Ilustrado Part 15

No return address.

Opened, they are empty.

You are already filled with what it was, secrets from an old you to a future self. Regret is only realizing the truth too late.

-from the 1982 poem "Self-Addressed Stamped Envelope," by Crispin Salvador *

Rocky marries Erning in a small ceremony at the Iglesia ni Kristo church in San Jose, California, with only two hundred friends and relatives attending. Rocky is radiant in the gown she resourcefully picked up from the specialty secondhand shop called Left at the Alter, in Haight-Ashbury. Erning wears the green barong he wore only once before, for his graduation. It is too tight, but he is so happy his smile is contagious. They honeymoon at Disneyland. The picture they have taken of them kissing in front of Cinderella's castle is framed and put on their mantel. A year pa.s.ses. One night, they sit on the couch watching the Filipino channel.

Rocky: "Honey. I have something to ask. But don't get mad. Okay? Darling, why didn't you give me anything for our anniversary?"

Erning: "Eh, you told me to surprise you!"

The little things, you know, eventually become everything. That last week, I was driven nuts by Madison's habitual promiscuity with the mirrors she'd happen across. When I mentioned it, she said she only wanted to look good for me. But I hated her pouting-lipped, three-quarter pose, like some Paris Hilton wannabe. It made me swear that when we made love later that night-my hands choking off her air just as she liked it-I'd lean too heavily and too long, just to see her eyes go wide with panic as she had no more breath to call out our safeword, "Bananas!"

During those final days, we dismissed, once and for all, and completely, each other's finer points for the few nettlesome constancies. We repeated our I-love-yous in the hope they would do something, anything. I think we knew we said those three words less because we believed them and more because we wanted to hear what the other would respond.

That morning-a Monday I think, after a strained weekend alone at the Liebling "beach shack" by an endearing inlet near East Egg-we simultaneously realized we were trying to convince ourselves of nothing. While waiting for the tea to boil, Madison talked about how much she loved being out in the country. How much we needed its s.p.a.ce. How much she loved the mornings before I awoke because the peace made her yoga sessions "transcendent."

When the kettle screamed, it was I I who admitted defeat. It was who admitted defeat. It was I I who spoke up. I expected her to cry again, to beg me to reconsider. But she just sat there, shaking Kokopelli Summer Mist tea leaves into her stainless tea ball. She poured tea into her mug and none into mine. Madison remained as quiet as a victim in a courtroom, the spurned and righteous and therefore the one who'd get our rent-controlled apartment with working fireplace. I said a few more things, then walked to Middle Neck Road to thumb a ride to the city. I kept looking over my shoulder, just in case she tried to follow. who spoke up. I expected her to cry again, to beg me to reconsider. But she just sat there, shaking Kokopelli Summer Mist tea leaves into her stainless tea ball. She poured tea into her mug and none into mine. Madison remained as quiet as a victim in a courtroom, the spurned and righteous and therefore the one who'd get our rent-controlled apartment with working fireplace. I said a few more things, then walked to Middle Neck Road to thumb a ride to the city. I kept looking over my shoulder, just in case she tried to follow.

At our home, I packed my things. I was slowed by having to separate our CDs and books. The task took me through the day and into the evening. When I was done, I memorized how the nighttime shadows journeyed across our bedroom and faded on the far wall into morning. When the day came, quietly then loudly, I looked out the window but saw no one. I made lunch, ate it, then gathered my bags. They were fewer than I expected. I double-checked that I wasn't leaving anything important and then I saw it on her pillow. Madison liked to wear my T-shirts to bed after I'd worn them, and my favorite Led Zeppelin shirt was folded where she'd left it after sleeping in it. It smelled of her and me. I put it back on her pillow. Maybe it would make her miss me. Then I p.i.s.sed all over the toilet seat, kissed our two cats goodbye, and placed my keys on the bookshelf by the entrance. The door clicked behind me. "Don't," it seemed to say.

