The Son of Good Fortune

by Lysley Tenorio

  “H for ‘helipad’?” Excel said.

  Lucia shook her head. “H for ‘hello,’” she said, then poured champagne into three tin cups and toasted their arrival.

  She served dinner on the patio, sandwiches and salad on orange metal plates. “Fig and prosciutto on sourdough with massaged kale tossed in beet pesto,” she said. “Hope that’s okay?”

  Sab said it was perfect and Excel agreed, though he’d never had figs, prosciutto, massaged kale, beets, or pesto in his life. “Neat plate,” he said.

  She rolled her eyes. “Those are Sven’s.”

  “Sven?”

  “My ex. The Swedish bastard. The reason I’m here.” They’d met three years before in an L.A. yoga class (“My clinically depressed law school dropout period,” Lucia said), and after two months together, Sven convinced her to move to Hello City, challenged her to live her truest, freest life. “And I thought, screw it, why not?” she said. “So we moved here, learned to make organic soap, and a year later he gets ants in his pants and starts applying to law school behind my back, when he knew that it was law school that triggered my depression in the first place. Would’ve been so much easier if he’d just slept around instead. So anyway, Sven the Liar gets into Yale, gives me a half-ass invite to go with him so long as I’m willing to get my own place off campus. So I said screw you, kept the trailer and the plates, and here I am, off-the-grid businesswoman and owner of Pink Bubble Organic Soap.” She poured herself another cup of champagne, got up from the couch, and put an arm around Sab. “And now my favorite cousin is here with me.” She looked over at Excel. “What about you? Why are you here?”

  He took an extra-big bite of the sandwich and chewed slowly, biding his time for the right response; there was no single defining reason he could nail down, no specific incident he could recount to explain why he’d come. Life, he thought, is that a good answer? What came to him instead was a feeling, something between a sharpness and a deepening ache. It was his leg, he realized, the spot behind the knee where Maxima had kicked him. Though it hurt in that moment, it had been fine the entire drive down. Maybe it was all the hours sitting, or maybe the cool desert air, but the pain was clear to him now.

  “I’m here for her,” he finally said. He reached for Sab’s hand, held it until the throbbing in his leg subsided.

  They finished eating, and just before they gathered their dishes Lucia told them to look up, and Excel saw a sky he’d never seen—the blackest black with folds of the darkest blue, streaked with light that he learned wasn’t just stars but whole galaxies. “Whoa,” Sab said, and Excel said, “Yeah,” though what he actually felt was amazement, followed by an unexpected stupidity. How could he not already know such skies existed? The best he’d seen before was from the roof of his apartment building, lit by a pair of Target signs, and the planes flying away from San Francisco International Airport, their tiny red and green lights flickering in the dark, reminders that he’d never really been anywhere before.

  After dinner, Lucia took them to a converted school bus, which sat on a small patch of dirt ten minutes beyond the Airstream. Lucia owned it, had been renting it out for the past year, mostly to weekend tourists wanting to experience Hello City. “Lookie-loos and gawkers,” she said, “so obnoxious.” This was where Sab and Excel would live now, for two hundred dollars a month. The bus was narrow and shorter than the average school bus, about eight paces from end to end—but Excel’s whole life had been spent in the crammed box of the La Villa Aurelia apartment, so the space seemed livable enough. The bus had been gutted, refloored with green linoleum, and furnished with a two-person table, a short bookcase, a green metal trunk for storage, a minifridge. All that remained was the steering wheel and the rearview mirror above.

  “Home sweet home,” Lucia said, then stepped out of the bus.

  In the back, sectioned off behind a shower curtain patterned with raindrops, was a mattress and box spring. “Our bedroom,” Sab said. They lay down and kissed, held each other, too tired for anything more.

  “What do you think,” Sab said.

  “About what?”

  “This place.”

  He’d only ever lived in Colma. He didn’t know how to figure out if a place was right for him or not. “What do you think?” He waited for an answer, heard only breathing.

  “Where else would we go,” she finally said.

