Orchid House (6 page)

“How far is the plantation from Manila?”

“Five hours perhaps. Depends upon traffic. I apologize that we must take the bus.”

“Oh, that's all right,” she said with a laugh. “It's more of an adventure for me this way.”

His lack of personality could dampen any mood, she thought. As the car idled in traffic, the driver honked several times, then suddenly turned up the radio and sang along, “You're the inspiration. You bring meaning to my life. . . .” He hummed when he didn't know the words.

Julia suppressed her smile and saw no reaction from Raul, though the driver continued to honk his horn and sing with the radio as if both were customary.

At the next intersection, a horserawn carriage came up beside them with a businessman sitting in the passenger seat.

“Miss, Miss!” A young boy slapped at her window and held up cigarettes and silk flowers.

“What does he want?” she said.

“He's selling those items, but do not open the window.” Raul's voice was firm.

“Miss, Miss, please.” His small hands continued patting the window, and a few older children appeared to join him.

The taxi quickly left them behind, but Julia noticed how vendors moved through the traffic with trinkets, water bottles, and snacks.

The longing in the boy's face remained with her, and Julia thought of the decades of struggle this nation had endured. She leaned toward the front again. “My grandfather said that Manila was mostly destroyed during the war.”

Raul grunted an incoherent response, and Julia decided that was the end of her questions for now.

She watched out the window, absorbing the sights and wondering how to describe this to friends and family back home. Her mother might want to know more about the country she was born in. She was just a young girl when her own mother died, and Grandpa Morrison had sent her to relatives in the States for her safety and education. It seemed to Julia that her mother had never forgiven him for it.

This humid and congested metropolis was nothing like the small coastal town of Harper's Bay on the rocky and cold northern California coast where Julia had grown up. After graduating from college in San Francisco, she'd remained in the Bay Area. She loved life in the city and all it offered, though she went home often to visit her mother and stepfather as well as old friends. With Nathan she'd fulfilled her dream of seeing Europe, touring Germany, France, and Austria. He was a lover of historical war sites and she a lover of art. They both loved the lavender fields of France, the vast green hills and sharp peaks of the Alps, and the culinary delights.

But the Philippines were so far like nothing she'd experienced before, with a mix of tropics, chaos, messy streets, brown faces, and beautiful scenery. And on the tinge of her desire to take it all in, Julia wondered at the dangers that might lurk in the hovels and alleyways of a country ever on the brink of upheaval.

The driver suddenly crammed his taxi between two parked cars, resulting in fierce honks and swerving vehicles around them. Raul hopped out and opened her door as the driver moved quickly to get her luggage.

“Remain here, please,” Raul said and rushed off before she could respond.

The heat beat down on her, and Julia wished for one of the umbrellas she'd seen other women carrying. Her face was damp, and she could feel the small hairs curling around her face. The taxi disappeared into the veins of the city as she stood with her pile of luggage. Streams of pedestrians moved around her, and cars sped by only feet away. The eyes of nearly every passerby stared with great interest, surprise, or friendly curiosity.

Never had she felt so utterly, well . . . foreign.

I can't imagine living in such a place,
she thought, but determined to make this the first adventure of the new Julia. She'd let nothing discourage her.

And then she saw the buses.

M
ANALO WANTED THEM OUT OF THE TRUCK AS SOON AS POSSIBLE
. It was ridiculous to be in such a situation. A band of fugitive guerrillas traveling through the heart of Manila. They'd passed within feet of a military blockade of soldiers whom he knew had memo- rized the photographs of both him and Timeteo. They passed a bus station where two city policemen talked to a driver.

Taxis, jeepneys, tricycles, and pedestrians surrounded them; he recognized growing claustrophobia in his men's faces, in their bloodshot eyes and the stiffness of their backs. If they were glimpsed between the canvas flaps or stopped at a checkpoint, each man had his falsified papers, work permit, and individual story of the field work they performed. But a close inspection would reveal the shipment of guns beneath them and the suspicious myriad of documentation papers.