The next two weeks, Madison didn't call once, and I spent them couch-surfing from one benevolent friend's living room to many sympathetic others'. Then I heard a rumor that despite her need for s.p.a.ce, Madison immediately gave up our apartment and moved in with our landlord, who lived directly above us, this goth guy who was rumored to be the son of Cat Stevens and had yellow contact lenses and fake vampire fangs. I had conversed with him once at a party in the building (he explained he'd had a dentist cement ceramic prosthetics to his canine teeth) and I discovered the f.u.c.ktard was an aspiring African-wildlife-doc.u.mentary filmmaker (at the party, he told a group of girls: "The Masai believe elephants are the only other animals with souls. How can we be here in Brooklyn, lounging on our Poang couches, watching reality TV, while poachers are defiling our besouled brethren?"). I can almost hear Madison's explanation: he understands me, he fills that emptiness, that hole I've had inside me all my life.

I bet.

Yeah. She let us go, easy as that.

The next morning, Sadie won't answer my telephone calls. Outside, there is a strange absence of taxis. I walk to the bus stop. I'm going to be late for my interview with Miss Florentina. A vendor selling barbecued bananas has a radio blaring on the busy corner of Buendia and Makati Avenues.

An American's voice, with its now familiar Brooklyn accent, rings out.

"They will only say that this cowardly act will be punished ... ," he exclaims; then he calls democracy a pile of bulls.h.i.t. His vitriol is astounding. He goes on about how the American population will rise up against the Jews. Then he goes on about how the whites should leave and the blacks will return to Africa and how the Native Americans were the stewards of nature and ...

My cell phone goes buzz-buzz buzz-buzz in my pocket and I take it out. A text message. Finally, a response from Marcel Avellaneda: Apologies for tardy reply. Been busy directing movie. I'll be pleased to meet. Am free the time you specified. See you at the Metropolitan Theater. I'll show you exactly what Crispin did to make me, and everyone, angry. I put my phone away. in my pocket and I take it out. A text message. Finally, a response from Marcel Avellaneda: Apologies for tardy reply. Been busy directing movie. I'll be pleased to meet. Am free the time you specified. See you at the Metropolitan Theater. I'll show you exactly what Crispin did to make me, and everyone, angry. I put my phone away.

The man's voice on the radio continues.

"Death to the U.S.," he declares. "They are the worst liars and b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. This is a wonderful day."

Station break. A woman sings the familiar cigarette jingle: "There's a light of hope, when you light a Hope."

Laser sounds, station identification, then a booming voice. A different commentator from the one earlier says: "You are listening to a replay of the September 12, 2001, telephone interview of chess legend Bobby Fischer, recorded live in Baguio following the World Trade Center attacks. We bring you this replay, compatriots, preceding a new live interview after some words from these sponsors ..."

I'd heard the rumors. Fischer on the run: long wanted by the U.S. government for breaking an embargo and playing a match in Yugoslavia, enraging American authorities by standing in front of international media and spitting on the U.S. order forbidding him to play. Fischer being found: someone had recognized him, despite his s.h.a.ggy hair and beard, spotted playing chess with the old lolos in Burnham Park in Baguio City, beating them with superhuman ease. Fischer living in exile: staying with the Filipino grandmaster Eugene Torre, who'd introduced him to Justine Ong, a twenty-two-year-old who later gave birth to Fischer's daughter, Jinky.

I walk down the street, his rantings drowned out by the grunts and whistles and yells of street life.

What would Crispin say? He had frothed at the mouth after Susan Sontag was publicly crucified for her reaction to the September 11 attacks. That wasn't a cowardly act, she'd said. Wrong, but not cowardly. Crispin had gotten on his computer to send her an e-mail pledging his agreement and support. When he told me about that incident, I was worried to discover I also agreed. And I grew afraid. What scared me most was the thought of our age's skewed conception of courage and cowardice and the slippery slope in between. I was frightened that my handy idea of heroism was invalid.

