“Tell me, Luis.”
“Her father is my boss. I am just developing her acquaintance. No, how can you say that I love her when I have just met her?”
Her face was still close, but the anger was gone. He stroked her hair and then, bending, kissed her softly. Her lips were slightly parted, and her breath was honeyed and sweet. She sighed and embraced him. “It’s wonderful. Now I know why they close their eyes. It’s more enjoyable that way.”
He withdrew briefly and could not help laughing. She laughed at herself, too, then kissed him again. He started to fondle her breasts, and she squirmed. “You don’t like it?” he asked.
“It tickles,” she murmured, but soon stopped squirming as his fingers touched her nipples. His hand began to wander down the silky line of her thighs. For a moment he could feel her stiffen, although her mouth still clung to his.
“Luis — not here,” she said in a husky whisper.
“And why not?”
“It embarrasses me.”
“I suppose it always does the first time,” he murmured, “but you have to have a first time.”
“I know,” she said. “I’ve been reading all those books, and we have had lectures in school.”
“Well, this is real now,” he said, bending so that they were now prostrate on the sofa. He could feel her gasp for breath. Her embrace had become tighter, possessive. “Luis, what is going to happen to us?” she repeated the question, this time with urgency.
“Love me,” he said, pleading.
She nodded and sighed an almost inaudible yes, pressing her eager body still closer to him.
CHAPTER 23
June came in a green that flooded the boulevard. The dead brown of March that had scorched the city was gone. The banaba trees had begun to bloom, and their purple flowers brightened the wide shoulders of the streets and the fronts of restaurants and nightclubs. The school year opened, and a rash of college uniforms — the plaid skirts, the grays and blues — colored the Luneta in the afternoons, together with the olive-gray and khaki of the ROTC cadets having their drills there. The invigorating smell of green things wafted to the house, bringing memories of Sipnget. Trining came, too, every Friday afternoon when her classes were over, and she stayed with him until Sunday afternoon, when he drove her back to the convent school.
It had been a significant year for the magazine, and the signs were clear that it would soon be able to stand alone and would not have to depend on financial assistance from the other Dantes publications, although the magazine had already displeased influential people and business leaders with its satirical and irreverent lampooning of their personalities. That they did not make good their threats pleased Dantes very much. Like Luis, he had correctly argued that if it were known that they were bringing pressure on the magazine, it would have confirmed not only their lack of humor but their vulnerability as well.
Luis had really intended to see Ester again, but the opportunity did not come until one afternoon shortly after school had opened. She came to the office with Trining and two other classmates.
“Our first term paper has already been assigned,” she said after the niceties were done. She wore no lipstick. Looking at her finely molded face, Luis could see her personality shining through. This afternoon there was something efficient and businesslike about her. “We came to you for advice, really. We do not know anything about the agrarian problem that you have been writing about — and labor, too — and our understanding of our sociology is rather poor. We didn’t know that our professor had written for you.”
Luis liked the unintended compliment. “Well, for a start,” he said, “suppose you tell me if you have been in a picket line — any of you.”
All four shook their heads.
“I haven’t either,” Luis said with a smile. “So this makes all of us students of some sort. The picket line is where you should really go if you want information about labor unions. You will be surprised how crooked the labor leaders are.”
“But our teachers — when we talked about this,” Ester said, “gave us the impression that you’d be an expert.”
Luis snorted. He never liked being called an expert on anything, and his humility was real. “I would suppose that being an editor should qualify me as a jack-of-all-trades, but I really know little about labor problems. A bit about the agrarian problem, particularly sugar—” He paused, suddenly remembering that Dantes was in sugar, too, but Ester would notice this; so he went on. “Politics, the sacadas, and sugar colonialism. All these aren’t new — you can get more from the files than by talking with me.”
“Give us some pointers on how to begin,” Trining said. It was a simple suggestion and he was grateful to her, for now he could speak a little from his own point of view. Looking at Ester seated, eagerly waiting, he became ill at ease, and he began to ramble vaguely about the nature of man, the value of labor, and the Marxist interpretation of surplus value; then he shifted to the encyclicals of the popes, the Rerum Novarum and the Quadragessimo Anno, and homing in, he spoke briefly about the class structure of Filipino society, the agrarian origins of the revolution of 1896, the peasant uprisings of the country, and now the rebellion in central Luzon.
He did not know that he had taken so long. Dusk was falling, but the girls did not seem to mind and Ester, particularly, seemed entranced. “It’s cleared up a lot,” she said when he was through. “I think I know how to go about mine. Why don’t you write what you just told us and use it in your magazine? I would like to see it before it goes to print.”
He agreed, and as they filed out, most of their questions finally answered, Trining tugged at him and whispered, “You would do anything Ester tells you to do. Now you must write my term paper for me.”
A week later Ester dropped by alone and made Luis very happy. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but the article — it’s all finished — is at home. I did it two nights ago, and I just forgot to bring it here. You should have called first, but if you are in a hurry, let us go home and get it.” His tone was tentative. He foresaw her indecision, so he added, “I think I will just bring it here tomorrow and give it to your father.”
The implicit challenge had been made, and Ester picked it up. “We will go to your place,” she said, “any time you are ready.”
It was not even five, but Luis stood up, and before she could say another word he was guiding her out of his office. Outside, the heat of the late afternoon claimed them. The Dantes building was in the congested heart of the city, and driving out was a problem. By five, however, they were on the boulevard, which was still sun-drenched. To his right, the sea glinted and the waves collapsed with a murmur against the concrete seawall. The breeze whipped her hair close to his face occasionally, and he could smell her fragrance. Her nearness evoked thoughts and imaginings of the kind of life she and her friends lived, of Trining, too, and all the others who had seemed to him immersed in staleness and boredom, mulling over their sins, keeping all their holy days of obligation, living day to day in the exasperating desire to keep their chastity as the most valuable thing that they would present to those who would become their husbands. It was really quite a shame that Trining had not even put up a token fight. He wondered how it would be with Ester, if she would — after it was all over and done with — go to confession so that she could take communion, or just stop taking communion altogether.