Most of their weapons were packed with their gear in the crate boxes, but their knives and pistols were within easy reach, hidden in waist belts and beneath pant legs. His men were guerrilla fighters through and through. They could survive in the jungle, but the city was a foreign landscape.

Finally the truck turned into an alley. Manalo peered through a crack in the canvas and saw a teenaged boy opening a narrow gate just wider than the truck.

Manalo motioned for the men to lean in close. “Donny, Leo, Ton, and Luis will go with the driver. Timeteo, Frank, and Paco, come with me. In the event of separation, meet at the safe house in Batangas or return to the bar in Gapo and find Boy. Questions?”

Heads shook and jaws were set. The truck continued through the gate and stopped, and the driver shut off the engine. Someone pulled back the canvas.

Luis climbed out of the truck and took his son in his arms, whistling a tune as if he were a laborer back from a day in the fields. The whistle turned to a Beach Boys song as brothers Leo and Ton joined in a duet with Luis's whistling. What band of hardened guerrilla fighters would include a whistle and song in their covert operation?

Manalo watched his men follow the driver to a gated doorway that led to the city. By the time the men reached the chorus of “Don't Worry, Baby,” the singing was lost in the sounds of Quiapo. Luis's son, high on his father's shoulders, stared at Manalo and lifted a hand to wave good-bye.

Manalo, Paco, Timeteo, and Frank watched them go, then entered the house within the small walled-off courtyard.

The shower was outside on a fourth-story terrace surrounded by potted plants, drying laundry, and three dogs that barely raised their heads at their arrival. An old woman led them up the flights of stairs; the elevator hadn't worked in ten years, she said. Piles of fresh, folded clothing of the civilized world awaited them.

The men took turns with a bar of soap beneath a heavy spray of cold water while the rest ate rice and adobo, drinking beer as if it were the finest wine from France. Manalo scrubbed his hair with the bar of soap and then his pants and shirt before peeling them off and letting the pounding water massage the muscles in his back. They'd been so long in the jungles that a shower, clean clothes, beer, and homemade Filipino food felt like pampering for a king.

Soon he sat before a plate of food and again thought of Malaya, as he continually did at odd moments throughout his days and nights. If only he could see her, just for a moment, like a ghost view's beside her. He'd do that next time they were together; he'd sneak around and watch her when she didn't know it. He wanted to see how she moved, read the different expressions on her face, hear her talk to the children or a neighbor or read her little list of errands and plans for the day.

“What's that smell?” Paco said, stopping with fork and spoon held dramatically midair.

“The question isn't what's that smell, but what is
not
that smell.” Frank flexed his arms and sniffed the air; his bare chest rippled with muscles on his very small frame. Frank notoriously carried a scent that, as Paco said, would change even a lion's mind if lions resided in the Philippine islands.

With the teasing that began between his men, the tension and discomfort eased. Manalo returned Malaya to the folds of his mind and heart. He'd bring her back out when he couldn't sleep tonight.

He thought tomorrow he'd take the men to McDonald's, even if it was redolent of the disease of American capitalism. A Big Mac, fries with banana ketchup, and a bottomless iced tea or Coca-Cola. Perhaps coming to Manila was exactly what they needed before they faced what might be quite an assignment at Hacienda Esperanza.

Showers, food, and beer changed their dispositions considerably. Frank and Paco kept hinting about seeing
Die Hard 2
with Bruce Willis—after their assignment was completed, of course.

“Our destination is on the other side of Quiapo. I don't know why we are going.” The shoddy data frustrated Manalo; he'd insist on better communication when he met his contact.

“I know it's an American movie, but it's Bruce Willis,” Paco continued as they walked down the flights of stairs. He admired Bruce Willis as though the man were a true Filipino warrior, not just an American actor.

They'd first seen
Die Hard
on a small color TV and VCR in a shanty in a village in the provinces where they'd stayed two weeks of a rainy season. The men played the tape until it broke, and still quoted their favorite lines.

“Paco, give it a rest. We don't even know if there's a theater nearby,” Timeteo said as they stepped into the courtyard.

