THREE
A month passed.
Things were going well with both my work and personal life. At PTN I did encourage Rodrigo Reyes to green light a show, a drama with the working title of Lester’s Ghosts. Lester “Caps” Capili was a ghost hunter working in the Gilmore district of Quezon City. He spent nights investigating its tree-lined streets, where some of Manila’s oldest mansions brooded behind gigantic stone walls overgrown with vines. I felt confident we could have the pilot plus three episodes shot and ready for release by the end of August. Of course I had yet to learn—and thus far no one had bothered to tell me—that Halloween had never been much for good traction in the Philippines.
I think Oliver knew the show would fail. Throughout production he smoked a lot while offering very little input. Every so often, however, I would notice him sitting near the sound stage, or leaning against one of the huge baleta trees on Baleta Drive where we shot the pilot, and his face was dressed in a serpentine grin, and his eyes were like the stone walls—pale, unforgiving, and immersed in dark green. Yes, Oliver knew that Lester’s Ghosts didn’t stand a chance. But he never said a word.
Meanwhile I continued to date Setti. We went to a number of different clubs and restaurants. One of them was on Timog Avenue in Quezon City. She’d chosen the place as her favorite, which I later thought quite odd, considering the information she shared while we ate. Up until that point she’d been cheerful and talkative, telling me of her family in Greenheights (“Where I’ll be taking you soon” she added with a devious little wink), of her little dog, Tikki, who lived with them, and about swimming at Puerto Princessa. This last brought us round once more to her free diving, and again I braved a look at her small chest, the smooth, soft center of which was exposed tonight between the V neck of a tight black dress. On either side I could also discern the faint twilight of her breasts, like the shadows of thin fabric thrown by starshine across an empty bed.
I started, feeling a bit as Dante must have felt when his eyes had rested for too long upon Beatrice, only to discover that Setti wasn’t paying attention to my scrutiny at all. Instead, she was looking out the window. Following her gaze I could see nothing of interest. The street beyond was crammed with traffic. Beyond this stood an old, decrepit building that appeared ready to collapse.
“Setti?” I asked. “Is something wrong?”
And here came the information I alluded to. “My mother,” she said, still looking through the window. “She died over there. In a fire.”
My eyes retraced their steps. There again was the traffic. A group of giggling girls were running across the street, hoping not to get flattened. There once more I could see the old building, its brickwork listing, its windows black as the tips of crushed out cigars.
“It used to be a disco,” I heard Setti say. “It burned in 1996. Killed 250 people. One of them my mother.”
I had no idea how to respond. Should I have taken the girl’s hand, tried to comfort her? Should I have apologized for the tragedy? Setti had returned to the present. Her eyes, dry, were resting on me. Then, in what seemed to me absurdly out of place, she flashed a tiny smile. “Crazy, right?”
“What caused the fire?”
Setti’s stare grew wide. “Electricity,” she sang in a creepy voice that mocked a million horror movies. Then she considered the candle between us, finding new justification, perhaps, for its very existence. Or perhaps she felt an urge, right then and there, to dump water onto its wick.
Floundering for purchase upon this rocky terrain, I took a sip of wine. “So...so you have no mother?” I stammered foolishly.
“Of course I have a mother. She’s in her grave but she’s still my mother.”
“Yes. Of course. I didn’t mean—“
“Eat your pasta, Fredo.” Setti grinned. “Don’t make a big thing out of it.”
I speared some rigatoni onto my fork. Was Setti telling the truth? I didn’t know.
But later that night I searched the internet for disco fires in the Philippines. And the information came up just as she’d said: March, 1996, two hundred and fifty people dead.
∞
On Friday of that week my production crew returned to Baleta Drive. We needed to conduct some re-shoots. This because Rodrigo Reyes had watched what we’d done on Tuesday, and been disappointed. The acting was stiff, the writing bland. The shots needed more energy. More tension.
“I feel groggy,” Reyes told me the day before, after viewing the results. “Why?”
“Well—“
“I don’t want people turning off the TV to go to bed, Fredo. I want their eyes on the screen and their mouths full of popcorn.”
“But it’s really not all that—“
“I’ve already talked the director. You’ll be going back to Baleta Drive tomorrow night.”