  EXCEL WOKE THE NEXT MORNING, THE COLDEST HE’D EVER BEEN. His ears, his face, the back of Sab’s neck when he kissed it—any part of them not under the blanket felt like it had been chilling in a refrigerator. Puffs of breath appeared every time he exhaled, and the ceiling of the bus looked like a long slick of ice, shiny and Arctic blue, like the inner dome of an igloo, or the walls inside one of those ice hotels he’d seen on the Travel Channel, in Finland or Norway, one of those countries he knew, without question, he’d never see.

  Sab shifted in her sleep, pulled the covers over her head. Excel slipped out of bed, put on pants and shoes, zipped up his hoodie, stepped out of the bus. Outside was warmer than in, but the morning was dark enough to look like early evening, and the still-rising sun silhouetted everything before it—trailers scattered in the distance, a row of low tents. Beyond, tall cacti looked like crucifixes, or people raising their arms in half surrender. He moved farther out, was startled back a step when a desert mouse—the first he’d ever seen—cut across his path. Then, suddenly, the ground beneath his feet was not dirt but concrete, and he realized he was standing on the edge of one of the concrete helipads Lucia had mentioned. In the middle of it was a faded H, the size of a pickup truck, large enough to be seen from high above. He imagined a sky filled with helicopters, their pilots looking down, and wondered what it might mean to them, to see someone like himself standing on the H.

  Hello.

  Help.

  Here.

  4

  Excel wakes to the sound of a dying heart.

  Ba-bum. Ba-bum. Loud and heavy, slow.

  He gets out of bed and goes to the living room, finds Maxima throwing one-two punches at The Bod. The Bod is her electronic cardio boxing dummy, all head and torso, the color of blue toothpaste, with a dozen diamond-shaped points of contact meant to light up when you hit them. “The stronger the blow, the brighter the glow,” the manual said. Maxima had bought The Bod at a garage sale, but after one workout, the little diamonds went dim forever. “Maybe I hit too hard,” she had said, and put him away soon after. Excel hasn’t seen The Bod in a while, had forgotten its facial expression, two dark squares for eyes, a short black line for a mouth.

  Maxima punches twice more—ba-bum, ba-bum—takes one step back and delivers a kick to The Bod’s neck. “Good morning,” she says, “it’s late.”

  The VCR clock says 10:07 a.m. “Guess I was more tired than I thought,” he says. The Price Is Right is on TV, muted. A blond girl in a Stanford sweatshirt is choosing between a pair of Jet Skis or a cruise to Puerto Vallarta.

  “There’s coffee. Pan de sal if you want, but no butter.”

  “Maybe later, thanks.”

  “What’s your plan?”

  “My plan? You mean, for today?”

  “For today. For life. Either one.”

  He sits on the arm of the couch, suddenly tired again. “Shower, get dressed. I was going to stop by The Pie, get my old job back.”

  “Wow. A home and a job to come back to, anytime you like. If I went back, you think I’d have those things waiting for me? You’re lucky, talaga.” She turns back to The Bod, goes for the abdomen now, and Excel tries to picture a moment when Maxima steps off a plane and onto Philippines ground. All he’s ever seen of the country comes from clips from her movies; every scene is a martial arts attack, a shoot-out, some degree of destruction. Whenever he imagines her in the Philippines, she is always fighting her way through.

  The Stanford girl wins the Jet Skis. “What about you. What’s your plan for the day?”

  “Just working.”

  “Working.”
He nods, looks at the TV. “Right.”

  “Excel,” she says, tone sharp as a warning. “Your face.”

  He straightens up, looks at her. “What about my face?”

  “You should see yourself. You look like this.” She raises a brow, rolls back her eyes, and scowls.

  “I don’t look like that.”

  “Yes you do. When I said ‘working,’ that was your face. Like you’re judging me. Like you’re ashamed.” Before Excel can try to deny it, Maxima goes to the kitchen and returns with a Christmas card, two candy cane–licking elves on the front. “Read it,” she says. He opens the card.