The street vendor squatting by her cart is looking at me. She keeps smiling. She has only three teeth-two on top, one below. I look behind me. Nothing strange. The woman smiles wider now. She struggles up to approach me.

The bus arrives, slows. I sprint to catch it.

While Salvador's relationship with Oscurio deepened over the following years, his intermittent affair with Mitterand would persist with just enough frequency to ensure he refrained from pursuing other romantic liaisons. According to Salvador's memoir, over his four years in Europe he met with Mitterand whenever she visited Barcelona (which proved often), twice when Salvador overlapped with her in Paris, and on twenty-three different occasions dedicated specifically to their illicit trysts: a rendezvous at the Simplon Pa.s.s, skiing on the Matterhorn in Zermatt, summer in Liguria, two "unforgettable trips to London to attend forgettable" plays, a month in the Corsican countryside near Ajaccio, an extended wine tour in the Haute-Loire, a food fest in Essen (ending in a Killepitsch-fueled public spat in Dusseldorf), and other encounters made possible by Gigi's concert tours and her partnership in Raoul's purveyorship of delicacies for such shops as Fortnum & Mason, El Corte Ingles, and Fauchon.

"How could such a cretin as he have such good taste?" Salvador wrote of Raoul. "His t.i.tle, after all, had been bought by his father, an Algerian emigre who had shady success in olive oil. It's usually the new rich who have the obsession, and therefore the better appreciation. Gigi, with her annoying sense of the absurd, would always bring me fancy-wrapped gifts, usually, inexplicably, fresh haggis, which went laughed at but uneaten."

-from the biography in progress, Crispin Salvador: Crispin Salvador: Eight Lives Lived, by Miguel Syjuco *

It was at that particular New Year's party that our beloved friend changed forever. Pipo had just driven down at brakeless speed from a rendezvous with Sadie in a small hotel atop M--. As he later, rather drunkenly, recounted, Sadie had informed him, cruelly, in the disheveled bed, that this weekend she, his unattainable Sadie, would continue to remain so, as she was returning north to Aigues Mortes, with Raoul, to spend the August holiday with him and her family. It was as if already forgotten was the previous night, or those promissory words they had uttered with clasped hands on the sands of La Concha a month prior. Pipo and Sadie had so wildly secluded themselves those four days in the Hotel Maria Cristina that during his train journey home he had marked the miles with smug grins, satisfied that he had left her finally truly his. This he told me, not seeing the jealousy in my face.

Now, he was slurring more nonsense into my ear. "For what purpose," Pipo demanded, his breath reeking of amontillado and vomit, "is this vexing faith I have in a spoken-for woman, as if the acts of her transgressions upon Raoul-that cuckolded Extremaduran count nearby, attending to business in Hendaya, with his big nose and ... what was I saying?"

"Acts of transgression," I offered.

"Ah, yes. As if those acts of transgression are my own personal triumphs? In truth, the love of the forbidden has been masquerading as love itself. I'm sure of this. Now. Perhaps it is not that I love her. Perhaps it is that I hate him."

I was trying to stay angry with him, with his recklessness and callousness. From M--, Pipo had driven my Bugatti through a rain shower tinged muddy from the dust storms of North Africa. He screeched the car to a halt, its windshield almost opaque, just before it could plow into the tables outside Els Quatre Gats where we, his friends, sat drinking beneath the full glory of the clearing sky. His irresponsible nocturnal descent had done nothing to sober him. I was, of course, quite incensed. But Pipo's always been too charming, too beautiful, for me to stay angry.

Then he rubbed salt into the wound. Among the large clique he later invited upstairs to his apartment was Max, my own former lover. It was with him, it would turn out, that Pipo later smoked his first opium on the rooftop. Malignant rumors abounded the next morn as to what had happened in the solitude of a moonless sky.

