I was the third Felix Starro (my dead father was the second), and whenever Papa Felix said my name it meant he was serious; this time, I decided, he was just talking to himself. “You won’t find anything,” I said, and returned to the room. I took the rosaries and sheets off the mirrors, peeled away plastic crucifixes we’d taped to the walls, blew out the candles. I reached into hidden compartments underneath the massage table and carefully removed tiny plastic bags of blood, then dug through the trash to retrieve chicken livers good enough to use for the next day’s Extractions.
Suddenly my cell phone vibrated in my pocket. I looked up, checking to see that Papa Felix was still in the bathroom, then took it out. A text message read, Buy roses. 6pm. 1525 South Van Ness.
I left the livers where they were. I took the day’s cash from the ice bucket, stuffed it into a manila envelope. “I’m going to the bank”—my voice shook, I could feel it—“to make the deposit.” We’d found a Filipino bank near Chinatown where no one questioned large deposits of cash. I changed into a clean white shirt and my good corduroy pants, grabbed my backpack and Windbreaker from the closet.
“Look before you leave,” he said. He meant that I should check the hallway, through the peephole, for anything suspicious; anyone, he said, could be undercover hotel security, ready to arrest us for our activities. But I didn’t look, not this time, and I left the room so fast I nearly collided with a maid vacuuming the hall. She was a Filipina, plump-cheeked and short, younger than me. We had seen each other before.
“Excuse me,” she said in English, “sorry,” but I caught her staring at the DO NOT DISTURB sign on our doorknob. It was always there, to keep maids from finding the batches of blood and bags of chicken livers, or barging in on an Extraction. So the room was never cleaned, and though we kept it tidy ourselves, the Filipino housekeeper looked suspicious, as if thinking, Dirty room.
I said sorry, too, then walked slowly to the exit stairs, ran all the way down.
“Do you know this place, sir?” I showed the taxicab driver the address in the text message. He popped his gum and nodded, and we sped off before I could fasten my seat belt. In minutes I was far away from downtown. For the first time in America, I didn’t know where I was.
We had arrived in San Francisco three weeks before. We worked seven days a week, up to ten hours each day, making the kind of money we could no longer make back home. Once, life was different: years before, Papa Felix had been one of the Philippines’ top healers. He’d made his reputation by curing Batangas City mayor Agbayani’s gout and action star B. J. San Remo’s diabetes, which led him to becoming a regular Very Special Guest Star on It’s Real!! (Di Ba?), the paranormal TV variety hour that named the procedure the Holy Blessed Extraction of Negativities. Once a month for several years my grandfather, my father, and I made the two-and-a-half-hour drive from our home in Batangas City to the TV studio in Manila. I would sit in the last row of the live audience and watch Papa Felix in the monitors above, the zoom angles on his hands penetrating the patient’s belly, like a ghost about to possess a body. When blood was shed the audience would gasp; when fleshy Negativities were extracted, they would cheer.
When I was ten, I snuck backstage to watch the performance. I hid behind the edge of a moveable wall, and as my father chanted Hail Marys into a microphone I saw Papa Felix slip a hand beneath the table and snatch something small and red—a bag of blood the size of a thumb. In an instant the Extraction began, and I felt a hand on the back of my neck. “You don’t belong here,” a stagehand said. He brought me to a white, windowless room, where I waited for what felt like hours, and when my father finally came I told him what I’d seen. He nodded slowly, stared at the ground. “Time to go home” was all he said. Two months later, he died in a jeep wreck, and at the post-funeral potluck I heard Papa Felix tell our guests I was his one comfort, a good, strong boy who would take his father’s place: like a birthmark, the family business was mine forever.
