SIX
We rode home from Baguio under a dodging sun. Through the glowering skies of that rainy season its rays did their level best to parcel what misery they could. In celebration of their fantastic defeat, pronounced by a fork of lightning over a misty Mount Pinatubo, along with an explosion of thunder, I opened my window and let the rain come in. This praise toward the Roman ruler of the gods came at the expense of my seatmate, whose laptop computer had been most inappropriately flipped open, exposing the delicate chiclets, and in turn, his delicate disposition. My profuse apologies calmed him somewhat, as did a sudden, comforting breeze from Notus, come to assist Jove with his chiding of Apollo.
None of it mattered in the slightest by the time we reached Manila. Here traffic slowed to a crawl, obliging the driver to reactivate the bus’s air conditioning system, so it was with a shiver that, as afternoon made its burnt-orange tilt toward evening, I stepped onto the gravelly lot of the same bus station we’d departed not five days ago.
There to greet me was a pretty white shirt and a pair of pink shorts. Gusting like the winds through which we’d just ridden, Setti leaped into my arms. Her smile was that of a teenage schoolgirl, her laugh, the same. Rather gluttonously, I gathered her in my embrace. Her light, perfumed body was ever so much more pleasant to lift than the luggage I could hear being unloaded from the bus. Giving the small bones of her torso a squeeze, I took a moment to express my displeasure at our being forced apart for such a great interval. I told her how happy I was to be holding her again. My words were lent strength by their absolute sincerity.
“I wanted so much to come with you,” she spoke into my ear. My arms continued to keep her tiny feet several inches from the earth. “But the network needs me, you know.”
“Syempre,” I told her. “Naiintindihan ko.”
Setti laughed some more. “Your Tagalog is so cute.”
That evening produced no need to hail a cab. My girlfriend had a little car waiting in a lot across the street. This surprised me—I hadn’t known she could drive. Nor was her style demure. On our way back to Salcedo Village Setti drove like a pixie demon, whipping the car from one lane to the next. Horns blared, several of them from trike drivers who suffered near misses in the grip of her wanton ways. But if Setti’s confidence ever slipped, it happened beneath the radar of my deductions. Maintaining a healthy chatter about things personal and professional, she winged us along to our destination.
Meanwhile I’d begun to feel rather peeved, not about Setti’s skills behind the wheel, but by an unannounced rearing of the fact that I’d not gotten her anything from Baguio. I’d forgotten, as it were, my pasalubong. This constituted a nigh inexcusable deed—or rather, lack thereof—in the Philippines. I winced as my heart cried out its guilt. Setti misunderstood it on the instant.
“Too fast for you?” she asked, her smile shark-like as the many front grills honking their displeasure outside the window.
“Not at all,” I replied, just shy of the truth. “It’s just that I forgot to buy you something. In Baguio,” I went on, when she looked puzzled.
“Oh that. Yes, pasalubong. Bad boy.”
“I’m mortified.”
“So buy me some flowers.”
We had turned onto my street. By then it was full dark. The fairy lights of the trees were in healthy bloom, as were the tiny jasmine sambac that grew along ornate archways and park railings.
The garage attendant did not recognize Setti’s car. He impeded her at the entrance by way of an officious raised hand. I was obliged to smile from the passenger seat, procuring my identification as cooly as that suave young spy from Fleming’s series of high tech adventures.
The attendant let us pass. Setti’s car plunged into my building’s concrete cave. She found a slot in the shadows and parked crookedly, as young female drivers are so often wont to do. Such awkward sweetness only served to increase my affections, my pagnanasa, as the Filipinos might deem it. Yes, I was beginning to admire what tiny cracks I could find in Setti’s otherwise flawless structure. Man is drawn to the bending flower, the driven reed, the spirit dour, for his heart can beat for nothing better, than to be his bending flower’s protector.
“We’re here,” the little girl behind the wheel told me.
I could scarcely wait to get her upstairs.
