FIFTEEN
For the rest of that week I was left very much to my own devices.
I told anyone at PTN who would listen that my dear Setti was bedridden with a somewhat implacable case of the flu, and that while her blankets were currently encompassed by various medicinal paraphernalia (Kleenexes, cough syrups, and the like), she was determined to be back on her feet by Monday. Her friends imparted upon me their best wishes. These typically came packaged with strict instructions for me to look after my patient in the employment of utmost care. Here I always voiced my own determination, promising that I would indeed treat Setti like the wife I was more and more perceiving her to be.
Such turn of phrase served as a boon to my credibility. Here it seems apropos to point out that Setti’s friends had never quite warmed to me. Like the green glow that Gatsby once admired from his West Egg palace, they preferred to shine upon us from a distance. Whilst alone I was never approached. Oh no, not by any of them, though I often waved or nodded in their direction. Their acquaintance demanded the presence of their peer. Could I blame them? I, the subject from a far away land? The quirk. The curiosity. The clarinet player’s stranger on the shore.
During her convalescence Setti did speak often with these cautiously aloof individuals, mainly by way of the incessant clicking that accompanied what seemed like hundreds of text messages sent from her bed. I am happy to report that every day her fingers seemed to race incrementally faster. By the weekend I felt certain that her carom from the stoic walls of our bitter happenstance was nearly complete. She had even taken to smiling when I brought her breakfast in bed, with the coffee stirred just right, her egg laid over rice in just that certain way to allow the yolk, upon a fork’s infringement, to ooze down the sides like lava from the parasitic cones of her country’s own Taal.
Only once did she attempt to defy me. It happened on Thursday—premier night for Boom Boody Boom. Setti requested, in the rather sweet tone of a child asking for cookies, permission to become part of the viewing audience. And did I also need to watch? Arrived my most cadenced of inquiries. No, of course not. She understood fully that my presence would prove far too difficult to uphold. She was perfectly content with the idea of seeing the program alone, and promised not to utter a word about it in the afterglow. In spite of this perfectly reasonable proposal I decided that I must refuse her. Lying in bed with a pouting lip and strands of dry bangs hovering over her eyes, she asked me again, this time with the addition of a forlorn “please” that made me think of starving kittens in the street. Shaken but not stirred (these heroes of the business I inhabit, and how they abide in our minds), I refused her a second time. During the premier we watched—wait for this now—a James Bond movie instead. My favorite of the series, For Your Eyes Only. Then we made love, and after that, Setti fell asleep in my arms. Not once during the film or our copulation did she deign to speak. It was defiance, I knew. The best that she could manage.
I reported to work on Friday harboring a perfectly ridiculous hope that none of the higher-ups at PTN had watched the premier, either. Perhaps they had asked their wives—pleadingly—and were told no. Perhaps the wives had then forced them to watch Meteor Garden instead. Well.
As I said, ridiculous hope. Friday morning began in much the same fashion as the Wednesday before, in that someone had placed a copy of the day’s newspaper on my desk. It had already been opened to the Entertainment section, which made me suspect Oliver as the culprit. The lambaster of Lester’s Ghosts was back with a fresh article, this one praising a new, hilarious Thursday night comedy, Boom Boody Boom. I skimmed the critique. Hilarious was not the only adjective that leaped from the page like a cold slap to face. Others included cliches such as sharp, energetic, and engaging.
“What didn’t you like about it?” I heard myself mutter through the stinging glare of my cheeks.
Looking back to those days (the opacity of my memory still permits this to happen, albeit the presentation always feels more like that of a dream I’d once had) I feel PTN may have made a mistake in not hiring a blogger, or a team of bloggers, to praise Lester’s Ghosts. The practice was not—is not—uncommon. If nothing more we might have saved a bit of face.
There were no meetings called for that day. Nobody wanted to talk to me. Thinking this well and good enough, I sat alone in my office until 3PM. As I was packing my laptop to go home to Setti the phone rang. It was our director. In a cordial but somewhat torpid voice, he asked me to please visit his office on Monday for the discussion of a new project.
“A new project?” I said, with a boost of positive energy desperately tardy to the occasion.
Either the director didn’t share my feelings or his spirit had already been nourished by its rain and was now experiencing the humid condition of its passing. In that same torpid voice he told me that yes, PTN was already considering replacing its newest program with one even newer.
“So we’re going to cancel Lester’s?” I asked.
And our director: “Mr. Reyes hasn’t made a decision yet.”
“I see. When did he tell you about the new show?”
“We had a meeting today.”
I had to wince at that. So there had been a meeting after all. I wasn’t invited. I asked the director if Oliver had been there, and of course he answered in the affirmative. From here I demanded to know why I’d been left off the guest list. The director told me—quite correctly—that it hadn’t been for him to decide who got invited and who didn’t.
“Okay,” I said. “Fair enough.”
“Monday morning?”
“Monday morning sounds good. Oh, one more thing...”
The director hesitated. I could almost feel his reluctance to speak to me wafting through the receiver. It was here I began to ascertain a dreadful possibility. Was I being marginalized by PTN? Phased out for one bad pitch that got knocked over the fence?
