TWENTY
Later that month Oliver Madilim was terminated from PTN. I have already exposed the catalyst, but please do indulge my satisfaction at typing the words again. Detective Lopez came to our network offices—on a Tuesday, I believe—and placed Madilim under arrest for the destruction of private property. Madilim’s urine sample had matched the one taken from the crime scene. It incriminated him, shall we say, yellow-handed.
He was escorted out of the building in silver cuffs of disgrace. I watched as he and the detective glided past my office window. Oliver’s head was down, his long black hair concealing whatever expression of shame may have occupied his features. As for Lopez... He turned just once to look at me. Neither triumph nor apology shined from his eyes. They were cold and accusing as always. Indeed, had I not known any better (did I?), I might have fancied he continued to suspect my guilt. Oh please, detective. Oh please. You have your man. The proof is in the beaker. Close the case and take your bonus.
We had a meeting about it. We being Rodrigo Reyes, our director, our writer, and a rather delicate little secretary with pretty legs who took down every word we said. This last was at first a source of confusion. I couldn’t understand why Reyes didn’t simply record our discussion with a phone or some other modern device. In hindsight I believe he used the girl as a method of easing the tension caused by Madilim’s arrest. She was like a kiss for encouragement. A cool drink for a seething sky. I needed none of those things (Oliver’s defeat was cause for elation, not tension!), but it certainly felt nice to have her in the room. Her neckline was low, her skirt high. You get the idea.
Reyes placed me back in my original producer’s role. Our writer grunted at this, but I promised to keep off his toes and let him do his work. The new dramedy was doing swell. It held no cause for the induction of my two cents. The writer nodded and seemed to relax a little. Then the director cut in to make sure we understood the shooting schedules for future episodes. The pace, he promised, would be hectic, but since things had been that way with the show since day one, he saw no reason for us to fail. From here he moved on to give a short list of complaints from the cast. The costumes were itchy. The caterer was terrible. Our pretty secretary wrote all of this down, her tiny arm winging away over a prim notepad (that’s a lot of adjectives for one sentence, I realize, but I’m telling you this girl was worth every single one). I raised one finger and promised to investigate both caterer and costumer.
“Ruth Cortez is our costumer,” the director informed me. “You remember Ruth?”
I did indeed remember Ruth—a short, plump woman of around fifty whose voice consisted of a booming friendliness that suggested a vague perdurance in the fogs of inebriation.
“And how about the caterer?” I asked.
It was the writer who answered. “Martha’s Catering. Cold soup. Warm soda.”
“We can provide you with contact information,” Rodrigo Reyes said.
I thanked him. He didn’t smile, or even acknowledge the gesture. Like Detective Lopez, I had a sense that this man simply couldn’t bring himself to like me very much. It happens. Two people meet, and sometimes there’s a lack of chemistry straight out of the box. On other occasions it’s a rigid difference of opinion (social, artistic, political, whatever) that drives them apart. With others still we may gesture toward a lack of trust as the reason. I had failed Reyes once; he no longer trusted me. In these lives we walk dry, dusty roads in the hot sun, and certain people walk with us for awhile, and some pass going the opposite direction. Even so, I thought I could win Reyes back, as I had won Setti back. We would get there eventually.
So I was now a producer again. That night I told Setti the good news. Her response was heterogeneous. She congratulated me with her eyes whilst, with a remonstrative pout, pitied Oliver his fate. I understood it well enough not to be angry before asking if she would like to go out to a celebratory dinner.
“Isn’t your victory rather dubious?” she wanted to know. “Chamba, Fredo.”
“Setti,” I began patiently, putting my hands on her shoulders, “Oliver did a bad thing. He committed a crime. And now he’s paying for it. Should I mourn?”
“No. But you shouldn’t necessarily delight.”
“I’ve been given a second chance. With you and PTN. I’m delighted, Setti.”
That made her smile a little. With my thumbs, I touched the corners of her mouth to make it wider.
“Tell you what,” I said. “We’ll order a pizza. Make it a half-celebration.”
∞
The leap from executive to chief producer nearly doubled my amount of work, so that I nearly forgot my mission—that mission being the excursion, if you will, into the gaming studio of PTN, there to retrieve the drowning death of Giselle Chavez. When the crew wasn’t off shooting material somewhere, people kept calling my desk in the middle of the day. The subject matter of these calls ran the gamut from extreme to downright silly. Rent was due on equipment. We needed more extras for a cafeteria scene. Our leading lady had come down with the flu and couldn’t make it to work tomorrow. Our leading man was hung over from an all night party and couldn’t make it to work today. We’d run out of toilet paper at a filming location across town, and now one of our cameramen was stuck on the can. The van’s motor was acting up again.
And then there were the calls that I had to make. They were as plentiful, if not more so, as the former. Stray dogs are a common sight among the cooked, hazy traffic of Manila’s streets. Often one would wander, half blind, half starved, onto the set as we worked. Primordial humanity obliged us to feed these mongrels, and feed them we did, usually with rice and chicken and cold water. One day I called a pet supply store to have some jerky treats delivered, which in turn became a force of habit for subsequent shoots. On that same day I got in touch with the costumer about those itchy clothes.
“Howya doin, hon?” Ruth Cortez bellowed through the line.
From here I explained our situation, whereupon she promised to rinse her future batches in cold water mixed with white vinegar. This actually did the trick, though the clothes came back smelly, impelling me to dial her number again days later.
