When we learn about the sign, we must see it for ourselves. So from our shanties we cross the railway tracks and charge toward the home of Alejandro, the only kid we know with a computer, the only kid we know with electricity, so that he can show us a picture of the sign on the Internet. He lives with his mother in the Financial District now, in a big-shot, high-rise condominium which, he has said, overlooks the world. But it�s not so high that we can�t reach it: Alejandro calls the front desk to give us clearance, despite the security guard�s suspicions, so we file into the elevator, rising and rising to the uppermost floors. When we reach his door, it�s already open, and he stands there waiting. �I�ll show you on my computer,� he says, �but don�t touch the keyboard. Don�t touch anything.� He inspects our hands to make sure they�re clean, then herds us into his bedroom. He flips open his laptop, types and clicks and types and clicks, until an image downloads, a picture of a sign posted on a shopping mall door. It says:

�So the story is true,� says Alejandro, closing his laptop, �they really don�t want you there.� He half-smiles at us and shrugs, a funny story to him but an injustice to us, so we curse its name and unleash all the profanity we know: Fuck you Greenbelt Mall, you asshole Greenbelt Mall, shit bitch motherfucker go to hell Greenbelt Mall.

Greenbelt Mall is mere kilometers from our part of Makati City. From certain vantage points and heights, we have witnessed its nighttime glow of green and red during past Christmas seasons, and we have heard the blare of marching bands that celebrate every grand opening and ribbon-cutting ceremony. But have we been inside? No way! We have no use for Tokyoinspired fur and leather winter coats. We don�t want imported and indigestible cheeses. Our lives are made no better by facial cleansers made from organic jackfruit and nuts. And say we did go there one day, say we purchased even the smallest trinket like a souvenir Greenbelt key chain or a stylish Greenbelt visor. We would be called arrogant big-shots who think we�re hot shit. People trying to be other people.

But we will not be prohibited from entering. We will not allow ourselves to be banned. We decide then and there to act, to right this terrible wrong.

�And do what? Get revenge?� Alejandro laughs, but we don�t.

The front door rattles open. �My mom�s home,� Alejandro says. �Leave.� He scoots us from his room, and on our way out we see his mother staring out a wall of windows at a view of skyscrapers, palm trees, a grid of streets that from here look orderly and clean. She is wearing a dress as black and tight as a silhouette, holds a long brown cigarette in one hand and an ambercolored drink with clinking ice in the other. She is the blondest Filipina we have ever seen, and her face is half-gone behind dark glasses, huge and round like two black moons.

With a long red fingernail, she lowers her sunglasses, looks us up and down with recognition and suspicion, as though we remind her of what she comes from.

We look around her, at this roomful of things we will never have � a white leather sofa and a rug of white fur, a dining table with elephant tusk legs, a strong ceiling free of cracks and leaks, and an equally sturdy floor. But our envy is tempered by our pity. We know the things she does to live this life. We have seen her strolling down the street on the arms of businessmen � Japanese, Indian, Saudi Arabian, American � and we know there are nights when Alejandro must find somewhere else to sleep, and on those nights he comes to us.

�Get out,� she says.

We exit, enter the elevator, feel our descent.

It�s dusk by the time we�re home, and Auntie Fritzie is already scolding us as we come into view. In her yellow poncho and pink rubber boots, she has been scavenging through the dumps and trash heaps, and has lined up her findings in messy piles along the railway track. She tells us to hurry our lazy asses and get to work, says that if our mothers and fathers were alive, they would smack our faces for our laziness. So we sort through tattered shoes, sticky soda bottles, chipped plates, flicking away the things that cling to them. Toiling through muck and stench, we keep on cursing Greenbelt Mall, daydreaming of the revenge Alejandro spoke of, and the many ways to get it.

�Casa Manila,� the docent announces, pushing the massive double doors twice before they give way. His memorized spiels are in impeccable, if textbook English. �Notice the furniture and appurtenances.� The nervous young thing is obviously new to this job, though Isabel would guess, by his robotic accent and tone, that he�s had a stint as a call center agent. But the quaintness of his jargon keeps with the whole design of Intramuros, the walled �city within the city.�

Isabel smiles at him encouragingly and he smiles back.

�This replica of a nineteenth-century Hispanic house was actually built in 1979.�

Ah, Isabel thinks, another of Imelda Marcos�s �cultural projects,� meaning the epitome of kitsch.

�... Spanish-Filipino baroque,� he continues. �The antique furniture and trappings that fill up these capacious rooms are authentic and collected from other houses.�

�Confiscated, you mean,� says a pudgy, dark-skinned little man. He looks every inch Filipino, but speaks with a drawl from the American South that seems to hang between Liverpool and Boracay. One of those who�d fled the country, Isabel concludes, at the height of the Marcos dictatorship. And still bitter about it.

Isabel detaches herself from the group and walks ahead to the next room. It�s enormous, and she is delighted to see that there is an open window taking up the whole length of the space. In broad daylight, this would be the cheeriest room in the house, but the late-afternoon sun has cast shadows on the pillars and walls.

Isabel gazes out the window and discovers that she is actually facing out the back of the house. With all the large doors, the room partitions, the mirrors, she hadn�t realized till now that she�d lost her bearings. From this window, she sees, across the gray roofs, Intramuros�s ramparts, with a watchtower at one end and a sentry box at the other. Across the faux-cobblestone road is the mass of shanties known as Barrio Santa Lucia.

Informal settlers. Slum dwellers have their own euphemism too, Isabel thinks in amusement. One more exhibit for the tourists of Intramuros, who can see the cross-section of Manila life without the muck and stench and, most of all, the dangers.

A man stands at the entrance to the shantytown. Isabel leans forward to take a closer look � the man�s profile is distinctive: the high forehead, the sharp cheekbones, the corner of the mouth sloping downward so that it gives him a perpetually somber look, the curly black hair growing close to the scalp.

�Elias,� Isabel mutters under her breath. A scar cutting an eyebrow would make her more certain, but she can�t see it clearly from this distance.

He suddenly glances up, as if he has heard her thoughts. He continues staring, with that familiar somber expression she remembers from � how long has it been?�� eighteen years ago. Isabel jerks away from the window. Not nervously, nor surreptitiously, but because the docent�s voice has startled her back to her surroundings.

It�s five o�clock, the docent says. Closing time. Only then does Isabel notice that the Casa Manila has gone all quiet.

She hurries out, hoping to find the man she thinks is Elias. A motorcycle engine zooms somewhere to her right and a horse pulling a calesa clip-clops to her left. She peers into the alley leading toward the barrio, but inside it�s pitch-black, the crush of shanties perpetually shutting out the sun. She guesses the people who reside there are used to living in the dark.

Elias is gone, of course. Elias, her father�s killer.

�Do you know what shabu means? Did you know that each letter means something?� Cesar asked, pressing a clean sheet of aluminum foil between two one-peso coins.

�You mean an acronym,� Franco replied, a dull glint of the strip crossing his vision.

�A what?�

�An acronym. That�s what you�re trying to say. Each letter stands for a word. Like PBA. Philippine Basketball Association. Or NBA...�

�I get it. Exactly. An acronym. So... you know what shabu means?�

�I didn�t know it meant anything.�

�Satan Has Already Bought You.�

�What?�

�Satan... has already bought... you,� said Cesar, his index finger digging into Franco�s shoulder for emphasis. �Satan.�

�I don�t remember selling anything. Least of all to the devil,� said Franco, his gaze still fixed on Cesar�s deft hands.

�Satan has already bought you.� Cesar tried to sound priestlike.

�So that means he�s bought you too, Cesar?�

�I guess. Satan has already bought you. You too.�

�Where the hell did you come up with that?� Franco asked.

�Heard it on the radio. Some Christian station.�

Franco chuckled. �Wait. Lemme guess... that�s probably DJ Dan. That holier-than-thou asshole. Did you know he was a major meth-head a couple of years back? You should�ve heard him when he was still with that station RA 106. Major psycho. Broke up with his wife on air, just before he played some stupid Duran Duran song. Oh, these born-again Christian pricks. Getting high on Jesus is the worst. There�s no rehab for that.�

�Satan. Has. Already. Bought. You,� Cesar muttered under his breath.

�What�s with the You? Following that logic, it ought to be SHABY. Right? Or it could also mean, Satan Has Already Bought US.�

�Just shut the fuck up and gimme that packet already, will you? How much is this worth?�

Cesar�s sudden display of impatience shook Franco. �One-five,� he replied, giving the small plastic pocket a little shake to loosen the milky crystal bits inside.

Cesar inspected the packet against the light and made a few gentle taps with his index finger. �This definitely does not look like one-five. Are you trying to put one over on me again?�

�Why the fuck would I do that?�

�This isn�t the first time, Franco. You know that��

�Hey, fuck you, man.�

�I remember the last time. I just kept my mouth shut. I know you smoked some of my shit at Bing�s house.�

�That�s not true.� Franco�s protest dissipated into a whine.

�And the one before that. One-five? Looked more like P500 to me. You know you shouldn�t be doing that. In other places, you could get killed. You don�t fuck around with other people�s hard-earned money like that.�

�What the fuck are you talking about!�

�Shut up. You�re ruining my concentration.� Cesar reached for a pair of scissors, the cheap, plastic kind for grade-schoolers. It was small but its edges were monstrously sharp, ending in frightful angles. They let kids use these in classrooms? he thought, then snipped off the top of the plastic packet and placed it once more against the fluorescent light.

�I swear, dude, I didn�t smoke from your stash. You gotta trust me.�

�Lemme guess. You sent Jong to do the scoring for you, right? You lazy, thieving subcontractor.�

�No. Look, you know how these things go. There�s no Department of Trade and Industry representative to inspect if they�re serving the exact weight. There ain�t no customer-complaint desk. One week it�s a full packet, the next it�s just a fourth. And if you ask why, they�ll just say, �Not enough supply� or, �Cops shaking us down again,� or some other excuse.�

�Yeah, yeah. Just shut the fuck up and hand me that lighter.�

Cesar sprinkled a few bits of the meth onto the small aluminum gutter in his hand. Seen from the side, the sheet was folded in an almost perfect V.

The temperature was razor. Cesar felt like his eyeballs were being roasted. They said that Quezon City was the ideal place because it had more trees than, say, Manila or Pasay. Here in Project 2, there seemed to be more greenery per square meter than most cities, but the heat was brutal. It was the kind that broiled brains, which, in turn, lead to stupid decisions, smashed bottles, broken teeth, slashed wrists, and hogtied corpses fished from the river.