  Maxima and Excel:

  Maligayang Pasko and Happy New Year! Kumusta ka? Best wishes to “you and yours” this season. Beginning JANUARY 1 your rent will be increased to $1000 (ONE THOUSAND), still better than “market rate” (like rent control, di ba?). Rent due in cash by 1st of EACH month. God bless!

  Regards,

  Benedicto Anonuevo

  Property Owner

  Excel had never known the full name of Joker’s brother, had always referred to him as Uncle Bingo, a formality he’d hated. Awful enough referring to the landlord as family, even worse knowing what he thought of Maxima and Excel: a pair of freeloaders leeching off Joker. Bingo owned the apartment—Bay Area real estate was his business—but out of familial respect for his oldest brother, he let Joker live there for free. But when Maxima and Excel moved in, Bingo started charging five hundred a month; after Joker died, they thought Bingo would kick them out, but he let them stay for eight hundred dollars a month. “In honor of my brother,” he’d said.

  “‘Maligayang Pasko, I’m raising your rent.’ Grade-A asshole, talaga,” she says. “I looked for another apartment, a room in a house. Somebody even asked seven hundred dollars for a bed in a garage, no heat.”

  He imagines Maxima curled up on a cot in an empty garage, wearing layers of coats to keep warm. You should’ve called. That’s the right thing to say. But how would he have helped? In Hello City, he’d made just enough from odd jobs to get by, not much else. “You’ve been able to pay it? In full, on time?”

  “Barely. I cleaned houses, washed cars. But it’s not just rent and utilities. Auntie Queenie needs a part-time nurse now, so I’m sending money back to the Philippines for that. Plus, her medicine, di ba?” Maxima’s sister, Queenie, had been a live-in maid in Saudi Arabia for decades, though from the way Maxima tells it, she was more like a slave; after she suffered a stroke, she was let go. Now she’s back in the Philippines, in the village where they’d grown up.

  She turns back to The Bod, raises her fists. “I have many hardships, Excel. So when I say I’m ‘working,’ and you make a face like this”—she crumples her face—“just remember, even if you’re gone, life still happens here.”

  On the TV, a heavy guy in a lime green polo shirt and cargo shorts charges to the stage—his nametag says JAKE—waves hello to the camera. A panel slides open, reveals a brand-new truck, white and gleaming. Jake jumps up and down, pumps his fist, and though the TV is on mute, Excel can almost imagine his voice—earnest and hopeful, confident but quivering, with so much to win or lose.

  MAXIMA STARTED TALKING TO THE MEN SIX MONTHS AFTER JOKER died.

  Excel had slept on the couch his whole life, but with Joker gone, Maxima insisted Excel take his room. “It’s too sad,” she’d said, “to have that empty space so close.” Excel obeyed, but the mattress was thin with poking springs, and Joker’s smell—a mix of aftershave and Bengay—hung in the room, like he’d just been inside it and was still somewhere nearby. One night, unable to sleep, Excel heard Maxima weeping on the other side of the wall. It happened again the next night, though the weeping was followed by laughter, and then the sound of what was, unmistakably, a second voice—low and deep but smaller and faraway, like a man calling long distance on a bad connection. Excel guessed that Maxima had met someone, a possible boyfriend maybe, but was too embarrassed to admit it; what few romances she had always went bust. But as the nights went on he heard more voices—all men—saying things like “sweetheart,” “darling,” “my love.” One evening, after a double shift at work, he found a box of Converse high-tops atop his dresser, a twenty-dollar bill tucked into each shoe. She’d never given him an out-of-nowhere gift before, and though he wanted to be grateful, all he felt was suspicion.

  He went to Maxima’s room, entered without knocking. “Something’s not right,” he said, holding up the shoes. She was sitting on her bed, looking at an IKEA catalogue. “Who are you talking to?”

  She sighed and rubbed her eyes, like they’d been arguing for hours and she’d finally had enough. “I’m talking to men.”

  “What men?”

  “From the Internet.”

  “Internet. Like online dating?”

  “Dating. Me?” She let out a laugh, shook her head. “No. I’m not dating.”

  “Then what’s going on? Tell me.”