“Thank you,” I told him, “for not bringing up my name on Wednesday. I know I was an influence on the set.”
“All of us were reaching for ways to make a bad script better,” came the other’s reply.
It didn’t soothe me in the slightest. “Was it really a bad script?” I asked, remembering how I’d fought for it back in March. “Really?”
“I’ll see you on Monday, Fredo.”
The line clicked.
I could think of nothing more to do except conduct a discreet exit from the dreary confines of PTN. As no one in the building wanted anything to do with me, the task proved remarkably simple. The ground floor lobby, Setti’s domain, looked hushed and peaceful. In the corner stood the Christmas tree, now fully decorated. Its lights twinkled happily as one atop a snowy hill on the very eve of the carpenter’s son. This same could not be opined for the girl behind the desk. As I passed I caught her regarding me with an agit of contempt and misadventure that nearly compelled me to protest whatever unspoken accusation may have taken up residence in her mind.
She’s fine, I almost blurted, don’t worry about her.
It was scarcely worth the effort. Things would be much better come Monday. Whistling, I left the desk girl behind. The Christmas tree smiled and wished me a happy trip home. It would not be an easy wish to grant, as Setti was still in Greenheights. Before me lay an irritating journey through heavy afternoon traffic.
But first I needed a stop in Salcedo Village, here to tidy up a condo unit I’d not visited in nearly three days. As the cab couriered me through a series of humid streets crammed with vehicles of every size, I remembered something horrible: Tikki.
Setti’s little dog had been left alone in the condo since Tuesday. In all the difficulties since then I’d completely forgotten about him.
“Oh, Christ,” I muttered.
The cabbie looked at me through the mirror. I apologized and explained to him in my comically bad Tagalog that I might need to bury a dead dog tonight. His face became stunned.
“Talaga? Bakit?”
“Kapabayaan,” I replied.
It was a very long elevator ride up to my floor. The car’s gold lighting and soft, pretty music, normally an embrocation for the downtrodden spirit that so often accompanied me home from PTN, failed to penetrate my anxiety.
I walked down the hall to my door. Drove the mag-card through its slot. Calling the poor little shih-tzu’s name, I swept into the living room. A smell of pee and poop hovered. My hand fumbled for the light switch. Nothing out of the ordinary came into view, however. There was the sofa; there was the chair; there was the television. From the kitchen I could hear the purr of the refrigerator and the water dispenser. Choosing not to follow their song right away, I checked the bedroom next. It too was as I had left it. (The last person to sleep here had actually been Setti, who’d left everything—blankets, floors, mirrors—neat as a pin).
Now back to the kitchen.
Here I found Tikki lying beside an empty dog dish. He was emaciated. I could count his ribs, had I actually been morbid enough to do so. The nubs of his spine might also have served as something of an abacus for small children—again, with dependence upon a mother’s strangeness. Tikki had become a living, breathing skeleton. That’s what I’m trying to say. That’s how I need to put it. I don’t really feel like writing poetry tonight.
He was alive when I found him, though just barely. He lay on his side like an animal shot. As I watched him a dehydrated eye turned, ever so slowly, to watch me back. Honestly? I don’t think it knew what it was seeing. Tikki could hardly even breathe. He no longer possessed the energy. Had a hunter found a scene like this in the woods, he would bring the curtain down with one shot.
I suffocated him with a pillow instead, the way some new parents do to their babies in the middle of the night. Doctors have a name for babies who die this way: SIDS. Tikki wasn’t about SIDS. He’d never once kept Setti and me awake with his crying. Truth be told, I thought he was a pretty good dog. He used to jump in bed with us at night and sleep between my feet. And I don’t think I’ve mentioned this before, but part of my romance with Setti had been dependent on my willingness to walk Tikki every evening. And so I had done. Tikki wouldn’t let me forget. At around 5PM he would pick up one of my shoes and bring it to me. Then he would bring me the other. Time for our walk, Master; let’s go outside. I’m going to miss that. I’ll miss scratching him behind the ears, too, and siccing him on feral cats, and teasing him with squeaky toys. Tikki was a pretty good dog. An innocent dog—totally innocent. His fate is undeserved.
Do you remember the name of that squint-eyed actor who made all the western pictures? Of course you do. I needn’t place it here. Well, in one of those westerns he said something along the lines of deserve’s got nothing to do with it. This to the western’s villain as the villain lay dying. I’ve given that line a lot of thought over the years. Today I suppose it to be true. Because Tikki? You didn’t deserve this, little fella. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
Here and there throughout the condo the carpeting had been soiled. I cleaned that up. I deserved to (on this occasion if no other, the squint-eyed actor’s theory was off the mark, whilst I, guilty as a man who’d fallen asleep at the wheel of a speeding car, felt more than a little content to see the arrow miss). From here the dilemma of what to do with Tikki’s body could no longer be deferred. In a high rise condo building in the middle of a city like Manila, my thoughts arrived upon but one solution. It was a bifurcation of the grisly and dismal weighed against the undimmed glow of pragmatism, which required the involvement of a fresh trash bag, several ties, and a garbage chute that plunged deep into the bowels of Portland cement parking spaces.