Cesar decided to change the subject. �But then there�s Precinto Cinco � that�s where bad things happen. It�s on the corner of Bignay Street and Anonas Road, and it�s cursed. No business that has opened beside it has ever lasted, not even a year. Cursed, I tell you.�

�What I remember was the Adobo Republic��

�Not even six months.�

�Too bad, cause their adobo was to die for. And before that, there was the pawnshop. I remember the robbery��

�Two security guards dead. One stabbed in the eye. Cursed!�

�Yeah. Who the hell stabs people in the eye?�

�To be fair, this is good shit.� Cesar took another whiff. �Look at how this thing rolls. Beautiful.�

Like a distended teardrop, a clear globule slid down the aluminum strip, turning from an opaque yellowish-white into pure white smoke, gently flowing into the small tube tucked between Cesar�s lips. The tooter looked like some stylishly alien cigarette.

�Told you. Quality over quantity.�

�I still think you cheated me.�

�Will you just cut it out, Cesar? Sheesh.�

�Good thing you didn�t cross a cop. Otherwise, they�d be fishing your body out of the Quirino River by now. Those cops don�t have a sense of humor. Especially the ones in Precinto Cinco.�

�Those guys are the biggest, nastiest drug dealers in the district,� Franco agreed.

�I know. And the last guy who turned out to be a bad customer got his balls cut off. You know where they found his balls?

On the counter of Kawilihan Bakery. Imagine buying your early morning pan de sal and you see that...�

�Pan de sal with eggs. Perfect.�

�Don�t laugh. I think they should do that to you too.�

�For the last fucking time, I did not��

�Satan has already bought you!� Cesar yelled, taking Franco by surprise. �Hahaha. Wanna smoke? It�s your turn, though I bet you already had your share before coming here.�

Sunday talk and it was all gossip. I sat watching my Tita Baby pick at the chicharon, while my mother lit cigarette after cigarette, her smoke rising in an elegant column until the fan � rotating and mounted high on the wall above the dining table � blasted through it. Manong Eddie, our driver, had been sent away the week before and my mother was explaining why.

�You won�t believe this,� she said. �I was taking my siesta. Eddie wanted an advance on his pay to go the movies, so he parked himself outside my window and started calling, �Yoo-hoo! Yoo-hoo!� So I called back, �Who�s that yoo-hooing there?� I think he expected me to go downstairs.�

�And that�s why you fired him?� asked Tita Baby.

�Not just that. Last Sunday, I caught him urinating against the front wall. We were all in the car waiting to go to Mass and I was wondering what was taking so long, so I looked back, and there he was.� My mother glanced out to the hallway where my Tita Elena � the eldest of the three sisters � was involved in a lengthy phone call, one that had been going on since my mother and I arrived at her house a half hour earlier. �What�s that all about?� asked my mother.

�I�m not sure,� said Tita Baby. �But you know Elena�s crowd. Those old ladies and their very young, very handsome��

��most likely gay yoga instructors,� my mother interrupted. �Of course, that�s all revealed later, after the money�s spent.�

�And the champagne has gone flat.� Tita Baby pursed her lips, faking sympathy.

From the hallway I heard Tita Elena�s voice become animated. She was making her goodbyes now. Tita Baby, my mother, and I all watched as she hung up the phone. Tita Elena had a smile that meant she had a good story to tell. �Sorry, sorry,� she said. �Unavoidable.�

I wondered what the tsismis was.

Tita Elena poured herself a Coke and sat down heavily in a chair. She raised her eyebrows in a meaningful way.

�Elena, both your sisters are here, so who could you possibly be talking to?� asked Tita Baby.

�Ching called.�

�Ching?� said my mother. �What did she want?�

�There was a home invasion last night. Or at least an invader.� Tita Elena rattled her ice cubes. �Someone tried to break into the neighbor�s house.�

�Which neighbors?� asked my mother. �Not the Buenaventuras?�

�No, the other side. The de Castros.�

�Ay, Dios m�o,� said Tita Baby. �Was anyone hurt?�

�Was anything taken?�

�Actually, no one was hurt, and nothing was stolen,� said Tita Elena. �That�s what�s so strange. Whoever it was disappeared.�

�Oh,� replied Tita Baby and my mother in chorus.

�It happened like this,� started Tita Elena. �Babylon fell asleep on duty, which is no surprise.� Babylon was my aunt�s security guard. �He�s a drunk, you know.� I knew well. �He awoke to find himself face-to-face with the invader, a knife pointed straight at his throat.� She paused here and looked at me. �Are you sure little Angela should be listening to this? It might give her bad dreams.�

�If she can listen to stories of Cherry and her twenty-year-old yoga instructor, she can listen to this,� said my mother.

�Well, anyway,� Tita Elena continued, �this invader has his knife straight at Babylon�s throat and is demanding his gun. Luckily, although Babylon is a tomador, he�s no idiot. He tells the invader his gun has no bullets. Babylon says that I won�t allow him to have a loaded gun because he drinks so much. Remember that night he shot all the chickens?�

�Yes, yes,� said Tita Baby impatiently.

�The invader believes him. I mean, if you had any intelligence, you wouldn�t be robbing houses, you know.�

�You would have a job,� said my mother, who has never had a job.

�The second thing Babylon tells him is that the neighbors are far wealthier than we are, which is ridiculous, and that the invader should climb the wall and rob their house instead.�

�How on earth can anyone climb that wall?� asked Tita Baby.

�Babylon had to help him.�

�That�s crazy,� said my mother.

�Yes, beyond a doubt, it is,� Tita Elena shrugged. �So the invader � at one point standing on Babylon�s shoulders � scales the wall and makes it to the top.� My tita took a leisurely gulp from her drink. �Once he was at the top, Babylon shot him in the back.�

The fan moved slowly from side to side, rustling papers, lifting the bangs off my face. I slapped my leg beneath the table, killing a mosquito. The fan stopped.

�Needs to be fixed,� said Tita Elena. �Bebeng,� she yelled to the maid, ��yung bentilador!�

Bebeng, the head maid, ran out of the kitchen, broom in hand. She hit the fan a few times and it came back to life, grinding a breeze out across the room. The conversation resumed.

�Well, I guess Babylon is worth more than we thought he was,� said my mother. �Did you give him the day off?�

My aunt nodded. �I keep thinking that I should call the police, but what�s the point? One crook�s wearing a uniform, the other crook�s dead��

�But what happened to the burglar?� I asked. �Where is he?�

�You see, that�s the mystery,� said Tita Elena. �It was so dark that Babylon couldn�t make out where the body fell. He was drunk, I�m sure, but he swears he shot him.�

�Did you ask the de Castros?� asked my mother.

�Yes, eliminating some of the details of the story. They heard the gunshot, but have no idea what happened to the invader. None whatsoever.�

�Very strange,� said my mother. �Manila�s going to hell. Murders, home invasions, carjackings, all those glue-huffing beggars, and the sosyal kids with their � what is it, shabu? Yeah, even in our crowd things are getting ugly. Did I tell you why Rocky and her husband are getting separated?� She looked at me thoughtfully. �Angela, go out and play. You�re inside all the time. It isn�t healthy.�

�Do I have to?�

�Yes. Now.�

I stood up dutifully and kissed my mother and my titas and crossed the dark wood floorboards, out of the gloom and smoke of the dining room and into the vestibule. The sun outside was shining fiercely, splashing red from the stained-glass doors onto the floor. The invader was bleeding somewhere, or was dead. I heard Tita Baby�s voice filtering out of the dining room.

�Rocky�s husband couldn�t have expected that. It�s just not Catholic.�

I pushed open the door and stepped onto the front porch. The sun hit my face and every part of my body instantly warmed. Tita Elena�s house had an enormous garden. There was a huge wall around it, like a castle. Someone from Spain had come to put it together right after the war, and once, a long time ago, there had been pet deer wandering around because my Uncle Chuck had liked the look of them. But the deer were gone, along with my uncle, who had died of cancer ten years earlier. Tita Elena was a widow and good at it � still in black and ready for death. The wall was taller than anyone could see over and when we were waiting in the car for Babylon to open the gate, the dirty children would gather around to sneak a look at the lawns and fountains and statues until Babylon shooed them away.

I walked down the tiled steps to the garden. How organized and symmetrical everything looked. Fountain in center, statue in the fountain, a pine tree on the right to match the one on the left, and perfect rows of red and white roses reaching with graceful arms around the lawn. Ligaya was sitting on the bottom step washing clothes. Her muscled arms dipped in and out of the basin, shiny and brown. She was wearing a red bandanna, and her kinky black hair sprung out about her ears. I stepped around to face her. At first, she didn�t notice me, she was so intent on her washing, but then she looked up, her lower arms covered in suds.

�Ah, it�s you,� she said. She smiled at me slyly. Her face was very broad, very dark, and she had the look of a wild animal that had just dropped from a tree. �You�ve come out to play in the garden.�

I nodded solemnly. I was scared of Ligaya.

�Such a pretty dress,� she said, grabbing the skirt with a wet hand. �Can I borrow it?�

�I don�t think it would fit you,� I answered. This sent her into a fit of rich laughter, which echoed across the lawns. The garden seemed strangely deserted.

�Such lovely hair. Almost brown.� She reached out and took my braid in her hand, turning it over thoughtfully. �You could give me some of your hair. It�s such beautiful hair.�

�My mother said never to give anyone your hair,� I responded.

�And why not? Are you scared? Do you think I would put a spell on you? Maybe one day you would wake up and find that I had given you the body and face of an old woman.� She smiled, her perfect white teeth standing out against her dark skin. �You know, they shot a man last night. He was on the wall. They shot him and he came tumbling down. He was a bird caught in the tree, but he had no wings to fly away.�

I looked up at the wall, to the top, where the broken glass glittered in the sun.

�Listen,� said Ligaya, �what do you hear?�

�I hear crickets.�

�Crickets and other insects, and birds and the frogs in the fountain,� said Ligaya. �And do you know what they�re saying?�

I shook my head.

She howled at this, laughing so hard that some of the water sloshed out of the basin. �Maybe they�re calling your name, or mine.� She squinted to listen better. �No, it�s not your name.�

�What are they saying?� I asked.

Ligaya listened carefully. �Have you ever seen a dead man? Have you ever seen a dead man? That�s what they�re saying. Can�t you hear it?�

I couldn�t understand insects, not like Ligaya, who came from the island of Samar, where all witches come from. I looked nervously into the garden.

�Where are you going, Angela? I have a riddle, one that you will like.�

�What is it?� I asked.

�He sought a feast and found a bed,� she said. �What does it mean?� I was about to step back but she grabbed my arm. Her eyes lit up. �You�ll figure it out, smart thing like you.� She let me go. As I ran down the driveway toward the gate, her laughter followed me and I could feel her eyes on my back.

