“Okay, I’m coming home now. Want me to get you something to eat?”
“God no. Don’t bother. There’s food here for you.”
“All right. Be right there.” He would visit Nena briefly before going to see his wife’s people for the five hundred dollars. And he would not tell her about the loss at the racetracks. Yet.
Nena had moved out of her parents’ house two weeks before, telling everyone that she was going to Colorado for the stewardess program. Kip had gotten her a room at the International Hotel for forty-two bucks a month, a nice one too, a curtain-partitioned space with a bedroom and a bathroom. “The bridal suite,” Manong Freddie had said to Kip. “Espesyal por you two.” And for those last two weeks, Kip had been biding his time by going around making and taking bets.
At the hotel, he entered her room and removed his jacket while fumbling for the light switch. He could faintly see Nena through the half-drawn bedroom curtain sitting upright on the bed.
“Don’t get up,” he said. “I’ll be right there.” He accidentally kicked one of her shoes as he entered. He picked it up and put it back in place as he put his coat on a hanger by the door. “I thought you might have fallen back to sleep.” Through the open window, he felt a slight breeze puff up a fresh tide of mist. “Aren’t you cold?” he asked.
“It’s good for you,” she replied pleasantly.
“You sounded tired over the phone,” Kip said as he sat down on the bed. “I was just going to sleep on the floor.”
“I’d never let you sleep on the floor. What’s the matter with you? What are you talking about?” Then she added flatly, “Not without me.”
“Well, I mean, just to rest — for a while. I gotta go get my money from her people,” he said without looking at Nena.
“Tonight?”
“Why not? Get it over with and out of the way — so we’ll have plenty of time to prepare to leave here Saturday. I got the tickets already,” he lied. “Pan Am. 4:50 p.m.” He had to cover the lie with two or three more because he didn’t know how to lie very well.
“That’s good,” she said.
“I gotta get everything done before Saturday.” They looked at each other for a while, then embraced.
“Ay, I don’t know anymore. If things should happen — if things should fall apart, Kip, let’s make a pact now. I don’t know anymore. Do you?” Then she lapsed into Filipino: “It’s such a crazy world out there... it’s such a fucked up, crazy world. I don’t know anymore. We’ll have to put some sense, some meaning into it. Let’s make a pact.” She got up from the bed and walked to the couch in the TV room.
“What do you mean?” he laughed lightly. He tried to remember the last time he had heard her swear.
“Lovers always make a pact,” she said.
“Wow, you’re starting to talk like Rudy. What kind of beatnik shit talk is that?” Kip got up and went to the bathroom cabinet. When he returned, Nena had switched on the little TV in the living room. He poured each of them a double shot of Jack Daniel’s. “But I like the idea,” he smiled.
“Me too,” she said.
“Let’s do it.”
And they drank to that, emptying their glasses.
“Is it okay for you to do this?” he asked, just barely swallowing.
“It’s still early on; and that’s all I’ll be drinking, anyway, so why not?... Okay, then, if anything should happen, if things don’t work out, we’ll contact each other somehow... no matter how late it is in our lives. But just once. Because once,” she continued, “we were each other’s one and only.” She raised her drink. “Without any notice?” she asked.
“With or without,” said Kip, taking another swig in celebration.
“With or without,” echoed Nena. And she took the remainder of Kip’s glass and downed it. She looked at him and almost shrugged a shoulder but caught herself, smiled softly, and raised her own drink.
“Even in her silence,” said Kip, placing his arms around her shoulders, “she says something.”
“Salamat,” she said.
Nena had a small mole on her left cheek that many people called her beauty spot. But for Kip, her beauty spot was something else. For Kip, her smile was shelter in silence. Her smile was a shelter from both the noise outside and the silence inside him. And she smiled effortlessly, with body and soul.
“I got a right to depend on you; you’re the man I love. The others I never took nothing from them, because I didn’t love them. But you’re the man I love. I expect that from you. It’s okay if you help take care of me. But I can take care of myself, too, thank you.”
“I know, I know,” he stammered. “But only a couple more months. Babalikan kita. I’ll be back with some cash from Alaska to take care of all this crap. And we can start again.” His face flashed a quick glow, then died again when he added, “Just a couple more months. Pumayag ka na, mahal.”
“Are you sure?” she asked.
He could tell her anything and she still would be afraid. He offered answers, encouragement, tender touches, anything and everything, and still she would be afraid.
And she asked again, “Are you sure?” She slowly raised her eyes to him. “What kind of life are we going to live?”
“The best,” he answered quickly, erasing everything, almost jokingly, with a mystery of casualness. “The best.”
“What about the money, Kip? You’re still a couple hundred short.” She stood, picked up a brush, and started drawing it through her hair.
“I got it all in the bank already,” he lied. This time he did not have to worry about whether she was going to believe him or not. She was no dummy, that was one thing. He had to laugh a little.
“You’re laughing again, eh? At me?”
“Why the hell do you get up and brush your hair at midnight, just so you can go to sleep and mess it all up again?”
She thought for a while and answered, “I never looked at it that way. You’re the weird one. Who would look at it that way?” When she laughed, Kip was already holding her nodding head in his arms. “Happy ending, tayo,” he said, “ha?”
“Oo,” she answered softly, “yes.”
Kip looked at his hands and he thought of all the things they once held — the anvil when he was a boy, leather gloves in a square ring in adolescence and youth, and now, with manhood, the texture of chips and cards, torn tickets from betting on horses and ball games.
“You’re an old soul,” Nena told Kip from the couch where they were watching TV.
“Everybody’s odd, right?” he retorted quickly.
“I said old, darling. Not everyone is an old soul, but you are.”
“I like this,” he said, touching the top of her forehead.
“That’s my widow’s peak. You like that?” she replied, getting up from the couch.
“Scary name for it, isn’t it?”
“For you, maybe.” And they both laughed.
“Maybe I better not divorce my wife, then,” he said. And the two laughed some more, but they both quieted down awkwardly as they remembered what Kip had to go do.
“You should go,” said Nena. “We all have our obligations.”
“I’m going right now.”
“Okay. Good, get that over with.”
“Get some sleep.”
“I will, my happy, married man.”
“I am. I truly am,” he said in Filipino, and walked out into the city night.
Kip had a small apartment on California Street near his wife’s place in Pacific Heights. He decided to stop by his apartment and call them from there. He’d get a chance to pack a little bit and put things away for the upcoming trip.