Moondogs (26 page)

Bobby walked him through the house and out to a walled-in, lush garden. A guard in a blue uniform opened the gate for them and they waited in silence for an empty taxi to roll by. Benicio examined the garden out of the corner of his eye while they waited. A sprinkler spun between piles of mowed grass. A big tree in the corner wept yellow flowers onto the roofs of two freshly painted doghouses. Bobby caught him staring, and he looked away.

“So, why the crooked paintings?” Benicio asked.

Bobby searched the road for empty cabs. “She does it so that devils can’t sit on the frames. If the frames are crooked, the devils slide off.” He demonstrated by holding his left forearm out and walking the fingers of his right hand up and down it. He dipped the forearm down sharply and his walking hand fell.

Benicio took a moment to mull this over. “The devil?”

“Not
the devil
, as in the one and only, but devils. That’s not even a very good word for them, but it’s one you’d understand.”

“Ah.” Minutes passed without a taxi. “You know …” he trailed off, his voice hoarse. “My mother used to have this thing. She used to say that she could tell the future. Said she could see it in her dreams.”

“Really,” Bobby looked from the street back to Benicio. “Could she?”

WHEN BENICIO GOT BACK
to the hotel, he realized that his father was finally home. Music thrummed dully through the adjoining door to Howard’s suite, and when he opened it he saw that the bed was slept in and some of the lights were on. He stepped inside, expecting to find Howard hunched over papers in his study. But the first thing he noticed was a dress. A green dress, crumpled at the foot of the bed. There were high heel shoes beside it, but no business loafers or slacks. Not a shred of men’s clothing anywhere, in fact.

The sound of a high-pressure shower spattered and hissed behind the music, and thin wisps of steam emanated from the open bathroom door. Benicio approached the door and saw, through the bathroom mirror, a lithe shape blurred behind the translucent shower curtain. He returned to the bedroom and switched the music off. A moment later, the shower switched off as well.

“It’s about damn time,” the woman called from inside the bathroom. “I’m getting sick of this—I waited up for hours last night.”

Benicio didn’t say anything. He sat on the edge of the bed, and then stood again. From the bathroom came the downy, frictive sound of a towel on skin.

“Quit fuming,” she said after a moment of silence. “I didn’t touch anything, you big baby. But next time, I will. Next time you’re not here when you’re supposed to be, I’ll rob you blind.” She laughed at this. A moment later she emerged from the bathroom, wearing a towel around her bust. She was, indeed, the woman from the night before. Water still beaded her dark shoulders, making her skin look sequined. Her fingers rested as lightly on the doorframe as the towel rested on her.

“Howard’s not here,” he said.

She was startled to see him there, but not as startled as he felt she should be. “Who are you?” she asked without so much as shifting her weight.

“I’m his son,” Benicio said. He watched her collarbones rise and fall as she breathed. “What’s your name?” he asked.

“Solita.” She let go the doorframe and took a step toward him. “When does Howard come back?”

“I don’t know. When he does I’ll tell him you were here.”

Solita took another step toward him. Her wet feet left prints on the carpet. “I know you,” she said.

“No, you don’t. You haven’t met me. I’d like you to leave now, please.”

“Last night,” she said, “you were with Bobby. You bought me a drink.” Then, without the kind of announcement that he felt himself entitled to, Solita lowered the towel down below her waist. Her skin was the same color all over and smooth save a long scar below her belly button and a little tattoo that sat low on her right hip. It was a black sun, dipping below the nubby towel like a horizon.

She reached out for his hand and placed it on one of her small breasts, his palm first grazing her dark nipple and then pressing hard against it. He was used to girls with heft—even Alice had a soft weight in his hands. Solita’s breast felt firmer, like a muscle after stretching. He forced his hand back to his side and she laughed at him. “You want me to stay,” she said.

“I don’t.”

She grabbed hold of the khaki just beneath his belt buckle. “You’re a liar.”

He stepped back. “Get out of here, please.”

Solita’s face stayed soft but her top lip curled just a bit. She dropped the towel completely and stepped back into her crumpled green dress. “Howard didn’t say his son was a faggot.”

“That’s fine.” He took her by the wrist and started to walk her to the door. Her pace quickened, so much so that it felt for a moment like he was holding her back.

“Fuck you,” she said as he pushed her out of the room. He closed the
door on her and locked it. He left his father’s suite, closed the adjoining door to his own and locked that as well.

FINDING A WOMAN
in his father’s room was no surprise. This was the second time it had happened. The first was on the last day of the father and son dive trip they’d taken five years back, a trip to celebrate his graduation and impending move to college in Virginia. Benicio was supposed to be out all day on a resort boat in the Murcielagos, but the corroded purge valve on his regulator got jammed and the boat crew had been unable to fix it or swap it for a spare. So they headed back a few hours early.

Benicio didn’t knock—why should he have?—before returning to the room he shared with his father. His first thought upon opening the door was that he’d walked in on strangers. The two twin beds had been pushed together to make a king-size with a crack in it. On his knees on the left bed was a nude man draped in fat like fabric. A woman was in front of him, halfway between kneeling and lying on her belly. Her knees made deep indentations in the mattress, her backside bucking up against his looming weight. Both of them looked up at Benicio as soon as he opened the door and surprisingly enough he recognized the woman first. It was the dive instructor with the mannish jaw—the woman he’d been flirting with and dreaming about fucking on the concrete floor of the tank room for years, since he’d first seen her bend over the velcro and hoses of a BCD. The woman with whom his father had promised to put in a good word. Benicio stared the fat man in the face but still didn’t recognize him until he started vomiting out apologies. Howard was actually talking to him while naked and still inside the sweating, broad-backed dive instructor. Benicio walked out of the room and left the door wide open behind him. After a few minutes his father came chasing after him in a white bathrobe that didn’t fit well enough to close properly. Howard wasn’t hard to outrun.