The guardhouse, a small cottage built into the wall by the gate, stood between me and the street beyond. From the other side of the wall, I could hear a junk peddler calling out, �Dyaryo, bote,� again and then again. I was out of breath. Ligaya�s handprint, wet on my arm, was disappearing in the heat. Inside the guardhouse, there was snoring, heavy snoring, and the sound of paper rustling gently. I moved to where I could see through the window. Babylon was asleep. There was a half-full bottle of Tanduay rum beside the chair, next to where his right hand hung down, ready to grasp it when he woke up. His shirt was open and his fat belly hung over his belt. On his lap was a comic book, which was disturbed with every intake of breath. I watched silently. On the floor beside his left hand, I saw the gun.

�Wake up,� I said. �Wake up!�

Babylon shook his head and blinked at me.

�Why are you here?� I said. �I thought my aunt gave you the day off.�

�Where should I be?� he answered. �This is what I like to do.�

�You should be watching a movie. Every time we give our guard a day off, he goes and watches a movie.�

�And what kind of movie does he go see? Action? People shooting each other, boom boom? I don�t need that. Go away. Let me sleep.�

�I hear you shot someone.�

�Your aunt told you that? Yeah, I shot someone last night.�

�Where is he?�

�I don�t know.�

�Did you kill him?�

�I don�t know. Who are you anyway, the police? Maybe I�ll shoot you. Go away and let me sleep.�

�You�re drunk,� I said.

�So what? I wouldn�t shoot you if I was sober.�

We looked at each other as I pondered this and came to believe him. He was better left alone and wasn�t going to tell me anything anyway.

I wandered along the side of the house and into the back garden. My aunt kept a huge pig there, beside the maids� quarters. I approached the pen nervously and then stood up on the railing watching it, not minding the smell. The pig was grunting cheerfully, probably hoping that I had brought some treat from the house. It had stiff white hairs on it and little black eyes that seemed to catch everything. I saw Bebeng walk out of the maids� quarters.

�Ah, Angela,� she said, �look at this pig, munching away. On your Tita Elena�s birthday we will eat him.� She looked across the pigpen to the far end of the yard.

�He looks so happy,� I said. �Why do we have to kill him?�

�Because that�s what we do. Have you ever heard a pig being killed?�

I shook my head.

Bebeng took some rotted greens from a basin by the outside sink and tossed them to the pig. We watched him eat. �Pigs scream. They don�t howl like other animals. They cry out, like a man, a man being killed.�

I stepped off the railing, suddenly afraid of Bebeng, who had always seemed so kind to me.

�We kill a pig by piercing its neck with a bamboo stick. While he�s still alive, we bleed him into a bowl. He screams until he�s dead, until we bleed the life out of him. Everything is used. Every last drop of blood has a purpose. Don�t feel sorry for that pig. Feel sorry for men, who shed blood so uselessly.�

�What men?�

�What?� She hadn�t heard me.

�What men bleed?� I asked again.

�What men bleed, what men don�t � that�s not important. But any blood shed by any man is useless.�

Bebeng stood gazing at the pig with a sad smile on her face. She was still there when I walked away.

Past the pigpen, past the maids� quarters, past the shed where the gardeners kept the lawn shears and the buckets for watering the shrubs, was the garage. My aunt kept her three cars there: the Mitsubishi, which she used, the Mercedes that had been Uncle Chuck�s and that she couldn�t bear to part with but didn�t drive, and my cousin�s white BMW that had replaced the black BMW after he drove it into a tree. I didn�t usually go near the garage. My mother didn�t want me hanging around the drivers, but I could hear their laughter. I glanced back at the house. No one was watching, no one that I could see. I tied my shoelace, which had come undone, and went to explore. Manong Cisco, who worked for Tita Elena and lived here, was fiddling with his radio. Manong Pepe, who drove Tita Baby, and Benny, our new driver, were bouncing peso coins off of each other, placing bets, cursing and yelling. Manong Cisco joined in, but he was quiet, and every now and then he would look over at Tita Elena�s house as if he thought Benny and Manong Pepe might be too loud. I didn�t know why Manong Pepe was always here. Tita Baby only lived one block over and it didn�t seem far enough to drive. I watched from behind Tita Baby�s Land Rover for a short time before the drivers noticed me.

�Angela!� exclaimed Benny. �Come join with us. You look like you could use some fun.�

�I don�t know how to play.�

�We�ll teach you,� he said.

�I have nothing to bet.�

Manong Pepe laughed hard at this, tearing up, but I did not even smile. Manong Cisco watched me nervously.

�The little se�orita has nothing to bet,� said Manong Pepe.

�How sad,� said Benny. �Do you know what happens to people that have nothing?� He smiled at Manong Pepe, who was patting his bald head with a handkerchief. �Hey, Angela, if you�re so smart, answer that. What happens when people have nothing?�

�I don�t know.�

�Yeah, you wouldn�t,� said Manong Pepe.

Benny quieted him with a raised hand. �Angela, think hard. People want things that they don�t have.� He sat back on his heels, squinting against the sun. �You want to play with us, but you have no peso coin. Take his.� Benny looked over at Manong Cisco. �Go on. Take your Manong Cisco�s. He�s not going to say anything.�

Manong Pepe laughed again, but I stayed still.

�Yeah, you are smart,� said Benny. �I guess you know what happens to people who try to take things around here. Tell her, Cisco. Tell her what happens to them.�

�I don�t know, pare,� said Manong Cisco. �What are you talking about? You�re gonna scare the kid.�

�Not this one,� said Benny. He smiled at me as if we shared a secret. �Did you ever want to learn to fly, Angela?�

�Be the shortest flight ever,� said Manong Pepe. �You�re gonna fly straight down.�

Benny laughed loudly with him but then grew quiet. �You know what I�m talking about. I know you do, because you�re so smart. I�ve seen you watching people. And I�ve been watching you, Se�orita Angelita. You hear everything, and you remember, so what do you think happened to that idiot son of a puta that tried to break into your tita�s house?�

�I don�t know,� I said. �I asked Babylon. He doesn�t know either.�

�Shit. Babylon�s such a fucking drunk, he doesn�t even know what happened to his wife,� said Manong Pepe. He slapped Benny�s shoulder. When they were through laughing, Benny turned once more to me.

�What do you think, Angela? One second there is a man on the wall, and the next he�s gone.� Benny studied my face. His eyes were light-colored, like a mestizo. I�d heard my mother say Benny thought he was too good to be a driver. �Do you think he flew away?�

I shook my head.

�Here.� Benny dug around in his pocket and produced a red rubber ball � the cheap kind from the market. �Why don�t you go play with it, Angela, or are you too smart to play?�

�I can play,� I responded, holding his gaze. I took the ball and held it. I let it drop on the pavement, catching it after it bounced.

�Now you go play, and when you think you know what happened to that man, the one that flew straight down, you come and tell us, okay?�

I nodded slowly. I didn�t like Benny. I was glad to have a reason to leave the garage, to leave the drivers and their game.

At first I just bounced the ball along the pavement, losing it every few times, but this soon lost its charm. I started throwing it in the air a few feet above my head, then higher and higher, until it was just a speck and seemed to hover still in the air before racing downward. I managed to catch it most times. I thought of the invader � the man � the one who flew straight down, like my ball, and threw it higher still, as if this could answer the question. I sent the ball soaring upward until it was nothing but a small red pinprick against a bright blue sky. I threw it again, this time too high. I stood patiently and saw it returning to earth. It was too far away for me to catch. The ball bounced once on the driveway and then again. I chased after it, but it bounced again, ricocheting off a paving stone and landing somewhere in the back garden.

The tangle of the back garden was very different from the front. Trees reached their arms across the small dark paths. The paths wove in and out through the vegetation in ways that I could never remember. The ball had gone to the left, so I headed that way. I looked over my shoulder to see the drivers who stood watching me, now interested. Bebeng too had suddenly appeared and I saw Ligaya with the others, wiping her hands on her skirt. I heard the insects. It was noise I had heard all day, but now the sound was loud. There was the hum of crickets and abruptly the frogs and toads all started to croak. The birds were chirping now, lots of birds, and as I made my way along a path, the sounds grew louder. The broken glass at the top of the wall high above me glittered in the sunlight. The noise was loudest right beside the wall. I was drawn to the sound and to the broken glass shining at the end of the path. And there was the ball, waiting for me. It was in a clump of makahiya grass � grass that fainted as my shoes brushed against it. I bent down, the song of the insects humming in my ears, and picked up the ball. There were ants on it, too many ants. In the grass, the ants were moving in an army. I followed them with my eyes and then I saw a huge hand, dark and still, as if it were carved out of wood. A man lay facedown in the long grass, beneath the tangle of vines, in shadow. There were ants, masses of ants marching over my feet, crawling off the ball and down my arms, marching to that rising hum of noise and life in the garden. The ants were moving onto the body in two straight columns. There was a hole in his back, a hole from which he had bled, soaking his shirt, leaving wet sticky clumps on the grass. The noise of the garden was too loud now and made me wonder whether it was really insects and frogs, or rather a strange echo in my head. I smelled the blood above the fragrant frangipani, above the rotting leaves. The man�s head was turned to one side as if he were sleeping and I crouched down to see his face, the eyes shut tight with thick lashes, his mouth slightly open with still, full lips � he was somehow held in a dream, in a better sleep than the cold dead that happened with guns and invasions and guards and walls. He had the sleep of a tired man who could never be woken up, who would go on dreaming forever.

When we finally roll out, our seats are pitched up like we�re on a plane lifting from the tarmac. My window�s open a crack and I�m breathing the firecracker fog like I�m swimming in it.

A harness of greasy chains moors us to the truck. There�s a little bit too much give. We lag a couple of seconds on the turns and sway loosely whenever there�s enough room to accelerate. The truck hits a pothole and we feel it late because our front wheels are off the ground.

There are still people out at this hour. They�re gawking at us as we rumble down the street. They look like they�ve never seen a smashed car and a tow truck in their lives. The girls are on the sidewalks sitting in plastic chairs with their butts out and their elbows on their knees. The glow of big-screen TVs is pumped out from the shadows in the doorways behind them. They look at me like I�m the one to feel sorry for and I can almost hear them clucking to themselves.

It doesn�t matter. It�s way after midnight now, and I�m far from the places where there are people I know. Actually, we really aren�t that far, but there�s a big difference between that side and this side and J.P. Rizal is the line in the middle.