“Howya doin, hon?”
“Ruth? This is Fredo. All our costumes now smell like vinegar.”
“Ay diyos ko! We’ll have to include an extra rinse!”
“Please do.”
In regard to the catering issue, my approach was more delicate. Martha didn’t drink, at least not the way Ruth did. As a result, the inclination of her personality favored politics over passion. To criticize her cooking would be tantamount to lampooning her love of the craft. So then. With Martha there were tulips to tiptoe through. I didn’t wish to step on any.
“Howya doin’, hon?” I almost asked when she picked up the phone, which would have gotten things off to a bad start. Instead, I began by wishing her a lovely day, the words spoken in what I hoped was a pleasant, cultured voice. Next, I complimented the nilaga she’d sent over to Festival Mall, where we’d filmed a bookstore scene a few hours before.
“Okay,” Martha said in a tone that came up shy of receptive. “Salamat.”
“Great,” I went on, chickening out. “Keep up the good work.”
The line clicked. Martha’s Catering was going to be difficult.
Overall, the intensity of my duties for the new show mirrored that of what I’d experienced for Lester’s Ghosts. Only this time around, as I’ve already stressed, would see little if any attempt on my part to influence the story. What wasn’t broken needn’t be fixed.
One rainy midnight near the end of November Setti gently requested a follow-up to my vault expedition. She lay naked in my arms, her body soft and cool as the rain on the window, her breath gentle like the breeze that touched the glass in passing. I’d been listening to both—rain and breeze—for the better part of an hour, their music all the more sweet for the fact that it played so rarely in this part of the world, and with such eagerness to be on to the next place. But for the faint glow of Manila through the curtain, the bedroom was dark. Silent, too, though I kept hearing the jingle, ever so slight, of a dog collar outside the door. What an imagination, yes? The network had instilled it upon me as a necessary tool.
“Fredo,” Setti whispered. “Sweetheart.”
“Hey, you,” I whispered back.
“Have you been to the crypt?”
At first I couldn’t understand what she meant. Then it lit upon me. Her maneuver gave me pause, the way a husband may pause when, at breakfast, he tastes his first sip of poorly brewed coffee. “You mean the vault,” I said, blinking in the dark. “No. I’ve been wanting to but I keep getting distracted with work.”
Setti slipped from beneath the covers. Her skin on the sheet was like the hiss of desert sand. I watched her cross the room naked in the light of Salcedo Village. The rain phantoms on her delicate curves made me wonder just how much like Giselle she really was, or wasn’t. There were people at PTN who were still concerned for her well-being. Where’s Setti? The girls from HR kept asking. Only sometimes I heard the question as Where’s Selli? Do you, Gentle Reader, understand? Are we beginning to discover a common ground? By this point in the story you perhaps suspect I’ve gone mad. Let me assure you that, as I watched my exquisitely beautiful girl cross the room that rainy night, my faculties were quite sane. I wanted ever so much for her to come back and lie down, and let me love her until dawn, whispering between every kiss that I would never again be the cause of her fear.
Where’s Selli? Where’s Selli?
The bathroom door clicked open, clicked closed. I waited to hear the sound of pee from a full bladder, or water from a squeaky valve. There was nothing. I failed to so much as pick out a bar of light from under the door. All I had was the rain on the window, tap tap tapping like the long claw of some wraith—the aswang perhaps—no longer interested in passing by because, truth be told, her home was here.
Calling Setti’s name, I followed her into the bath. The light was off. I clicked it on. The sink, the toilet, the tub sprang into disinfected view. There was no Setti.
I took a breath. Then, knowing what I would find, I turned round to meet her sitting up in bed, her breasts bare, her smile taunting. And for just one moment I thought I saw fangs. Fangs, dear Reader. Then I blinked, and she was Setti again. Her arms slithered from beneath the covers. They reached for me.
“Come here,” she whispered.
My hand went back through the door, found the light switch and clicked it off. This I conducted out of absolute determination against any fear. Have you ever read the poem A Kiss From My Darling Death? As I crossed the room to our bed, a fragment of it occurred:
Come to me this rainy night,
My blue kiss your oasis,
And bear the pain of dawn’s delight,
To know what my true face is.
Taking hold of Setti’s hand, I slipped under the sheets. Moments later Setti also slipped under. Her eyes were deviant, her smile vampiric. I waited. She was fully submerged, like that painter from the film by Richard Marquand, who had carried off her scene of death upon a manor crest. But Setti wasn’t holding her breath. I could hear the air between her lips, feel puffs of it upon my skin. Then came the warm wetness of her mouth as she took me in, deeper and deeper, until the meal that drew her became her impediment, forbidding passage to the lungs I’d once took such pleasure in timing.
I might have gasped something. Some encouragement that lent her faith. Since that night there have been so many others like it, each as delectable as the last. Dear girl. Bird of the sweet, cooling rain. What do I call you? What is your name? You were not the Rainbird, a fact my conscience failed to realize. The name fit so neatly. A perfect breath for a perfect pair of lungs.
I called you the Rainbird, but I was wrong.
Soon I would learn, freeing us both to the joy we live today. The time between then and now seems like forever. To this I know you agree. So I will mark a date in the future—a random date which I, like a warlock, will turn from nothing to everything—so we may live forever once more. There are never too many forevers, nor is there too much love. I learned it all from you.