I confronted him over breakfast, trying not to betray myself, trying not to glance at his thigh exposed from beneath the short robe I gave him. Pipo replied: "My dear, we discussed the loves greater than those confined to just one subject or family. Max spoke to me about love, an as.e.xual love, a polymorphous, dutiful love for all of humanity. He recalled the responsibilities we must each shoulder. He reminds me of my uncle, the communist guerrilla, though the two could not in appearance and demeanor be more different. I fear I've misjudged Max on the strength of his eccentricities and ambiguities."

What happened the next evening was the reason I-we-lost Pipo forever.

-from Amore Amore, Book IV of The Europa Quartet The Europa Quartet, by Crispin Salvador *

With the roads free of taxis, the bus makes good time, though the traffic slows on Roxas Boulevard. The sky over Manila Bay is as white and flat as a sheet of paper. On the surface of the water are thousands of dead fish, the size of sardines. They rise and fall with the waves.

There's music. Lively music. And then I see it: the Paul Watson Paul Watson. The ship that's been in the news, the one the administration has been trying to evict from the country because of its owners-the World Wardens. It's always strange to encounter in real life the people and objects you first get to know on television. The boat is dull among the luxury vessels at the Manila Yacht Club. Her hulking size and gray hull are ostentatiously incongruent with the sleek white boats around her.

A pair of security guards sit on the dock, back to back on a single mon.o.bloc chair. One guard looks out to sea, his expression that of a newly discovered stowaway. The other guard is text-messaging as if he were a war correspondent. A group of street kids, five of them, the eldest probably eight years old, loiters around the gangplank. The smallest is daring the others to board the ship. On the deck, four World Wardens on brightly colored beach chairs enjoy the break in the rains. They play Monopoly and drink red wine, listening to some sort of world music that's all drums and horns.

The street kids call out to the foreigners. A lanky, balding Caucasian with muttonchops puts down his gla.s.s and disappears inside. He resurfaces with an armful of cans of Coca-Cola. Down he goes, the gangplank boinging beneath him. His face is beaming. The children cheer. He pa.s.ses the c.o.kes around. The boys put them in their shorts pockets. They begin to pull at the greenie's clothing, tugging at the shemagh scarf wrapped around his neck. The boys' eyes grow bigger and I can hear them sniffling. Their voices are raspy: "Hey, Joe, how 'bout U.S. dollar?" They tug harder at the ends of his shemagh: "Can I have this? Made stateside?" The greenie brushes them off, politely at first, then with increasing panic. The scarf is tightening and his face is turning red.

One of the security guards hisses at the children. "Ssssst! Tama na yan!" he yells, jogging to the gangplank. He holds on to the things on his utility belt so that they don't fall. He slows to a quick walk to make sure. The kids point and laugh. The guard unbuckles the flap on his holster. "Wow, guy," says the World Warden, "that's not necessary, eh?" The other foreigners watch nervously from the prow. The kids flee down the boulevard. The environmentalist is left, scarf disheveled, one pocket of his cargo shorts pulled out. When the kids are far enough, one turns and does a mocking version of the Mr. s.e.xy s.e.xy Dance. He waves his b.u.t.t toward the security guards and flails his hands above his head. A resounding fart is heard. The kids collapse in laughter. They lounge on the seawall and drink their c.o.kes. I watch them throw the empty cans at the dead fish rising and falling in the tide.

He sits in the bus, watching it all happen. The fish seem like a detail from the places he goes to when he falls asleep. He is distressed about his dreams. Partly for their content, but mostly because he can remember them. Was I better off before, without memory? Have I always had such nightmares?

Last night was the worst. He'd woken up at four in the morning after dreaming of being cuckolded and hanged. When he went back to sleep, he was immediately whisked away again.