The driver�s arm darts out of the truck window to flick a cigarette into the haze. I try my best to remember their faces but it�s too dark. I should have told them which route to take home but it�s pretty straightforward and I feel like they�re doing me a favor and I don�t want to mess things up. It�s New Year�s Eve and nobody would take my business and these guys came all the way from Caloocan or something like that.

I switch on the stereo even though I�m fully expecting it not to work. Instinct, I guess. While I�m still trying to remember what we were listening to before it happened, the speakers blast Patsy Cline singing �Walkin� After Midnight.� Everything starts coming together.

She was messing with her phone, trying to make calls, trying to text, cursing every time it failed. A security guard came over waving his big flashlight in the air. He asked us if we were okay and I asked him if he knew the number of a towing company. He said no and walked over to my car shaking his head like it was his property or like this was any of his business. People get drunk, people get crazy this time of the year, the security guard was saying. I was in the middle of making all these calls and I got in his face and he sort of backed off. He was thinking maybe I was the one who was drunk or crazy on something. I gave him attitude, like things could be worse, buddy � it could be you instead of me. I stood around like I was a congressman and the pale girl with me was some hot starlet, when all I am is a guy making a living writing ad copy.

We heard the truck coming before we saw it. I was just about to give up and leave the car right in the middle of the street. The front of it was a lopsided mess but the rest of it was still an unmarred black, the nighttime sheen on the hood cutting through all that gunpowder smoke in the air.

There was a thin man and a fat man. It would have been funny if they weren�t there to tow my car. The fat man was just the driver and the muscle. He unloaded the chains from the truck and went under the car to hook them up. The thin man did most of the talking. He told us there was no room in the truck and we needed to get back into the car. I�d never been in any situation like this so it seemed like the most logical thing to do. I�d considered hailing a cab and making a convoy but it was all too much trouble.

We crawled back inside and the fat man pulled on another chain coming off the pulley. The tires lifted from the ground and the car jerked on the chains like it was a little toy. He kept pulling until I heard the front grill crunch hard against the top of the pulley. I gripped the steering wheel like an idiot and Andy giggled. She looked like every bit of her was ready to party again. She had her legs folded under her thighs and she was smoking a cigarette, just like I�d found her earlier, sitting and smoking in the VIP section at Club Vetica as if she�d been born there, which as far as I know is the only way you ever get into the VIP section of any joint worth going to.

She had someone else�s hand on her knee and it belonged to Gil Gordon. I recognized the congressman from the south because he was in the papers that morning. She was in the middle of shouting something to somebody but I didn�t want to waste a second. I waved to her across the velvet rope and I wasn�t surprised that it took a while for her to recognize me. She stood and bent across the barrier to kiss my cheek and I smelled the booze on her breath. The congressman kept staring, wondering who the fuck I was.

They were playing hip-hop and it was really music for the cheapskate New Year�s Eve crowd, but we danced anyway. People hardly dance in clubs anymore. Everyone just stares at everyone else, worried that everyone else is having a better time. Gil Gordon was now staring at my hand on the small of her back, and it felt wet with sweat. I thought of what chances I�d have against him. I couldn�t even remember the last time I�d made a fist.

Andy�s mouth was moving but I couldn�t hear what she said. I moved my face close to hers and put my ear right next to her mouth. She was asking me if I wanted to do a couple of lines. I never say no to that, so I tailed her into the bathroom, where they pumped the music in so it was like a little club built for two. When we came out, Gil Gordon was blocking the doorway with a funny smile on his face.

My father once told me that in a fight, I should never look into the other guy�s eyes. He told me to focus on the little spot where the eyebrows meet. As soon as I clocked Gil Gordon right on the jaw I thought it was probably the first successful punch I�d ever thrown. Blame it on the music. Blame my next punch on the way Andy was looking at me. I would have thrown another if the bouncers hadn�t stepped in. The way they handled the situation you could tell it happened a lot, except that maybe this was kindergarten stuff compared to the things that sometimes went down.

I can�t remember if Andy grabbed my hand or it was the other way around, but the next thing I knew we were getting into my car. Drive fast! she yelled. Don�t think, let�s go! One-two-three. That�s how my father taught me things happen in commercials.

Andy was all giddy. She had her bare feet up on the dashboard and kept playing with her phone. She said she wanted to text her friends about what went down at the club, but she just couldn�t type properly. Fucking autocorrect! I said she didn�t need to, her friends were bound to find out soon enough. The way shit like this spreads. Manila is so small, I said. It�s twenty million people but I was talking about the people and the places we knew. Shit, she said, shit. You shouldn�t have done that. She couldn�t help but laugh again, briefly caressing my cheek with her hand. Not that guy. You shouldn�t have done that.

I drove hard until we had gone past the Makati skyline and we were on my side of town, whizzing past the dark apartment buildings and the shophouses on J.P. Rizal. I swung a hard left and we were on my street. You can�t miss the building where I live because there�s an InstaPure water refilling station on the ground floor and a twenty-four-hour Mini-Stop right across from it. There�s an elevator but it takes forever and we were still really lit so we walked up ten flights to my floor. I didn�t know what she�d think of my shit apartment but I mostly didn�t care.

I took a couple of joints out of a jar in the fridge. We smoked them and we didn�t really move, not for what seemed like hours, and it felt unnatural when we lifted our hands to smoke or shifted our legs. The only thing that felt easy was talking.

She asked me what I did for a living, who my parents were, what they did. Things you never really ask when you�re in a club. I told her I was an adman, just like my father had been. Remember that TV spot where a girl walks into a bar full of men and orders the nonalcoholic beer? That snap election commercial where the female candidate confesses that she�s just a woman and isn�t really fit to run the country? All my father�s. But talking about it that way somehow made it mine, as if I could inherit things like that instead of money.

When I grew tired of talking Andy asked me to take her home. We were both exhausted, though the weed had done much to make us forget what had happened earlier. It was still dark outside. It was maybe four in the morning when we stepped out of the apartment into the thick smoke of last night�s firecrackers, holding our breath until we got back into my car.

There were clusters of people out on the streets drinking gin and beer and lighting up whatever firecrackers were left. I thought I could hear each bang go off separately. We saw a couple of punks at the intersection ahead lighting up some stuff, waiting to toss it under the car as we drove past.

The shape appeared in front of us like it was formed out of fog, an SUV in a straight path toward us. I saw Gil Gordon at the wheel, his face briefly lit by the splash of headlights across his windshield. His elbow rose at the last second to shield his face and swerve at the same time. He fishtailed and his rear flank spun toward us.

I thought about my mother who never had to work a day in her life, until my father died from of all sorts of complications following a stroke. It followed a long night of work, following a successful pitch, following a long-wished-for promotion. Which is why I drove his car � the only thing he had passed on to me � for fourteen years before I earned the company car plan. I drove my mother around � to the grocery, to the mall where she watched one movie a week, to my aunt�s office in Legaspi Village where she did part-time work. And my mother kept reminding me to drive carefully, reaching over to knock on the speedometer loudly whenever I went over whatever speed limit she had in mind at the time, because she was sitting in what she called the �death seat.� The kind of catchy phrase my father would have invented to scare enough shit out of people to make them want to buy whatever he was selling � hand cream because chores caused sores, mouthwash because gingivitis would eat up your gums, disinfectant soap because things had consequences and your conscience would never forgive you.

I asked Andy if she was okay and she said yes she was. I brushed my hands over her body from her scalp to her ankles. I wasn�t sure what I was looking for � broken bones, maybe, or the sudden wetness of blood, but I didn�t find anything. I kept asking if she was okay and she waved me off and was already trying to make a call on her smashed phone.

The neck is broken. That�s why the head is turned at such an unnatural angle. The body is lying chest down on the floor, but the head tilts upward and twists sharply to the right, a rotation of more than ninety degrees. The eyes are open, staring. Something in that frozen expression makes Saenz think she did not go down meekly. Her fingernails are rimmed with gunk from where she scratched her attacker, raked flesh, drew blood.

Senior Inspector Mike Rueda stands quietly behind the priest, waiting.

Saenz straightens up from a crouching position over the body with a slight groan.

�You okay, Father?� Rueda asks.

�I�m an old man,� Saenz mumbles, almost to himself. He strips off the latex gloves, presses the heel of his left hand against his right eye to relieve the pressure there. He is about to absentmindedly stuff the bloodstained gloves into the pocket of his jeans when Rueda reaches out to stop him.

For a man with a prizefighter�s face, Rueda is surprisingly gentle. �Let me take those.� He holds open his own gloved hand. Saenz realizes his mistake, grunts, and hands the gloves over. He glances down at his jeans and notices a small red streak where the gloves have made contact with the denim.

�Like I said, Mike. An old man.�

Rueda bags the gloves. �You need a vacation.� He shrugs at the woman�s body. �Well, maybe after this one.� He turns, motions for a young officer to take the small bag for disposal. When she�s out of earshot, he moves closer to the priest. �So was it the broken neck, or the glass?�

She had fallen from the stairs onto a glass-top table. The blood pooled beneath her head was from where a large sliver of glass had lodged itself in her brain.

�Either, both,� Saenz shrugs. �What matters is, was she pushed?� He glances up at the stairs, waving long fingers toward a section of the balustrade near the top that had given way. �You try a fracture-match on that, and I�m guessing the stress marks will be consistent with a forceful impact. Not with any mere weakness in either the structure or the material.� Back to the woman now, fully absorbed in her face. �Gave him hell, though. Her luck ran out at the top of the stairs, but before she went down, she made him suffer nearly as much as she did.�

Rueda surveys their surroundings. Books have fallen off shelves, picture frames knocked off walls, furniture overturned. �Satisfied it�s a him, then?�

Saenz nods. �There�s a full-length mirror on the door of one of the bedrooms. It�s cracked. Nothing lying around it, and a bit of blood and hair at the point of impact. So what cracked it was a someone, not a something. Someone�s head, in fact.�

�And it�s a him because...?�

�The hair is short.� A note of exasperation lends a slight edge to Saenz�s voice. �And the point of impact is a few inches above where it would have been, had that head been hers. She�s, what � about 5'5", 5'6"? Bit taller than the average woman here. So if the person who cracked the mirror is even taller, odds are it�s a man.�

Rueda takes a deep breath, biting down his own frustration. Father Augusto Saenz is a forensic anthropologist by training, and technically his expertise wouldn�t be needed for cases like this. But if Rueda and his people could see things as clearly, connect the dots as quickly as the Jesuit does, he wouldn�t be asking him to his crime scenes so often. �Okay. I�ll make sure someone gets samples from the mirror too.�

Saenz doesn�t answer, doesn�t even seem to have heard. He is still looking intently into her face. �You brave girl,� he mutters. �You brave, brave girl.�

Somebody died in this car I�m driving. That�s why I got it so cheap. I mean, new Ford Escapes don�t go for less than a million pesos, and even discounting a few years� use � five years, to be exact, and fifty-two thousand kilometers on the odometer � I�d have valued this 4x2 XLS at around 530,000, maybe even a bit more in those used-car lots that have sprung up everywhere around Metro Manila, near the malls to catch the dads� eyes while the moms shop. But 365,000? That�s a steal. That�s robbery. Unless you figure all the scrubbing it took to get the blood off the upholstery in the back, right behind me where the professor�s head would have been, the blood bubbling out of his mouth and his nostrils and who knows what other cavities. His wife�s lap would have caught some if not most of the blood, but I could just imagine that head, that whole upper frame of his, jerking up and down like some broken insect, spewing blood and mucus all over the car seat. Of course I didn�t really see any blood when I looked � not that I looked too closely � because the seats sported new beige velour covers when I got the car, and I couldn�t smell anything either because the wife � Lalaine, that�s her name, I keep calling her Mrs. Sanvictores, or Ma�am Lalaine, never just �Lalaine� to her face or in the professor�s presence � had sprayed a canful of acrid-sweet lemon air-freshener into the interior.

