TEN
A month passed.
My unit traveled from location to location, trying its best to stay in step with the shooting script. As I had hoped, the road seemed to be getting smoother now that Madilim was with his own unit. We were getting through five to ten pages per day—more than double our previous output. The hiccups came—minor ones—when Oliver’s unit needed to borrow some of our performers for its own scenes. It happened regularly, but on most occasions the actors were good with working two different locations on the same day.
Only once did it become awkward. For episode three, our leading girl was to pose as a stripper whilst investigating paranormal activity at an adult club on Quezon Avenue. The second unit director made it clear there would be no need to shoot footage of her actually dancing. All he needed were a few nervous glances toward the stage, along with some shy, uncoordinated behavior for a dressing room scene. The actress took offense at the director’s assumption toward her lack of adequacy with the craft. Hissing her S sounds like a snake, she made it clear to the crew that she intended to dance. In fact, she’d worked for a year at this very club. Did neither Oliver nor his director know that? Here the director pressed, gently as he knew how, that PTN would never be allowed to show the footage to its audience. It perturbed our girl not a single jot. With cameras rolling, she was eventually allowed to strip to one of her favorite pop songs. Later that week my own unit was allowed to view the show. All of us agreed that her talent would have gone to waste had the director gotten his way.
By the end of the July the pilot was nearly complete. In a dingy viewing room toward the back of the studio, I viewed it with the director and Rodrigo Reyes. The director gave no sign of approval or disapproval at what he was seeing. His face was like the statue of Jose Rizal at Fort Santiago, which Setti had taken me to see earlier that month. It bore a placid concoction of thoughtfulness and severity which could not distance itself far enough from his typical demeanor to pass judgment. As for Reyes, he sat with his legs crossed, stroking his chin. At one point I caught him nodding. At others, he licked his lips, as if trying to decide whether or not hope was worth investing in. When the lights finally went up I thought we had a winner on our hands, and told him so.
Reyes acted hesitantly agreeable. He’d taken notes during the screening, and asked for a few simple re-shoots. Our director didn’t think they would be a problem. He told Reyes that the re-shoots could likely be finished in a single day. Looking pleased, the old man shook our hands. He congratulated us on a job well done.
We stepped back into the brightly lit corridors of PTN. The director bid us good day and cut left, while Reyes and I went right. Here I couldn’t help but ask the station manager how Oliver’s unit was fairing. Reyes stopped at a water dispenser, filled a cup, and drank.
“Madilim?” he said, dropping the cup into a waste basket. “His people have been done for a week.”
You may imagine how I gaped. “With all three episodes?”
“Yes sir!”
With that, Reyes patted me on the back, nodded, and returned to his office.
∞
Another bit of news from that month came from, appropriately enough, our news department. Allen Bautista’s suspension had expired. He was back in his favorite chair, reading daily headlines to Manila’s inquiring public. Setti and I did our best never to miss a broadcast. Sometimes we would watch from my condo unit, other times from her dad’s house in Greenheights. Our efforts were rewarded with a fair number of wonderfully preposterous blurbs.
“At a construction site near Glorietta Mall today, a worker’s helmet fell off and struck a man on the sidewalk below. This, ladies and gentlemen, is why wearing helmets is not safe! We must let our construction crews work bare-headed!”
“This evening at Buendia Station, a bus explosion claimed the life of a local condominium landlord. Rent on the condo units will be the same, though ticket prices for buses out of Buendia have significantly dropped.”
“In Los Angeles, actor Mel Gibson has been arrested for drunken driving. Again. This after he told the press, just weeks ago, he intended kick his alcohol habit. Perhaps Mr. Gibson was drunk when he made the promise.”
These and more of Bautista’s on-air statements kept Setti and I laughing on the couch for hours.
Indeed, I hadn’t realized how much the old man’s absence had dampened my spirits. I went back to having lunch with him in the basement cafeteria. His rich, grandfatherly laugh had survived the suspension and was working just fine. Sammy the cigarette smoking waitress took our orders with one eyebrow arched toward the pink diner hat she wore, as if comparing our friendship to a bad memory she wished would go away.