But first those flowers. The lobby of my building was immensely more cheerful than that of the Kagubatan. Its theme—marble with gold lighting—greeted us off the elevator. Holding my pretty darling’s hand, I strolled beneath a majestic crystal chandelier, where two elderly ladies were sharing a joke, or perhaps just an amusing story, for their laughter—shiny and sharp—seemed to mimic the crystals. They paid us no mind as we passed, though I nodded in service of proper manners, but minutes later, when Setti emerged from a gift shop immersed in pink blossoms, they looked at her and paused. And I caught some memory in their eyes of a handsome lad from long ago, a lad who bore gifts, and comforting kisses, and love. Of course this may have been merely the service of a germinal imagination for which I am paid, but I fancied it nonetheless. We passed them again on our way back to the elevators. This time I refused to nod, choosing instead to place a possessing arm around Setti’s shoulder. And did one or both of them remember that arm from their youth—an arm dead these days, and ever so much more cold? I wonder now, yet not then. It really didn’t matter then. What memories I have today, though, are most certainly cold. Cold as the streets of Cleveland on a February night.
∞
We were forced to order dinner. My kitchen cupboards lay bare. As this was Setti’s first visit to my condo, she reacted with a rather sprightly display of incredulity, standing on tip-toe to reach the shelves of nothing that gawped nearly as wide (widely, I know) as the stare of her disbelief. Opening one door after the next, she expostulated on the corollaries of poor self-government, neglected grocery stores, and men living alone.
“Fredo,” she said, dropping back to her perfect height, “don’t you ever go shopping?”
I allowed that it wasn’t high on my list of priorities.
“So you don’t eat. This is why I was so upset while you were in Baguio. I knew there was no one taking care of you.”
Ah! So the flower, too, feels she must shelter the gardener.
An hour later we were dining on Prito’s chicken at the kitchen bar. My unit was a typical two-bedroom on the 20thfloor. The kitchen, a pristine white, rectangular box, found its way into the living room by way of an arched recess, which stepped down onto a biscuit gold parquet flooring system. Also recessed were the lights. They cast their warm glow from where the ceiling met the wall, fooling my poor fake plants into believing the sun was in a perpetual state of western farewell. As we ate I told Setti a stolen joke—something about the plastic trees dying because I did not forget to water them. She manufactured a laugh. Then I asked about her dad. I’d last spoken to him on the phone, where his geniality had bewildered my train of thought. Were his mannerisms always so unpredictable?
“I’m afraid so,” Setti admitted. “You see, he’s diabetic. And sometimes his medicine makes him strange. And sometimes he just forgets to take it.”
“I’m sorry.”
She stopped cutting her leg to look at me. “Whatever for? You’re not the one who fed him all those halo-halos.”
“How can you be so sure? Maybe I peddle the stuff behind your back.” I ran a hand up her spine for illustrative effect.
“I had wondered how you can afford this place on a PTN salary. Which reminds me. We missed the evening news.”
I was leaning in by this time, kissing my Asian pixie behind the ear, and along her neck. “Oh yes. Allen.”
Setti had long since exposed herself as a great lover of neck kisses, even when there was fried chicken involved. Her head tilted backward to offer her throat, which I accepted, listening to a nearby pair of girly lungs flood with dainty little breaths.
“Bed,” she gushed, from the grotto of some magical forest which I, through whatever orchestrations men feigned great talent for, and upon which Fortuna, in collaboration with Venus, occasionally laid her hand, had been invited to bathe, seemingly for as long as I pleased.
I carried Setti into the bedroom, lay her down, and unsnapped those pretty pink shorts.
In the afterglow we slept. Near midnight I awoke to find her place at my shoulder empty. I lifted my head to see if she’d gone into the bathroom. But no. There was no light from beneath the door. Aside from the glow of Manila beyond the window, the room was dark. Matching the glow’s subtlety was a whispering breeze from the air conditioner. Nothing else stirred.
Mimicking that Norwegian crooner from 1986, I put my feet on the floor. Then I snatched up a pair of shorts and tottered blearily into the living room. The sound of clanging dishes drew my eye to the kitchen, where Setti, minikin chest bare above the bar, stood about cleaning our mess from dinner.
“Hello, goddess,” I announced, or something to that effect.
Her black hair, Poe’s raven amid my glittering silver, slipped over her shoulder as she looked at me. “Fredo,” she smiled. “You wolf. Hunting prey in the middle of the night.”
“Indeed,” I said, closing in. “Where’s your red hood?”
Setti put a dish in the rack, then emerged from the kitchen to show me what else besides her chest was bare. A pack of cigarettes lay on the coffee table. She reached for them, and suggested we go out to the balcony for a smoke.
I fancy myself as rather observant, and something in her tone smacked of weighty proposals yet to be lowered from some block-pulley over this undefended scene. Nevertheless, I followed the exquisite curves of her puwit to the balcony door, where she stopped and commanded that I remove my shorts.
