TWELVE
There was a funeral. It came after a three day church viewing.
We drove, Setti and I, to a cemetery I had never seen, in a motorcade of black, and gray, and metallic silver that captured the sun, only to release it again upon unsuspecting members of our grieving queue. For the day of the funeral came with clear skies. The punishment of a bright, open smile. A nigh insufferable heat blazed upon the jagged, stony precipice of our loss. I felt inspired to jump, yet held on for Setti’s sake.
Nor was the landscape of any assistance. Mark Roxas’ plot occupied a massive plain of gentle slopes that were badly in need of more trees. We sweltered in our suits and dresses as the priest—a very priestly-looking fellow of gray hair and twinkling glasses—incanted a most poetic benediction in that once dominant Roman language, now frail, whose fragments still shine from certain crevices of this modern world, like bits of gold in a panner’s sluice. At the end came the Roman Rite.
“Requiem æternam dona ei, Domine. Et lux perpetua luceat ei: Requiescat in pace. Amen.”
We spoke in lowest whispers. There were tears from the ladies. Nods of respect from the men. Apologies. Extended hugs. Hands extended.
--He was a good man.
--I loved him.
--Anything you need, Setti, anything, just let me know.
Her hat came with a black veil. Her gloves, laced, helped to etch out a powdery dedication to silence. A silence like calligraphy on a headstone. Circumspect and fastidious. Faded memories between two points in time—birth and death. We sit beneath a tree of lights; we speak of love on snowy nights. The bedside candle’s steady flame facilitates our reckless aim. Dawn, however, waits for all, with saccharine hope and stuffy pall. We pass deceived by history’s lathe; we pass bereaved, in great good faith.
Greenheights wasn’t far from the burial plot. I drove Setti all the way home with neither of us speaking a single word. Her hands were in her lap, as were her eyes. We passed beneath the duhat trees. They cast dapples on the road that were still as a painting. I parked the car. I held the door open for Setti. We walked inside.
Tikki approached us. Somehow, he could sense his mistress’ grief. He did not jump or bark or wag his tale. After giving him a brief pat on the head, Setti glided to the kitchen table and sat down.
“Would you like some coffee?” I asked.
My mind floundered for healing elixirs. It seemed I had learned nothing from that lone star author’s old book about the differences between a man’s heart and a woman’s, though I had once read it. There would be no elixir for Setti today. It was commiseration she needed.
But she did give a nod to my question. I brewed up two cups—careful to avoid the mug her father always used, and which she often reached for—and took the chair across from her. Tendrils of steam rose between us. The living room clock ticked. The refrigerator purred. Holding her cup in both hands like an old Nepalese woman seated on the windy cliffs of quake-ravished Langtang, Setti drank. I watched to see if she would shake, or begin to cry. Neither happened. She’d cried a lot at the service. Doubtless that, coupled with a recent lack of sleep, played the part of catalyst for composure. Still, I continued to watch. Two or three minutes went by. Never once did her eyes wander from the caustic depths of the mug, until finally a thought seemed to alight upon the shoots of her languished psyche. Blinking, Setti looked at me, then back to the mug, then again at me.
“Did you know,” she muttered, “that before the diabetes, my father’s demeanor was cheerful? Ever so cheerful.”
I carefully replied that I did, remembering how happy Mark had sounded on the phone when I’d spoken to him from Baguio.
“Once,” she continued, almost as if she were alone, and speaking to herself, “he jumped out of a plane. Jumped. And his main chute wouldn’t open. The rip-cord...” She shook her head, and I thought I could detect the minutest trace of a smile on her tired face. “It broke off in his hand.” Her eyes rose from the cup yet again, and this time I could plainly see that her smile was quite real. “So do you know what he did?”
“Tell me.”
“He’d jumped from fifteen thousand feet. That gave him maybe seventy or eighty seconds of free-fall, most of which had expired. He tossed the broken cord away. Then he screamed into the screaming wind: If I’m going to die, I’m going to die laughing. And he thought of the funniest joke he’d ever heard—something about a talking parrot that died of starvation because it never asked for food.”
