“For heaven’s sake, Aniano. The guy’s a fag.”
“Yeah? With a wife and five kids. Pretty macho for a fag, no? Is that his room up there? How much do you charge him? Or maybe he’s getting free rent himself, like that teenage lover of yours. You like them young, no? Young and promdi. Just like you.”
Her eyelids flutter for an instant, the way they always do when she doesn’t know what to say. They remind him of butterflies. Black butterflies, which are bad luck.
“Stop staring at me,” she says.
“Give me the key to the front door.”
“Can’t.”
“Because you gave the copy to your teenage boyfriend?”
“Because I only have one key.”
“All locks come with duplicate keys. Any idiot knows that.”
“Fine. You be the brilliant detective. Go to that hardware store and ask Mr. Cheng why he gave me only one key. Maybe he’s fucking me too, right?”
“Maybe.”
“You’re so sick, Aniano.”
He keeps staring at her. She’s wearing her favorite dress, a silk orange shift that sort of matches the streaks of color in her hair. She lifts her eyelids slightly, the black gash of mascara splitting open to reveal just the whites of her eyes.
“Oh, you’re still here,” she says wearily.
“Why is your hair turning that way?”
“What?”
“It’s turning orange. Like rust.”
“I like it this way.”
“I like it too.”
“Sure.”
“Does he like it that way?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Aniano.”
“Bet he loves to touch it.”
“He loves to shampoo and blow-dry and tease it like I am fucking Audrey Hepburn. Satisfied?”
He comes closer, hovering over her. “Is the apartment nice?”
“What apartment?”
“The apartment you got for that teenage waiter of yours. I heard it was nice. In Cubao, even. Pretty fancy!”
“Puta, Aniano, I can’t keep track of who you’re being jealous of.”
“You tell me. How many boys are you fucking anyway?”
“Three hundred and sixty-five, okay? One for each day of the year. Leap years I take a day off.”
That gives him some pause, to her relief. “Your lipstick matches the color of the sofa,” he says.
“Inborn talent.”
“He picked that for you, that color lipstick? You never wore red lipstick before. You always wore pink. Red is for hookers.”
“So now I’m a hooker.”
“So, what about the apartment?”
“What about it?”
“Is he keeping the love nest?”
“He can keep it for as long as he can pay the rent.”
“You mean you. For as long as you can pay the rent.”
She bolts up. He steps back, taken by surprise, his hand instinctively gripping the revolver on his hip.
“Puta, Lucila, don’t move like that. I could have shot you.”
“Sure, just shoot me and get it over with. I told you it’s all over. He’s out of my life. What more do you want?”
“Yeah? He was here earlier, you know. Trying to pick the lock like a two-bit thief. Why didn’t you let him in? No time for a little quickie tonight? Got other plans?”
“Oh God, shoot me now.”
“I will too, you know.”
She walks toward him. “Why don’t you?” Her lips are close enough to brush against his. “Can you stand losing this?”
He looks straight in her eyes. Under the glare of the fluorescent light they seem darker than he’s ever noticed before, a deep, barako black.
“Go ahead,” she taunts him. “Can you stand never seeing these eyes again? Never touching me again?” She takes his hand and holds it over her breasts. “Can you stand never seeing these beauties again?” She leads his hand farther down. “Or this?”
“Goddamn you, Lucila,” he says. “And your teenage boyfriend.”
She throws her head back and laughs. “Go, run after him. He’s probably still out there, that little dog. You boys just go and shoot each other up, like cowboys and injuns. There, can you see? He’s out there trying to get in. Go get him, Aniano. Hop along, cowboy.”
He opens the door and peers out. “Lamppost blew out again,” he says. “Cheap bulbs from fucking Japan. Total losers, those sakang. What time are you coming home?”
“I’ll come home when I come home. Business is business.”
He can’t get himself out the door. “I don’t hate you, Lucila.”
“Basta.”
“I think you are a good woman, but you have been misled.”
“What, you turning evangelical now?”
“You were so—good—when I first met you. So virginal.”
“All things must pass.”
“Fallen from grace. Led astray by those reckless boys. By this dump of a neighborhood. You should move out of Santa Cruz. Santa Cruz is for losers. All migrants and students and hookers and addicts.”
“It gets the money in. Can’t say the same for your job. Why don’t you take a few more bribes, like everyone does? Maybe then I’ll think of moving my shop. Makati, how does that sound? Tease the hair of all them rich matronas. Or what about Malacañang? Maybe do Imelda’s hair. How about that?”
He can still hear her talking as he finally walks out. He turns toward Avenida Rizal and its vertiginous frenzy, jeepneys speeding past and barely missing the hawkers who have spread out their goods on the sidewalk, socks and underwear, flashlights and knives. He suddenly feels revolted by all the commotion.