  She looked back at the catalogue. “I have a profile on some websites. Sometimes men find it, and if they like what they see, they contact me. If they seem nice, we talk on camera.” She pointed to a webcam on her desk. Excel had never seen it before, and he stepped back, suddenly worried someone could be watching from the other end.

  “What do you talk about?”

  She shrugged. “Lots of things. Life, I guess? The ups and downs. The good days and the bad days. And sometimes, if there’s a connection”—she looked up at Excel, then away from him—“I ask for help.”

  “What kind of help?”

  “Money.”

  He looked back at the camera on the desk, imagined Maxima sitting in front of it. “Is this . . .”—he trailed off, not knowing the right way to phrase a question he didn’t want to ask—“a sex thing?”

  Maxima shot up from her bed and shoved him against the wall, kept him there. “I do not do that,” she said, the force of her hand crushing into his chest. He could not believe how strong she was.

  She stepped back, took a breath. “Ano ba? Why should I defend myself? Why should I explain?” But with no prompting from Excel, she told him about OK Filipinas, A Kiss across the Ocean, Pacific Catholic Romance, websites where men—most of them middle-aged and American—searched through profiles of women from Thailand, Vietnam, Japan, the Philippines. “They want the perfect Asian wife. And you know what ‘perfect’ means. Hardworking. Housecleaning. Loyal. A maid in the day, a whore in the night. These men, that’s the kind of thing they say, believe me.” The men assumed she was in the Philippines, someone looking for a way to America, via marriage. Once she felt a connection was made, mutual trust established, she’d make up an elaborate tragedy or hardship, something that only money—both small and large amounts—could fix, and the ones she could convince would wire the cash.

  “I only take what I need,” she said. “Enough to make rent, pay the bills. Anyway, it’s my business, nobody else. You don’t have to like it, but you have to live with it.” She sat back on her bed and opened the catalogue, flipped to a page showing an all-white kitchen, plates stacked perfectly next to the sink.

  “Fine,” he said, “but I’m not wearing these shoes.” He left the room.

  Later, he asked Maxima to at least keep her voice low, but there were still nights, even some days, when he heard her through the wall—flirting and giggling, cheesy lines she’d use again and again (“I am a simple woman who believes in the two L’s: the Lord and love.”). Sometimes he’d learn the names of men and where they were from, their hobbies and interests, the thing that they loved: Jermaine from Saint Louis lived for the Yankees, Werner from Milwaukee collected German beer steins, Roberto from San Antonio loved the US of A. Maxima could indulge them all, could make them believe she loved the same things too, and somehow find the perfect opportunity to pivot the conversation toward that moment when Maxima would go from giggles to heartache, and reveal a tragedy (a typhoon that devastated her village, the sudden death of a sibling, even a cousin held hostage b
y Muslim insurgents) that would require her to ask, with shame and humility in her voice, for a little money (“Life in the Philippines”—she’d say, right before breaking—“is hard.”). Excel would listen with his ear to the wall, embarrassed and ashamed, but also, admittedly, riveted—how convincing could she possibly be? How did she come up with the perfect sadness to make the men believe her, want to help her? But for all of Maxima’s stories and lies, he learned that a bit of truth could sometimes slip into the conversation, as he did on the night before he left for Hello City: stuffing clothes into his backpack, he could hear Maxima through the wall, weeping about the son she lost, the broken heart that would never heal. When the man on the other end asked, “What can I do, mahal? How can I help?” Maxima had no requests—not for money, not for prayers—then told him there were some things in the world that simply could not be fixed.

  ON THE PRICE IS RIGHT, JAKE LOSES THE TRUCK, BUT HE’S STILL SMILING for the audience, fists in the air like he’s a winner. “He lost,” Maxima says, “why is he celebrating? Dummy.” Excel rereads the Christmas card, and remembers, suddenly, that he didn’t send one to Maxima. He hadn’t called at that point, but he’d meant to write a card, had even made sure that Sab saved an extra stamp for him to use. He doesn’t know what Maxima did for Christmas, if she did anything at all. He hopes, if nothing else, there was someone online for her to talk to.