Frank wakes beneath the thin white sheet of a hotel bed. Above him, a ceiling fan stirs the warm air. He thumbs sleep from his eyes and yawns and rolls onto his side. A young woman is watching him. She is lying on the bed beside him and she is as naked as he is.
Magandang umaga, she whispers. Good morning.
Her tousled hair is long and dark and her face polished with youth. Her body’s heat presses through the bedsheets. She smells of perfume. Of the mint gum she rolls over her tongue.
I’m sorry, Frank says. I forgot your name.
Mahalia.
She reaches out to brush his fringe aside, her fingers a comb. Then she giggles.
I forgot your name too.
Frank.
Naaalala ko. Yes, Frank. Where did we meet?
I’m not sure. Down on the beach, maybe. I remember your dancing. You’re very good.
Mahalia smiles and studies Frank with her dark eyes.
Have you a girlfriend?
No. How old are you?
Nineteen. And you?
Twenty-one.
Mahalia shuffles close and closes her eyes.
When Frank wakes again the sun sits at noon whilst sunlight pours between the balcony drapes. He is alone in bed. Shirt, shorts and a swing skirt lie rumpled together on the floor. A water canteen stands half-empty on a dresser. Before this, a pair of peep-toe shoes.
Somewhere a wall pipe clunks as the shower ceases in the on-suite bathroom. Then Mahalia opens the louvred door. She wears a white towel wrapped around her body and her skin is a wet shine and her hair lank. She makes the room smell of soap and toothpaste as she walks toward the bed.
What will you do today? she asks, offering Frank the water canteen.
Frank sits up in bed and drinks.
I only just arrived in Manila, he says. Perhaps I’ll go exploring.
For more bars and dancers?
Frank’s smile is sheepish. Mahalia’s eyes never leave him as he pushes his feet from beneath the bedsheet and onto the cool tiled floor.
I’d like to do something relaxing, Frank says. Some sightseeing. You know of any historical places nearby?
Yes, lots. I like history too. The Rizal Monument is not far, and there is the Santa Cruz Church and the old fort too, Baluarte de San Diego. My father owns a rickshaw. He’ll take you there for free. He’s very kind like that.
She returns to the bathroom and her voice comes through the slatted door.
I can show you around the whole city, if you like? Manila is wonderful. My mother would love to meet you too.
Frank eases himself off the bed and puts on his shorts and then pushes his way past the balcony drapes. He blinks at the raw daylight; its heat a sudden sting on his face. Two floors below lies Escolta Street, bustling with cars and motorbikes, horse-drawn kalesa and Jeepney buses. Engines rumble. Hooves clop. Each vehicle is a collage of paint and chrome and flashing reflections. Streaming along the dusty pavements are Filipinos dressed in salakots and crisp-white shirts. Musk and vanilla rise from the stalls of incense sellers, sweet as temple air. Sparrows dart between the glossy greens of katmon trees. An aeroplane’s contrail seams the clear blue sky.
Frank rests his elbows atop the balcony’s railing but it is too hot. He places his palms instead against the bright metal in a test of fortitude that is ineluctable to a young man. Much is.
Opposite his hotel is a cafe with a roof terrace. Atop here are three young women dancing to the hits of a radio station. The Marvelettes play for the whole street. The revelling women swoon and twirl and laugh. One of these dancers wears a red dress and black shoes and her hair is pulled tight into a high bun and her lipstick gleams like the sweat on her neck and her bare calves flex as she steps her dancing steps.
Frank taps out the song’s beat against the hot railing.
Mahalia calls from the bathroom.
What do you think about sightseeing together, Frank? Can I show you around the city?
Across the street, the dancing woman spots Frank and she smiles and waves.
Frank waves back.
***
The grey door of the terraced house flings open with a clack. Frank sits up on the sofa, muting the television. Sharon marches back down the hallway to grab two suitcases then she leaves through the front door with heels clapping down the garden path.
Wait, Frank says. He chases after Sharon in the rain.
No, Frank. We’re finished. It’s over.
Sharon halts behind the garden gate, her breaths smoking in the cold air. She swears. The local bus is turning at the next junction and driving away. Sharon drops a suitcase and a half-fastened zipper bursts apart spilling a pink bra and stiletto heel onto the wet paving.
Mrs Granger watches from behind her garden’s chain-link fence.
Don’t make a scene, Sharon, Frank says. Come back inside.
Sharon presses her face into her hands and sobs. Her hoop earrings rock as her bracelets slide down her forearms. Still she sobs. Her chest shudders beneath the leopard-print leotard she wears with jeans and coat.
The rain falls harder. Mrs Granger retreats into her home where she continues to watch from the kitchen window.
Frank puts an arm around Sharon’s shoulders.
I’m sorry, she says. I have to go.
But we’re engaged.
Sharon looks at Frank with wet eyes and wet make-up.
Not any more, Frank. We’ve been kidding ourselves. We were never suited for one another.