I was no one to deny her wishes, though I did hope the demesne of Capulet would be dark tonight, and all my neighbors in bed with the flu.
Setti placed a cigarette between her lips, but handed me the lighter. I lit the end of her smoke before selecting one of my own. And there we puffed, letting our eyes wander about the towers of Makati City. So many of their windows were still lit, though none—to my timid relief—seemed occupied. Far below on the street, I spied a cabby at the condo fountain, either waiting for a fare or having a snooze. Someone honked their horn. A clock chimed. It was 12:30.
“Fredo?” I heard Setti say. “You haven’t forgotten my birthday, have you?”
The trail of smoke from my cigarette may have traced something guilty on the air. Up until that very moment I had indeed forgotten. But time’s cruelty had not found blood with its jaws quite yet.
“June 17th,” I replied. “Saturday.”
“You forgot.”
“Of course I didn’t forget. I just told you.”
“You rescued that memory from the burning pits of hell at the very last second.”
I laughed. “Now you’re being absurd.”
“Shall I remind you again on Friday?”
“Really, Setti.”
We finished smoking. My gaze again went to the street—down towards those burning pits, perhaps. This time it found an insectile sports car, her lights low, creeping moodily beneath the trees. I was helpless to wonder who might be behind the wheel. Who might be crazy enough to invest millions in such a fragile object, all in the name of exhilaration by means of proximity with the scythe.
“I like it up here, Fredo,” Setti came out with. She wasn’t looking down. Instead, she seemed to have found enchantment in the distant fairy lights of Salcedo Park, which at this hour concealed, I was willing to believe, other couples like us. “It’s not like Greenheights. There’s a steady breeze.”
“I noticed that, too. It’s called downdraught. Cool air at high altitude hits the towers and rushes to the streets. But why be uncomfortable in Greenheights?” I pressed on, suddenly aware of what I wanted from her at that moment. “The condo has plenty of room. You could come live with me.”
Setti didn’t answer with words. She stood and went back into the unit. I followed, locking the door behind me, and got a glimpse of her softness disappearing into the bathroom.
Quite suffused with gentilesse for her privacy, my obligation placed me in check, though she’d left the door open. I waited for the sounds of fluid running. The gasp of a held breath strained upon.
“Setti?” I called, after several seconds of silence.
She bade me come in, where I found her seated pertly on the commode, hands folded, knees together. Her eyes glowed like those of a lethal gynoid. The adjective lethal must be present here, as my girlfriend did not appear pleased. Nor did her displeasure seem in any way associated with natural acts performed in rooms such as this. The severe expression of her features—tight lips, burning eyes—was trained directly upon me. Moments later this deduction on my part was proved accurate when she said:
“My father must never be imposed to live alone. Not in his condition.”
“Of course not,” I countered.
“So he can live here, too?”
My hesitation lasted less than a moment. For Setti, that was long enough.
“You don’t mean what you say,” she told me.
I had to admire her bravery in such a compromising position. There she sat, haughty and determined, refusing to claim solace from some convenient distraction upon the tiled walls. Rather, it was I who began to wish for a place to hide. A basement barber shop, perhaps. Or behind a dune on Memorial Beach.
“I do mean it,” I said. “I just hadn’t thought—“
“You hadn’t thought,” Setti cut in, “of my father. Of my family’s well-being. Just Alfredo Trentinara’s, right?”
My own displeasure was kindled at that. “You’re being ridiculously unfair,” I scowled. “Is Setti Roxas a perfect human being?”
“I can’t come live with you, Fredo.”
“Understood,” I replied—or maybe I just lied. Yes, it must have been a lie. I wanted Lysette under my roof. And the present shows clearly my memory of that night; it depicts with undesired clarity something horrible in the bathroom window. A gigantic beast otherwise invisible, covered in thick hair. An entity with footsteps like the pounding of a bass drum.
“What do you mean?” Setti asked.
“I mean I’m sorry I didn’t consider your father.” My coals were cooling—not that they’d been terribly hot to begin with. “It’s just that I was so elated with having you here...I kind of lost my head.”
She smiled then, and we were out of the woods.
“I’ll let you, um...you know. Do what you need to do in here.”
Setti’s eyes fluttered. “Do you want to leave, Fredo? Hmm?
Slowly, I shook my head. “What exactly is it that you need to do, little girl?”
“Stay and watch,” the little girl said.
“Maybe you need a helpful kiss. Or two. Or three.”
“Why thank you, Mister. I think maybe you’re right.”