“I forgot it,” she said. “How could I have done that?”
Excel had seen it before, a small black-and-white photo of her mother as a high school senior back in Japan, dressed in a school uniform, diploma in hand. “You’ll call your aunt and have her send it,” he said. “It’ll be here in a week, okay?” He pulled her close and kissed her temple, then noticed the time on the alarm clock on the floor beside the bed. It was just past eleven a.m., the bus looked bare and clean, yet they’d unpacked everything they’d brought. He wondered what he might have forgotten too, if there was a lost or misplaced thing he couldn’t remember. He thought of their fourteen-hour drive from Colma to Hello City, imagined a small box somehow tumbling out of the trunk and rolling onto the freeway, still there.
AT NOON, LUCIA CAME BY WITH BLTS AND A MAP. “EAT, THEN EXPLORE,” she said. The map was a xeroxed copy, hand drawn and nowhere near to scale, and Hello City looked like a diamond made up of four smaller diamonds, north and south, east and west. Most people were in North Diamond (Lucia included) while South Diamond was full of artists, living in group trailers and minicommunes. West Diamond was the way in, the welcome sign at its tip. East Diamond, which was also called the Outerlands, was a few hours’ walk from there, and populated by those who came to Hello City with no desire to be part of it. “It’s all drug users, sex offenders, general weirdos,” Lucia said. “Keep your distance, they’ll keep theirs.”
In the center of the map was a black square, the symbol for the Square, the town center of Hello City. “You want to fit in? You want to belong?” Lucia said, as if issuing a challenge. “Then go there. Get to know the place. It’s the way to be a good Hello City citizen.” She wasn’t looking at Excel when she said it—citizen—but he felt self-conscious, a twinge of guilt. He’d meant to tell Sab he was TNT before they left for Hello City, had even planned to tell her at Joker’s grave—what better place to tell a person what you were, than in the exact spot where you’d first met? But when the moment came, just two days before leaving Colma, the sight of Joker’s tombstone, knowing all he’d done to give Maxima and Excel the life they had, made telling the truth too risky, the aftermath too uncertain. Sab, he knew, wouldn’t tell anyone, but the lingering possibility was undeniable: What if she did?
He wouldn’t tell her, not yet. Out of practicality, out of safety. And maybe out of loyalty: to admit what he was, was to admit what Maxima was, too.
THE SQUARE WAS LIKE A CROSS BETWEEN A FARMERS’ MARKET AND A garage sale. There was a booth that sold onions, potatoes, and a dozen different kinds of squash, another that sold supermarket rejects—dented canned goods, expired boxes of pasta and cereal. A larger booth called the B&Q sold everything, no matter what it was, for a buck and a quarter. On the other side was a long row of assorted junk spread out on blankets laid on the ground—light fixtures, doorknobs, souvenir shot glasses from all fifty states. One blanket was covered with doll heads and bullet casings, nothing more. There were two food carts (Sammy’s sold sandwiches, Hot Food sold hot food), and an outdoor Internet café called Beans!, which had four computer terminals that looked like they were from 1992. There was a library (a green tent full of paperbacks on shelves made of milk crates), a wellness center (a massage chair tucked under a beach umbrella), and a booth with a sign that simply said REPAIRS, though what kinds of things could be fixed wasn’t clear. On the other side of the Square was a small stage, a raised platform covered in Astroturf with strings of lights crisscrossing above.
The day was warm, already too bright. Excel bought a twenty-five cent coffee and sat in the shade at Beans! while Sab went to the B&Q. She picked up random items—a rusted desk lamp, an iron, a boomerang—and inspected each one, like an appraiser trying to determine its value. She was wearing what she’d worn the day they met—army jacket, black T-shirt—and for a second, for reasons he didn’t know, he imagined not knowing her. Would he guess she was a citizen of Hello City, or assume she was new, that she’d arrived only yesterday? Arrival, he realized, was utterly foreign to him—he’d never really come from somewhere else before.
He thought of Maxima’s first days in America. How the new weather felt on her face, her skin. What the change in time zones did to her sleep. If her first time in a supermarket overwhelmed her, if she understood the value of US dollars versus Philippine pesos. Except for the two trips to San Francisco, he’d only really seen her in Colma—at the cemetery, walking along the strip malls, in the cramped rooms of their apartment.
One of the Beans! computer terminals was free. He went to it, opened the browser, and composed a quick e-mail.
I’m here now. I’m fine. More soon.
It was his first time e-mailing Maxima—he’d never been gone before—and he wasn’t sure if the message was enough, if it was too direct, or all she needed to know.
He looked up and saw Sab approach. He hit Send, closed the browser.
“Look what I bought,” she said, then held out what looked like a small metal octopus the size of a lemon, its tentacles made of tiny bent spoons. “It’s a cool souvenir, right?”
“Right,” he said, though Sab, he thought, was wrong. He’d never traveled, but it was his understanding that you bought souvenirs from places you visited or passed through, not from the place you meant to call home.
IN THE MIDDLE OF THE SQUARE WAS A POSTING BOARD, WHERE people placed ads for upcoming events, ride shares into towns, even personals (someone had written “I like sex, you like sex, call me” on a hot pink Post-it). But most were help-wanted ads, various odd jobs available in Hello City, and Excel needed one fast; they’d arrived with less than five hundred dollars between them, and Sab would be making only $150.00 a week helping Lucia with Pink Bubble. They had enough to start, but not much beyond that.
