EIGHT
The following week I was having coffee alone in PTN’s basement cafe. Allen couldn’t make it. During the previous evening’s news segment he’d come down with a severe bout of the hiccups. The rather unfortunate truth of the matter—that he’d been drunk again on the air—eventually found its way over to Rodrigo Reyes’ office. More unfortunate still, somebody or something had recently snipped the station manager’s well redeemed fuse of patience for the mildly chaotic. Ill-tempered with whatever ailment currently fevered his amicability, he’d suspended Bautista for the entire month. Thus, here I sat at the network without a friend to sing Barnacle Bill The Sailor with. Or Inuman Na.
I took a sip of coffee. It was my second cup of the afternoon, and as such, I’d begun to doubt the potency of the brew, for my senses continued to proceed with overly deliberate steps through the task of caffeinating the second of our two sleepy agents: Lester’s Ghosts.
The cuts Reyes had asked for weren’t doing the show any good. Quite the reverse. That morning I’d sat down with our director to view what he and Madilim had done over the weekend. The plot moved faster. I allowed him that much once the lights were up. But in between these now swifter currents, the narrative kept striking against jagged rocks of unexplained instances in the protagonist’s life. Permit me to state the following example: In one scene, we have the spirit of Lester’s dead girlfriend shrieking the injustice of her demise; in a following scene, he laments the fact of her absence as if she had never made contact with him at all. The director agreed with me that this was ludicrous, and that a cut scene which explained his behavior should be restored.
And then we had our executive producer. Oliver Madilim wanted the show to fail. If I hadn’t known as much already by way of my rejection of Boom Boody Boom, then his daily lack of participation on set was a dead giveaway. I don’t know how many cigarettes he smoked, or how many cups of coffee he drank, whilst the crew attempted to hash out one scene after the next. And when he wasn’t pouting, he was playing the saboteur. In Baguio he’d dropped one of our cameras, damaging the lens. No one had witnessed the accident, but it was Oliver who’d been standing near the van when the camera, with tripod attached, fell out the back. It wound up costing the network 30,000 pesos to repair. His impish shenanigans weren’t always so egregious. One day we were shooting a breakfast scene, and he managed to swap our heroine’s pancake syrup with vinegar. She’d taken a bite and gagged. Oliver had laughed harder than any of us. Also, we knew he wasn’t on friendly terms with the actress. The blame came to rest on his shoulders, though he protested strongly the injustice of reckless assumption. For the rest of that shoot the actress’ normally warm constitution turned cool in Madilim’s presence.
I also suspect he played a role in the van’s flat tire on our way to Manila Film Center, albeit that particular crime lacks any kind of damning evidence. Still, whenever I chanced to encounter our executive producer—that square jaw, those long, greasy blades of hair—I wanted to blame him. He maintained no interest in seeing Lester’s Ghosts succeed. For this hypothesis we had evidence aplenty.
“Mr. T?”
The surface of my half empty coffee did not reflect who stood behind me, as it so often does in the movies, but I knew of only one person who addressed me as such.
“Yes, Oliver?” I said, turning round.
Today the executive producer had abandoned his traditional barong. In its place was a pink dress shirt with powder blue tie. “Guess who wants to see you?” he grinned all too pleasantly.
“To judge by your happy countenance,” I began, “I’m going to hazard that it’s Rodrigo Reyes. And that his mood is not nearly so good as yours at the moment.”
Madilim let a small, sardonic laugh slip from his nose. “Very good, Mr. T. You’re smart.”
“I’d appreciate if you’d stop calling me that.”
“Shall I tell the boss you’re coming?”
I rose from my chair. “No need. And Oliver?”
He raised a questioning brow.
“I am your boss. The station manager? He’s my boss.”
I normally think of myself as a mature, peaceful adult. That day, however, neither of the traits proved adept at squelching the pleasure I took in seeing the other’s smile melt into the grimace of one forced to swallow hard medicine.
“Of course,” Oliver got out. “Of course.”
Rodrigo Reyes slapped a screenplay for Lester’s Ghosts down on his desk. “The Manila Film Center footage has to be scrapped.”
I tried not to gawp as I asked why.
His answer was succinct. “You were late to the shoot that day. The lighting’s all wrong.”
Over Reyes’ shoulder I could see rain pattering on the office window. Such weather was common from June til August in Manila. The station manager’s suit was the same color as the streets below—gray and cheerless. A streak of red—his tie—represented the constant possibility of traffic accidents. As for his square glasses and neat black hair...they were the tenuous cadre of structure.