We also—Allen and I—continued to meet for drinks at the bamboo bar with its companionable shadows and twinkling fairy lights. I was happy to discover that the atmosphere didn’t always make him moody, as it had when he’d related the story of his dead bride. In fact on most nights I found him to be quite cheerful. That was how things were on the night he told me the story of the Gemini girls.
It was Saturday. The streets were windy due to an approaching typhoon. In a storm of leaves, sampaguita petals, and cigarette butts, Bautista and I walked from our cab to the bar. The tiny barmaid gave us a reproachful look when we left the door open for too long. The lounge was dark and quiet as usual, though I noticed the lights would occasionally exhibit skittish flickers with the storm.
We sat in one of the candlelit booths. Bautista was hungry and ordered a sandwich. I went with french fries and a beer. These details are worth noting so as to reinforce the clarity of my recollection. We spoke of mundane things as we ate. After the meal we ordered a round of brandy. Two glasses later I was feeling quite relaxed. The liquor, combined with the darkness of the bar and the sound of wailing wind from the street, effectuated the soporific sensation of dreams upon ambiguous lot lines.
Perhaps Bautista felt it, too, for our conversation turned to friends we’d known and lost over the years. Also, my tongue must have been loose enough to release my deepening affection for Lysette Roxas. At one point I even told the anchorman that I was in love.
The older man’s face hovered in the bamboo-scented gloom. A vague yet warm smile turned the corners of his mouth. “Ah,” he said, “we must be careful whom we fall in love with, Fredo. It’s sleight of the heart. Sleight of the perfect kiss.”
There was still some brandy left in the bottle. I refilled my glass before asking what he meant.
Bautista reached into his pocket to retrieve one of his heroic cigars. He bent to light it with the candle, puffed, and answered: “Among those old friends we were talking about was a fellow who went head over heels while still in high school.” His shoulders twitched with what looked like a shrug. “I was his batch-mate. The girl in question was very small and very pretty. High school is such a wonderful time for being in love.”
I allowed that this was so before lighting a cigarette from the very same candle.
“He met her in trigonometry class. Or rather, he met the back of her head, for his seat was directly behind her. She had a wave a dark hair that curled between her shoulders like calligraphy drawn over Bristol. That was the way he put it.” The anchorman gave a laugh. “Anyway, love. Instantaneous. For him.”
“And what did he look like?” I asked, mainly to reflect my interest in the story. I was taught by my father years ago that the art of listening, and showing that you were listening, is just as integral to a conversation as the words themselves.
Bautista had an answer ready and waiting. “Tall. Lanky. His ears were big and his eyes were small. Also, he tended to trip a lot on the stairs. None of these qualities helped his chances with her. So for about one month he loved her from a distance. Nor did their classroom seating arrangement make a difference. The girl had many friends who liked to cluster around her desk during study breaks.”
“That’s common with girls,” I pointed out, thinking of Setti’s friends in HR.
“Indeed it is. But this friend of mine just couldn’t stop what he felt. He continued to love her while his courage suffered before every looking glass he happened to find his way into. Then one day it got even worse. He was sitting in study hall, mulching his brain over some exam or other, when suddenly, someone sat down directly across from him. He looked up. It was the girl of his dreams. She’d been assigned to his table. Now, instead of looking at back of her head, he was looking directly into her eyes. Harap-harapan. It was painful for him. Torture. She was so beautiful, and he couldn’t muster the courage to tell her, even from two feet away.”
I shook my head. It was hard to understand how a man could be so skittish. A spider behind a picture on the wall. When I told Bautista as much, he sighed.
“We were in the nerd club, Fredo. We were pimply. We wore glasses and pocket protectors. We farted in our sleep.”
I laughed. “Everybody does that!”