He'd been sitting by his window at Trump Tower, overlooking the East River. The hold music on the phone is a song he hasn't heard in a long time. "I'd die for you girl but all they can say is, he's not your kind." Just as he's enjoying it, the music stops and an agent comes on. "Sure, Mister Sigh-joo-chee," the agent says. He corrects the agent: It's See-hoo-coh. The agent says, "Mr. See-joo-c.o.c.k, I'm more than happy to cancel your account. But let me first ask you a question. Why do you want to stop being one hundred percent safe and protected?" He hangs up on the agent because he realizes he's late. Outside, out of breath, he flags down a taxi. In the backseat, he pulls a photo strip from his pocket, taken in a booth in the ChateletLes Halles metro station. He and Madison are sticking their tongues out, or kissing deeply but coyly like silver-screen stars, or making monocles with the fingers of their inverted hands. They had rushed into the booth, giggling. He realizes that they both knew that one day he'd be sitting in the back of a taxi and looking sadly at the photos. The taxi driver watches him studying the pictures. The cabbie is Philip Gla.s.s. The composer says into the rearview mirror, "Don't you wish you were relishing first contact with life's offerings, instead of taking snapshots?" He's about to reply when he sees Gla.s.s is speaking into the hands-free headset on his cell phone. When he gets to the bar, it is nearly his turn to read. Madison is talking to the guy with the fangs, saying, "I'm reading about Schoenberg and why dissonance is so stressful from the scientific point of view of the eardrum." Fangs says, "Eardrums have points of view?" Madison pulls out a book and says, "Let me read you something ..." Fangs says, "You know, you're awfully interesting." The MC calls his name and he leaves Madison and Fangs and goes onstage. He reads from his notebook: "At thirty-five, she ran away with a circus geek who actually was a Tuscan count waiting for his nineteenth birthday, the age the oracle had prophesied he would call an army and lead it into a series of clashes against the grandfather who had thrown him as an infant into a pit of impalement and left him for dead, and the count's b.l.o.o.d.y lost battles before his miraculous victory would birth a new epoch of enlightened peace, re-creating the grandeurs of Rome and the glories of Greece, with she, of course, as queen, her image the people's most loved to the king's most feared, and yet even as monarch, with all her riches and finery, she would lie in her milk bath masturbating to the memory of how they had made love in the curtained carriage drawn by six white horses on the marches between battlefields, he still her beardless Tuscan count, she a dot-commer's daughter from Topeka, Kansas." He finishes reading. He's trembling. His head swims as he walks between the tables. People look at him in alarm, their eyes wide and their mouths like the black holes he saw ill.u.s.trated in science books as a kid. His old friend Valdes stands up and takes a step toward him. His old friend Clinton holds on to the edge of a table. Sadie throws back a chair while getting up. He sees them watching him fall inexplicably forward. He would be flying, if only he didn't feel so heavy. Everyone stares and points at the table in front of him. Gla.s.ses shatter, hesitantly then instantly. A corner of a table strikes his temple. His middle meningeal artery ruptures, causing an epidural hemorrhage. As the blood squeezes his brain, he sees everyone standing over him. Some point, some take photos with their cell phones, some hold their hands over their black-hole mouths. Markus says, "Holy s.h.i.t, dude, what did you do?" Grapes stands up and says, "You've gone and done it." Madison is where Sadie was sitting and she says, "Now you've ruined everything." Oh my G.o.d, he thinks. This isn't a dream. I'm going to die, a simple, everyday death. I didn't make things right. like the black holes he saw ill.u.s.trated in science books as a kid. His old friend Valdes stands up and takes a step toward him. His old friend Clinton holds on to the edge of a table. Sadie throws back a chair while getting up. He sees them watching him fall inexplicably forward. He would be flying, if only he didn't feel so heavy. Everyone stares and points at the table in front of him. Gla.s.ses shatter, hesitantly then instantly. A corner of a table strikes his temple. His middle meningeal artery ruptures, causing an epidural hemorrhage. As the blood squeezes his brain, he sees everyone standing over him. Some point, some take photos with their cell phones, some hold their hands over their black-hole mouths. Markus says, "Holy s.h.i.t, dude, what did you do?" Grapes stands up and says, "You've gone and done it." Madison is where Sadie was sitting and she says, "Now you've ruined everything." Oh my G.o.d, he thinks. This isn't a dream. I'm going to die, a simple, everyday death. I didn't make things right.