I laughed. “Okay. I think I know that one.”
“He pulled the reserve cord. His chute opened. Friends who were with him that day, and who had already jumped, told me later that my dad floated to the ground laughing like a loon. They couldn’t comprehend his mirth. He’d nearly died.”
“It was likely a defense mechanism.”
“Yes. Likely.”
Setti’s hands were still clutched around the mug. I asked how the coffee tasted, to which she countered with a question of her own: Had I spiked it?
“Of course not,” I gushed in shock at her presumption. “Why would I do that?”
“I’m kidding, dear. The coffee is potable.”
“No better?”
She smiled over the rim of the cup. “Potable.”
Grinning, I told her that potable would need to do for now. Setti agreed, before allowing that I tended to excel at other, more gravitational endeavors. I didn’t tax her on what she might have meant, but did ask if she was going to be all right.
“In a while, Fredo,” she replied. “I’m going to be just fine in a while.”
∞
Lester’s Ghosts premiered on Tuesday, September 5. PTN remained sullen as the date approached. The hall outside my office door was like a slow river, its maritime vessels the colleagues—a great many of them—who passed with their eyes on the bottom of the waterway. I didn’t like it. Seeing them made my stomach hurt, and the tendons in back of my neck go tight. By the Thursday before premier night, the latter ailment had given me a pulsing headache. I couldn’t concentrate on work. The network’s one game show, Pababa At Madumi, was not drawing enough contestants. Rodrigo Reyes had tasked me with developing a solution to the problem. No, not developing. Automating. He wanted an autonomous system for the recruitment of contestants. I knew very little of such processes, but didn’t think it wise to respond to his assignment, sent to my office via email, with the truth. Not while he remained in a dither over Lester’s Ghosts.
That Thursday I began to count the number of despondent faces outside my door. There were ten before lunch. Number ten was a mousy little secretary wearing big, black-framed glasses. She held a stack of papers to her dainty bosom. The papers may as well have been execution orders for an imprisoned lover, such was glum expression she wore. My resolve broke. I’d been seeing people like this pass by my office all week. I leaped from my chair and confronted her in the hall.
“You don’t have to worry,” I said, a bit breathless by frustration. “Please stop.”
The girl looked at me as if accosted by a madman. “Sir?”
“Lester’s Ghosts. It’s going to do fine.”
Now she shook her head. “What is Lester’s Ghosts?”
“What is it? You mean you don’t know?”
“No, kuya.”
“Fredo? Fredo?”
It was Allen. We were having lunch in the basement cafeteria, and I’d just recounted what had happened with the secretary. The telling was easy. Only ten minutes had passed since the incident.
“Is the girl all right?” our anchorman wanted to know.
“Of course,” I told him. “I didn’t attack her, Allen. I just wanted to reassure her.”
The other nodded before swallowing a bite of his ham and cheese sandwich. “From the way you described her, I’d say it was Stacy.” Next he seized a can of Coke and drank heartily from it. “Tiny little thing? About Setti’s build?”
“That’s right.”
“Ah,” Allen replied. It was easy to discern he’d become lost in some pleasant memory of the girl. “She has a gaspy little pair of lungs, Fredo. You should hear her when she’s out of breath.”
His dreaming tone, and the way he blushed as he spoke, made me laugh. “What are you talking about, old man?”
“Never you mind, never you mind.” He raised a hand toward the counter. “Sammy? Cigar?”
The waitress peered at us from behind a case of donuts. “We don’t sell cigars down here. I tell you that every time you ask.”
“I’m being suggestive, darling.”
After lunch my mind wandered back to what I’d been told about Stacy. I kept an eye out for her in the halls, but didn’t see her again that day. Setti’s lungs were also rather “gaspy”, as Allen put it. Last I’d timed her, she’d been able to hold her breath for 45 seconds—nowhere close to the two minute objective she strove to achieve. But then it was weeks, possibly months, since I’d seen her try. Had she been practicing? For some reason the question vexed me all through the following day, so by the time the weekend arrived, I decided to find out.