He enters an alley and continues walking until he is deep in the labyrinth of the neighborhood. In this warren of dimly lit alleys, open canals run along the length of the sidewalks, black soupy water gurgling through. He keeps walking until he realizes he has lost his way. Only a few of the wooden two-story houses are illuminated with bare incandescent bulbs, which he can see through wooden grills. Dormitories, he tells himself, prison cells, what’s the difference? For some years now their owners have been partitioning these family homes into cheap rooms where students from the provinces board for years, hoping to get a better life in Manila. Now Santa Cruz is the dormitory capital of the Philippines—you got to be famous for something, right? Lucila used to live in one of those rooms until he took her away. Morons, there’s no better life here. Unless you have an ass like my wife, the joke’s on you. He can hear the words growling inside his head, so loud they seem to be coming from somewhere else. Then he finds himself on a deadend street, and at the other end, backed against a cement wall, is a stray dog as large as a bull, frothing at the mouth, cornered and growling and ready to pounce on him.
“You’ll be dinner for someone else,” he says. “Not me. Not this time.”
The dog lurches forward, barking.
“Fuck off,” he says. He pulls out his revolver and fires a shot. The blast hurls the dog backward, leaving a spray of blood on the wall.
4. JOSE’S VERSION
He can hear them whispering in the parlor below.
He can hear him telling her how long he’d been waiting, and how he was afraid it would rain. She silences him with a kiss. He can hear their mouths coming together, the soft moan that escapes from his throat as she presses her lips against his.
He climbs out of bed and lies flat on the floor. He presses his ear against the wooden floorboards. The ceiling fan whirring right beneath his ear muffles the sound a little, but he can still hear everything clearly. It feels like he’s right in the room with them.
She’s saying, No, not now, it still hurts.
But you want it to hurt.
Not like this. How would you feel if you were the one getting hurt?
Long silence. There’s the sound of a plastic bottle cap being opened, and something thick and liquid being squirted out. He can hear him moan again. He’s saying, Okay, show me.
Yes, he says.
Stop?
No. You use this a lot?
Only when I’m lonely.
He presses his ear flat against the floorboards. Now he can hear even the slightest whisper. You want to know what it really feels like? her voice taunting and tender at the same time. I’ll push it all the way in.
He closes his eyes and presses his lips against the floor. He can taste dust and wax. They’re silent again. Then he can hear someone in the shower, the water a slow and steady trickle. He slips his hand in his shorts. He comes almost instantly. He feels a deep and comforting solace, like the first few moments after a typhoon. He feels grateful for this stillness. He wants to disappear in it.
Suddenly the door bursts open.
“Anak ng puta.” Lucila is standing at the door. She’s wearing lace panties and a matching bra. She walks straight in as he struggles to get up. “You’re going to get this floor waxed from now on,” she says. “I’m sick and tired of you messing on my floor.”
“I must have fallen asleep,” he says. “I must have fallen out of bed.”
“The fuck you did.” She sits down on the bed. “Who do you jack off to? I hope it’s me.”
“You know it’s you.”
“You don’t do it when Florante fucks me. Or Aniano. Just him.” She picks up the Marlboros on his desk and taps the bottom of the pack to push a stick out, which she removes with her lips. “Don’t look so surprised, Joey. I can hear every move you make.” Her lips are bloodred and there’s a streak of lipstick across her left cheek. “You miss your wife?”
“Not anymore.”
“You jack off to her too?”
“That’s the way he does it,” he snaps.
“What?”
“To get a smoke out of the pack. That’s the way everyone in school does it.” Then, after a few moments, “I’ve run out of matches.”
She puts the cigarette down. “How much do you hear when you’re lying down there?”
“Nothing.”
“You got come trickling down your leg,” she says. “That doesn’t happen for no reason.”
He reaches across her for a tissue and wipes himself dry.
“Another wasted moment,” she sighs.
“I’m not going to do it again.”
“Just clean up when you’re done, okay? You can’t help it. You’re as horny as your friend. Birds of a feather.”
“He’s not my friend. We just met in school.”
“Funny. Talks about you all the time.”
“What does he say?”
“I think he’s in love with you.”
“He’s in love with you. I’m not a homo.”
“Never said you were.” She’s struggling to keep a strap from falling off her shoulder. “How was the party?”
“There was no party.”
“You were here all night?”
“Correct.”
“Because you knew he’d be here.”
“I haven’t been feeling well—”
“How come he only sees me at night, that friend of yours? He a vampire?”
“No.”
“You a vampire?”
“No.”
“You want to suck my blood?”
“No, of course not.”
“Then what is it?”
“I think he’s afraid he’ll fall in love. If he sees you too often.”
She laughs. “Too late for that. He’s in love as a dog. Darling, you can count on me. He sings that to me when we fuck, you believe that? Till the sun dries up the sea.”
“He sings?”
“In my ear. Who says romance is dead? You know Don’s going to be a father soon, right?”
“His name isn’t Don.”
“Whatever. That’s what I like to call him. Don Everly. That’s the cute one, no? I can never tell one from the other. Maybe you can teach him a few lessons. How to be a nice daddy. Just like you. You a nice daddy?”
“He’s too young. Are you sure?”
“A woman knows, for heaven’s sake.”
“It could be someone else’s.”
“It’s certainly not yours.” Her bra finally unsnaps. Her left breast spills out. He can see a few cuts on it. “Puta,” she says. “Your friend bites too much. Look what he’s done.”
“I have a Band-Aid.”
“Always the perfect accessory.”