How did I learn about the way the professor died? From Lalaine, of course, she was there, cradling his bony head on her ample lap where he might have, would have, lain the same birdlike head � I remember how, when he nodded in class, it almost seemed like he was pecking, the way his nose would dip forward and then pull back � some other time, any other time. Heck, I�ll admit, I would have too with half a chance, and given how I�d sometimes steal a glance at that lap � and, oh, at other parts of Mrs. Sanvictores, or Lalaine. It wasn�t my fault; it was the professor himself who invited me into his house, their house, to discuss his research on the origins of the coffee industry on Sibutu Island � and I didn�t even know he had a wife, or a young wife to be exact, a hot young wife who must have been thirty years his junior, and maybe just ten years older than I was, if even that much.

The second I met Lalaine, as she bent over to hand me a glass of pineapple juice and all kinds of good things began to spill out of the front of her low-cut blouse, I nearly fainted from the sight and the whiff of Shalimar or whatever they name those perfumes that remind you of rustling silk and moonlight. The truth is, she wasn�t what you would call particularly pretty � her cheekbones seemed set a bit too high and the sides of her face tapered down so sharply into her nubbin of a chin that you could�ve said she looked like a caricature, especially with those full wide lips. She was a walking, bobbing exaggeration of a woman, or womanhood itself, that�s what I always thought. Her skin was so white and creamy that the large brown mole that sat on the hump of her left breast looked even larger and browner than it probably was.

�You didn�t even ask if he wanted Coke instead of pineapple juice,� the professor chided his wife as she bent at the knees, with the practiced dip of a professional dancer, to serve my drink.

�This is better for his health,� she retorted in a Tagalog that resonated with provincial charm, making me imagine tender papayas, broiling squid, and potent rum, or whatever they drink down there, south of Tablas Strait.

�It�s all right, I prefer juice.� I practically grabbed the drink from her hand. When my fingers grazed hers I felt like I had been scorched, like the juice would vaporize.

Indeed, it seemed like a fine mist had crept into the afternoon, and as we sat there in the professor�s garden, with him droning on about Leandro de Veana�s report to the Crown about exploiting the colony�s natural resources, I watched Lalaine�s shadow through the jalousies, puttering about in the kitchen, maybe making little rice cakes. That�s what I often imagined her doing, I don�t know why, they just seemed to go together, Lalaine and rice cakes. I�ll bet she made a lot of them for the professor.

My reverie was broken when the buzzer rang at the gate � it was Dencio, a handyman who lived in the squatters� settlement nearby, in Krus na Ligas. They used him as a gardener, a plumber, a carpenter, and sometimes even a driver, when they had functions to attend and the professor didn�t want to crease his barong by driving the Ford Escape himself. Dencio was one of those hard-luck characters, the guy who works his butt off fixing other people�s problems but who can�t shake off his own. The professor told me that Dencio had been all set to fly to a construction job in Dubai when his youngest daughter fell ill with dengue after a mosquito bite, and died. Then his wife went insane with grief and walked into the path of a dump truck, leaving him with five kids to feed, one of whom has encephalitis. I mean, who writes these scripts? Now here he was to repair � he announced to me when I opened the gate for him � a leak in the septic tank. A big job, Dencio muttered, both of his pudgy hands clutching large, heavy tools to break the earth with.

So that�s where the vague stink was coming from. I know, I didn�t mention it earlier, but I was thinking of Lalaine � Shalimar, remember?�� and had shut out the creeping suggestion of decay, something that now afflicted me with cloying tartness, now that Dencio had mentioned it and Lalaine was out of sight. Or rather, she had stepped out for a second to let Dencio into the main house and into the backyard, where the septic tank was located. She looked happy to see him, and murmured something I couldn�t understand � I think they came from the same part of the country and spoke the same dialect � and for a minute back there I wondered if Dencio looked at Lalaine the same way I did. It seemed like a silly idea. Men with five kids to feed don�t have time to fantasize, do they? Now the stink was definitely in the air, like the earth�s own bad breath. Even the professor noticed it, not that he minded too much. �Sometimes a dead bird falls on the roof,� he said, although I wondered how he could have known that, and how large and dead a bird had to be to create such rot. But I could believe how the roofs of these faculty houses might accumulate all kinds of garbage, even as the professor and I spoke; and on other visits, our conversation would be interrupted by the thud of a falling mango from one of the stout branches arching over the property.

Let me tell you about these old houses on the UP campus. They were built in the �50s and some of them still have the suburban look of that time, where they pinched the wet concrete for cheap texture and carved the outlines of rocks and boulders on the wall before painting the pebbled spaces over, just to offset the basic gray boxiness of the house itself. They had given the professor one of these, a concrete shell that he began to fill with books of every imaginable kind, including obscure commentaries on the apocalypse, herbal recipes for the relief of gout, and a pictorial history of the American Civil War.

I can imagine Professor Sanvictores coming to UP as a young instructor, eager to make his mark in history. Or was it economics that he first signed up for? This was years before his stint as a teaching assistant and doctoral candidate in Minnesota, where he picked up and cultivated the American accent that many coeds found charming, if not irresistible. Now every two-bit club and radio deejay and call center agent has one, but none of them can come up with and use a word like �contumacious� the way the professor did to describe certain tribal chieftains in old New Zealand.

I was dying to ask either the professor or Lalaine herself how the two of them met, and more than that, how they ended up being man and wife. I mean, what ever did they see in each other? But of course, silly, I knew what he saw in her, I could see that even with my eyes shut. But what about Lalaine? I could understand her developing a schoolgirl crush on him, especially if he put on that Minnesota affect and gave his sophomore-class version of his lecture on Rizal�s women and free love in the nineteenth century. Truth be told, in his younger days the professor might have been found attractive by some women from a certain angle, especially women who liked stray cats and boys with cowlicks and otherwise smart men who needed to be helped with the simplest things, like using an ATM card. And did the professor have any money? It�s a fair thing to ask. From what I�d gathered � and I would hear this again at the wake, not that too many family members bothered to show up � there had been a farm in Quezon Province, somewhere on that long, ragged, storm-bitten eastern shore nobody really wants to call home. The professor�s mother had wanted him to become a priest; his father a lawyer or a businessman. Both parents expected their only son to get married, but they died long before Lalaine stepped into his life � or did he step into hers?

Almost as soon as Lalaine appeared beside the professor on campus, the predictable gossip swirled about her being a bargirl he�d met during a semester spent doing research down south, maybe while he was trying to figure out how the plague that ravaged Brazil�s coffee industry reached Sibutu�s liberica plantations in 1888. Nobody thought to ask Lalaine for her CV, or they assumed she was some graduate assistant like me. Even at the wake, nobody thought to ask her sensible questions like, So have you thought of donating his papers to the university archives? or, Isn�t it wonderful that Professor Umali came to pay his respects? If there was anyone who would have wanted the professor dead, it was Calixto Umali. He had been a thorn in the professor�s side for ages � at one time, his prot�g�, like me, and then his rival and archcritic, especially after he�d returned with his PhD from Leipzig � you know, where Goethe, Wagner, and Nietzsche all wore the school jersey � taking every opportunity to dispute the professor�s theories and gathering his own coterie of departmental groupies around him, the kind with braces on their teeth. Umali cut quite a figure as well, with a full shock of hair, like a crown. Sometimes I think the professor brought Lalaine back from Sibutu and married her � cake, bouquet, pigeon, and all � just to prove that he knew something more about life than migration theories and why empires crumble.

And then when he bought the Ford Escape � in a color the dealers call �toreador red� � the professor looked even younger, snappier, more eager to engage anyone in anything, from a debate at the University Council to a drag race on Temple Drive. Or so it seemed. I was still a senior then and his baby-thesis advisee, not yet his assistant, but he had made it a point to ask me to join him in the SUV for a ride to the post office, using a supposed problem with my endnotes to Chapter 6, on the Battle of Biak-na-Bato, as an excuse. As soon as we were driving down A. Roces Street, nothing about my thesis was ever brought up again. Instead, he told me about how he�d cashed in some stocks he had inherited a long time ago from his father to buy the car � his retirement paycheck was still too far away � and that the Escape was his wedding gift to himself and Lalaine. One of these days, he said, he�d teach her how to drive, but not too soon. Heck, maybe it was better to get her a driver, he added. Lalaine was bound to scratch the car up, she was good with dainty little things like cups and saucers, but large objects confounded her, she was new to all this and an SUV was just too much. It was at this point that I wanted to ask him how they had met, but we had reached the post office, and the professor realized with a chuckle that he had forgotten the parcel he was supposed to send his sister in Chicago. �I know, they�re all wondering why I married her, asking who and what she is, like it�s their business,� he muttered as we drove back to the faculty center. �But if you were me, you�d do the same thing, I�m sure you would.� I kept quiet, but I wanted to say, Of course, professor, I certainly would, I�m your man, whatever is good for you is good for me too!