It was as if the other didn’t hear. “Nerds aren’t supposed to love goddesses. Or even the gifts of goddesses.” Bautista paused to relight his cigar. “That last. That was also how he described her. He told me it was as if Venus herself had given her to him. Love her, Venus told him. Take care of her forever. But as you said...he was skittish. So skittish.”
“So he lost her instead?”
“He lost her instead. For many, many years.”
I lit another cigarette. It was clear that Bautista’s story was just getting going. His eyes were dangling lures in the sea of gloom between us. Now the lights flickered again, this time more vehemently. A gust of wind screamed past the door.
“But...she came back?” I asked, giving in to the anchorman’s stare.
“In a manner of speaking. Not that he ever stopped loving her. He once said to me that a day couldn’t pass without some thought of her making its way into his head. It went on for a long time after we graduated high school.”
“It never embarrassed him that you knew?”
“I found out on my own,” Bautista said. “It wasn’t difficult. He would stare longingly at her during study hall, then put his head down and sleep. Once I even saw the girl roll her eyes in exasperation for his cowardice. This was just after she caught him looking. The poor kid’s eyes flew off like a couple of scared birds. Well. We graduated high school, went to college together, and the girl disappeared. I took up journalism while my friend studied 16thcentury English literature.”
“Whoa!” I broke in. “That’s a niche major!”
Bautista went on to tell me that one night, not long after they’d gotten their degrees, he attended a seance in one of the upper floors of an abandoned art gallery. This, he explained, was his first assignment ever. A story about ghosts. Do they exist, or are they nonsense?
“It was a night not unlike this one,” Bautista said. “Stormy. Rain and wind. The gallery was a huge, disused space on the fourth floor of some business block that hadn’t been occupied for ages. When I got the assignment I invited the friend along and he accepted. It seemed that over the years this girl he loved had been haunting his dreams. It must have been those dreams which sparked his interest in the occult.”
“Were his dreams scary?”
“Not at all. From what little he related to me about the dreams—just bits and pieces over span of maybe five years—he would be standing in a busy train station, saying goodbye to a group of departing faces he was never quite able to identify. Then the girl, wearing a pink sweater and pink framed glasses, would breeze past on her way to one of the trains. Seeing her always astonished my friend. Determined not to lose her again, he would check her on the spot. There, he went on to tell her who he was, and how much he loved her, and would always love her. And every time he voiced this litany the girl’s beautiful face would take on an amused expression, as if she found her confessor to be cute, along with more than a little naive. Of course, her secret smile only made him love her all the more. What does she know, Allen? He used to ask me that whenever we talked about the dream. As if I could possibly produce a satisfactory answer. In truth, I wanted to tell him to stop being ridiculous for this long lost girl and get on with his life. But our friendship wasn’t like that. We entertained each others’ miseries. Then came the night of the seance.”
I didn’t interrupt Bautista anymore. His knack for telling a good story wasn’t the only reason. The candlelit bar, with its bamboo shadows twitching to the redoubtable rhythm of that year’s strongest typhoon, also contributed. I lit my third cigarette of the evening before leaning forward to let my friend finish his tale.
“I remember there were huge, half-finished paintings leaning against the walls. They were hard to see, which only lent power to the abandoned brush strokes that would periodically leap, like memories of murder, from the gloom. An old woman—seances are always conducted by old women—had already met up with us on the street outside. Once in the giant room, we sat in a circle. There were maybe eight of us in all. Myself, my friend, a few others. There were candles in the middle of the circle. The old woman lit them so we could see. Aside from being old, she didn’t look like the spiritual mediums you tend to see in the movies. There were no cloudy, creepy cataracts in her eyes. Her voice didn’t drawl like some zombie let loose from the grave. No drool oozed from the corner of her mouth. Instead, she resembled a kindly old grandmother who’s always giving out sweets to the kids.