So here we stood. Moods were sour. Our director, who’d been thoughtful and soft-spoken with everyone since the beginning, tonight felt inclined to shout orders like a marines drill sergeant. He kept telling the girls to fetch him coffee, and the men to stop pouting. This, he yelled through his megaphone, was a show about ghosts. People needed to look scared. Ready to scream. How difficult could that possibly be for a bunch of art school graduates like ourselves?
“Ayusin mo!” he screamed. “ACTION!”
I too had become irritated with the shoot, but at least had a weekend with Setti to look forward to. As she’d promised, we were going to Greenheights to meet her family. Her invitation had come not two hours ago, before we left the station, and that mischievous smile she owned had returned. I could only hope it meant what it looked like.
“Pale,” Lester uttered, lost in soliloquy, “like moonlight beyond the black boughs of our screeching souls being dragged to hell—“
“CUT!” the director shrieked. “WHAT THE HELL, BOY? THAT’S NOT IN THE COPY!”
The actor playing Lester now looked lost in a completely different way. Blinking like Hugh Grant in one of his old rom-coms, he said: “Well, no, but I just thought—”
Our director cut him off again. “I DON’T CARE WHAT YOU THINK! YOU’RE AN ACTOR! YOU ACT!”
“Sir, this street is rumored to be haunted for real. A ghost might actually show up.”
“THE GHOST CAN KISS MY ASS!”
At last I could sit by no more. I rose, went to the director, put my arm around his shoulder. “You’re doing great,” I told him. “Really. You’re making everybody here feel it, man.” I gave a smile and nod to reassure him I meant what I said. Even though I didn’t. “Some actors, as you well know, just can’t help but twist a few knobs here and there to immerse themselves further into the character.”
“But we’re wasting time, Fredo,” he replied. “This reshoot puts us even further behind than we already were.”
Here I winced. We were indeed behind schedule for an August release. Reshoots aside, the station manager had also demanded rewrites. Script polishing. Our budget for these early episodes was approaching its limit. I had known very little about these things until yesterday, when Reyes had called me into his office. And while as yet I could see no real excrement upon the proverbial spinning blades of the Hanabishi, a distinct odor had begun to waft onto the scene.
“Don’t blow your cool,” I told the director, smiling some more. “He’ll get it.”
Five minutes later the director called action again.
“Pale,” Lester uttered, lost in soliloquy, “like moonlight beyond the black boughs of our—“
“DAMMIT!” I screamed, slamming down my copy of the script. “WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH YOU?”
“CUT!”
I turned my head to look at the director. Over his shoulder I could see my executive producer, Oliver Madilim, sizing me up with the black, heartless eyes of an ocean predator.
∞
Greenheights was a small, relaxed village one hour’s cab ride south of Manila. Setti and I left PTN at eleven on Friday night. She came outside dressed in her traditional black—skirt and blazer with a white blouse. A wind had gotten up, whipping her hair into life, as once that ancient Greek gorgon’s hair had lived, and whose head became an icon on the shield of Athena. She hopped into the cab on sprightly legs, kissed me a welcome, and away we went.
The village rested on the side of a huge hill. Beyond the gate (where a sleepy guard waved us inside), I could see a number of large, well-kept homes overlooking a valley that led all the way to Laguna Bay. The bay itself I could just make out through the trees, five kilometers distant, shimmering beneath a cloud-scudded moon.
At a deserted T intersection Setti bade the driver turn left. We plunged downward, deeper into the trees. At the bottom of the hill was another intersection, where an old, rusty fence materialized in the gloom. A few more houses did the same, their twinkling lights set among the swaying trees. We crossed a small bridge, then:
“Dito na,” Setti told the driver.
I paid the driver and got out, escorting Setti like a true gentleman, though I’d caddishly forgotten to buy her flowers. An abandoned guard house greeted us. Leaves swept up the street, as if fleeing the wind. In front of us was a dark lane divided in two by a row of duhat trees through which I could see more house lights. Setti tugged me in the opposite direction, up a street that led seemingly nowhere. The trees closed around us. Pitch blackness. Then we turned left. A hill led us upward toward a wide expanse of clouds that passed like ships on a fjord. A the top was an open field of grassy terrain decorated with a small pond.