“Won’t the darkness lend uncertainty to the scene?” Oliver put in, more as a token gesture of defense than for any legitimate compassion.
“I could hardly see anything at all!” Reyes barked. He placed his hands on the desk and looked at us. “Gentlemen? I need the pilot plus three episodes by the end of August. Where are we with things now?”
It was I who answered this question. “The pilot is halfway done,” I said, knowing how that sounded.
“And the episodes?”
“We have shooting scripts, Sir. But no footage as yet.”
“Sir?” Oliver broke in. “Perhaps I could take charge of a second unit. We could work on the shorter segments while Fredo finishes the pilot.”
I glanced at him. A glance was all it took to ascertain how much Madilim liked the idea. It would get him on top of his own little hill, and away from me.
Reyes seemed interested as well. I saw his face relax a little as he asked: “How far behind schedule are we? Be objective.”
“At this point,” I began, “I don’t see us as behind. The setbacks—“
“Two weeks,” Oliver told us, rudely slicing off my application.
I looked at him again, this time for much longer. A gust of rain spattered outside the window. “That isn’t true, Oliver. Perhaps you should review the shooting schedule. The pilot will be finished by the end of this month. Then we’ll have all of July and most of August for the three shorter episodes.”
Oliver grinned as I spoke. Part of that had to do with the sound of Reyes opening his desk to grab a copy of the shooting schedule. I couldn’t help but imagine another copy hanging on the wall of Madilim’s office, pocked with red slashes for every day we wasted.
All three of us huddled around the station manager’s desk, studying the schedule. I expected us to get about seven pages shot per day. With each episode sitting at fifty pages, I felt confident that twenty-five to thirty working days would suffice. After pointing these bits of information out to both men, I took a step back to let them appreciate the aptitude of their producer.
Either they were ungrateful or too blind to see it. Reyes looked at me and shook his head.
“Fredo, what you’re saying is only going to happen with a perfect shoot.”
“Not true,” I rejoined. “I’m actually allowing eight to ten extra days for problems.”
“But the pilot is fourteen days behind right now and only halfway done.”
I began to stroke my chin, which at that moment really could have used a beard. “Where do you get that from, Oliver?” I asked around the station manager, who was standing between us. “Two weeks?”
His reply was smug as his ridiculous hair. “Easy.” He raised the schedule. “We’ve got a hundred and ten pages to shoot. We’re just over fifty in, after over a month of filming.” Here he laughed. That really made things unpleasant between us. Suddenly I had the urge to hoist Madilim over my head and throw him off the highest building I could find. “You say you expect seven pages per day? We can barely manage two!”
“Perhaps an absence of broken equipment and flat tires would be beneficial to our cause,” I reminded him, gauging Reyes’ features from the corner of my eye.
Oliver did not flinch as he replied: “Perhaps. We seem to be cursed with the baggage of bad luck. My grandmother used to say, bumagsak ang kamalasan mula sa malalayong baybayin.”
“And pray tell, Oliver, what does that mean?”
“It means,” Reyes stepped in, “that there are clearly problems between the two of you.” He shook his head. “Two grown men, acting like children, forcing someone older and wiser to intervene.” I saw his eyes shift to Madilim’s hand, which still held the shooting schedule for Lester’s Ghosts. Then he looked directly at me. “Oliver will head up a second unit for the shorter episodes. Effective immediately.”
“Very well,” I nodded. What else could I do?
“As for the film center footage...we can’t use it. Our writers have replaced it with another scene. Fredo, your unit will proceed to its location tomorrow.”
I left Reyes’ office soon after, not looking to see whether Oliver followed or not. His—Madilim’s—Tagalog remained lost on me, but later I was able to recall enough of it to repeat to the outsourced cleaning boy (he of the cappuccino machine clan) its sounds and syllables. And just as the cabbie had been able to translate what Bautista incanted the week before, the boy was able to tell me in decent enough English what Madilim’s words meant: Misfortune blows from distant shores.
∞
So I had my own unit, sans a greasy-haired hieroglyph of the morose, to spend the rest of the shoot with. This should have been a good thing, and truth be told, the reduced tension on set could scarcely be deemed as illusory. Where silent misgivings once held court, smiles and laughter pervaded. There were no more lengthy improvisations on our protagonist’s part. Our leading lady became more receptive to suggestions (perhaps because they no longer came from Madilim). And as the week progressed, the director’s language downshifted from that of a drunken sailor, to a truck driver, to very near the borders of gentleman. Was Madilim’s absence the catalyst for these happy declarations? Had the general negativity of our executive producer been holding us back from day one? I ask of you, Gentle Reader, to apply simple logic to the matter.