After some years, Mayor Agbayani’s gout returned, followed by prostate cancer, and B. J. San Remo became a double amputee. The big-shot clients were gone, and our loyal following in nearby shantytowns brought in little money; I remembered long months when we were paid with eggs and sacks of rice. “Even the peasants are ripping us off,” Papa Felix griped. And then two years ago, his old rival Chitz Gomez began performing surgeries on Filipinos abroad in Guam and Saudi Arabia, and returned a far wealthier man than before. “We can do better,” Papa Felix said. He called on old connections to help him build a client list in California, then scheduled our trip to San Francisco, where there were plenty of Filipinos in need of healing. It was true: our first patient, a middle-aged sales clerk with stomach tumors and a fear of doctors, fell to his knees when he stepped into our hotel room. “You’re here,” he said, taking Papa Felix’s hand and pressing it against his forehead, “finally.” It was amazing that there were people who remembered Felix Starro—and even more amazing that they still believed in him.
At the end of our first week Papa Felix said, “How I pity them, these Filipinos in America. So many sick without knowing why.” He was standing at the hotel window looking down at the crowds in the street, as if they were his people. “Can you imagine, waiting and waiting, just for someone to bring you hope?”
I lied and said no.
“Buy roses” was a code from a woman named Flora Ramirez; 1525 South Van Ness was the address of her flower shop, which was squeezed between a Mexican bakery and a liquor store. On the storefront window, yellow curly letters spelled out BUHAY BULAKLAK, which translated strangely from Tagalog—it meant “life flowers” in English. I took a deep breath, but just as I reached for the doorknob I glimpsed a streak of dried blood over the ridge of my knuckles. I licked my thumb and rubbed it away, checked my other hand. It was clean. I went inside.
The store was barely bigger than our hotel room, lined with flower-filled shelves and humming refrigerators; everywhere you moved, it seemed, flowers would touch you. A woman was standing at a wooden table behind the cash register. She had a pair of scissors in one hand, white flowers in the other, and one by one she snipped them in half, letting stems fall to the floor. She was not tall, but her tailored blazer and the tight bun of her hair made her seem like a serious businessperson, someone who could get things done. Though I had never seen Flora Ramirez’s picture, I knew it was her. It had to be.
She greeted me in English, like I was any ordinary American customer. I meant to identify myself but was unsure if it was safe to speak: there was one other customer, an old, bent-over woman in a dirty ski jacket with a scarf on her head, moving from bouquet to bouquet, rubbing petals between her fingers.
Flora Ramirez looked at me and said, “You want to buy roses.”
I nodded.
“Roses are on sale. Seven for seven dollars. Red, pink, yellow, white. What is your preference?” She put down her scissors, stepped around the register, and slid open the refrigerator door. Cold, rose-scented air floated toward me, and suddenly I feared her text message was no code at all, that our meeting truly was about flowers and nothing else.
“Red, pink, yellow, white,” she said again.
“Yellow,” I said.
“Yellow means friendship.” She took seven yellow roses from the refrigerator and carried them to the register. She wrapped them in cellophane and rung them up, then handwrote a bill on a small pad of paper. She tore it off, handed it to me. It said $25000—the initial payment.
“Everything is fine.” She smiled, and something about her perfect teeth let me know that I was right to seek her out. For twenty-five thousand dollars, Flora Ramirez could help illegal Filipinos stay in America—months or years, forever if they wished. I didn’t know how she did it, only that she could: two years before, she had given TonyBoy Llamas, my girlfriend Charma’s favorite cousin, a new life. He was vacationing in California before returning to the Philippines to join the seminary when he met and fell in love with an amateur Mexican boxer. His pare
nts disowned him, his brothers, too, so he and the boxer sought help from Flora Ramirez. Six months later, they were living in what TonyBoy called a Mediterranean-style apartment complex in Las Vegas, earning good money dealing blackjack. So when Papa Felix began planning our trip to America, I knew this would be my chance: I made contact with Flora Ramirez and started a yearlong correspondence of coded e-mails and text messages, coordinating cash amounts and payment dates and when, where, and how we would meet. These were risky, secret dealings, but in times of doubt Charma would tell me, “If my homosexual priest cousin and his Mexican boxer boyfriend can make it in America, why can’t we?” We were no different from them, she said, or any other person in search of a good and honest life.
