"What about our Land Cruiser? What about your bike?" She was still on her haunches, on the floor, her hands on her lap, looking up at him in the chair. She was trying to find her way clear but coming into dark alleys. They spent over sixty thousand dollars on that eleven-seat safari vehicle five years ago. What was it worth now?
"The bike stays with me," he said. "But we"ll p.a.w.n the cruiser."
"We"re going to p.a.w.n the cruiser?" she said incredulously.
"Just for three months. That way we"ll have plenty of money to get you to Manila, and I"ll earn enough to get it out of hock come October. What? Don"t look so glum. It"s just temporary."
"Everything"s temporary," whispered Larissa.
"No, not everything."
And later, in their bed, Kai said to her, "I have to solve this, can"t you see? Right now there"s no work for me here. We"re hurting. And it"s hurting us."
He was right. They were hurting. The open catgut feeling inside her now lasted twisted protracted periods throughout the day, constantly making her feel like she was falling, even while walking, especially while walking, always with the breathless sensation of the never-ending plunge.
"We need to get through the lean months." Kai was soothing her with his voice, his long and gentle caressing fingers. "We"ll make it. We"re strong; this is what strong people doa"what they have to. We"re regrouping, that"s all." Leaning over her, he kissed her easily. "Remember when we wondered: what are we going to do when the money runs out? Well, now we know."
"I don"t think we said money," she whispered into his Adam"s apple, into his careless breath. "I think we said luck."
"I"m hoping," he said, "we still got us some of that, babydoll."
Larissa thought she was all closed up, shut in, boarded up, condemned, a Chico girl without a ride, but Kai made love to her that night as if she were the hospitality committee at the welcome inn. Everyone was invited, the doors were flung open, and the rooms were free.
2.
A Motherless Child
And just like that, days later, she was on the bus alone to Sydney and then on the plane to Manila.
Don"t worry, Larissa, an unwashed and unkempt Billy-O a.s.sured her, I"ll take good care of Kai for you. Right. Because that made her feel relaxed inside. She brought with her a suitcase; she brought with her everything she owneda"which wasn"t much and fit in a suitcase. It was remarkable how little she had acc.u.mulated in the bungalow they"d fled.
They never paid Mejida. When Larissa had confronted Bianca before she left, asking why in the world she would talk to Mejida about her past, about her life, Bianca looked horrified and bewildered.
"I never talked to her about you, Larissa," she said. "Not a word." She paused. "But Mejida"s husband, Umar, did tell Bart that a little while ago someone had been snooping around looking for you, asking all kinds of questions. A big guy with a gut. An American." The blood turned to ice in Larissa"s veins. That was part of the reason why she let it all go so quickly, why she barely protested Kai"s tangle with Billy-O. They owed over a thousand dollars to a woman who knew something about Larissa. Some American man came snooping.
Even in this seemingly simple life, something was happening she couldn"t control. Something was amiss in the blue universe, in the frosty glades.
In Manila it was hot and sticky. To explain this was impossible. How could a country just a few hundred miles north of where she lived have a completely different climate? It"s not in the same hemisphere, the Manila cab driver who picked her up said to her. There it"s winter. Here it"s summer. "But why would you come here in July, miss? It"s the absolute worst month to come."
"Really?" She settled in the back of his old beat-up cab. "You think something could be worse than July being winter?" She glanced outside at the morning rush hour crowds in the damp heat. "Looks okay to me."
"Does it? It"s monsoon season. A typhoon a day. And in Paranaque, where you"re headed, everything floods. It"s a swamp down there. Good luck to you."
She stared outside at the mess of traffic, the palm trees, the loopy jaywalking mothers with strollers, the racing bike messengers, the jitneys. "When do the rains go?"
"Late October."
Great. She"d be gone by then. Her return date was October 20.
They only had a few miles to travel from the airport to Che"s address, but it took them over an hour; the highway wasn"t moving.
