alone. Once in a while, Queenie would call and say, ‘Maxima! Maxima! Nandito na ako, umuwi ka na. I’m home, I’m home, you come back too!’ And I’m thinking, ‘Why not? What’s my life here?’”
“You have a life,” Excel says.
“Maybe I did, before. There was Joker. There was you. But on my own, there’s too much time. Know what I mean? And for what? Cleaning houses and washing cars? Crying to men across America so they can send me money? So now I’m thinking, ‘Go back. Be with your sister. Take care of her. She’s getting old.’ Like me, di ba?” She pulls back her hair, points to the gray, tries to laugh.
“When you were gone,” she says, “sometimes the only people I talked to were the men online. And the best night I’ve had in so many years was with Jerry. And even then I had to be someone else. What’s that about?”
He looks at the rug, remembers the glimpse of hardwood floor beneath, from that morning he left for Hello City. “Is this because I was gone? Or what I said about Joker? I didn’t mean to—”
“It’s not you.”
“If you go,” he says, unable to look at her, “how will I see you?”
“I’m not sure. But after what happened at the airport, with Joker watching over us like that, we’ll find a way. I have faith. And besides, I’m not worried about you.”
“You’re not?”
“When you were gone, I was so pissed at you for leaving, talaga. But then I knew you were okay, that you could take care of yourself. You moved to the desert. Then you kicked that Jun-Jun asshole’s butt. You convinced a man you were a fourteen-year-old boy who builds that shipping-a-bottle thing. You even tricked me with that stupid professor story and your ‘important discoveries.’ You can get by, Excel. You know how to survive.”
He looks at Maxima. “I learned it from you.”
“I hope so,” she says. “But even if I go, I’ll still help. I saved some money, and Jerry gave extra. Not a lot, but enough for a while.”
“Okay,” he says, “thanks.” He speaks so softly he can barely hear himself.
She gets up from her chair, steps over to her dresser, then the door, then back to her desk, like she’s restless but has no idea where exactly she should be. She finally sits on the floor with her back against the wall, face toward the window. Excel imagines himself out there again, crouched on the fire escape, watching her. “Anyway”—she takes a deep breath and sighs—“it’s just a plan. All in my head. Who knows what will happen. ‘Every day is another day to make the most out of life.’ Just like Jerry says, di ba?”
Excel nods, notices that Maxima’s Virgin Mary night-light is on, its fading light barely there. “I’m sorry,” he says.
“Sorry?”
“I’m sorry life wasn’t better. I’m sorry I didn’t try to make it better.”
“Ano ba?” She comes over, sits beside him. “You did make it better. Of course you did. You came back, didn’t you?”
He looks at her. Nearly a year ago, he was the one who meant to leave forever; now, he imagines a world where Maxima is gone.
“What’ll I do without you, Mom?” he asks.
“You’ll be strong,” she says, “you’ll be good, be the best.” She touches his face, wipes his tears before her own. “Excel.”
It’s almost midnight. Maxima gets
to her feet, rubs her neck and stretches, like she’s just finished a training session. “Gutom kaba?” she asks. “Roxy dropped off some KFC. I’ll cook rice, too?” Excel isn’t hungry but says he is, and on her way out her bedroom door, Maxima reaches for the pull-up bar but only taps it, just barely, with the tips of her fingers, then disappears down the hallway.
Excel looks at the screensaver, watches the slow-lapping waves of the sea. He pictures Maxima filling the screen, pictures himself in a small box at the bottom corner; if she leaves, maybe this is how they’ll meet. He won’t look her directly in the eye—her webcam can’t do that—but at least he’ll see her face.
The room feels warm; Excel needs air. He climbs out the window and up the fire escape, steps onto the roof. It’s a cool night, the departing planes from SFO blink especially bright, and the graves of Old Hoy Sun Ning Yung almost glow from a near-full moon. Compared with those nights in Hello City, when he and Sab would stare up at stars from the helipad, this view isn’t much, but it’s something, and he thinks about writing an H in the rooftop gravel, drawing a circle around it. Could planes passing above see it? Would anyone understand what it means?
Excel hears footsteps, knows he’s not alone. He turns and sees Ranjit, who waves and says hello.
Acknowledgments
Thank you to Julie Barer for her faith in my novel, and to Megan Lynch for helping me to finish it. Thanks to Sara Birmingham, Zachary Wagman, Caitlin Mulrooney-Lyski, and the folks at Ecco and The Book Group, for sending this book into the world.
For the gifts of time and space to write, my thanks to the Blue Mountain Center, the Mesa Refuge, and the Paris Review Writer’s Residency at the Standard East Village. I’m especially grateful to the MacDowell Colony and Yaddo, for years of generosity. Grazie mille to the Bogliasco Foundation for a residency (and an epiphany) that saved this book, and to the American Academy in Rome for a year in Italy (and for the amazing food, excellent company, and great bar).
Special thanks to the staff at all the places mentioned above, who work so hard to provide a welcoming and inspiring environment to write.
For the Joseph Brodsky Rome Prize, my gratitude to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Thanks to Saint Mary’s College of California, especially to the department of English, the MFA program in creative writing, and the Faculty Development Committee.
Tara Runyan and Serena Crawford read early versions of this book, and Bing Magtoto helped with translations. Thank you all.
And Bruce, for every word and sentence, all the chapters (good and bad), always to the end.
In memory of my godfather, David Magsino, with thanks and admiration for his endurance and courage.
Finally, my gratitude and love to my family: my father, who still gives us so much; my nieces and nephews, who keep the family going; my brothers and sisters, who bring me home.
And to my mother, whose name was Estrella.
About the Author
LYSLEY TENORIO is the author of Monstress, named a book of the year by the San Francisco Chronicle. He is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, a Whiting Award, a Stegner fellowship, the Edmund White Award, and the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as residencies from the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, and the Bogliasco Foundation. His stories have appeared in the Atlantic, Zoetrope: All-Story, and Ploughshares, and have been adapted for the stage by the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco and the Ma-Yi Theater in New York City. He is a professor at Saint Mary’s College of California.
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Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
THE SON OF GOOD FORTUNE. Copyright © 2020 by Lysley Tenorio. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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Cover design and illustration by Jim Tierney
FIRST EDITION
Digital Edition JULY 2020 ISBN: 978-0-06-205961-1
Version 04292020
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-205957-4
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The Son of Good Fortune Page 24