He awoke. He was crying. His pajama pants and bed were soaked. He spent the early hours washing the sheet in the bathtub, ashamed of what the chambermaids would think. By the time he was done drying it with the hair dryer, it was time to go see Miss Florentina.

Erning and Rocky Isip decide they desperately need a change. They finally squirrel away enough U.S. dollars to return to the Philippines and settle down. Their life's savings are invested in a bubble-tea franchise. Rocky has a baby, whom they name Boy. Still, the couple feel they've so little connecting them, so they have another child, a girl, whom they name Tiny.

Sleep-deprived from caring for the kids, Rocky and Erning fight more than ever. Holding urgently on to the love left between them, they make a pledge to try harder. They spend many cozy nights watching the latest pirated DVDs. They attend Couples for Christ counseling. They forward each other loving and humorous text messages. Nonetheless, they grow relentlessly apart. Even the old joys of walking slowly, hand in hand, in the mall do nothing for them. Since there is no divorce in the Philippines, they file for an annulment and separate.

Erning gets depressed and grows fat. Rocky takes up Tae Bo kickboxing, loses weight, and dates an event-planner-slash-DJ before abruptly starting a common-law union with a congressman nearly twice her age. Rocky reverts to her maiden name, Bastos, and takes custody of Boy, who becomes a troublesome lad. Erning keeps Tiny, who becomes very religious, the favorite of the nuns at the a.s.sumption.

One day, while out playing golf, poor Erning has a stroke. In the hospital, he is told by his doctor: "Mr. Isip, from now on you can only eat things that can swim." Several weeks pa.s.s and Erning doesn't show for his follow-up appointment. The doctor, worried, decides to pa.s.s by Erning's house, because, anyway, they are neighbors in Valle Verde. The doctor rings the doorbell and the maid opens the gate.

Maid: "Yes, sir?"

Doctor: "Where is Mr. Isip?"

Maid: "He's in the pool, sir."

Doctor: "Very good! What's he doing?" Maid: "He's teaching the pig to swim!"

I forgot to mention, last night I was feeling a bit c.r.a.ppy about Sadie throwing me out of her car, and I made the mistake of doing a smidge of c.o.ke. When I finally pa.s.sed out, I slept fitfully. At four in the morning, I thought I heard knocking on my door, but it must have been the neighbors s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g. I couldn't get back to sleep for a while. I looked through Crispin's stuff again. Closer scrutiny of a sheaf of photographs underscored this oddity: Crispin tied upon a cross, hands impaled with iron nails, palms open in both supplication and ostentation.

On the reverse of the print was written the name "Sadie Baxter." In the same messy writing, "f/2.8 & 500." Beneath that, the place and date: "March 1994. Pampanga."

In another, a close-up: Crispin's face tilted heavenward, pupils rolled so far back into his head he appears to be contemplating the uncharted surface of his mind.

I woke up this morning with my bed soaked, and that photo still in my hand.

My departure from Spain, with Max Oscurio, delivered me to Manila entirely changed. To be precise, I felt no different, but the streets hummed with a new inaudible sound, the acacias hunched more troubled, the stamens of the bougainvillea and gumamela twisted in antic.i.p.ation. The light was more slothful than on the Continent, perhaps more fecund with possibility, or maybe it was just the humidity that I no longer remembered being so brazen, as if it had been fortified with the centuries of sweat from our nameless brothers and sisters. Maybe that salt of perspiration had become foreign to balikbayans like me. My friends and I in Europe had dubbed ourselves the New Il.u.s.trados-the New Enlightened, taking on the yoke of revolution as our fee for our material advantages.