Up here the view was nothing less than splendid. Greenheights was now behind us. At our feet were the city lights of Muntinlupa, rife with activity on this weekend night. But we were alone. Or rather, it was just us and the wind, whispering through brush that bordered the hill. Even the moon had dodged behind a cloud, as if in respect for what my young Filipina did next.
Watching me intently, she let her blazer fall to the grass. Next, she began to unbutton her blouse, her fingers moving as if at play on the strings of a delicately tuned instrument.
“I used to play up here as a girl,” she said. “We had such fun. My friends and I. Playing two base. Picking mangoes.”
The blouse opened over her brassiere. Setti’s chest looked small and pretty as petals upon the surface of a stream, carried as it were not by water on this night, but wind, the cool, stormy wind that rushed through the trees, leading us on this dance, encouraging our steps. A bow. A curtsy. A twirl and a dip. A kiss at midnight’s unmasking.
“I also knew that my first time with a boy would be here,” Setti went on.
I didn’t bother asking how she could know such a thing. Nor did it matter, as her brassier fell, and I took in the sight of her tiny breasts, rising with breath upon a cage of ribs thin as twigs. I could contain my decorum no longer. My hands found her soft, bare skin. They pressed gently upon the bones beneath, which bent, as if my touch was the wind, and they the trees. Just like a rainbird, Setti was such a small young lady. She bruised easily. I would need to be careful, especially on this night, while she was still a virgin.
“My neck,” she whispered.
I kissed her there. My hands went to the hem of her skirt and lifted, exposing even more of her body.
“Yes,” I heard her say. “I like that. Oh my God, baby, yes.”
She’d been fumbling with the belt of my pants, and now managed to get everything down. I helped her by kicking off my shoes, during which time she returned the favor by unzipping her skirt, so it was with effortless zeal that I slipped it down her legs. She ordered me to remove my shirt, which I did, then told me to step behind her. This I did too, placing my hands over her breasts. A high, musical gasp flooded her lungs. I took hold of her neck and gave it a calculated squeeze. That she really seemed to like.
“Good!” Setti plumed, tilting her head back. “Perfect, baby, perfect!”
My other hand retraced its steps to her panties. Squeezing her neck a little harder, I reached beneath them. Setti’s vagina was bald, tight, and smooth. My invasion upon this sensitive place flushed her lungs with another gasp. Seconds later her knees were buckling, and my fingers were wet.
“Are you going to fuck me, Mister?” Setti asked between breaths. “Are you?”
I reached lower between her legs. Her other hole was there. I found it and pushed.
“Yes,” I said, feeling her push back.
“Say you’re going to fuck me. Come on.”
“I’m going to fuck you, Setti.”
“You’d better mean that.”
“I do.”
I did. Lowering Setti to the grass, I got her panties off, then placed my hands beneath her thighs and eased them apart, getting everything she had down there fully exposed. She looked at me. She was not smiling. Rather, her eyes were that of a woman conducting a job interview, wondering whether or not to hire this man on the other side of the desk. Was I good enough? Could I contribute? Fortify her stealthy, feminine means?
“Fuck me,” she commanded, lying naked on the grass, her groin open. “Right now, Mister. Don’t let me breathe.”
I thought this last a rather odd request, but then who was I to deny a pretty girl her dalliance? Opening her legs wider still, I stabbed the air from her lungs with one thrust. Setti screamed. That was no good. Not outside in the middle of the night. Thrusting again, I cupped a hand over her lips.
“You be quiet!” I hissed. “Quiet!”
She moaned as I slammed into her again. Her eyes, however, had narrowed. Not enough, they seemed to tell me, you need to do better.
Keeping her mouth sealed, I increased my speed, my intensity, until at last Setti’s pretty eyes squeezed shut for endurance, a response I found to be quite gratifying indeed.
“You’re a good little girl, aren’t you?” I said, my own breath coming up short by now. “Aren’t you?”
Her eyes flew open to reveal a severity that nearly stunted my control. No I’m not, the eyes gleamed, not even close.
“We can fix that,” I assured my tiny, insubordinate vixen. “Oh yes we can.”
When it was over, she smiled and said: “Not bad. But I could still breathe through my nose. Don’t let that happen next time.”
I looked at her. We were still on the hill, still naked, lying in each others’ arms. She drew on her cigarette, passed it to me.
“You want to literally be suffocated?”