And so it went for a few years, during which I graduated with my degree in history. I thought I would go on to law school and realize my father�s dream of having an attorney in the family. For a brief while I even got a job as a call center agent, advising people in Ohio how to set up their digital answering machines, only to keep returning to campus and hanging out with the professor. Eventually I signed up for an MA. I didn�t really see myself becoming an academic or a professional historian � I mean, I loved all the war stories, the expeditions and encounters with strange tribes, that sort of thing. But the kind of history the professor was seriously interested in, having to do with varieties of coffee beans and price fluctuations in Antwerp and Rio de Janeiro, was almost like Accounting 312 to me. I suppose I was fascinated by the professor and by his young wife, and by the life they led. I�d expected her to get pregnant within months of their wedding, but it never happened. I got used to seeing Lalaine just the way she was, just short of pregnant. Me, I�d had a couple of girlfriends, nothing serious. I was never good at figuring out what they wanted, except the obvious, which turned out to be something they didn�t really want as much as I did. I mean, what is it with these women? It�s not like I grope or fondle them the first chance I get. I do everything by the book � saving up for dates so I can take them to a decent dinner after the movie, telling them about my day and asking about theirs, escorting them home in a cab and being properly hesitant when they ask me in, focusing on the TV while they make coffee, keeping my hands on my knees until they relax and get that glassy look in their eyes, talking about future and family. I start feeling frisky and touch them somewhere that seems to burn, because they jump up and say things I never had in mind, and I go home totally bummed out. I hate to say this because I dislike generalizations, although history tells us that when you take a really long step backward and look again, people tend to do the same basic things wherever they are, whether in China in the Qing dynasty or in Montezuma�s Mexico, but I came around to the conclusion that it was my not having a car, my own car, at the age of twenty-four, that made me look not so hot to the girls. I mean, let�s face it, driving a car makes you look like you can do anything, or go anywhere � even the professor knew that. I�m sure those Egyptian charioteers got laid a whole lot more than the foot soldiers, the cowboys more than the cooks. I�d brought this up with my parents � I still lived with them in Kamuning and drove the old man around in his �93 Civic that now coughed in first gear and groaned in second. It was hard to convince sixty-somethings that they, I, needed a new car when their only son was a perpetual schoolboy, earning little beyond the scraps the professor threw me from his research funding and the transcription jobs I took on now and then for other academics. (Once, even, in a really bad fix, from Professor Umali himself. Although of course it had to be kept secret, and I swear I never broke any confidences or passed along any gossip.)

Luckily � okay, it�s hardly the word, considering the circumstances, but you know what I mean � my dad was close to retirement, and fairly susceptible to suggestions of spending his golden years driving or being driven around the country, like to weekends in Tagaytay or Subic with my mom. And I just had to appeal to his sense of entitlement to get him to agree that he deserved a prize for all his decades of hard work in the maritime insurance industry. That was the key � it was going to be his car, not mine. That way he would also pay for the gas and the spark plugs, even if he was going to stay home most of the time playing Scrabble with my mom. When the 2005 Ford Escape came up for sale at that unbelievably low price, all I had to do was give Dad a little nudge for him to tip over and sign the check, hallelujah. It was like the heavens had conspired to deliver me a chariot in toreador red, to reward me for my cleverness, and to compensate me for all the nasty rejections I�d received since high school.

But this isn�t about me or the car. It�s the professor I�m talking about, isn�t it?... about how he died that awful day in late November.

Some time in September, things began to go wrong, horribly wrong, for the professor. It was bad enough that Typhoon Emong hit the country, the strongest and worst in nearly thirty years. Which was longer than I�d been alive, come to think of it. Emong killed hundreds of people as far south as Surigao, and brought crusty old trees crashing down on power lines, so that the UP campus went without light and water for three days. I rode a bike to the professor�s house just to see how they were doing, and found the old man drying out some papers. Letters from his mother, he said � written while he was still in graduate school � that had been soaked when the wind ripped off a corner of the roof and rain came streaming in. I was surprised to hear the roof creaking and see Lalaine up there herself, hammer in hand, tamping down the errant sheet of galvanized iron. I shouted to her and she acknowledged me with a wave. Looking up at her in shorts, I caught a glimpse of long white thigh before Lalaine disappeared to work on the dangerous edge and I had a chance to say, �Be careful.�

But like I said, worse things were to come for the professor.

First, a few days after the storm lifted and the last fallen branches had been cleared by road crews, Professor Sanvictores came home dejected, profoundly humiliated by Professor Umali�s incontrovertible proof that the annual reports to the governor-general from his caretaker in Sibutu had been outright forgeries or fatally compromised copies � at least the segments from 1885 to 1891 � given that the real records had been unearthed by one of Umali�s assistants at the Houghton Library in Harvard. Professor Sanvictores was so upset and distracted, he scraped the left fender guard of the Escape against a post in the garage entryway when he drove home. It�s still there, a faint and meaningless scratch, more annoying than anything, but there.

Second, Lalaine had become pregnant by someone else. The professor told me the somber news in mid-November, while we were sitting under the mango tree that shaded the gazebo in the yard. His face was in the shadows: �But I couldn�t get it up. I never could,� he said. �That was the problem, that was our problem.�

Lalaine had tearfully confessed to a liaison with Dencio. I felt outraged, like I myself had been betrayed � like I said, how could a man with five mouths to feed think of carrying on with another man�s wife? I had come to the professor�s house to pick up my salary for the past two months� work. I usually got paid monthly, and never complained. But when the old man handed me my check, his hand trembling in grief, I felt so embarrassed, so sorry for him, that I almost gave it back, as if I myself had something to feel guilty about.

�What will you do now?� I asked in a voice that sounded even weaker than his.

�I don�t know,� he said. �For some strange reason, I want to keep the baby, but not keep her. God forgive me for saying this, but sometimes I just want to strangle Lalaine in her sleep, and then I remember that it was me who asked her to come here and live with me and my books, to cook for me and occupy half of my bed, all of which and more she�s done without complaint. And when I remember that, much of the pain goes away, at least until I wake up and see her, or hear her mumbling something in that dialect of hers, and suddenly she becomes a horrible stranger again... And then I too become someone else, someone I don�t want to know.� He raised his hands and spread his spindly fingers out in what might have been a profession of innocence, or surrender, or he could have been pushing something back, I don�t know, and he hung his head down in silence, like he was praying, but I didn�t think he was.

�I�m sorry to hear that� was all I could say. The professor said nothing, and to break the awkwardness of the moment, I excused myself to go to the bathroom.

For over a week before the storm, Dencio had been digging out a large pit in the back for a new septic tank. The old one was beyond repair and foul brown sludge had begun bubbling up in the toilet. I saw that myself when I went in for a pee. Lalaine had done what she could to contain the overflow with rolled-up newspapers, but I could see how, despite her best efforts, the house was beginning to be less habitable by the day. The professor�s books and papers filled every shelf and cranny like an overgrown garden with the shrubbery gone mad. A small altar was tucked away in a corner with glowing electric bulbs illuminating Jesus cradling his heart in his palm. It had to be hers, because I never knew the professor to be a churchgoing man. I mean, the word �God� would sometimes creep into his speech, like an expression, and I know enough about social scientists to know that when they say �God,� it�s with all kinds of little asterisks.

That�s when I saw her in a corner of the kitchen, as I stepped out of the bathroom, breathless because I had stopped inhaling the instant I noticed all those soggy newspapers on the floor. I actually heard her before I saw her � whimpering in a chair, with her knees up and her arms curled around them. She looked up � surprised, embarrassed, defiant, fearful � and it occurred to me that we had never really spoken about anything more serious than the weather or her rice cakes, certainly not in private. Through the window, I could see that the professor was still in the gazebo, maintaining a stoic silence, flipping through the pages of a newspaper like he cared about what was happening in Afghanistan. Lalaine sat backlit, so that her edges seemed even softer, silvered in shadow. I could see the wetness of her nose, and when she noticed me standing there, she abruptly brushed the snot with the back of her hand. It only made things worse by smearing her cheek, but somehow Lalaine looked vulnerable and therefore all the more beautiful to me.

�Are you all right?� I instantly realized the stupidity of my question.

�Help me,� I thought I heard her say, and moved closer so I could be sure. �My husband�s going to kill me.� She began rocking herself and crying. �He can�t forgive me, he�s going to kill me, I just know it.�

�No,� I said, not even sure why. �The professor wouldn�t hurt anyone, especially not you.�

She looked up sharply. �You�re not his wife. How would you know?�

I felt like snapping back with, You�re not his wife, either, or something to that effect, just to register my own disgust about how she�d betrayed the man. She and Dencio, she with Dencio.

�You have no idea the things he makes me do. I do them to keep him happy, because I promised to love him. And I don�t care if you believe me or not, but I still do.�

�Then why would he kill you? And if you think he will, why don�t you leave? You should go home.� My voice was laced with bitterness and chastisement, and I realized that I might as well have been speaking for the professor.

�I have no other home,� she said. �There was another man, back in Sibutu. He was an evil man, he hurt me. I came here to get away from him. But everything,� she sighed, �everything just gets worse and worse.�

My mind reeled. How many other men did this woman have in her life, and how could I believe all the stories she was telling me about them? And granted, she must have been woefully unlucky to shack up with the wrong guys. But how about taking some responsibility for her own poor choices, and for whatever she might have done to make good men go bad? I mean, history, folks, history � Jezebel, Delilah, Cleopatra, Mata Hari, it�s a list that just goes on and on.

�Well, that�s true,� I said. �You can�t keep running away from the past.� If there was anything I learned from school, anything at all, it was that.

Apparently sensing my lack of sympathy, Lalaine rose up from her chair to get a glass of water and gave me a steely, almost reptilian glance that simply confirmed my own dawning mistrust of Mrs. Sanvictores. Or whoever she really was. How could all that liquid softness vanish so quickly, and be replaced by this new skin, hard, resistant, and opaque?

I noticed through the jalousies that the professor had left the gazebo. I wondered if he had observed my brief exchange with his wife, or whatever she was to him now. Suddenly the thought crossed my mind that he might have � could have, should have � suspected me of being the baby�s father at some point, if she hadn�t fingered Dencio. I mean, it was possible, wasn�t it? As far as I could tell, apart from the professor himself and that sneaky Dencio, I was the only male who went into their house with any kind of frequency. Never mind that Lalaine and I hardly ever spoke. I could have gotten her cell phone number and initiated and carried on an affair via text, beginning with innocuous thanks and comments about the refreshments, and then about the decor, or her perfume, raising the level of intimacy with every message. That�s what I could have done but never did, and meanwhile this half-literate handyman was giving it to her by the bucket, while I listened to the professor deliver the annual Cesar Adib Majul Memorial Lecture at the C. M. Recto Hall and chased coffee production figures at the National Library.

�I have to go back to the professor,� I told Lalaine, who had turned away from me, which was just as well because she now seemed ugly to me, even her legs where I could see splotchy patches, maybe from all the tension and the guilt. �I�m sure you�ll be all right.� Now that she was standing upright, up to her full height that nearly matched mine, she hardly seemed the helpless victim of moments before.