"Must be flooding somewhere in Las Pinas," the cabbie said. "It always happens. This whole southern strip from Manila to San Pedro is two inches above sea level. One high tide and we flood. Bays on both sides. It just pours in. Roads are made impa.s.sable by waters."
"Hmm," said Larissa, her face pressed to the dirty window. "Must be good for the crops." In Jindabyne the orange groves dried out in the summer heat.
"Maybe good for crops," said the cabbie. "Not so good for people." Whistling, he smiled at her in the rear-view mirror. "But we don"t mind. We take it all as it comes. It"s all good, miss. Bahala na. It"s all how it should be."
Is it? Was it? When the driver finally got off the parking lot that was the highway, and Larissa started looking at the signs, she became perplexed by the street names. Turkey. Texas. Libya. Syria. Hawaii. That one pinched her heart. And then after the crop fields and the public park, Benevolence. Kindness. Goodness. The poorer the neighborhood, the more virtuous the street names. Gentleness and Humility were framed by Meekness Extension.
Che lived in a gaggle of shacks spliced together between San Pablo and Humility. Larissa asked the driver to wait, but he got another fare and wouldn"t. She was left standing with her bags in the middle of a shanty town. She wasn"t used to the humidity, her clothes stuck oppressively to her body, her lashes stuck together every time she blinked, her mascara ran and she wasn"t even crying, but it did feel like the next time she blinked, she might not be able to open her eyes again. Pulling her suitcase, she struggled down the dirt road. Was there even a chance Che"s place would be air conditioned? Maybe they could sc.r.a.pe up some cash and buy a used AC unit, because Larissa could not live like this for three months. Could not. Che described her house as number 37 from the top of San Pablo, or number 12 from the bottom of Humility. But you really have to count carefully, Larissa, Che had written jokingly. They"re not marked and it"s easy to mistake two little houses for one s.p.a.cious abode.
Larissa counted. Just to make sure, she traipsed back to San Pablo and counted again. Did Che really live in a tiny shack made of straw and bamboo, patched together with sc.r.a.ps of plywood and st.i.tched-together cardboard, a handmade doll"s house with no windows, just openings for air that flashed open on someone else"s city? There was no one to ask, and Larissa stood in the middle of the road with her suitcase, her purse, her black carry-on, the same one in which she had carried away her other life, too, carried away her other self. When she knocked on the counterfeit door it nearly came off its one hinge. It was morning. Was it ten? Perhaps Che was sleeping. Or at work. Did she really live here?
A small man came out, still in his pajamas, barely awake. Smiling he asked her, a stranger, if she wanted to come in. No, thank you, Larissa said. I"m looking for my friend, Chea"Claire Cherenge. Is she here?
"I"m very sorry, miss. No one by that name lives here," the man replied.
"You sure?"
"Am I sure? Look at the size of my house. You think I wouldn"t know if a woman named Che lived here?"
"How long have you been here?"
"There years. And before me and my family, an old woman lived here alone but she died. That"s how we got the house. But no one young like you describe. Maybe you have the wrong address." They both looked at the scribblings in her tiny handwritten address book. But no. This was it. This was house number 12 from the bottom of Humility.
"She doesn"t live here, I"m sorry. You sure you don"t want to come in?" the man said regretfully, before closing his paper door.
Larissa stood dumbly in the middle of the street. What in the world was she going to do now? Behind the row of huts were wet fields, and down the street on Goodness, a morning market. Was this where Che had sold fruit for Father Emilio? The ground was sopping; all the dust was mud, but mud with a rising vapor because it was hot and getting hotter. Kai had given her two hundred dollars from p.a.w.ning the cruiser, and she"d already spent twenty of it; was a hundred and eighty bucks enough to live on for three months, even in Paranaque? Where was Che? Not here for at least three years. Larissa glanced at the house before she walked away. How could her friend have lived here? She never described it like this in her letters. She talked about Lorenzo, their cute simple life, the church, the priest, wanting a baby, selling fruit, demonstrating for hire. She never wrote to Larisa about this. Once, a long time ago, when they were adolescent small-town girls on swings in shorts and ponytails, didn"t they have the same dreams?