∞
She and Tikki had been living at my condo unit since Mark’s death. I took Setti out to dinner on Saturday. When we got home, I casually brought up the idea of buying a fish aquarium for the the living room. She asked if I could unzip her dress, an act to which I warmly agreed.
“Speaking of fish,” I intoned slyly, “how’s your breath-hold time? Getting higher?”
The zipper buzzed down to her waist, exposing a number of bony curves that were delicate as the scent of flowers on a rainy breeze. Setti was such a slight girl. Using barely any of my strength, I knew, I could squeeze her tiny chest hard enough to prevent her inhaling. I could do this with one arm, while she beat and flailed at me with two, until her lungs caught fire and collapsed.
This was a strange thought to have. I blamed it on Setti. She’d been cool with me of late. Unsmiling. Difficult to speak to. Nor was her father’s death the catalyst—or at least I couldn’t see it as being so. She’d made for an unpleasant date at the wrap party. Kept herself at arm’s length from my protection against inebriated social deviants. Well before then, she’d refused to come live with me. Had, in fact, accused me of being selfish for even making the offer. And of course, there’d been the day I’d caught her laughing in Oliver Madilim’s office. Laughing with an abandon she hadn’t deigned to show me in...well, a very long time I would have guessed. Anyway, it was only a thought. That thing about crushing her ribs, I mean. Role-play fantasy, nothing more.
“I haven’t been practicing,” she replied absently.
She kicked off her shoes as the dress fell to the floor. Leaving them to lay on the living room carpet, she strode into the bedroom half-naked. Her stockings whispered in that way I always found pleasing, like perfume sprayed from a pink bottle.
“Not practicing?” I said, in hot pursuit of her slender frame. “What if you get kidnapped by pirates and they decide on a keel-haul?”
Setti unhooked her brassiere without turning around. The straps fell. This did not serve to cool the coals of my curiosity. Quite the reverse. Covering her breasts with her hands, she turned and made some flippant remark about hoping the boat wasn’t too large. Her tone irritated me. We had not been intimate for a long time. That evening, I’d been hoping to slay the dry spell. But Setti seemed too content to remain among funereal dunes. Cowering, perhaps, beneath a sedimentary ledge of self-pity. Not me. I wanted an oasis. I wanted us to drink...and maybe go for a swim.
“Put your arms down,” I told her.
She shook her head. “No. I don’t think so.”
She turned toward the closet. That was when I grabbed her wrists. “Down, I said.”
“Fredo!”
Setti’s puny arms were no match for my intent. I forced them away from her breasts, getting a good, clear view. She squirmed and twisted to free herself. Again, no contest.
“Fredo, stop it! That hurts!”
“Then let’s play a little.”
“I don’t want to play!”
“One breath-hold, Setti. Come on.”
She stopped squirming. “Are you crazy?”
“No. I just want you out of the doldrums. It feels like we’re drifting apart.”
Tikki appeared at the door. Head tilted and tail swaying doubtfully, he’d come to investigate the disturbance.
“Look at Tikki,” I said.
This time Setti obeyed. “What about him?”
“He’s all sad because you’re sad. Dogs can feel it.”
“Fredo? Please let go of my wrists.”
“Promise to let me time you and I will.”
Her eyes rolled. “Ay, diyos ko! Fine!”
“Good girl!”
Tentatively, in case she tried to escape, I placed my hands over Setti’s small, soft breasts. Her response may or may not have been involuntary: Her lungs gushed with a deep sigh, to which I murmured my appreciation. I gave her breasts a squeeze, pinching the nipples. It earned me another sigh, along with her body weight, which fell upon my own, as does a flower fall upon the open page of a sturdy book, and become enclosed.
“Good girl,” I whispered. “You little goddess. You little goddess.”
Her back arched, bringing up those exquisitely delicate little ribs I believe I have spoken of already. Her lips opened, and for the third time she took a breath, getting all the air it was possible for her tiny lungs to hold.
“Oh, Setti, I like that.”
“Fredo, I don’t know if this is who we are anymore.”
“It is, baby, it is. One more breath. Come on.”