And that, my scholarly order, is the story of Tikki, shih-tzu of misplaced trust. Farewell, little man. I hope you’re running with a good pack that loves you like the best dog who ever lived. I know of such packs. With one I was even allowed to participate as an esteemed member. It happened so many years ago. Friends of smiles, of golden aisles, among such staple wares; we spoke of dreams, and hapless teams, to ease more worthy cares. Until at last those cares drew me to other parts of the world, at which time I awoke from a happy dream. A dream that you now frolic like the victorious beasts of Adams’ Watership Down. After the suffering. Beyond the war. Farewell.
∞
I thought for certain that Setti would fly into a rage once I broke the news to her. Her reaction, however, may well have defied the swords and cups of the most masterful Tarot readers. Sitting on the edge of the bed, her face captured by the soft glow of her sleeping gown, she listened to me reveal my guilt. The sun had set; the room was dark. A weak ray of light through the window, cast from a neighboring village, was all I had to see her by.
Something in the way she looked made me hover by the door, unwilling to approach. Her black hair, cold and dark as a drowned woman’s grave, framed an empty gaze. She was a portrait of the dead. Expressionless, emotionless. A face on the wall of a haunted room.
“Setti?” I called softly. “Did you hear me? It’s Tikki. He’s gone.”
“Yes,” she moaned. Her voice had come down an octave, or perhaps further. F was root of the key. Key of mysteries and ghosts. She was mocking me again. Making fun of my failed program.
Feeling no need to make an already bad night even worse, I let it go. “I’m sorry. It was an accident.”
“Accident,” Setti moaned.
“Will you please stop talking like that?”
In the dark I caught her eyes shifting, ever so slightly, to meet more directly my own. “Of course. But what will we do with our time, Fredo? What will we do?”
“I’m not sure I understand what you mean.”
“My love is alone.”
“Alone? That isn’t true. You have my love.”
She didn’t seem to hear. Either that or the hem of her certitude had fallen victim to some rogue draft in the high halls of ambiguity. “My love is alone,” she repeated. “Perched in the trees of a rainy grove. A bird of lament.”
“Setti—”
“You failed me.”
I stood in the doorway without a thing to say. She was right, of course. I was a failure. Very little had gone right since March. A list, however, need not portend a sinking. I felt certain that something could be done, that it wasn’t too late.
“I can’t accept that,” I told her at last. “I can’t.”
And Setti: “Please go away.”
I nodded, leaving her to sit in silent darkness. Only later that night—after I’d spoken to my parents on the phone—did I understand the true meaning of her words. She wanted me to go away. Not from the door, but from everything I had done in the Philippines.
“Hello, Mom. How are you and Dad?”
“Who is this?”
“Mom. You know who it is. It’s Fredo.”
“I don’t...I don’t know any Fredo.”
“Mom, stop that.”
“Who is Fredo?”
“Mom!”
“You sound very far away. Are you sure you dialed the correct number?”
“Mom, I recognize your voice, and I know you recognize mine. I didn’t abandon the family. I came here for work. This TV station offered me an interesting job and I took it.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t have a son named Fredo.”
“Can I talk to Dad?”
“You’ve got the wrong number.”
“Please put Dad on the line.”
“I...I’m recently reconciled.”
“I know about that. Dad already told me. Congratulations.”
“I’m recently reconciled.”
“Yes, Mom. Can I talk to Dad?”
A clustered, shuffling noise came through the receiver. The sound of a phone changing hands.
“Who is this?”
“Hi, Dad. It’s Fredo.”
“Who?”
“Oh, not you, too.”
“Fredo. Fredo. Is this really Fredo?”
“Yes it is, Dad. How are you and Mom?”
“I once knew a boy named Fredo. He...he fell down a well. A deep well. We were just a couple of kids.”
“Dad, I’m not—”
“Sometimes I still see him. In dark rooms from the corner of my eye. A boy with a broken neck. His head. It doesn’t really look quite right.”
“I don’t understand this hostility, Dad. Do you want me to come home? Reunite with the family?”
“No. For God’s sake, no. Please.”
“I can pack my bags. Maybe you were right all along. Maybe I made a mistake.”
“Please Fredo...stay away.”
“You sound afraid.”
“I am.”
“Of me, Dad?”
“Yes.”
“Why would you be afraid of me?”
The clustered shuffling noise returned. This time it sounded more like rushing water. Violent interference on the line. Beneath it, distant and faint, I could make out—or thought I could make out—the panicked screams of a dying woman. A woman trapped with that robed wielder of the silver sickle. Cornered, helpless. Begging for more time. Then the line went dead in my hand.
I turned to look at Setti. She was a lump under the bed cover. The shape of an unnerving dream. Her breath escaped in a series of short, gentle sighs that seemed to carry on the whisper of the aircon. They floated across the room and under the bedroom door, until I could almost believe that Setti wasn’t next to me at all, but standing somewhere in the hallway, breathing my name again and again.
Fredo...Fredo...Fredo...