I want to have a little girl, said Che happily, so I could torture her like my mother tortures me.
I want to travel the world, said Larissa. She grinned. On a white horse. They were sitting astride a seesaw in a dusty playground in Piermont. School had ended. They spent the afternoon chalking the lines and playing hopscotch. At four the ice cream truck came and they sc.r.a.ped together enough nickels for one, a cherry bomb banana float, and with it sat on the swings rocking back and forth taking turns with the ice cream.
Che told her favorite joke. Two m.u.f.fins are in the oven, Che said, and one m.u.f.fin says to the other m.u.f.fin, "Oh no! I think we"re going to get baked," and the second m.u.f.fin says, "Oh no! A talking m.u.f.fin!"
Perhaps no, not even then. They didn"t have the same dreams.
The cobblestones hurt Larissa"s feet, and the sun blinded her eyes. She stumbled down Humility and Goodness and Gentleness, all narrow and winding, with their pungent smells of rotting fruit, unwashed humans, and seaweed all marinated in stifling wetness, the overhanging delapidation, the sad-sack windows, the chipped frames, and yet above it all, palms and below it, red flowers, and drenching humidity like the ocean. She walked, dragging her heavy suitcase behind her, carrying her duffel on her sore shoulder; it felt like drowning, the air dense with moisture. Hobbling away from the thing she had come to find, Larissa almost couldn"t breathe. Except it was a sunny morning and sauna hot, and the birds were chirping here, there. Paranaque, a haven for farmers and fishermen, was close to the sea, sandwiched between Manila and Laguna Bays, and it smelled like the seaa"salt and fisha"all through the thick air. At the outdoor market, haphazard tables displayed slippers, weaved baskets, bags of rice, bananas, mangoes, and yellow pears. She would"ve bought a pear from a beseeching woman in flagrant red garb with a little baby on her lap, except for the falling sensation in her gut. Looking away from the mother and child, she could barely wheel her suitcase over the rough ground.
Where was she going? What was her plan? Should she find a bed and breakfast until tomorrow, then fly back, somehow make her way to Pooncarie, back to Kai? They"d have to make it work somehow, they would just have to. For G.o.d"s sake, she couldn"t stay in Manila all by herself! But changing the ticket would cost her money in penalties, and she didn"t have it. Maybe Kai could wire her the money. What was she going to do? She"d have to call him at Billy-O"s, tell him she got in okay, but Che was nowhere to be fa"
Through her trance, she heard a gravelly voice. She raised her eyes, blinking, focusing, and glimpsed a tall salt-and-pepper-haired man in a black frock with a p.r.o.nounced withered face. "Is it nothing to you," the man said in a British accent, his hands pressed together, "all that pa.s.s by here?"
That made Larissa stop walking cast down.
"Look and see," the man continued, opening wide his large lined-by-life hands and beckoning her to him, "if there"s any pain like your pain."
He was standing on the steps of a small adobe white church, sandwiched between a green garden and three wooden houses. He had a composed manner about him, penetrating contemplative dark eyes that seemed all the more striking against the gray hair, and an air of juggling too large a number of thinking b.a.l.l.s. His mind seemed busy with inner things.
"Excuse me, what church is this?" said Larissa.
"San Agustin of Paranaque."
San Agustin. It was like a miracle!
Larissa stepped closer, still in the street, and walked a few feet toward him. "I can"t believe it. Is there only one San Agustin?"
"In Paranaque, yes."
"By any chance do you know a priest named Father Emilio?"
"I am Reverend Father Emilio," said the man in black cloth.
