The doorbell rings and it’s Peter, whom she’s expecting, but not until nine. Peter who has agreed to four thousand pesos, starting with some wine and oil massage and ending with him in her mouth. No penetration. He’d agreed to a high fee because being turned down by Charmaine in the past made him want her even more. This is no tactic. Peter visits every month from sterile Singapore, and each time he’d requested Charmaine through the circle, she was always booked. Tonight will be the culmination of many months of trying and hoping. Charmaine puts herself in Peter’s shoes; and in touch with his excitement, she gets very excited herself as she walks to the door. She is going to be very stern with him. Pretend stern. Who knows, he may agree to another thousand pesos as punishment for being too early. Thank God she is naturally pretty and doesn’t need much preparation on her face.
She opens the door but doesn’t get the chance to say much. It’s Peter, but it can’t be Peter, because she has seen this Peter before, here in Manila, a Filipino, not Singaporean. All this happens in an instant. Because this Peter doesn’t stay still long enough for her to ask him who he really is. He moves and, by moving, becomes the world. All the rage in the world, all those quick-glancing, suspicious eyes on the streets of Manila — especially when she’s in full makeup and despite the fact that she is known as the most convincing girl in the whole circle; all those judgmental looks of a lifetime betraying fear of sex and of difference that can only be described as Catholic — all of it is contained in the four-point star of Peter’s knuckles as they meet her face, quickly turning the room sunset-orange, then black.
Catholic. Catholic. Yes, she knows who he is.
She can’t feel her face but she knows work was done while she was unconscious. There, finally — sensation in her left eye. She blinks once but the pain stops her. Tears cloud her vision. Tears not from emotion but from her eyes’ irritation at some foreign substance. Maybe blood. Maybe bits from not-Peter’s knuckles. She is more afraid of encountering her face in a mirror than she is of him. Where is he?
It’s as if she’s called him back into the room. He is so young. No more than thirty, she would guess. He sees that she’s awake. She sees the knife in his hands. The blade is glistening. She thinks to inspect herself down there but stops herself. If she can’t feel anything, then it’s not real. Not yet.
Then she sees his left arm. He has rolled both shirtsleeves up and on his left arm he has made knife notches. Maybe the blood on the knife is his and not hers.
He starts to recite the Our Father.
Catholic. Catholic.
He is looking at her with fervor — as if she’s Our Father and it’s she who he’s praying to.
Benjamin. That’s his name. Son of Esmeralda, one of the Catholic matrons she’s patronized. Esmeralda of Sampaloc. The son does not look like the mother. The mother has an ascetic face, very little makeup, which is unusual for someone of her class and of her Spanish mestizo background — above all else, for that type of woman, vanity and appearances. But Esmeralda has the certitude of God’s approval and she wears this in the rigid stance of her shoulders, in the many disapproving lines on her forehead, the only blemish on her highborn face. Highborn, but fallen from grace, which explains why she’d resorted to reading God’s wishes from a deck of playing cards for paying customers, most of them sinners like Charmaine. The son, on the other hand, has cheeks to which clings baby fat, even at thirty. There is something spoiled, something inbred in his appearance; the eyes too close together, the nose not so much aquiline like his mother’s, but pinched, as if he’s sniffing out something rotten.
Something rotten: that’s her, face beaten to a pulp, oozing the garbage of a lifetime of sin. Now on to the Hail Mary. Hail Mary full of grace the Lord is with you. Blessed are you among women.
He kicks her. Pray, he orders.
She moves her lips, and a miracle: they cause her no pain! Though no sound comes from them, for the moment he’s appeased. She keeps her lips in motion, pronouncing: Fuck you, fuck you. So strong is her will to live. Should this be a surprise? Her ticket to Bangkok, paid for in cash, sits under two layers of underclothing in the top drawer of her bedroom dresser. She can taste her new life in her rotting mouth, her tongue running into gum where teeth had previously been. She hadn’t been entirely unconscious before, for flashes come at her now, fast and furious: Repent! he’d said at one point, before she blacked out. And then, she remembers waking up to see him crying, kneeling in front of her.
At one point he’d been shaking her awake, his face so tender and nervous, as if he hadn’t counted on her being so weak, so easily extinguishable. She’d woken up, stayed awake for as along as she could, then blacked out again.
Now her nose is working and she can smell his pomade and she wants to puke. Then, mercifully, her nose is again stoppered. By blood, by a clot of disfigurement.
Glory be to the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit...
Even his hair smacks of Catholic repression. It’s been plastered tight to the skull and parted in the middle, the pomade glistening in the lights of her bathroom. Tamped down, the wildness restrained. She turns her cheek to the tiled floor and is comforted by the utter coldness.
She understands now. The young-old boy Benjamin had been such a riveted skulker during her three sessions with Esmeralda. Charmaine had always thought he was sexually attracted to her but was afraid of his mother and didn’t dare come close. Still, he’d wanted Charmaine to know of his attraction, wanted her to feel his presence as his mother had hold of Charmaine’s palm, into which would be dropped the pertinent playing card, each number its own message from God. Which was the card for the Angel of Death? Had the Angel of Death ever made an appearance in any of her readings? Not just with Esmeralda, but with seemingly every existing seer in Manila?
She thinks back to Ah-ma’s words: Everything will be fine.
What a fraud. Everyone’s a fraud. Including herself, including this bakla-hating Catholic boy with the knife, who needs only to give in to his desires to be cured, to be freed. The knife is the penis he can use, she thinks, before passing out again.
Is she still alive? Why is she still alive? This time she tries to look down between her legs. She can’t make out anything. She can’t feel anything. Maybe she’s in shock. But she’s not wet, no signal of bloodletting. Maybe he wants her to be awake as he’s doing it.
But of course it’s him. She understands even more now. The bigger picture. God’s-eye view.
Nene from Tacloban. Aurora. Saltie. They too had gone to Esmeralda. Like her, they too had wanted to stay on the right side of fate. Esmeralda the card-reader, the fortune-teller, the ex-socialite-in-hiding-in-Sampaloc, was one of God’s chosen ones, with the power to sanctify lives by pronouncing positive messages from aces and spades and kings and queens. And in their turn, Nene, Aurora, and Saltie too, like Charmaine, had probably flirted with the boy Benjamin, who skulked when Nene was around consulting with Esmeralda, who skulked when Aurora was around, who skulked when Saltie was around, irresistibly drawn and, as is clear now, repulsed. Riveted by repulsion. None of those girls were as convincingly feminine as Charmaine. Maybe that’s why it took Benjamin so long to find her. To find her out. He couldn’t be entirely sure. What was the giveaway? A few seconds passing beneath an unforgiving streetlamp to reveal a not-quite-girlish cast of the jaws, the hint of an Adam’s apple? A particularly tight pair of pants that highlighted a boy’s narrow hips? Or did his mother Esmeralda tell him that Charmaine was a friend of the murdered girls, and by friend he finally understood that they were part of the same problem? He sought them out, Nene and Aurora and Saltie. He lured them to places where he could do with them as he wanted without being seen. Hadn’t Esmeralda said that her no-good husband, the boy’s absentee father, was a manager for a real estate company? So many empty units at Benjamin’s disposal. For disposal. For his Catholic hatred and his ceremonies of proximity to the divine. Our Father who art in Heaven hallowed be Thy name.