I couldn�t find the professor anywhere in the front garden, so I went out back. There he was, staring into the yawning pit that Dencio had dug for the new septic tank. How was this ever going to get finished, I wondered, now that the professor knew about the affair and Dencio had presumably been fired? The pit had filled to the brim with rainwater during the storm, but the waters had subsided and I could see the hole was large and deep enough to swallow a man, the soft rough edges of its mouth making a silent scream of warning.

�In Herculaneum,� the professor said, �they excavated tons of compacted human waste from a septic tank, and so were able to establish what the citizens ate, like dormice and sea urchins. It�s funny how we learn about people from the shit they leave behind.�

That was the last time I saw the professor alive � at least literally speaking, since the following day I heard him, through the partly open door of his faculty center office, speaking to none other than Professor Umali. I couldn�t make out exactly what they were saying � and the fear suddenly seized me that it was about my perfidy in having worked for Umali a few years earlier. I began constructing my tortured defense � then realized that they were having a casual conversation, almost as if Calixto Umali was back to being the professor�s most brilliant and respectful pupil. One of these days I�ll ask Umali about that unexpected visit, like who called whom first and what was on the agenda. I might even wheedle some work from him again, and feel guilt-free now that the professor�s gone, but we�ll see.

Two mornings later I got a text from Jo-Anne, our departmental secretary, telling me that the professor had died. What, where, how, why? I texted back quickly. I�d just come out of the shower and hadn�t even pulled my pants on � but even before Jo-Anne responded, a flurry of ideas ran through my mind. Chiefly, that Lalaine somehow had something to do with his death. At the very least, she had driven him to it.

Jo-Anne�s text seemed to confirm my suspicions: Accidental fall into hole behind house. Hit head. That was no simple hole, that was the septic tank, and yes you could lose your footing on the edge, fall in, and hit your head on the hollow-block floor and get a nasty bump, but it wouldn�t kill you � it just didn�t look deep enough � unless you were hit again and again.

I could just see it happening: Lalaine luring the professor to the backyard, then Dencio coming from behind with a shovel and whacking the old man over the head with it, jumping into the pit to slug the professor some more and finish the job. I was sure that Lalaine had texted Dencio, then given him that Help, he�s going to kill me look, and that Dencio quickly figured out the side benefits of compassion and had mustered the temerity to do her bidding. But if they�d killed the old man there, why not just leave his body in the pit and cover it with earth and concrete? Too obvious; I�d often noticed Lalaine watching those true-crime and CSI-type shows on TV, where the scheming wife and her lover-accomplice always get caught. �The soil�s too fresh,� the detective would always mutter, pawing on bent knees at an obviously off-color spot.

�We drove him to the hospital,� Lalaine told me that same afternoon, in the very same gazebo where I had been sitting with the professor just two days earlier. I had to go to that house, I had to hear it from her own mouth, I wanted to see Lalaine twitch and hear her sputter, trying to explain away the terrible truth. �It happened late last night, around one a.m. I woke up to get a glass of water, I�m always thirsty being pregnant, and he was gone from his bed � actually the sofa in the living room, where he now sleeps, or was now sleeping... Anyway, the door was open and I looked out and � I don�t know how, but I could feel where he was, what he was doing or wanted to do. So I took a flashlight and went to the backyard, calling his name, but there was no answer. And when I looked into that hole in the ground he was already there, unconscious, bleeding. I jumped in to try and pull him out, but I couldn�t... so I called Dencio.�

�Dencio? Why not call me? I�m sure you have my number somewhere.�

�There was no time to look. Dencio lives close by, and I was very afraid. He came, rushed right over, and helped me pull my poor husband out of the pit, and we brought him to Labor Hospital but it was too late. He died in my arms, in the back of the car. You know � he was still alive when I found him.�

I didn�t know where to begin tearing away at her lies. Dead from a fall into a six-foot pit? Okay, sure. Dencio so conveniently nearby? So, all right, Krus na Ligas was just five minutes away on a bike, but why not scream to call the neighbors for help, like genuinely distraught wives are supposed to do? Driving to Labor Hospital? Why not the UP infirmary just a few streets away � not that they were good for much more than dispensing Tylenol? Again, why drive anywhere at all? Why not just let their victim writhe to his death at the bottom of that infernal pit? Perhaps she suffered a pang of guilt watching him lie there, looking back at her with How could you? in his glazed-over eyes. Did Dencio drive the Ford Escape at full speed, or did he take his time cruising out of the UP gates and onto C. P. Garcia, maybe stopping for a burger in a twenty-four-hour McDonald�s along the way?

And now that I gazed at Lalaine in her proper widow�s somber dress, a deep-blue linen outfit with a modest neckline that she might have worn to a dinner with other faculty wives at the Executive House had she felt up to it, I didn�t know whether to marvel at, or be appalled by, her incredible composure. Her simple words were inflected with emotion and what I had mistaken for sweet na�vet�, that�s how dangerous she was. I realized that this was going to be a bit more difficult case to crack, that I had to be equally deft and skillful in probing the mind and motives of the widow Sanvictores.

It was the audacity of her next gambit that astounded me. Placing her hand so carefully that her fingertips just barely touched my knee, and with no suggestion of malice or enticement in her demeanor whatsoever, the widow Sanvictores glanced at the parked Escape and asked: �Would you like to buy my husband�s car? I need to go away for a while and could use the cash. I just realized I have very little money, and it will take time to go through his papers. You understand, of course � about the car, all the memories. I don�t drive, and... and I know you like it. I�ve seen how you look at it.�

My throat went dry. Of course she had seen me look, many times, at the car, at herself. Unlike my girlfriends, she knew what I wanted, and was prepared to give it, at least in stages. �I don�t have much money,� I began to whine. �I�m just a graduate student, and the Escape is such a nice car.� She or someone � maybe Dencio?�� had taken the trouble to wash the SUV that morning, so that it sparkled more than usual, enough to give me a headache. But I managed to pull myself together and pop the question: �How much do you want for it? Maybe my father can help. He needs a new car, or a newer one, anyway.� I covered my mouth with my hand to disguise my desperation.

She beamed and picked up a pencil from the gazebo table � I could see lots of numbers on a pad of paper, so she must�ve been working on some calculations when I called to say I was coming by � and wrote a number: 365. The buzz in my head got stronger. Surely this was a mistake. Didn�t she know how much a 2005 Ford Escape XLS was worth? Had she even bothered to ask around or bought one of those car magazines at the pharmacy checkout for thirty pesos, scanned the ads, and realized she could make herself an extra hundred thousand or two? I know; I�ve looked. I buy those magazines and dream about Audis and Alfa Romeos, but that�s because I�m a regular guy.

�Are you sure?� I asked.

�I�m a simple woman,� Lalaine said. �I just want a quick sale. I�m sure your dear father can help � but if you don�t want the car, Dencio probably knows people who��

�No!� I said. �Not Dencio. Look, I want the car. Give me a day or two. I�ll talk to my father. Three hundred sixty-five? Consider it sold.�

She glanced at the SUV again, wistfully, then smiled at me. �This is a very sad day. I�ve lost my husband. They�re moving his body to the University Chapel, and I will be going there later to join him. I came home just to change and � and because you called to say you were dropping by. You make me very happy by... helping me recover. Thank you. We have a deal.� She took both of my hands in hers and pressed them, just long enough to send over a surge of warmth. �Let me get the keys so you can take it for a drive. And maybe you can drive me to the chapel, no? We can pay our respects to someone we both loved, you and I.�

I could hear birds singing in the mango trees.

Friday, September 20, 1974, 7:45 a.m.

Lala makes the sign of the cross when she comes upon the naked, mutilated body of Vanessa Blanca hanging from the ancient balete tree on Moriones Street, a block away from the Tutuban train station. Like most of the Tondo residents in the crowd, Lala believes that the tree � beside the small bridge overlooking the shanties along the black, stagnant waters of Canal de la Reina � is haunted by evil spirits. Lala�s mother once told her that during the war, the Japs hung a handsome American corporal and his Filipino spy from its branches. She tries to look away, shifting her stare from the grotto of the Virgin Mary that the priests from Santo Ni�o Church had built inside the hollowed base of the tree. But her gaze keeps returning to the body of the former Miss Gay Tondo Universe.

Vanessa. Vanessa Blanca. Nobody�s mistress. Everybody�s whore. Last known residence: Olongapo, before she escaped to Tondo after President Marcos declared martial law on September 21, 1972. �Operation Biniboy� had gone into effect, banning transvestites in Olongapo and every other town occupied by the US military.

Vanessa was a bakla who preferred sex with straight men. Bakla. Biniboy. Businessgirl. A puta con huevos. Add these names up in whatever language and they equal �Beauty.� A beauty now reduced to a castrated goddess. Vanessa�s long, ash-blond tresses have been shaved off. Her bra and torn panties stuffed in her mouth. The cord of her hip pads, drooping over her back like a cape, is coiled around her neck. Slash marks and stab wounds on her torso. Cigarette burns on her inner thighs. Her penis, severed.

Fourteen-year-old Lala wants to cry but can�t. Questions gnaw at her like the balete�s aerial roots that, upon touching the earth, will creep toward the tree and feast on what�s left of its origin.

Who did this to Vanessa? And why?

Vanessa was her among ina. A surrogate mother who made Lala feel and think that she mattered. Who convinced Lala she had a future outside of Tondo, outside of a life that reeked of gang wars at Pier 2, Barrio Matae�s shit, and Balut�s burning trash.

For three years, Lala lived with Vanessa, learned from her, waited on her. She ran Vanessa�s errands, bought her gin and cigarettes, cleaned up after her, massaged her feet. It was Vanessa who gave Lala, born Efren Cruz, her name: Lala L�amour.

Lala did not mind being an alalay to Vanessa. Apprenticeship with a renowned Tondo Beauty was coveted by any boy who dreamt of being crowned the next Miss Milky Way, Miss Independence Gay, Muse of the Night, or Miss Gaygaylangin.

In exchange for Lala�s loyalty and servitude, Vanessa fed her, dressed her up in the latest creations by Manila�s fashion czar, Caloy Badidoy. Vanessa sent Lala to school. First, at Magat Salamat Elementary School, where she finished third in her class. Then, to Gregorio Perfecto High School, where Lala was an honors student until she dropped out five months ago.

When Lala turned twelve, Vanessa started her on the high-end birth control pill �Diane� so Lala could grow breasts. In no time, she blossomed into a young Vanessa. Adopting Vanessa�s sexy and sophisticated ways. Accentuating the �A� in attitude, Vanessa-style. Accepting her Vanessa-given duties as a prelude to beauty with danger.