“Perhaps she should have studied more film, for her undramatic appearance spread into the seance itself. Sitting with us around the candles, she had no luck with her craft whatsoever. Not for maybe half an hour. I think all of us gave her the name of some dear, dead friend or relative we’d been hoping to contact. But there was no soap. Finally I made up my mind to leave. The seance was a bust. Even the paintings had lost their power over me. I tapped my friend on the shoulder and nodded toward the door. He nodded in return. Then, I suppose as a last, desperate attempt to make something out of nothing, he asked the old woman about the love of his life. He asked about the girl.
“He hadn’t seen her for years and just wanted to know if she were still among the living. The old woman closed her eyes. She concentrated for several minutes, giving our senses over to the wind on the windows, and rain on the roof. At last her jaw slowly came open. Her shut face turned to settle directly on my friend. She told him that yes, the lady in question was still alive and well, and that she was a Gemini.
“My friend already knew this last. He told the medium that he’d actually learned the girl’s birth date while still in high school. Here the old woman shook her head. Slowly, back and forth. A gust of wind struck the window hard enough to make the frame rattle. One of the candles guttered and went out. She is a Gemini, the woman repeated. She has a twin sister. The sister died young. Very young. A baby.
“My friend knew nothing about this girl having a sister. Of itself, that’s hardly surprising. He’d never been intimate with the girl. Outside of those longing teen-aged glances, he barely knew her at all. Well. The seance eventually came to an end. We all went home. I wrote my story and, a week later, presented it. Nobody cared. Strike that. One person cared.”
“One?” I chanced, hoping not to warble too far the groove of Bautista’s story.
“Yes. The girl cared. The proprietor of my friend’s dear heart.”
I could nock no reply to the bow of my speech. The girl had viewed Bautista’s presentation, and from there contacted the network? I managed to ask this question while pouring out the last of that evening’s brandy.
“Oh no,” the anchorman replied, perhaps taken aback by my drunken stupidity. “We didn’t use her real name on the air. But another friend at the network, this one with a background in documentary research, did agree to help me track down her whereabouts. I’d had enough, you see, of weeping hearts. I was already engaged to my own dream-girl. The one I lost on our honeymoon.”
Drunk or no, I was tactful enough to keep silent while Bautista re-lit his cigar. Tokyo had been bad for him. I already knew more about it than I wished.
“So this girl, she eventually gets in touch with me, and from there I put her touch with my friend. What their conversation was like probably merits a news story all its own. But the gist is this: The girl was—is—indeed a Gemini. She is also the twin of a dead sister. The sister died of dengue when she was four years old.” A puff of cigar smoke floated over the table. “Quite remarkable, really. I am still in contact with the friend. Sometimes he tells me—normally late at night, after several glasses of cheap beer—that he has no idea which of the two girls he truly loves, the living one or the dead.”
“I’m sure it’s the living one,” my opinion voyaged. “He’d never met the twin at all.”
Bautista shook his head. “Untrue, Fredo, untrue. He’s met her several times, at some train station in the region of romantic love.”
“You mean he dreamed of her.” I’d no idea what Bautista meant by the region of romantic love, and chose not to pursue it.
“Perhaps. But Fredo. The dream repeated many times. Still does to this day. Always my friend sees her amidst a throng of travelers. Always he stops her to proclaim his passion.” He leaned forward. “And always, she replies with a silent smile. The smile of a girl who knows a different truth. My friend thinks that one day he really will get to meet her. And who knows? One day, maybe he will.”
Bautista settled back in the booth. The darkness embraced him.
“I don’t really believe,” I began, “that it’s possible to love two women at the same time. Truly love them.”
I heard the anchorman grunt in what sounded like amusement. “Not even identical twins?”
And I had to allow that I’d never known a pair of identical twin people. Never once in my entire life.
“Our passions, Fredo, arrive with the histories of those who felt them before us. A thousand rainy days fade the carvings on their stones, so that we must learn them again. And again. And again.”
Blinking my drunken eyes over the table, I tried to understand what Bautista meant by this. But with the flint of my comprehension moistened by drink, the steel of his verbiage could produce no spark. In the end I could only nod, doing my best to appear sage.