I’m your grandson. Your only heir.
His grandmother was unmoved. Stop being so sentimental and self-pitying. It doesn’t suit you. Everything that’s wrong with his country is rooted in greed, cheap emotion, and the Catholic Church. It’s destroying us. There is no money left. Where’s Rodel? What have you done to him?
I grabbed Paco by the arm. Let’s go, I said.
In the first version, a lightbulb goes off in the old woman’s head. She grabs her gun from under a pillow and shoots Paco. Not once, but twice. He’s thrown back against the wall and slides down into a sitting position. The walls and ceiling are splattered with blood and bits of him.
Do you believe in God? Lola Conching asks, after a few moments have passed.
I don’t know, I say. Then I throw up.
Paco’s green eyes are open and amazed. Lola Conching never leaves her bed. She turns up the volume and stares at the television. A movie comes on. Some comedy from the ’70s, starring Dolphy.
When I’m done throwing up, Lola Conching says: Get out of here, young man. Save yourself.
In the second version, Granny pulls out her Glock but doesn’t shoot him. I grab Paco’s arm and we hurry down the stairs, slipping on the bloody floor, stumbling over Rodel’s splayed corpse as we run out into the night. Paco won’t get in the car.
This is my house! Paco howls, staggering around the garden of orchids, palmyra, and bamboo. My house! My money!
The dogs of Forbes Park howl back at him in response. It’s almost funny. I glance back at the house before getting in my car. The lights go out in the old woman’s bedroom. And I leave Paco behind, and drive as fast and as far as I can in a last-ditch attempt to save myself. It starts to rain.
Desire
by Marianne Villanueva
Ermita
Which parts of a bird are edible?
Epifanio did not know.
He would guess. Yes, he could do that: Not the internal organs. Not the beak. Not the feathers.
He wrote, laboriously: eyes, tail, breast.
Afterward, when they were all gathered in the small lobby, they were offered warm Coke in thick glasses, no ice.
Why would anyone ask them a question about birds? They were there to study to be seamen: most of them were from Negros, like Epifanio. The rest were from Marinduque, Zambales, Cagayan de Oro, Davao. After two years on one of the interisland ferries, and provided they received good evaluations, they might get the chance to work on one of the cruise ships that went to Hong Kong and Singapore. Epifanio clung to this hope.
He liked the young woman who had been waiting to greet them the day they arrived in Manila, but there was no sign of her the next day, or the next. By the third day, he began to notice a fat man who sat in a little room on the first floor. The room had desks and filing cabinets, like a regular office. Epifanio learned later that the man’s name was Leandro.
Epifanio pretended that the young woman had lent him some toothpaste and he wanted to repay her. “Is she coming back?” he asked Leandro.
The man smirked. “She’s sick. Morning sickness. What’s your name again?” Epifanio gave his name. The man gazed down at a sheet divided into two columns. “From Bacolod,” he said, and smirked again.
“Silay,” Epifanio said. And, he thought, but didn’t say aloud, I have been to college. I have had two years of San Agustin. And you—! He lowered his gaze and shrugged and gave a self-deprecating smile.
When Epifanio later replayed the conversation in his head, he hated the way Leandro seemed to know instinctively what Epifanio was after. And Leandro’s smirk would return again and again to his memory.
The rules of being a seaman: The shared toilets must be cleaned and ready for inspection at five a.m. When a passenger requests assistance, the seaman must smile and show his willingness to be of service. Even the most unreasonable guest will appreciate a smile.
Manila, this teeming city, pressed on him: dense, impenetrable. The sounds were many and various and ill-tempered. They abated only a little, toward dawn. His eyes were heavy from his dreams. Sheryn, I love you, he would dream himself saying aloud. In the dream she always laughed, as if she could hear him speaking, even across so many islands. I love you, I love you, I love you, he would say, his fists clutching the thin mattress.
On the sixth day, there was no one in the little office. Papers were scattered on the floor. The filing cabinet drawers hung open. The desk had been overturned. A policeman stood by a window, speaking into a cell phone.
Epifanio stared. He thought he heard the policeman say, “Ngunit” — But — and then, “mga estudyante.” Epifanio did not want to listen anymore and turned away.
He found a few of the men gathered by the front door, whispering urgently to one another. Epifanio forced himself to approach.
As he took a step forward, and then another, he felt a slickness on his shoes. He looked down, and dully noted that something dark seemed to have smeared the soles of the sneakers that were practically brand new, bought from Gaisano Mall the day before he left Bacolod. He didn’t understand. His thoughts were slow. Perhaps that was Sheryn’s laugh he had heard, ringing in his head when he reached the urgently whispering men.
“Epifanio!” said Benedicto, the big man from Murcia. “Did anyone tell you what happened?”
Sheryn’s laugh was almost ear-splitting. The day was just beginning, but already he detested and feared it.
“Gonzago here thinks he heard something,” said another man, the one Epifanio knew only as Baby. Epifanio had overheard some of the men gossiping about Baby. It was strange: he had angered his in-laws by slapping his wife, and they had made it impossible for him to remain in his own home, constantly abusing Baby in front of his own children.
Gonzago was old, almost forty. Everyone knew he roamed the halls in his sleep.
“If I did hear something,” Gonzago said, “it wouldn’t have helped. I might have heard the man’s soul leaving his body, yes. It sounded like water slipping down a riverbank.” Gonzago gestured, his right arm driving cleanly through the air.
Only then did Epifanio realize that the floor of the lobby was covered with the same dark substance that stained the soles of his sneakers. It was everywhere. There was even some of it smeared across one of the lobby’s light blue walls. He saw what might have been a handprint.
Spit was collecting at the back of Epifanio’s mouth. He swallowed, then managed to ask, “Who found him?”
Sheryn said, “I’m in love with Julio. He will make a better father to my child.” Epifanio closed his eyes. When he opened them again, everyone but Gonzago had left. Gonzago was chuckling to himself. “Eh? The police ask so many questions. But all the wrong ones.”
Epifanio turned from him and walked out the door.
“Eh?” Gonzago called after him. “No one is supposed to leave. The police are still taking statements.”
Epifanio kept going. The street began less than a yard away. Here were spit stains on the buckling asphalt, and horrendous smells. There was almost no sidewalk to speak of. Banana peels, empty soda bottles, scraps of paper all formed a clotted mess in the gutters.
God is love, God is love, God is love. Epifanio trembled: Sheryn’s pet mynah bird knew only this one sentence. Every time Epifanio called on her, the bird would direct a baleful glance at him and begin its monotonous chant.