“Two blocks away. I spotted it already,” Paco said with a wide smile.

“I say, let's get this business over, and then I'm skipping Bruce Willis for the ago-go bars,” Frank said.

They stepped out to the street below and, as if to punctuate his words, flashing lights and enticing images greeted them.

Frank grinned. “Look, it's a sign!”

Manalo shook his head as they walked onward. “Let's just get through this meeting first.”

“T
HIS BUS HAS NO AIRCONDITIONING. DO YOU HAVE A HANDKER
-chief?” Raul asked as he sat down stiffly beside Julia.

Her luggage was piled high in the seat behind them, and she realized his shamed embarrassment that she was on a rundown bus and not in the hacienda car.

“A handkerchief?” she asked, shifting to the right of a sharp tear in the seat.

“Here.” He pulled a white square of cloth from his pocket and pantomimed patting his forehead with the fabric before giving it to her. He took out a flowered handkerchief from his back pocket and dabbed his own neck and face.

“Thank you. You said it's five hours to the hacienda?” Sweat ran down the curve of her back and between her breasts, and she wondered if a bus this decrepit-looking could actually make such a journey. She noticed two red chickens in a pen several seats ahead.

“Unless traffic is lessened, but probably five, yes.”

The bus rumbled to life, emitting a huge puff of black smoke. Passengers continued to glance back at her. A couple of children even sat turned with their hands on the back of the cracked vinyl seat three rows up, watching Julia's every move. She hadn't anticipated that her skin would be such an anomaly in the Philippines. Celebrity or circus freak—she wasn't sure which they saw her as.

The bus took off with a start, lunging into traffic and making Julia wonder if their pilot was a former taxi driver who didn't realize he was now driving a bus.

Julia had the sense that she was truly on her way now. Part of her wanted to put out her hands and say,
Slow down, let me take this in, let me adjust to one thing and then the next.

In the past two years, she'd lost the man who had been her entire life, left her company job for freelance work that she cared little to build, and faced her grandfather's diagnosis. Time had passed in a kind of dull resonance until the final months of being with Grandpa Morrison. Now she faced instant change—seeing Nathan again, flying to Manila, heading toward the plantation—it felt fast, too fast.

The highway passed towering malls and cinemas and colossal billboards displaying brands like Calvin Klein and Guess jeans. It crossed a sludgy brown river filled with garbage and lined with shanty houses stacked and staggered upon each other. Julia saw a television flashing through an open doorway and half-clothed children playing outside on the sidewalk with a scrawny dog. Poverty existed just blocks from tall professional buildings with restaurants and clubs. They drove along shops like strip malls without side-walks, crowded with every class level of Filipino walking and shopping together. In a strange way, the juxtapositions mirrored herself—the woman she was, the girl she'd been, and the fight between them to be something new and more and better.

She was so lost in thought that she jumped when Raul asked, “Would you like a Coke, miss?”

The bus wasn't fully stopped when vendors came aboard.

“A Coke would be nice, thank you.”

Raul waved a woman over, bought two Cokes, and popped the top off hers.

The cool liquid tasted much sweeter than at home, but it was a welcome relief down her dry throat. Julia's skin already felt sticky and ready for a shower.

Other vendors boarded the bus, offering chewing gum, drinks, paper-wrapped candies, boiled bananas, and other foods she didn't recognize.

As they drove from the city into the province lands, Raul leaned back slightly and slept with his hat perched over his eyes. The city and industrial areas turned to rice fields and rolling countryside pocked with gangly palms of various types and sizes.

An older jeepney of unpainted wood and metal stayed in line with the bus for a time, but instead of passengers peering out the windows, it was filled with large pink pigs. A few had fallen asleep, and their forked feet stuck out the back.

They passed a gated housing development with homes she might see in the Bay Area bluffs, and then a village with houses the size of large sheds where laundry dried on lines and men chatted outside on wooden chairs or worked on wood projects in dirt yards. At times, tinroofed stands lined the narrow streets with overflowing shelves of fruit and flowers.