I had my doubts, of course. If we were following the path of the fathers of the Revolution, could our feet ever reach the proportions of their shoes stretched big by sixty years of history? Like them, we had been amba.s.sadors to and students of the outside world. I arrived in Manila invigorated by my experiences. I had retraced the paseos of General Luna, listened to echoes of the Ramblas where Lopez Jaena and Rizal debated, and taken morning coffee in a sordid cafe beside which the il.u.s.trados had printed La Solidaridad La Solidaridad. I hoped I had osmosed the greatness of these men. I arrived, very unsure, for other than Max I was totally alone-the two of us made a pitiful vanguard party-surrounded by family and friends who were still blind.

Almost immediately, Max and I got ourselves into trouble with the authorities. What happened in jail was certainly not pleasant.

-from Autoplagiarist Autoplagiarist (page 1982), by Crispin Salvador (page 1982), by Crispin Salvador *

Miss Florentina has the world's most perfectly arched eyebrows. "Look at this," she says, pointing to today's Gazette Gazette. "It's only just the beginning. Can you believe these people?" On the front page, a photographer has used a fish-eye lens to capture Reverend Martin grinning beatifically during a prayer meeting in his cell in Camp Crame. Several police officers, military men, and politicians hold hands in a circle in the cramped quarters. Some are high-ranking Estregan cronies. Grasping Reverend Martin's right hand is Senator Bansamoro, leader of the opposition. Taking his left hand is my grandfather. I recognize him immediately from his thick head of silver hair. The caption beneath reads: "Undying faith, fidelity, and commitment."

Beside it is a smaller article with a photo of riot police arresting protesters in front of the munitions factory of the Philippines First Corporation. A gunboat sits in the Pasig River in a wonderful example of overkill. Amid the higgledy-piggledy of picketers and cops towers a man with long golden hair and sunburns like war paint on his cheeks and nose. He must be seven feet tall. He holds his hands behind his back so that the short cop can reach up and cuff him. The giant bends his knees courteously. His face is raised to the sky. He resembles Saint Sebastian in those old paintings, tied to a stake, seconds before the arrows pierce his chest. The caption says, "'We'll get you yet!'-terrorist environmental group makes threats as they are arrested."

"The appearance of virtue is more important than virtue itself," Miss Florentina says. I'm not sure to which picture she's referring. "Oh yes, I have a letter for you," she continues. "It's here somewhere. I hope." Miss Florentina laughs. It's more of a cackle. On the daybed on which she reclines is a mess of things, like the spilled contents of a bag lady's shopping cart. "Did you hear the latest gossip?" she says. She riffles through the objects around her. "Lakandula sent out the maids but refused to release the Changco child. The couple and their son are the only hostages left. I can't stop following the story. It's amazing. In an instant, Wigberto Lakandula could be national hero or national villain." Miss Florentina's voice is disarmingly vibrant. I am often surprised by people like her. Some internal energy continues in defiance of the decaying body. In the dim light, she seems almost oracular. The darkness gathers in the deep wrinkles of her skin, which sags on her as if she were a child wearing her father's sweater. Her arms are mottled like an old banana. Her hair is long and white.

"Voila!" she says, balancing an envelope on her belly. "But it's the heart of darkness in here." She claps her hands and a lamp lights up. Her eyebrows are tattooed on. "That's better," she says. Miss Florentina is an island in a sea of junk. Books, crumpled letters, TV remote. Lipstick-smeared tissues, contact sheets, transistor radio. Mismatched socks, cordless phone, pad of paper. A ratty wheelchair sits within her reach. For the first time, I notice a disgusting smell. Talc.u.m powder, jasmine, and death. Miss Florentina fishes a letter opener from the jetsam of objects and slices open the envelope.

She squints at its contents through a photographer's loupe tied with hairy twine around her neck. I wait.

"There. That's a nice letter." Miss Florentina claps again. The lamp turns off.