Our writers had replaced the film center with a haunted call center. It was a green, three-story building just a few blocks down from Baleta Drive. Right away I could understand how its reputation came to be. The inside of the building had recently been remodeled with new lighting and brightly painted walls. Nevertheless, its passages remained hostage to gloomy shadows whose sources were difficult to pin down. Even with our own lighting to help with some of the scenes, a persistent ambiguity seemed to hover in corners, as if waiting for the chance to retake pilfered territory.
Several of the agents who worked there had stories to tell. One day while eating lunch in the ground floor cafeteria, I overheard a girl telling some friends how she’d got caught up in a game of hide and seek with a child upstairs. Assuming the child—a boy—had escaped from the second floor nursery, she’d thought nothing of his presence and was enjoying the distraction from work, until finally she saw the boy dart from behind a wall and into the slumber room. She followed, and found him smiling from one of the beds near the back. Quickly the boy lay down to hide beneath the covers. But he wasn’t quick enough. She’d seen him, and when she yanked the blanket back to yell boo...she found one of the agents instead, a fully grown adult male, fast asleep.
Another story came from the second floor. Down the hall from the nursery was a women’s comfort room that not many women were comfortable to use. This I learned by overhearing nervous exchanges about a pale phantom with long, black hair. These giggling female agents spoke of black hair flowing like spilt ink across the bathroom tiles. It could only be seen from inside the stalls, through the space under the doors. Or so the ladies liked to believe.
And then there was what happened to me near the end of our stay. We’d been shooting upstairs the day before; now we were doing a scene with human resources on the ground floor. Except I couldn’t find my bag, which had a company laptop in it. Fairly certain that I’d find it upstairs, I went to the elevator and pressed the 4 button. There was no one else in the car. It took me up without a fuss, though I was unsettled when the doors opened upon a dark and cavernous area of the call center I didn’t recognize. Hesitantly, I stepped from the car. The room was full of broken office furniture. Mountains of chairs and desks, their legs pointed upward as if slain, floated in an arena of gloom. Far in back of them I could make out a row of windows, which allowed just enough light to see by. Then, from behind me, a whispering sound. The elevator doors had closed. I heard the car whir into life and drop away. A plate on the wall, barely visible, told me which floor I stood on: 4. My gaze returned to the furniture, which now resembled a singular beast, put down on a dark night for some savage outburst. The sensation of being alone retreated somewhat, which should have been comforting. Instead, my spine prickled. I felt sure there was someone up here with me, hiding in the dark.
I pressed the elevator button. The car returned (though as I waited, I refused to turn my back on those jagged humps of tables and chairs), and seconds later I was back on familiar terrain. A cameraman gave me my bag. He’d found it in one of the cubicles, half open but otherwise unmolested.
Later that day I was eating dinner at a fast food restaurant across the street. Crowds of agents and team managers from the call center were doing the same. While waiting in line, I spied one of the agents whom I’d gotten to know a little bit during the week. He was ordering a hot dog. We sat down together, and ate and talked about movies for a few minutes. The agent was a corpulent man in his late twenties. Sharp strands of black hair hung over his bushy brows, like teeth about to slaughter a burnt meal. His English, like that of most Filipino call agents, surpassed middle ground, so we encountered no issues with communication. Eventually our talk came round to the haunted call center. I asked if he knew anything about the history of the place. He nodded while sipping a monster-sized soft drink, and said that a hospital had once stood on the site. One year during a typhoon the roof had caved in, killing a number of patients, doctors, and nurses on the top floor.
“Top floor?” I asked. “How many stories did it have?”
The agent gave a noncommittal shrug. He was one of the few people at the center who didn’t believe in ghosts. In his five years working there, he told me he’d never witnessed a single incident. “Four, I think.”
“So they built another four story building in its place?”
Here my associate shook his head. “No, we only have three.” He reached for a napkin to wipe his hands. “But who knows? Maybe they’ll decide to add a floor one day. We’ve got two new teams moving in next year.”
We went on to talk about other things, but I’d already heard enough. When the shoot ended I was happy to leave. I wanted nothing more to do with knavish children, empty elevators, and the constant chirping of tech support telephones.