She had someone else’s hand on her knee and it belonged to Gil Gordon. I recognized the congressman from the south because he was in the papers that morning. She was in the middle of shouting something to somebody but I didn’t want to waste a second. I waved to her across the velvet rope and I wasn’t surprised that it took a while for her to recognize me. She stood and bent across the barrier to kiss my cheek and I smelled the booze on her breath. The congressman kept staring, wondering who the fuck I was.
They were playing hip-hop and it was really music for the cheapskate New Year’s Eve crowd, but we danced anyway. People hardly dance in clubs anymore. Everyone just stares at everyone else, worried that everyone else is having a better time. Gil Gordon was now staring at my hand on the small of her back, and it felt wet with sweat. I thought of what chances I’d have against him. I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d made a fist.
Andy’s mouth was moving but I couldn’t hear what she said. I moved my face close to hers and put my ear right next to her mouth. She was asking me if I wanted to do a couple of lines. I never say no to that, so I tailed her into the bathroom, where they pumped the music in so it was like a little club built for two. When we came out, Gil Gordon was blocking the doorway with a funny smile on his face.
My father once told me that in a fight, I should never look into the other guy’s eyes. He told me to focus on the little spot where the eyebrows meet. As soon as I clocked Gil Gordon right on the jaw I thought it was probably the first successful punch I’d ever thrown. Blame it on the music. Blame my next punch on the way Andy was looking at me. I would have thrown another if the bouncers hadn’t stepped in. The way they handled the situation you could tell it happened a lot, except that maybe this was kindergarten stuff compared to the things that sometimes went down.
I can’t remember if Andy grabbed my hand or it was the other way around, but the next thing I knew we were getting into my car. Drive fast! she yelled. Don’t think, let’s go! One-two-three. That’s how my father taught me things happen in commercials.
Andy was all giddy. She had her bare feet up on the dashboard and kept playing with her phone. She said she wanted to text her friends about what went down at the club, but she just couldn’t type properly. Fucking autocorrect! I said she didn’t need to, her friends were bound to find out soon enough. The way shit like this spreads. Manila is so small, I said. It’s twenty million people but I was talking about the people and the places we knew. Shit, she said, shit. You shouldn’t have done that. She couldn’t help but laugh again, briefly caressing my cheek with her hand. Not that guy. You shouldn’t have done that.
I drove hard until we had gone past the Makati skyline and we were on my side of town, whizzing past the dark apartment buildings and the shophouses on J.P. Rizal. I swung a hard left and we were on my street. You can’t miss the building where I live because there’s an InstaPure water refilling station on the ground floor and a twenty-four-hour Mini-Stop right across from it. There’s an elevator but it takes forever and we were still really lit so we walked up ten flights to my floor. I didn’t know what she’d think of my shit apartment but I mostly didn’t care.
I took a couple of joints out of a jar in the fridge. We smoked them and we didn’t really move, not for what seemed like hours, and it felt unnatural when we lifted our hands to smoke or shifted our legs. The only thing that felt easy was talking.
She asked me what I did for a living, who my parents were, what they did. Things you never really ask when you’re in a club. I told her I was an adman, just like my father had been. Remember that TV spot where a girl walks into a bar full of men and orders the nonalcoholic beer? That snap election commercial where the female candidate confesses that she’s just a woman and isn’t really fit to run the country? All my father’s. But talking about it that way somehow made it mine, as if I could inherit things like that instead of money.
When I grew tired of talking Andy asked me to take her home. We were both exhausted, though the weed had done much to make us forget what had happened earlier. It was still dark outside. It was maybe four in the morning when we stepped out of the apartment into the thick smoke of last night’s firecrackers, holding our breath until we got back into my car.
There were clusters of people out on the streets drinking gin and beer and lighting up whatever firecrackers were left. I thought I could hear each bang go off separately. We saw a couple of punks at the intersection ahead lighting up some stuff, waiting to toss it under the car as we drove past.
The shape appeared in front of us like it was formed out of fog, an SUV in a straight path toward us. I saw Gil Gordon at the wheel, his face briefly lit by the splash of headlights across his windshield. His elbow rose at the last second to shield his face and swerve at the same time. He fishtailed and his rear flank spun toward us.
I thought about my mother who never had to work a day in her life, until my father died from of all sorts of complications following a stroke. It followed a long night of work, following a successful pitch, following a long-wished-for promotion. Which is why I drove his car — the only thing he had passed on to me — for fourteen years before I earned the company car plan. I drove my mother around — to the grocery, to the mall where she watched one movie a week, to my aunt’s office in Legaspi Village where she did part-time work. And my mother kept reminding me to drive carefully, reaching over to knock on the speedometer loudly whenever I went over whatever speed limit she had in mind at the time, because she was sitting in what she called the “death seat.” The kind of catchy phrase my father would have invented to scare enough shit out of people to make them want to buy whatever he was selling — hand cream because chores caused sores, mouthwash because gingivitis would eat up your gums, disinfectant soap because things had consequences and your conscience would never forgive you.
I asked Andy if she was okay and she said yes she was. I brushed my hands over her body from her scalp to her ankles. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for — broken bones, maybe, or the sudden wetness of blood, but I didn’t find anything. I kept asking if she was okay and she waved me off and was already trying to make a call on her smashed phone.
My cell phone’s gone dead. The fat man sticks his arm out again, a fresh cigarette between his fingers, a tattoo of someone’s initials on his forearm. For a moment I think I see the driver flicking a firecracker in my direction. I bang my fist on the horn and get nothing but the sound of plastic being punched.
An explosion makes my ears ring and I can hear the blood throbbing like it’s trying to find a way out of my head. I can’t hear the music anymore. The smoke fills the car and it’s making me sleepy, but something tells me we’re back on J.P. Rizal again. Andy’s leaning back against the headrest. Her face is frozen and her mouth is in the shape of an O, looking like it’s right in the middle of singing a song.
Part II
Black Pearl of the Orient