3. Aniano’s version
She lies down on the sofa and shuts her eyes. “Look what you’ve done,” she says. “There’s a run in my stocking.”
“You can barely see it,” he says.
“You hit me again, Aniano, I swear I’ll walk out on you.”
“I didn’t hit you. I just pushed you a little.”
“I can’t go out now.”
“Just take it off then,” he says. “It’s a birthday party. At a fucking Chinese restaurant. What do you need to wear stockings for?”
“Nobody goes anywhere without stockings.”
“Sure, you want to look nice for the birthday boy.”
“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.