Flora Ramirez tapped her fingernail twice on the receipt. I unzipped my backpack, took out the envelope of cash, handed it to her. She slipped it underneath the register drawer, then tied a black ribbon around the bouquet of roses. “Better selection tomorrow,” she said, “you come back then. Same price.” She nodded toward the door.
I left the store and walked to the corner to hail a taxicab. My heart was pounding; people on the street stared at me, as if they knew who I was and what I’d done. But it was merely the roses in my hands that caught their attention. They were lovely and bright; I could imagine pressing them between the pages of a heavy book, a souvenir that would inspire me to look back on this day, the first of my new life. But for now they would only make Papa Felix suspicious, so I left them on top of a trash can for someone else to take.
Whenever I called Charma, I’d stare at postcards of famous San Francisco landmarks, images of which she would download online—the Golden Gate Bridge, Coit Tower, the famous crooked street. It was like taking in the same view together, despite the distance between us, and she’d say the pictures were glimpses of our future. But now, I was calling from the backseat of a dented, lime-green cab, staring at a lightning-shaped crack in the window.
She picked up on the fourth ring. “I bought roses,” I said.
First she giggled, then she gasped. “You really did it? Truly?”
“First payment was today. Second tomorrow. And then—”
“Pay it all now!” she said. “Pay it all now and send me a plane ticket tomorrow and let’s be together forever.”
“That’s not how it works. Flora Ramirez has a process.” I reminded Charma that it might be months, maybe longer, until I could send for her; though Flora Ramirez had connections with people who could help find me work and a place to sleep, it would take time to begin a life. “Have faith,” I said.
“Always. What about the old man?”
“He doesn’t know anything. And once I get my papers, there’s nothing he can do.”
Then she said, “How will you go?”
There was static, silence, then an awkward moment when I caught the driver’s eyes in the rearview mirror. He seemed dubious, though I was speaking Tagalog. “Are you there?” Charma said, but I had no answer, not yet, despite the exit scenarios playing in my head: I imagined going to the airport with Papa Felix, then backing away into the crowds as soon as he crossed through security. Or I would take my seat on our return flight and then, minutes before takeoff, tell Papa Felix I’d forgotten something in the terminal bathroom, and make my escape from there. Sometimes I didn’t even imagine the airport; I simply left in the middle of the night.
“How will you go?” Charma repeated.
“I’ll leave a note,” I finally said, a good enough answer for now.
Back at the hotel, Papa Felix was sitting on a chair in the bathroom staring at the mirror, a paper cup in his hands and a bottle of Cutty Sark by his feet. “You forgot me,” he said. “I’ve been waiting.” He was wearing a white trash bag like a poncho, and a box of hair dye was on the edge of the sink. At home, I colored his hair twice a month; here, once a week. “A good healer should look ageless,” he always said, “like Jesus or Dick Clark.”
I hung my windbreaker and backpack in the closet, stepped into the bathroom. “Long lines at the bank.”
“Cut in line next time. Receipt?”
From my pocket I pulled out an ATM receipt I’d found on the sidewalk a week before. He squinted at the small paper, as though his old eyes could actually make out the tiny numbers. “Good work, good money,” he said. “And just think: What did we come with? Nothing. Now look at us.” He finished his whiskey, poured another. “Maybe we’ll come back another year. New York next time. Maybe Canada. Where are the Filipinos in Canada?” He named other countries and continents we might visit; the way he talked, the whole planet was full of ailing Filipinos far from home, waiting for us to heal them.
“Someday,” I said, “maybe.” In the mirror, there was an odd, faraway look in Papa Felix’s eyes, like he was trying to remember something long forgotten. I realized he was watching me. I reached for the box of dye and tore it open, pulled out the bottle and latex gloves, and I found him still watching, like he was studying my face for a twitch or new expression I’d adopted, some clue to who I really was and what I was planning to do.
“When we’re home,” he finally said, “you’re on your own.”
“My own.” I didn’t understand.