"Can you tell me what it says?"

"It says you want to find Dulcinea. Because you think she has something for you. Because you're searching. Aren't we all? Take, for example, that poor fellow, Mr. Lakandula, searching for justice rarely given. One of the maids he released had a message pinned to her. A manifesto calling for the ma.s.ses to revolt. Apparently, after that radio report, there were scuffles between police and the crowd. A water cannon was brought in. The pressure was so weak the protesters danced in it. One produced a bar of soap from heavens knows where and applied it to his underarms. Very droll. That's why I still bother with newspapers."

"Miss Florentina, I was ..."

"Of course one bothers," she says. "Because our days are numbered. I'd like to find out how the story ends." She reminds me of Lena, and of how Crispin could be. Old people act as if they've paid their dues just by living, and can therefore teach you something important. That's why we the young both sometimes listen eagerly and sometimes never visit them. "It will end in tears, I wager," she continues. "It's always the same. One day, they'll smell something odd from this apartment, and all the world's problems will be someone else's. The kids on the list for vacancies in this building will be tickled. You young are held in awe by high ceilings."

"We are," I say.

"I don't know if I should tell you how to find her. She's now free, you know?"

"I'm sorry?"

"Dulcinea."

"I see. You don't think that in the middle of the night, or when she reads her father's name in the papers ... maybe she wonders?"

"She's out in the world, making it her own. What more can a person ask for? Freedom is the only thing we must demand in life, for all other good things stem from it. I can say this because I well know." She points at her wheelchair. "But that's fine. The world now comes to me. It tends to when you have something people need." She laughs. It is discomfiting, almost disingenuous. Miss Florentina peers at the letter again. She nods and holds it on her lap. Her fingernails are like claws.

She lowers her voice. "I think one of my suitors has been stealing my books. Don't ask me how. Books just go missing. But listen to me go on."

"What else did the letter-"

"Of course, one must go on! Never rest, lest it catch up. Because I could not stop for death ... Though I was never one of those made frail by that grim obsession. Lena is. Ever since. She simply stopped trying. Because the afterlife is said to be so so much better. She could have done anything with her life. Instead she remained her daddy's little girl. Constantly pushing his wheelchair wherever he pointed. How mortified Lena was whenever he'd just stand up, spry as a teenager. She'd sort of shrink behind him, following with the empty chair. But I do prefer her gravity to the graceless ones, those who refer to themselves as 'x-many years young.' Crispin's mother was like that. Maybe it was the weight of her cancer. We all cope differently. Suddenly these past months I catch myself. I'm ninety-five years young." She grimaces. " much better. She could have done anything with her life. Instead she remained her daddy's little girl. Constantly pushing his wheelchair wherever he pointed. How mortified Lena was whenever he'd just stand up, spry as a teenager. She'd sort of shrink behind him, following with the empty chair. But I do prefer her gravity to the graceless ones, those who refer to themselves as 'x-many years young.' Crispin's mother was like that. Maybe it was the weight of her cancer. We all cope differently. Suddenly these past months I catch myself. I'm ninety-five years young." She grimaces. "This must be purgatory. Though you don't have to worry yet. Even though we cannot make our sun stand still, yet we will make him run." must be purgatory. Though you don't have to worry yet. Even though we cannot make our sun stand still, yet we will make him run."

"Marvell. 'To His Coy Mistress.'"

"Very good! I thought kids these days resorted to drink spiking, not poetry."

"A little of both, I think."

"I like you," she says. "Come live with me and be my love."

"And we will all the pleasures prove."

"Oh, you do remind me of Crispin. He was quite the pa.s.sionate shepherd. We used to trade lines of verse in the darkroom. Oh my, that does sound dirty, doesn't it? He wanted to be a photographer, but he became a writer, thanks to me."

"Do you think he was killed for his writing?"

"Why do young people enjoy unpleasantries?"

"I was just wondering ..."