Hallowed. Hollowed. Helloed. Fuck, it hurts to laugh. Even the rumble-beginnings of a laugh feel like a tremor in her guts, letting her know that parts of her are no longer connected to the rest.
There is a commotion at the door.
It’s his partner. But of course he has a partner. To cut up those women. To heft those corpses — she’s heard that death weighs a body down, doubling the living weight. To dump them from a moving car, as is the current police theory. All that requires two sets of hands. Maybe it’s his mother. Maybe it’s his father.
But then, silence.
No partner.
No second party.
No new pair of footsteps. Just Benjamin’s, pacing, accompaniment to his never-ending prayers. Oh Lord show me the strength to show my love for You, Oh Lord show me the strength to show my love for You, Oh Lord...
No. This boy has the strength to do the killing, cutting, dumping all by himself. He has fervor. And it’s fervor that got the pyramids built, all those stones made light and put into place by nothing more than fervor.
Fuck. Now she knows. The man at the door. It’s Peter. The real Peter from Singapore. Benjamin sent him away. Peter frustrated by Charmaine’s eternal unavailability. Poor Peter. Maybe next time he’ll be willing to pay ten thousand pesos, so huge has his appetite for Charmaine become, so constant his frustration. If there is a next time.
Benjamin comes to her. Are you sorry? he asks. But if he’d only given her time to respond, she would’ve said yes, played along to satisfy him. Instead, no sooner had the question been fired than the right hand bunches into a fist, and if she has any teeth left, she is sure they have been sacrificed too in this new attack.
Albino python.
Python handbag.
Oscar. Like that fish, she too is barely alive. If she keeps to within a centimeter on both sides of her, like that fish in its selected spot, she can live on in the state she is for years, for decades. No teeth, no problem. Busted face, flies laying eggs in the crevices of her exposed flesh, no problem. She has heard of maggots eating away putrefaction, curing disease.
She is sure her eyes are as orbed and as dead as the bayawak’s.
She hears him come back into the room. Why isn’t she dead? What is he keeping her alive for? She pretends to lie lifeless. Now she remembers: an alligator has a longer, thinner snout of a face than a crocodile.
She feels him drag her body into the living room.
Nene was formerly Nestor.
Aurora, Esteban.
Saltie, Orville.
And she? She was once Norma. Norma from Norman, a long-despised name from an ill-fitting childhood. Catholic school, check. Catholic Mass every Sunday, check. Parents ashamed of his self-revelation, check. Self-revelation turned to self-disgust, check. Not until he was Norma did he feel even half-alive. And then that pleasure was taken from her by the club sobriquet: Normal Norma. Who’d started calling her that, intending it as a tribute, intending to make her feel comfortable in her new life? No, not normal, that’s not the way she felt. Extraordinary, not normal at all. So she changed her name once more. Moving up from normal. Charmaine from a magazine. A model’s name. A model, with that bounce, that self-confidence, that earning capacity. Charmaine.
She tastes blood in her mouth. She lets it pool, then opens her lips to let the whole thing, saliva and all, dribble away. She feels something hard slide along with it. Her teeth.
The ticket to Bangkok is made out to Norman. To match her passport. Her application form to Dr. Srichapan: Norman.
Norman. Norma. Charmaine.
Charmaine still.
On and on he is dragging her. Does he think she is dead? She can’t feel the area between her legs. At least, she no longer has to go to Bangkok. If he’s already done it. Like he did to Saltie. Saltie’s “thing” never found.
He probably threw it into the Pasig River, let the fish have it.
She lets her hands relax and open, surrendering to her fate. The fight has gone out of her finally, after how many hours? Her arms are bumped along by the motion of his dragging. And her hands acquaint themselves, floor-level, with the objects of her well-curated home: the base of a lamp, a leg of her leather couch, the felt-covered base of one of the chrome legs of her glass-topped coffee table. It’s her place of business, after all, not just her home, and has been furnished according to some idea of a bachelor’s private space, she being the prime decor in this gentleman’s haven. Nobody stepping off the streets of Binondo could imagine this plush, private room waiting for them. This room and Charmaine.
A flash. Of. What is it? Survival instinct? Anger? A delayed neurological twitch begun by her not-quite-laugh, that tug in the gut? It spreads from her midsection, fanning upward as a wave of heat, to her breasts, to her neck, and outward toward her arms and hands, which flex and test their still-aliveness. Her right hand grabs at the nearest object, a large stone she uses to rest her phone on. It’s smooth, there’s nothing really to hold on to, but she does, a sliver of an edge, and to do so, she uses all her upper-body strength, everything in resistance to his force on her legs, which, in the same instant as her hand finds the rock, kick free.
When the villains in horror movies startle awake after having been beaten, knifed, torched, shot — she now understands this is exactly true to life. Some fight against death always remains. She joins her other hand to the rock. She lifts. She throws the heavy projectile at him. But the thing falls backward instead of flying at its intended target. He laughs. He is chuckling at her nerve. A crash behind her. It’s the coffee table. She is sobbing at the futility of her last-ditch effort. She can’t stand, her legs are like boneless things, or nerves have been severed and they are no longer commandable. Her torso collapses to the floor, she slithers away. He grabs her feet again, pulls her toward him. Where is the knife? If both hands are on her, what is he using to hold the blade? A man screams and it’s only after a moment that she realizes it’s her. Crying. Calling. In her wordless wail are contained so many prayers: Oh Bangkok. Oh new me. Oh a life anew. Oh a real girl, more real than any real girl.
Her torso shoots up, like a jack-in-the-box. It startles him. You fucking bitch! he says, involuntarily letting go of her legs, which smack the ground yet cause her no pain.