Lala crosses the street and stands in front of Distelleria Tondeña, a factory that makes the nasty Chinese red wine known as shoktong. Fortune-tellers in front of Quiapo Church sell it to rich girls who want to induce miscarriage. The cop hands the kid a knife and gestures to Vanessa’s hanging body. Then he walks toward Lala.
“Ang init,” the cop says. Removing his cap and wiping the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand, he asks Lala if she likes the heat. Without waiting for her response, he adds, “Grabe. And the day’s just beginning.” Cool ka lang, Lala tells herself. Act normal.
Lala keeps her eyes on the boy climbing the balete tree.
“Sayang si Vanessa, no? Ang ganda pa naman niya,” the cop says, shaking his head and clucking his tongue. Too bad about Vanessa. She’s so beautiful.
Lala eye-trails the boy now crawling across the lowest branch where Vanessa hangs.
“Amoy dalaga.” The cop smiles. Smells like a virgin.
The boy cuts the rope with the knife. The rope snaps. Vanessa’s body falls.
Lala closes her eyes.
The cop asks Lala if she knows Vanessa.
Lala nods.
“Close ba kayo?” the cop asks.
Lala shakes her head no, adding for emphasis, “Hindi.” She tells the cop they were neighbors, that her mother did Vanessa’s laundry.
The cop then tells Lala to go home before she gets implicated. “Baka mapahamak ka pa,” he says, his voice almost sincere.
Lala turns to get a real glimpse of the cop. She notices the jagged scar on his right cheek, his bloodshot deep-set eyes and trimmed mustache. He’s handsome, Lala thinks. Parang action star. Embroidered on his shirt pocket, in red, is his name. Eli Cortez.
Lala walks away. Eli. Eli Cortez. Was he one of the cops infatuated with Vanessa?
Lala looks back and sees that the cop hasn’t moved. He nods at her. She takes a deep breath. Relax ka lang, she tells herself. He starts walking in her direction. She turns onto Elena Street. At Gregorio Perfecto High School, she begins to slow down. He whistles “Seasons in the Sun.” She makes a left on Ricaforte. He catches up to her in front of Iglesia Ni Kristo on Juan Luna Street. They’re practically walking side by side on Pavia with its fruit and vegetable stands and milling crowd. She loses him there.
Maybe he’s gone back to deal with Vanessa’s body, Lala tells herself, back to that tree that is forever growing and rotting.
She enters Liberty Bakery and buys three pieces of pan de sal. As she exits, she spots him, Eli, across the street, in front of El Tondeño, which sells embroidered velvet slippers. Eli stands there, waiting. She takes a bite of her bread. Learn from the dead, she tells herself, and walks toward him.
The Unintended
by Gina Apostol
Ali Mall, Cubao
The story Magsalin wishes to tell is about disappearance. Not necessarily about writers who have slipped from this realm, their ideas in melancholy arrest, their notebooks tidy; later one might see the analogy, or at least the pathos of inadequate homage, if one likes symbols. Of course, the story will involve several layers of meaning. There will be a whiff of murder, or maybe a kidnapping, but the clues will be too fraught with personal despair to bear tight scrutiny. Her protagonist is a moviemaker whose scandalous father precedes her fame. Her name has an Italian flavor, Chiara or Lucia, with the first C glottal and the latter c a florid ch: she is Kiarrrra, or Luchiiiia — Magsalin has yet to decide. Both names mean clear, or lucidity, or something that has to do with light, something vaguely linked to eyesight, hence to knowing, thence to paradox. It is Chiara/Lucia’s body that may go missing.
The subject line intrigues her: Translator needed, meet me at Muhammad Ali Mall. The message must be from a foreigner. No one calls the mall by that name. Some Filipinos do not even know the seedy building is named for the greatest, Muhammad Ali.
She has just arrived from New York, on vacation in her birthplace, Manila, to continue a task that she believes has great spiritual potential, though the rewards are yet to surface. She is beginning a mystery novel.
The curtness of the subject line, Magsalin thinks, is rude. She thinks the message is a joke, a hoax drummed up by her writer friends, a bunch of alcoholics hiding out, often in pork-induced stupor, in Flushing, Queens. Magsalin ignores the message.
Later, she searches Chiara’s name online. She finds an item mentioning her arrival only 18 hours ago, an innocuous piece with a photo of the filmmaker at Manila International Airport, wearing huge shades and a safari outfit. The report speculates she is scouting sites for a movie. No quote emerges from the director herself.
Magsalin checks Chiara’s cred through praxino.com, Magsalin’s website of choice for occasional curiosities. A tour operator reports that Tom Cruise was sighted in March in the Ilocos, sporting an ugly ingrown toenail revealed by beach flip-flops. She learns that Sandra Bullock did not buy her black baby in the area near the old US air force base in Pampanga. Madonna’s orphanage in Malawi is hemorrhaging millions, bilked by savvy entrepreneurs. Eric Clapton’s late son’s former nanny, a Chavacano, remains in seclusion in Zamboanga, still mourning her single lapse. Donatella Versace did not slap her maid. Finally, she turns up a video of Chiara Brasi, a wan and wavering figure, in one of those canned interviews to promote a project. This video is also quoted in FabSugar, the Emory Wheel, Irish Times, Moviefone: Chiara rode a helicopter over Manila with her father, the war movie director. A fond memory, in 1976. Someone had unhinged the helicopter’s doors, and she looks out as if the sky is her vestibule.
Magsalin goes back to the e-mail, composes a response. She hits send.
During the best of times Ali Mall is a decrepit, cramped cement block of shops hosting Rugby glue sniffers, high school truants, and depressed carnival men on break. It was built in 1976, a paean to the Thrilla in Manila, which took place directly across the street at the Araneta Coliseum in Cubao, site of the match that destroyed the career of the heavyweight champion of the world, Joe “The Gorilla” Frazier, and the source of our modern discomfort perhaps — a sense of the futility of earthly striving — whenever one thinks about Muhammad Ali. Cubao is the omen of Ali’s shambling shadow. Cubao heralds an incommunicable fall.
Even at noon Ali Mall is creepy. The circus is nearby, and a creaky carousel winds around like some tiresome concept of eternity. Magsalin enters by the basement annex, through the Philippine Airlines office toward the Botak shop and a trinket store selling Hello Kitty barrettes. A security guard is texting by some plywood boards, next to an idling clown. Magsalin heads straight to a bakery selling cinnamon buns and pan de sal.
She notes, like a skillful detective, that her likely client, wearing a tank top, panama hat, and tan wedges, is attempting the incognito look. But the designer shoes (Clergerie) and incongruous shades (also French: Chanel) are amateurish. Even an idiot would know she’s rich. Magsalin has not lived twelve years in New York for nothing. This woman at the counter, drinking bottled water and not eating her bread, has the luxury of looking underdressed, no-nonsense. She’s flat-chested. She shows Magsalin a thick manila envelope, bulging with papers. A manuscript.