"Oh, I can"t believe it! Thank G.o.d." Larissa put her hand on her heart and started to cry. Stepping forward, Father Emilio placed his hand on her back, gently patting her. His expression changed, as if he put down some of those bright juggling b.a.l.l.s and focused solely on her.
"Yes, you"re right," he said. "We should thank G.o.d for all mercies, great and small. Would you like to come inside?"
"Inside where? Father Emilioa" Larissa wiped her face. "My name is Larissa Connelly. I"m looking for my friend Che. She used toa""
"I know Che very well," said Father Emilio, staring at Larissa, studying her.
"Has she ever mentioned me?"
"Yes, she talked about you, Larissa. I feel I know you already." His blinkless gaze, inquisitive, sober, remained on her. "I thought you were Larissa Stark?"
Larissa stammered. As with Mejida, she found it distressing and mortifying that people thousands of miles away from her physically and metaphysically would know anything about her. "Shea"uma"used to, I"m pretty sure, live near San Pablo," Larissa went on haltingly, "buta"
"She hasn"t lived here a long time," said Father Emilio. "She left perhaps five years ago."
"Left and went where? When she was writing me, she said hera"" Larissa broke off. She didn"t want to say. She couldn"t remember.
"aBoyfriend was in jail awaiting trial for murder?"
"Something like that."
"They made bail. And they ran. Took everything and vanished to Mindanao."
"And she hasn"t been back since?"
He shook his head. "They joined the Peace Brigade there."
"Peace Brigade? She told me they were going to live with some tribe in the mountains."
"Yes, the Peace Brigade soldiers," said Father Emilio. "I vaguely heard that during one of their daily skirmishes with the police and MILF, Lorenzo was killed and Che was arrested. Or perhaps Che was killed and Lorenzo was arrested. This is just a rumor, mind you. No one was sure of anything, and it"s so hard to keep track of people, especially down on the islands. Our parishes can only help so much. Sometimes they lose the string of information. But then a year later I heard that if she weren"t dead, she might have gone to prison for aiding and abetting a cop killer and a fugitive from justice."
"Prison! Father Emilioa" Larissa"s hand was on her heart. "Pleaseawhat are you telling me?"
"Only the truth, Larissa. Would you like to come in?"
"I don"t think I would, no. Buta"
Except where did she have to be? Where could she go? If not for this man standing on the steps of his adobe house, where did she intend her feet to carry her?
"I have some real problems, Father Emilio," said Larissa. "I may be in serious trouble."
He opened the side door to his church and stood waiting for her to pa.s.s by him.
He took her into his rectory, a large comfortable room with tall windows overlooking the street. Larissa wheeled in her suitcase, dropped her duffel and purse and, with relief to finally sit down, sank into an old leather chair. Father Emilio sat in the red leather chair across from her. The windows were open, and the sun was out. There was a fan in the room, swirling the mugginess around, but it was better than being outside. There was a faint smell of incense and mosquito repellent.
She sat like this for many minutes. She didn"t really want to talk, just enough to get her bearings and perhaps ask him to help her. But help her what? Did she want him to give her money? She couldn"t look at him, at his silence, at his calm brown eyes.
"Is it true," she said when she finally spoke, "that you used to be a renal surgeon?"
"Hmm. Random," he replied. "But, yes. It"s true."
"You became a doctor here?"
"No, in London. I came here on a grant with Our Lady of Peace Hospital."
"To do kidney transplants?"
"That"s right."
She paused. "So how did you get from there to"a"she circled the air with her handa""here?"
Nodding, he smiled slightly. "Now I see. That is a good question. I decided I could be more useful here."
"You think so?" she said skeptically. "Rather than help people get new kidneys?" She tilted her head. "My friend had kidney disease. She kept going to church, but what she really needed was a transplant."
"I think that"s a false choice," said Father Emilio. "After all, why can"t you do both?"
Did this man just say "false choice"? Her old friend Ezra used to say that all the time. Larissa studied the priest more carefully.
"You didn"t," she pointed out, finally.