He rummages through a shelf above the sink. There’s a Nescafé glass and cutlery and a kitchen knife. “I can’t find it.” He looks back and sees her massaging her breast.
“You like it?”
“Lucila, don’t.”
“Because you’re bakla.”
“No.”
She hooks the strap back on her shoulder. “Don’t worry,” she says. “I got rid of it.”
“Of what?”
“Your friend’s baby. Washed it down the drain. You know what it looks like when it’s this early? Like you got a big-ass menstruation. Just a big dark blob of blood … Come here, Joey. I’m not going to steal your friend from you.”
“I can’t, Lucila.”
“Give me one good reason.”
“My friend’s still downstairs.”
“A threesome then. This is your lucky day.”
“What did you do with him?”
“What?”
“You were doing something—funny. What did you do?”
“I share my toys with everyone, Joey. I’m a nice girl.” And then she pauses, and it seems as if there’s a light twinkling in her eyes. “Oh my God,” she says. “You really are—he really is—oh, I get it now.”
He walks to her and realizes he’s still holding the knife in his hand and his hand is trembling and something warm is once again trickling down his leg. She notices it and sees the knife gleam and for some reason she finds it ridiculous and laughs that funny laugh again, throwing her head back. Her neck is long and white, and her laughter gurgles out warm and rippling like water, like she’s choking on her own laughter. He drops the knife. He inches closer to her, closer to the source of that mysterious sound. He reaches out for her breasts, barely brushing his fingers against them, then suddenly clenches her throat, firmly squeezing it as he blacks out.
5. LUCILA’S VERSION
She’s been having the weirdest dreams.
She’s flying over the alleys of Santa Cruz, her arms spread out. It’s not an astral experience. It’s not her soul that’s flying. The wind just picks her up, like debris, and there she is, skimming over the ramshackle dormitories, wobbly antennas spiked all over the tin roofs.
There’s Florante on a street corner drinking with his buddies. She zooms in and sees his lips up close, the lips she liked to bite in the heat of the moment, savoring the taste of iron and salt. He’s bawling his eyes out and cursing. He looks up and shakes his fist at her, at the sky, at the empty hole where God had been. Drink up, You God, and go to hell.
Now she can see Aniano lost in the warren of alleys and suddenly he’s at Shoe World in Carriedo, watching as she tries on a pair of wet-look pumps. It’s yesterday or the day before yesterday. When the saleslady brings the box over she clings to his arm and reminds him that there’s a run in the toe of her left stocking, because he had pushed her and now he’s sorry and he’s buying her a new pair of shoes to make up. He slips her shoe off and takes her foot in his hand, the way the prince did with Cinderella. He tells her it feels like he’s taking a rose, small and delicate, in his hand, and if he catches her with another boy again he’s going to snap that foot off, like a flower.
Now she’s with Joey in his room, and she’s standing by the window, looking out at the churning sky. Rain tonight, early rain. He creeps behind her and wraps an arm around her belly and presses hard against her. With his other hand he jabs a knife into her heart. The pressure makes her gasp for air. An odor of iron permeates the room.
And now she’s inside a flashback, just like those dreamy dissolves
in the last feature show she watched at the Lyric on Avenida Rizal with Don, late at night in the back row of the balcony, when the ushers are too tired to stop them from petting. It’s the first time she’s met him, and Don is telling her something you wouldn’t believe happened when Joey introduced them earlier that evening, something wide-screen and cinematic.
“That’s what they all say, Don.” The sound of her own voice surprises her. She can hear the words loud and clear, like they’re resonating from her entire body.
“I knew I wanted you entirely,” he says. “The way the devil wants our souls.”
She laughs.
“Okay, you’ve heard it all before, but that’s the way it is.”
“Tell me one thing about me you’d kill for.”
“The color of your hair.”
“What?”
“I like looking at your hair when you suck my dick. It’s like getting a blow job from Marilyn Monroe.”
“The bitches at the Pagoda say it looks like cotton candy.”
“It’s the color of mandarin oranges.”
“Mandarin oranges, walanjo! Nobody in that dive can tell a mandarin from a chink. Fill my head with words, you son of a bitch.”
“I’ll smooth-talk you and pillow-talk you. Be your own private José Corazón de Jesus, your own heart of Jesus.”
“You scare me.”
“Why?”
“You’ll wind up like everybody else. That’s how it all ends.”
“Not me.”
“Every man I’ve ever met reminds me of Manila’s traffic.”
“Explain.”
“I never know which way to turn. There are no street signs, and everyone ignores the few that say Stop or Yield.”
She closes her eyes and imagines it. Through this maze of dilapidated alleys and dead ends, there’s nothing but long stretches of desolate highways, cities teeming with anonymous faces, restrooms that stink like a sewer, motels full of bugs where the walls still throb with love’s sticky whispers, and always a lot of stations where people come and go. She wonders if he can see it too. Of course he can. Everything is transparent in a dream.
“Nobody ever gave you what you’re looking for,” he says.
“Bingo.”
“Not me. With me, you know exactly where you’re headed. You can see the end of the road. You always wanted it, the final fade-out. I’m going to take you there. I never break a promise.”
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