As for love � Lala had to learn about it the hard way. One day, she came home from school with bruises and a swollen lip because the boy she had a crush on had punched her in the face and called her Bakla! When Lala told the story to Vanessa, Vanessa just laughed. �Good for you, Lala. Now, you know better.� A week went by and another beating occurred � same bully. Vanessa called Lala �pathetic� and told her to toughen up or else go back to her rat-infested shanty on Pilapil Street and become a washerwoman like her mother.

Vanessa.

Cruel, cari�o brutal Vanessa. Who believed there was no greater love.

Chiara was Googling idly, with nothing on her mind, in her mother�s mansion. Then she went Oedipal. She Googled her father�s film, The Unintended, and the year production began: 1975. She never thought she would find an item of interest, nothing memorable, not even an inch of a pitch for a horror script or a jotting for her sundry journal. But on pages twenty-four through thirty in the search results, she started clicking. Muhammad Ali�s historic match against Joe Frazier on October 1, 1975. Miss Universe Amparo Mu�oz has become a soft-porn star and is stripped of her crown. The bells of Balangiga, some religious items stolen from a Philippine island, remain missing. The first multilevel shopping mall in the Philippines rises in tribute to Muhammad Ali�s victory. Another article on the ambush in Balangiga of American soldiers of the 9th US Infantry Regiment on an island called Samar in 1901. What the heck was going on?

Online, an unrelated catastrophe was ambushing her father�s film. Balangiga, Samar, kept coming up, neck and neck with Muhammad Ali.

A motif of the renovated Ali Mall is a series of commissioned portraits of the boxer framed in glass at strategic points, like altars. The reflexive signifiers, most of them tacky, are not tongue-in-cheek. They are serious gestures of veneration. One has a wilted flower on its ledge, as if left by an admirer (candy wrappers and cigarette stubs also decorate the shrine). While the corporate intention of co-opting the Greatest in order to shill shoes is obvious, the beauty of the intertextual display � the portraits that modify the mall, and the mall that is an appositive of the portraits � is that presence confounds purpose. The portraits do make Ali as absurd as the corporation promoting meaning from dubious intentions. Passing them by her first time in amusement, at another in alarm, at several outright laughing, Magsalin spends the afternoon searching the mall for all the images. One, a giant reproduction like an advertisement, is done in painstaking flatness. Ali�s nose is as big as the letter A in the word CHAMPION. It has graffiti all over its wall. But when you look close, expecting obscenity, instead you find sincere compliments, some of them mistaken: ali is da greatest! I saw the HBO, THRILLA! r.i.p. Muhammad Ali, floats like a butterfly, sings like a bee. At this point, though perhaps in the future it will change, Muhammad Ali is in fact still alive. Oddly, even the errors count. In another, a cubist Ali in a relaxed pose, clearly allusive, looks like Pablo Picasso in an early self-portrait, wearing a white camisa. Another illustrates a Filipino pantheon of assorted black idols � Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, the kid from Diff�rent Strokes, Gloria Gaynor of �I Will Survive� fame, and their forefather, Muhammad Ali � descending in order somewhat like Marcel Duchamp�s Nude Descending a Staircase, but not. To pan on each of these is a slice of time, precious in Chiara�s movie, so the viewer does wonder at its meanings, juxtaposed as they are with a scene in Magsalin�s story � a kidnapping left hanging.

I was introduced as Louie�s long-lost cousin from California. Paco and Gala were clearly coked up, Paco in an expansive, convivial mood. He invited us to join them upstairs in the cordoned-off VIP lounge. Where he said the service was one on one, the music different and not as loud. We slid into a spacious booth in a shadowy corner.

Welcome to my satellite office, Paco said. We all laughed.

Gala complained about the air-con being on too high. Paco gave her his jacket. A waiter scurried over and said drinks were on the house. Paco didn�t seem surprised. He told the waiter to bring a bottle of R�my for the table, without asking us what we wanted. Then he lit a cigarette. I noticed the tattoo of thorns around his wrist.

Most of us can�t wait to get out of this country and live somewhere else. Why�d you move back here, Nick?

I heard the surfing�s awesome.

It is. You a surfer, Nick?

Are you?

I�m a businessman. Ready for a toot?

I followed him to the men�s room like a meek little lamb. We locked ourselves in one of the stalls. Two searing hits of Paco�s coke and I lost my inhibition. I leaned in and kissed his mouth. The kiss was gruff and quick. He pushed me away with a smile.

Not so fast, kid.

We went back to the table without saying a word. Louie and Gala were waiting for us.

Can we have some too? Gala cooed.

Paco dealt out of an apartment in one of those creaky, prewar buildings in Malate that his family owned. He could get you anything, Louie said. Even the latest and most expensive high, which was crack. You�re fucking kidding me, I said. Crack?

Louie shrugged. He always insisted I come along with him to score, for some mysterious reason. Misery loves company, I guess. Paco�s clientele was small and definitely A-list, with money to burn. Louie � a thirty-year-old brat who depended on his mother�s generous monthly allowance and had never worked a day in his life � was one of the lucky few. I knew I was out of my league, and made every effort to stay away. Plus, I couldn�t stand Paco acting like I didn�t exist. He�d been cold toward me since that night at the club, and had eyes only for Gala. Once I started working at the call center, it got a little easier to stay away. The job sucked, but I actually got off saying shit like: American Express Customer Service, Ralph speaking. How may I help you?

Ralph. Steve. Randy. Whatever. I finally made it to an AA meeting held in this sweet little community center close to my aunt�s house in Quezon City. But there were too many bornagain freaks in the room and I never went back. As the weeks of stifling heat and torrential rains dragged on, I resolved:

1.�To stop thinking about Paco.

2.�To stop hanging out with Louie.

3.�To not get fired.

4.�To buy a car.

5.�To move out of Tita Moning�s and rent my own apartment.

6.�To help my father die a dignified death.

Which parts of a bird are edible?

Epifanio did not know.

He would guess. Yes, he could do that: Not the internal organs. Not the beak. Not the feathers.

He wrote, laboriously: eyes, tail, breast.

Afterward, when they were all gathered in the small lobby, they were offered warm Coke in thick glasses, no ice.

Why would anyone ask them a question about birds? They were there to study to be seamen: most of them were from Negros, like Epifanio. The rest were from Marinduque, Zambales, Cagayan de Oro, Davao. After two years on one of the interisland ferries, and provided they received good evaluations, they might get the chance to work on one of the cruise ships that went to Hong Kong and Singapore. Epifanio clung to this hope.

He liked the young woman who had been waiting to greet them the day they arrived in Manila, but there was no sign of her the next day, or the next. By the third day, he began to notice a fat man who sat in a little room on the first floor. The room had desks and filing cabinets, like a regular office. Epifanio learned later that the man�s name was Leandro.

Epifanio pretended that the young woman had lent him some toothpaste and he wanted to repay her. �Is she coming back?� he asked Leandro.

The man smirked. �She�s sick. Morning sickness. What�s your name again?� Epifanio gave his name. The man gazed down at a sheet divided into two columns. �From Bacolod,� he said, and smirked again.

�Silay,� Epifanio said. And, he thought, but didn�t say aloud, I have been to college. I have had two years of San Agustin. And you�! He lowered his gaze and shrugged and gave a self-deprecating smile.

When Epifanio later replayed the conversation in his head, he hated the way Leandro seemed to know instinctively what Epifanio was after. And Leandro�s smirk would return again and again to his memory.

The rules of being a seaman: The shared toilets must be cleaned and ready for inspection at five a.m. When a passenger requests assistance, the seaman must smile and show his willingness to be of service. Even the most unreasonable guest will appreciate a smile.

Manila, this teeming city, pressed on him: dense, impenetrable. The sounds were many and various and ill-tempered. They abated only a little, toward dawn. His eyes were heavy from his dreams. Sheryn, I love you, he would dream himself saying aloud. In the dream she always laughed, as if she could hear him speaking, even across so many islands. I love you, I love you, I love you, he would say, his fists clutching the thin mattress.

She doesn�t have to travel very far to see her fortune-teller. This is the chief advantage of living in the Chinese section of Manila known as Binondo. From her apartment on Espeleta, it�s three quick blocks then up two flights of creaky wood stairs. On the third-floor landing, to announce her presence, she will call up to the woman who could be anywhere from forty to eighty and who, using the Fukienese word for grandmother, goes by the name Ah-ma.

Ah-ma is the trade secret of the girls in Charmaine�s group.

Charmaine doesn�t know why the Chinese make the best fortune-tellers. She has tried everyone else. There are the Catholic matrons, who are of two types: well-preserved socialites fallen on hard times; and the provincial transplants with their reedy bodies and brown-brown faces who consult in the front rooms of the overpopulated shacks they call home. A deck of playing cards is common to this type. There are also the baklas or homos she meets at the clubs � dabblers in trades from cosmetology to cosmology, whose instrument is the tarot. There are of course palm readers, tea readers, face readers, witch doctors who specialize in potions, spells, and counterspells, and two Americans who do extensive readings based on your horoscope � though Charmaine had inevitably run into the dilemma of not having the exact time of her birth, a very important detail to these specialists.

Ah-ma is the only Chinese fortune-teller Charmaine has ever been to, but according to the girls in Charmaine�s group, she is typical of the Chinese fortune-tellers in Manila, and by typical, it is understood that she is superior to all other non-Chinese practitioners.

Of course, these Chinese fortune-tellers are Buddhists and they conduct sessions in the halls and storefronts of their faith, places accoutred with wood and ceramic statues, depicting a celestial range from martial saints of protection with their slightly demonic faces and clutched weaponry to the hermaphroditic and peaceful face of Kwan Yin, the Buddhist goddess of mercy. Ah-ma�s place of business, which is a floor below where she lives with her only remaining relative, a grandson of eight, has plenty of these statues, and needless to say, Charmaine�s favorites are the various Kwan Yins, resting on the floor, by a couple of windowsills, and among the pantheon arrayed in a tiered central altar that also includes the commemorative black-and-whites in gold frames of the deceased relations of Ah-ma�s various disciples and clients � a funerary memorial.

Charmaine also loves the smell of incense perpetually suffusing the air in Ah-ma�s establishment. There is no Catholic equivalent in the churches she used to attend as a young believer � the burning candles had no fragrance to speak of, the incense was acrid like metal smoke, and the holy water no more than regular water that the priest was supposed to have transformed by passing his hand over it.

On the ground floor of Ah-ma�s building is a hardware store called Happy Fortune Supply, and this too has convinced Charmaine of Ah-ma�s superiority to all other seers, to Ah-ma�s aptness in Charmaine�s life.