“I have good lungs. I’ll let you know when a long time becomes too long.”
“Speaking of that,” I said, puffing out smoke. “How long are we going to stay up here?”
“Til morning. We’ll go to my dad’s house and pretend we just arrived. This is the Philippines,” she added, fixing me with a gaze that suggested I’d spoken out of turn. “You can’t just fuck a guy’s daughter under his own roof. Doesn’t fly.”
“Understood.”
Setti took the cigarette out of my mouth and placed it in her own. “You don’t understand anything yet, Fredo. But you will.” Her bare breasts rose as she drew deep, then blew smoke at a sky rife with meaningless, uncaring stars. “You will.”
Dozens of cocks were crowing as we made our way down. Setti lived on the street with the duhat trees. We arrived as Apollo began his ascent, bejeweling that goddess of love and victory with rays that, one hour from now, I would curse for being so hot. Setti’s house overlooked a canal. It was quite large, and like Apollo, lit from within at every window, so that I wondered if perhaps a party had taken place here during our tryst.
This turned out not to be the case. Inside I became acquainted with Tikki, a little shih-tzu who barked at me from the top of the stairs. The house was a series of large rooms with hardwood flooring. I could smell fresh paint and piney wood doorways. I surmised that everything was new. Quite new, which seconds later Setti deigned to verify, as if reading my mind.
“Like it?” she asked, gesturing at one of the home’s crystal chandeliers (there were many, which accounted for all the light). “It’s only been finished for a month.”
“I like it very much,” I told her. “I thought my condo unit was spacious, but this...” I smiled and gave an appreciative nod toward a shelf of books.
She dashed upstairs to take a shower, leaving me to hover in the living room. There was wooden furniture—a couch and two chairs—that also looked brand new. Some picture books on a coffee table. A flat screen TV. A ticking clock. I was about to start flipping through one of the books when a noise from the archway got my attention.
A man stood there, regarding me. He looked to be in his sixties. This I guessed from his thin black hair, which like a dead patch of grass could not quite cover the scalp beneath, and his piebald face—marked, perhaps, by some evil cutaneous disorder—set with deep wrinkles doubtless exacerbated by the pair of huge spectacles that rested upon his nose.
“Hello,” I chanced, smiling. “My name is Alfredo. I’m a friend of Lysette. She’s...she’s taking a shower upstairs.”
The man continued to look at me without expression. He would not leave his space beneath the arch, or even so much as glance at Tikki, who’d since come into the room and was now jumping on him for attention.
“Your home is very beautiful,” I said. My mind scrambled for what few Tagalog phrases I had learned since entering the country. None of them seemed to fit the situation. “Kumusta ka na?” I said with a little bow. I needed a hat to tip but wasn’t wearing one.
“Mabuti naman,” came the man’s clipped reply.
Still he refused to leave the archway. I had no idea what it meant, or how to proceed. Again I complimented the house, which earned me no response. I told him how much Setti really enjoyed her work (did she? I honestly had no clue). The old man’s face was like the sheer drop of a cliff, cut with jagged edges. Indeed, I thought I could almost hear the waves of some sea or other crashing upon his inclination. Desperate to assist their endeavor, I continued.
“Is Setti your daughter?”
I thought I detected a slight nod from the old man. Tikki, meanwhile, had thrown in the towel, and was lapping water from a dish. I found myself in envy of his dismissal. The situation had grown intensely awkward. My eyes roved about the room in a floundering attempt to find something—anything—to use as an ice pick. There were some books I knew, and some I didn’t. One title in particular caught my attention: Tuet Enormity Among The Stars. Relieved, I opened my mouth to ask about it. That was when Setti glided down the stairs.
“Good morning, Daddy!” she sang.
She was dressed in a T shirt with pajama bottoms. Feet bare, she padded across the floor and kissed the old man’s cheek.
“This is my boyfriend, Alfredo. Fredo. He’s a producer at PTN. Fredo, this is my dad, Mark. He was a lawyer, and now he’s retired.”
“It’s a pleasure, Sir,” I said, bowing a second time.
But Setti’s father simply would not return any kind of gesture. The cliff face continued to hang, inveterate, resolved, until all I could do was smile, and let Setti return the smile for him, her arms wrapped about his shoulders as if holding back some kind of avalanche from that stormy sea.