Mia Alvar - In the Country - Stories

I looked up then from my tray into the window of the restaurant. And there, as if it had just fallen from the sky or risen from the ground, was a dress: white and gauzy, fluttering at the straps and hems, like something by Alberta Ferretti. And there was a body in the dress, a long-limbed woman who turned and walked away just as I caught her eye. She seemed to be alone, and tall for someone local. I abandoned my meal and went after her, not considering how I would find my way back. The alley from the restaurant went straight on like a tunnel for a while. She might have been in a private hurry somewhere, but now and then she would turn and, at the sight of me, speed up. The alley veered left and onto a set of stairs so suddenly that I almost fell. Either the stairs were steep or I descended slowly: I had time to notice that the walls on either side were made of old, crumbling bricks, pocked here and there with holes that could have been from bullets.

At the bottom of the stairs, the black strap of my sandal broke. A flash of white skirt hurried down another long alley. I had to limp to keep my sandal on. I followed the woman around a corner, but then lost her. The street was lit by fancy iron lanterns. Confetti and crepe streamers littered the cobblestones, and workers were sweeping them up with stick brooms. This had to be a tourist spot, I thought. At every other streetlamp was a taxi. The drivers, leaning on their doors and smoking, laughed together. One of them crushed his cigarette under his rubber slipper and nodded at me. “Taxi?” he said. Just below my ribs, I felt the pang that comes with too much movement after too much food. I looked down both ends of the street for any trace of white, but couldn’t see anything. I could taste, at the back of my throat, the bilious burning of a meal that wanted to come up. Dragging my loose sandal, I limped to the cab.

—

Our beach shoot the next day started at 4:00 a.m. so we wouldn’t lose the sun. We took a little jet plane, which listed drowsily in the air, to another island. When I undressed, Carmen gave me a look and tapped her stomach. “What’s this?” she asked. “I don’t remember this.”

I sucked it in. “Nothing,” I said. A little bloat had happened, from last night’s feast of grease and salt. I sucked in some more. “See? Abracadabra,” I said and laughed. Carmen relented and laughed too. It was always better not to apologize too much and come off like a new girl, a needy amateur. Better to act flighty and forgivable, like a supermodel.

On the beach it took two hours to pump me up and out in the right places: clouds of mousse to fatten my hair, chicken-cutlet-shaped silicone inserts for my bra. I wore a linen slip and a gold string bikini underneath. But Jorge wore only the product, the Liberty jeans. We lay down where the sand met the water. We were on our sides, propped up on elbows. When I leaned back against Jorge I noticed how blue the sky was and sighed. “Paradise,” I said, without thinking much of it.

Jorge laughed and said, inside a loud cough, “Typical.”

“What?”

“Oh, it’s just… paradise, ” he said, in an extremely condescending way. “It’s so American.”

“You don’t know me,” I protested. “You know a story you heard once about some dumb blond girl who’s never left the States.” I thought of mentioning Sabine, and how we’d traveled to the Philippines before, but then it seemed just like something that blonde would say.

Something tensed between Jorge and me; the energies had changed. But because we were professionals, our faces stayed the same. He kept on looking down at me with that mix of desire and attack. “Listen,” he said, “what’s the name of this ‘paradise’ island?”

“No one told me,” I said.

“Did you ask? You’ve been to this country before, right? Name one thing you know, one thing you’ve learned in your time here.”

“I’m only ever here to work.” On our previous trip, Sabine always woke up early in the morning and went out into Manila with a canvas hat and Lonely Planet guide. She’d invited me to go with her. But the jet lag had stretched me out like taffy and I just wanted to sleep. Unlike me, she hadn’t come for work, just tagged along to visit family and explore the city she hadn’t lived in since childhood. “Balete Drive,” I said. “I’ve been to Balete Drive, I know about the ghost woman. She got hit by a car. Or raped in World War Two. People say…I know someone who ran her over. He’s got the lace to prove it.”

This surprised Jorge; he almost broke the pose. “Is that true?” he said.

“The ghost story? Or that I’ve been?” I felt proud, as if the white lady proved my membership in some club I didn’t know existed.

“A guy I grew up with lives on Balete Drive,” said Jorge. “The version I know is she borrowed something, and now she wants to give it back. I like that one best. There’s no violence in it.”

We stayed out for as long as the sun was high. “Here we go. Perfect. Right there,” said the photographer. The sand was bright as a blank canvas. As we dressed I felt a little desperate not to be, again that night, the one lonesome person in this city of laughing brown faces. I reached for Jorge’s arm. “Saan tayo?” I said. Sabine’s Lonely Planet had taught me that one.

He smiled — forgiving me, I guess. “Anywhere we want,” he said.

—

We rode a jeepney, it was called, tricked out with streamers and painted in the colors of a carousel. The sides read Bubble Gum, Candy, Cookie, and Lollipop. “The driver’s kids, no question,” said Jorge. On my way in, I banged my head hard against the metal entrance; I didn’t know to duck. Or maybe jeepneys were made for shorter people. “Manila’s dangerous like that,” Jorge said, with a laugh. “It ain’t Kansas, if you know what I mean.” We passed my hotel, the walls of Liberty Denim ads with Jorge and his faceless girl, the little restaurant where I had eaten. In the district of cobblestones and iron lampposts Jorge said, “There was a festival last night, for the Virgin Mary’s birthday.”

“A parade?” I said.

“Yeah. They bring Mary statues out of all the churches. Girls get all dolled up in their little white dresses to watch.”

He took me to a karaoke bar, Crescendo, and dedicated a song to me. One pill makes you larger and one pill makes you small. It wasn’t the first time I’d been serenaded with that — a tough song to listen to in the first place, and Jorge sang it badly. He swirled an arm above his head, genie-like. Go ask Alice, I think she’ll know….

I smiled as he returned to our table. “Don’t quit your day job.”

“Your turn,” he said.

I shook my head. “I take a good picture — that’s it.”

“I don’t believe you. What if you didn’t take a good picture? What would you do?”

My mind went blank, and hummed like feedback from a microphone. “What would you do if you couldn’t take pictures?”

“Me? Oh man, what wouldn’t I do?” Jorge stretched his arms and laced his fingers behind his head. Looking down at his stomach, he said, “Someday this’ll be a keg and not a six-pack. You know? I would love to act.”

“No cliché there,” I said. In the last few years Sabine had thought about acting, and even landed a few walk-on parts here and there. She would rehearse scenes with me even though I was no good at reading aloud. One scene involved a woman who couldn’t work because of a traffic accident and sued the driver for loss of earnings. I looked at “loss of earnings” too quickly and said “loss of earrings.” The misreading stuck. Every time we practiced I’d say “earrings” and then “sorry, earnings.” I thought, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to sue someone for loss of earrings? And get back all the missing earrings you had left in bars or beds or clubs or cabs? “You’re kind of an idiot, Alice,” Sabine had said, but there was laughter and forgiveness in it.