And, God, how Benicio had made him suffer for it.

Chapter 15

The first thing Monique heard when she woke was something in the kitchen. Amartina was in there making usual morning sounds. Running water. Opening and closing squeaky drawers. Clanging cast-iron crockery. But aside from the sounds, everything else was unusual. Monique wasn’t in her bed. She was naked on the leather couch in the den. Reynato slept on the floor just below her, a blanket coiled around his gut, covering little. Monique’s memory of the night before returned like a houseguest—the earthquake, the sex, the conversation she’d had with Amartina; telling her, very clearly, to go home. But Amartina wasn’t home, with her family, in Cavite. She was in the kitchen.

Monique slid off the couch and rushed into the master bedroom. The tremor had tipped her dresser over, trapping her clothes. The basin her jacket had been soaking in—along with everything else she’d worn to work the day before—was overturned. Spent suds covered the bathroom tile, snaked out to the bedroom, and seeped into hardwood. Monique edged along the mess, grabbed a robe from the towel rack and put it on.

Reynato was still asleep when she passed him on her way to the kitchen. She glanced back and saw that while the couch obstructed his body, his bare feet jutted out conspicuously. There was a chance Amartina hadn’t seen them, but if she’d taken even a few steps into the den she’d surely have noticed his shins, his knees, his thighs, his balls. And beyond that, she’d likely heard them the night before. Yelping in fear at the tremor. Fucking a second time on the carpet and a third back on the couch. They’d even had a midnight heart-to-heart in the kitchen, not six feet from Amartina’s closed door, about what they thought was really wrong with their respective spouses. Joseph was petrified of not being impressive. Lorna, Reynato’s wife, was scared of looking like a phony among the “real” society women. This was a disaster.

The kitchen was a disaster, too. Dishes lay broken on the floor and
the cupboards had disgorged cookware onto countertops. The spice rack had fallen from its nail perch, glass jars shattering where they landed. Amartina didn’t turn when Monique entered, but she must have sensed her. She walked barefoot through the mess, smashing ruined plates into a garbage pail and slamming cupboard doors, grumbling as she did so—a performance for Monique’s benefit. So much for feeling her out.

“I told you to go home last night.”

Amartina turned and faced her. The tear streaks down her cheeks made Monique incredibly uncomfortable. “It’s all a mess.”

“What?”

Amartina looked around the kitchen. She held the garbage pail in one hand and a chipped drinking glass in the other, and shook them as though explaining to a simpleton. “Look at this,” she said, marching out of the kitchen, pail and glass still in hand.

Monique followed, repeating, “I asked you to go home” a little lamely. Amartina opened the door to Leila’s room and stepped aside so Monique could see. The flat-screen computer monitor was wedged between the desk and the wall, and the lovebird’s cage had toppled over. The miniature wrought-iron door was open and the cage was empty.

“Gone. I don’t know where.” Amartina turned, walked through the den, right past Reynato, and into Shawn’s room. Monique raced after. Her son’s room was almost as clean as usual, but the terrarium had toppled off the bed-stand and broken into a few large pieces. The heat lamp seared a neat rectangular burn into the carpet. The gecko was nowhere to be seen and feed-crickets hopped everywhere. “Gone. You made a big mess,” she said, as though she blamed Monique not just for the nude man in the den, but for the earthquake itself: for shattered belongings and escaped pets.

Monique’s cheeks filled with hot blood. What an incredible pain in the ass this woman was. Why couldn’t she have just listened? Why spout reflexive, meaningless yeses? The maid’s quarters were tiny, the bed narrow as an ironing board, and still she’d insisted on staying when Monique had asked her—
told her!
—not to. Now the only choices left were bad ones. Monique could threaten her and spend the next year
worrying she’d spill, or fire her and feel guilty for maybe much longer than that.

Out in the den Reynato stirred. He got up and wrapped the blanket around his waist. His eyebrows, his mustache, even the silver hair ringing his nipples was wild and matted. He forced a smile and said, “Magandang umaga.”

Amartina spun on him. “I don’t care who you are,” she said in sudden Tagalog, “you don’t open your mouth to me.” She got in his face, garbage pail raised as though she meant to use it as a weapon. She called him filth. She called him cheat. She called him parasite and devil. Reynato took the pail from her and set it down on the floor, but other than that he averted his eyes and accepted the assault.

“No. No. No,” Monique said, her whole body burning under the horrible awkwardness of it—she used to speak that way to the cat, before it died. “You don’t talk to anyone like that when you’re in my house.” She grabbed Amartina’s knobby elbow but Amartina pulled away, spinning on her heels, slapping Monique clean across the face. For a moment they could have been each other’s reflections—shocked and still.

“That’s enough,” Reynato said, in English.

Amartina blinked first, charging into her quarters off the kitchen. She emerged seconds later with an already packed bag, more bloated than usual for a weekend at home. “Shame on you,” she said without looking back at them. “I cannot work here anymore.” She fumbled with the deadbolt. She went out into the landing and rang for the elevator. A sound like a bicycle bell announced its slow approach. “I won’t be back on Monday,” she called, the steel gone from her voice. She sounded stressed, and distracted, and only slightly less determined.

MONIQUE SAT ON THE COUCH
, staring dumbly at Joseph’s overturned speakers, catching her breath even though she hadn’t lost it. Reynato dropped his blanket and joined her. He began to have trouble restraining his giggles.

“This is funny to you?”

“Certainly not.” He pursed his lips and made a show of stopping.
One of the escaped pets—or maybe both of them—twittered in the hall. Reynato smoothed out his mustache and looked about the wrecked apartment like an appraising buyer. “She’s right about one thing, though. You really made a mess.”