“You’re nineteen now. A man. Your father was sixteen when he first extracted on his own. It’s your time.” He emptied and refilled his drink, then set a paper cup on the counter and poured one for me. “Two of us working, side by side. Double Felix Starro, double business.” He lifted his cup, toasting a future that would never happen.
There was only one thing to do. I took the whiskey, drank it in a single gulp. I felt its warmth, then its sting.
He nodded, drank his whiskey, poured another. He settled back in his chair and looked at his reflection almost admiringly, then pointed to his roots. “All this silver,” he said, “make it black.”
Four cups of whiskey made Papa Felix drowsy. I poured a fifth that put him to sleep. It was barely eight o’clock when I tucked him into bed, but he snored thunderously—someone from the next room pounded on the wall, as if that could quiet him down. “Are you awake?” I whispered. I crossed the room and spoke again. “Can you hear me? Wake up!” But his snoring only grew louder, and I knew it was safe.
I went into the closet, unlocked my suitcase and opened it, unzipped the lining. The money was there, paper-clipped in flimsy stacks. It was almost a disappointment, how little twenty-five thousand American dollars could look; it seemed mathematically impossible that so small an amount could guarantee my next life. But back home, it could keep a family stable for several generations, or get an entire village through a difficult year. Half asleep on the plane from home to here, I’d dreamed that I’d refunded every person Papa Felix had ever touched; in that same dream my father told me, Go, go.
I took two stacks of cash and put them in my backpack for my second visit to Flora Ramirez. I locked my suitcase, closed the closet.
I went into the bathroom to prepare for the next day. I made the blood first—I poured corn syrup into a plastic jug, mixed in water, then thirty drops of red dye. But the lid to the jug was missing, so instead of shaking the jug to make the mix, I rolled up my sleeve and stirred it with my hand. Long ago, Papa Felix made it the same way; because my hands were small, my job was to squirt the liquid into tiny bags and knot them up. We’d stay up all night, diligent and silent, as though our work was truly blessed and holy.
I finished making the bags of blood and liver, tied them shut and stashed them in the foam cooler beneath the sink. There were streaks of blood along the counter and faucet, red fingerprints on the doorknob and toilet seat. Our nightly crime scene, but not for long, not for me. I cleaned up fast, then showered, and under near-scalding water I scratched dried blood from my wrists and fingers, the backs of my hands, my knuckles and the skin in between.
Back in the room, Papa Felix was still snoring. I walked over, sat on the edge of my bed, an arm’s reach away. The Cutty Sark was on the nightstand, so I unscrewed t
he cap and drank from the bottle, thinking of the note I told Charma I’d leave behind, all the things that could be said—a quick apology maybe, the hope he would understand, a promise that we would both be okay. The more I drank, the more the note went on—it would have been pages, had I truly written it. But then the pounding on the wall started again, so I pounded back and told whoever it was to let my grandfather sleep.
We performed twelve Extractions the next day. Most who came were elderly, complaining of arthritis, swollen joints, unending fatigue. But the last patient, a woman named Maribel, was just thirty-two years old. She’d come with her little boy, who sat on a pillow in the corner. Despite his video game, he watched us the whole time, the fear plain on his round face.
After, as Maribel got to her feet and buttoned up her blouse, I noticed that her right breast was gone. She caught me looking. “If only you’d come sooner,” she said, blinking back tears. She gave me the money, and I took it.
“I’m sorry,” I said, and then I heard giggling. I turned and saw Papa Felix sitting on the edge of his bed, entertaining the boy with a vanishing coin trick. He’d done the same with me when I was that age, making random objects disappear and reappear in his hands—a spool of thread, a mango pit, even a newborn chick. Then he would say, “Tell me how I did that,” his voice heavy and grave, as though sleight of hand could save a life instead of deceive one. But I couldn’t explain it; all I could think about was the time and space between the vanish and return, where a small thing went in its moment of absence—I pictured some dead, barren planet without weather or sound, and I’d lie awake at night, determined not to dream of it.
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