Frank begins to speak but finds no honest words. Instead, he wipes rain off his receding hairline and then lights up a cigarette. Drizzle glistens over his work-worn hands. He takes another drag then passes the cigarette to Sharon.
Why must you go? he asks.
Sharon sniffs and wipes her eyes. She looks down the terraced street as a dustbin truck pulls up outside Mrs Granger’s house. A sour smell seeps from the truck’s refuse compressor. In the distance, a car alarm blares.
I didn’t want to end up here, Sharon says. You promised me you’d rent a place in the country.
I know. Frank sighs. What can I say? I got stuck in a dead-end job.
You should quit then. Find other work.
At my age? There’s too many youngsters to compete with.
Frank lights another cigarette and nods toward his home.
It’s not so bad here. You got a bus stop right outside, a Woolworths down the road, two payphones less than a mile away.
Sharon is a visage of dismay.
I’ve always offered to take you on holiday, Franks says in defence.
To do what? Visit more museums and Roman forts? I don’t care about that stuff.
Sharon collects her bra and stiletto heel and stuffs them back into the suitcase.
She and Frank stand side by side but neither speaks. A car drives by hissing in the wet. Then the dustbin men wheel Mrs Granger’s bin to their truck and then wheel it back empty.
Frank watches Sharon. She blows smoke into the air and the cloud is stale and vanishing. They’ve been together for nearly three years. A colleague told Frank that three years is nothing though it seems a lifetime. Sharon always said they’re a bad match, that they’re getting old and desperate and that this is all they have in common. Frank always agreed but figured they’d work things out anyway.
We’ll end up alone, he says.
Sharon gives no reply. She smokes her cigarette to the butt then throws it onto the road where a stream of oily rainwater sucks it down a drainage grate. Then she picks up her suitcases and leaves and Frank offers no words to dissuade her.
***
The doctor’s surgery is warm and Frank sits comfortably in a waiting-room chair. Across the room, a small child coughs beside a stand of old and creased magazines. A smell of jasmine emanates from an air freshener and behind a Perspex screen a receptionist speaks quietly on a telephone. Frank listens, half asleep, his gaze drifting between the window panes. Outside, the winter’s day is darkening for dusk and it seems the world entire is coming to a close.
Frank’s name scrolls across a flat-screen monitor hung above the reception. Shortly afterwards, a doctor arrives from a hallway to assist Frank into her office. She is very young. Perhaps not even thirty-five.
Frank shuffles into the consultation room, his walking crutch clacking against the floor. The doctor smiles kindly. She offers Frank a chair and he sits and cups his papery hands over his coat.
The doctor seats herself behind her desk. She speaks of test results and then of good news. She tells Frank that he has treatable osteoporosis. She says something about medication, a few more tests, a diet change. She wears her hair straight and it is long and dark and there is an accent to her speech, perhaps Spanish.
The consultation nears its end.
Have you anyone at home to care for you? the doctor asks.
Frank pushes his glasses up his nose.
No, he says. But I’ve friendly neighbours.
And have you still got the care pack I gave you during your last appointment? The one with numbers to call should you have any concerns?
Yes. I’ve not lost it.
The doctor assists Frank back to the waiting room where he sits for a time before heading outside. Cold air bites. He pulls on a pair of gloves whilst cars and buses drone by, their headlights glinting off frosted bollards and traffic signs. Night is near and despite the cloudless sky there is no moon, nor stars, only the blinking of a distant aeroplane set on an eastbound course.
Rock salt crunches beneath Frank’s shoes and crutch as he heads toward a bus stop.
When the bus arrives, the driver helps Frank on board. He is seated beside a window so fogged with condensation the rubber seals are dripping wet. The bus shudders as it drives on.
By the time Frank is dropped off outside his terrace house the sky is night-black whilst snowflakes fall through the street lighting like dying moths. A group of scarf-wrapped girls hurries by, their faces incandescent in the glow of smartphones. Frank pauses before his garden gate to catch his breath, then he lights up a cigarette and watches a passing car and the falling snow.
When he returns inside his home, he places a cottage pie in the oven and switches on the radio. He pulls up a chair to watch the meal cook through the glass door. The oven’s interior blazes with a heat as fierce as the tropical sun. Frank rests a hand against the hot oven door and when The Marvelettes play on the radio a memory reels into mind.
Her tousled hair is long and dark and her face polished with youth.
It is a memory of such vividity that it is a memory beyond mere image.
Her body’s heat presses through the bedsheets.
Mahalia was her name and she had wanted to visit the city together that day. For a moment Frank thinks they did, but then he remembers a red dress and black shoes and that he’d made another decision. He never saw Mahalia again after that morning. She was a gem too readily abandoned.
She reaches out to brush his fringe aside, her fingers a comb.
She would be old now too. Perhaps even dead.
Mahalia shuffles close and closes her eyes.
Frank turns up the radio and he closes his own eyes whilst the song plays into this memory of Mahalia and into the empty rooms of his home.
[End]