She gave a nod, then filled her lungs again and, locked in my embrace, held her breath.
“Nice,” I let her know. “Show me now. Show me how long a pretty girl can stay underwater.”
Her eyes shifted to give me a look. I didn’t care. My left hand slipped down over her heart. It thrummed a portentous beat, as if an evil entity were in the room with us, the way it was for that poor Bither woman, played in 1982 by the actress Hershey. Except there was no entity. Only I, a producer from PTN, who once heard a story about a stunt woman who had drowned in a car.
Setti pointed to her throat. Her lungs were hurting. Getting low on air. By way of response, I cupped a hand over her mouth and nose.
“No,” I growled. “Hold still. Hold still!”
She was squirming again. Kicking, twisting, thrashing. Her nails clawed at my wrist and her eyes were huge and when she looked at me I saw a girl begging for respite.
“You hold it!” I ordered. Then waited. And waited...
And let her go just as it appeared she might pass out. Breasts heaving, Setti collapsed into my arms. My fingers scurried beneath her panties, found her vagina, and wriggled inside.
“You jerk!” she gasped. “You jerk!”
“You used to love it when I got rough.”
“What’s wrong with you? UH! Stop it!”
I had found another hole between her legs—the smaller one. But on that night Setti just didn’t feel keen on the enactment of taboo isometrics, or any other kind. She jerked away from me, staggering toward the bathroom door like a drunkard.
“What’s wrong with you?” I countered. “What happened to the Setti I knew last spring? Miss Adventure?”
“We don’t have spring here, Fredo.”
“You know what I mean.”
She was looking at me with her hand on the door. The diameter of her eyes made me ashamed. She’d escaped from me. Now she felt reluctant to return. Even afraid.
“It’s all right,” I said, pulling the kill-switch on my frustration. “You don’t have to lock yourself in the bathroom. I was only trying to stir the coals.”
“Fredo—“
“I’m sorry I got so excited. Please don’t be scared of me.”
“Fredo, I know these past months haven’t been easy on you. Moving from Cleveland. Our relationship. My dad. The TV show. And who knows how Tuesday night is going to go.”
“I’ll probably spend it with about fifty pouches of Kremil-S,” I put in.
“But I don’t really know if the girl you met in March is quite the same girl who’s with you now.”
“Because of your dad’s death?”
“That’s part of it. But not all. Nowhere near all.” She was still eyeing me fearfully, ready to slam the door at a moment’s notice. “I just feel like I’m changing. It’s very strange.”
“Changing into what, Setti?”
Her gaze wandered. Became unfixed. I turned around, thinking perhaps she’d noticed something behind me. But no. Whatever she was seeing possessed no physical substance. The entity again. Only this time I wasn’t the culprit.
“Somebody or something that...isn’t here,” she said. “It’s like my spirit is dislodged, and...and my body is slowly dying.”
I convinced her to sleep in my arms that night. It was something she’d always liked to do, yet had slowly gotten out of the habit of, as if I were nothing more than an extra spoonful of sugar for her coffee, or a homeless dog who would appear on her doorstep after a bit of charity, just a little, she no longer seemed willing to impart.
“Fredo?” she whispered in the dark.
I didn’t know what time it was. I’d left the window open, and a breeze had entered the room, flirting with the drapes.
“Yes?” I said.
“Have you ever missed someone who is still with you?”
I scarcely knew how to answer without sounding glib, yet did my best: “Well...no. I don’t follow.”
“Like I’m here right now. But you miss me. Right?”
Now I understood, and nodded. “Are you sick?” I asked. “I mean, do you think there’s something physically wrong—“
“No,” she cut in. “This feels more like something broken away. This thing with my spirit. And it’s drifting out to sea.”
“It’ll pass,” I said, then looked at her. “Unless you mean us. Is this your way of saying you want to end things, Setti?”
“It isn’t just us. I feel like everything is coming to an end, Fredo.”
“What? Like the whole world?”
Her eyes were on the drapes, which lifted, fell, and lifted again in the ghostly tufts of avenue wind. “Everything,” she told me. “Everything.”