There was a help-wanted ad for solar panel installation, another looking for assistance with Internet hookup. Someone needed hypnotherapy and life coaching, someone else was looking for a person to simply hold them for occasional thirty-minute sessions (“Not that one,” Sab said). All the jobs paid in cash, none required specific experience or even a résumé, and, because this was Hello City, no form of ID was required. During high school and in the summers between, Excel would apply for the most straightforward of jobs—restaurant busboy, salesclerk, bowling alley custodian—and the few he was actually offered were invariably sabotaged in the actual hiring, by all the forms of identification he couldn’t provide. Only once did he try to fight: he’d applied for a sales position at Kadabra’s, a magic shop that opened in Colma at the start of his senior year. No magic experience required, and any sleight of hand necessary for in-store demonstrations could be learned on the job. During the interview, the storeowner, an older gentleman with thick silver hair and jet black eyebrows, mentioned he was from Jordan, a country Excel had heard of only the week before, when he happened to see a TV documentary on the ancient city of Petra. “I visited Jordan once,” Excel lied. “Petra is awesome. Everyone should visit Petra before they die.” The storeowner smiled, impressed with Excel’s worldliness, and called that evening to offer him the job. Excel showed up at the store the next morning and filled out the W-4 form, but paused at the box asking for his Social Security number. He considered writing a phone number down instead, or the numerical dates of important historical events; maybe inputting those numbers into whatever computer the IRS used might let the form somehow pass through undetected. But Excel chickened out, left it blank. “You forgot,” the storeowner said, pointing out the missing Social Security number. “I didn’t,” Excel said, “I just don’t have one.” The storeowner looked confused, asked why not. “I just don’t,” Excel said. The storeowner suggested speaking to his mother or father about it, in case he was mistaken, but Excel shook his head, said, “Nope, no mistake,” and continued filling out the form anyway. “They’re just numbers,” he said, sweat building on his neck. The storeowner reached out, put a calming hand on Excel’s shoulder, then gently took the W-4 form from his hand. He gave E
xcel a look that seemed to say, I understand what you mean, but there was nothing he could do to help. “It’s just a number,” Excel repeated. “I can do this job without a number. Please?” He didn’t know why the job mattered so much—he didn’t care about magic or illusions—but he’d somehow convinced himself that getting this job might be a sign of good things to come, the critical pivot toward a more promising future.
“You try again,” the storeowner said, “next time.” As a kind of consolation, he gave Excel a pair of X-ray glasses, and wished him the very best of luck.
Standing in the Square, looking through the various kinds of help people wanted, Excel didn’t think he’d need that kind of luck, not here. All anybody wanted was for you to show up, do the work asked of you and do it well, get paid for it.
At the bottom of the posting board, Excel saw a green piece of paper with “ASAP” written on it. He bent down, read the rest. “E-mail [email protected] if interested. Lift stuff, move stuff, I’ll give you $$.”
“I can do that,” Excel said.
9
The mattress springs of Joker’s bed poke Excel’s back, no matter which way he tries to sleep. He’s awake all night, even by dawn. He sits up, looks out his window. There’s no sunrise to see from here, just the slow lift of gray from the headstones of Old Hoy Sun Ning Yung. Those first days in Hello City, he’d wake early enough to watch everything go from pitch black to a day almost unbearably bright.
He lies back down, finally dozes off when Maxima pounds on his door. “It’s almost ten!” she says. “Who sleeps this late? Nobody, that’s who. Wake up!”
He showers, gets dressed. Maxima is by the front door, all in black, and she gives Excel an up-and-down look of utter disapproval. “You can’t see Joker looking like that. Ano ba? You look like a homeless. And why is the happy face drunk?”
“I don’t look like ‘a homeless.’” He looks down at his black Nirvana T-shirt, the yellow smiley face logo with X’s for eyes and a hanging tongue, bought at the Square for $1.25 at the B&Q. “My clothes got a little worn in the desert. I wasn’t exactly going to four-star restaurants out there.”
She mutters in Tagalog, something about Excel and what he knows or doesn’t know, he’s not exactly sure. She buttons her jacket, grabs her purse. “We’ll stop at the good Target on the way, get you a shirt there. Let’s go.”
They leave the apartment, make their way toward the Target in Colma (Joker and Maxima had always called it “the good Target” since it was closer, the bathrooms were supposedly cleaner, and for a time an elderly Filipina woman working the express line gave them discounts on nondiscounted items). When they get to the store, she gives Excel a fifty-dollar bill. “Joker wants us to look nice when we see him. So buy something with long sleeves. Something dark and clean. And bring me back my change. We’ll meet out here in thirty minutes.”
“I’ll be done in twenty.” He takes the money, walks off.
Target always makes Excel think of Joker. Joker loved the store, could spend hours, sometimes half a day, pushing a cart through each department, up and down every aisle. He liked keeping track of which items were new and which were discontinued, and he especially liked comparison shopping, pitting name brands against the generic Target brand, and reporting his findings. “Old Spice shaving cream?” he’d say. “Four dollars and ninety-nine cents. Rip-off, talaga. Pero the Target shaving cream? Two dollars. And guess how much, the eight pack of Charmin?” He would even point out pricing inconsistencies to the red-vested Target employees, explaining to them that he was a “concerned consumer,” though he rarely bought a thing beyond the essentials; an occasional bag of Kit Kats or Starburst for Excel was Joker’s only splurge.
There’s just one clearance rack in the men’s department. Excel searches through, finds a gray button-up shirt with long sleeves, a men’s small. He takes it off the hanger, walks over to the three-way mirror and tries it on. Though it feels all right in the chest, the shirt sags over his shoulders and the sleeves run past his knuckles, the shirttails droop to his thighs. In the mirror, reflecting from three sides, he looks like a boy playing dress-up.
He rolls up the sleeves, tucks in the shirt. Good enough.
He walks back toward the entrance, passes racks of kids’ clothes, when he sees the Nirvana drunk smiley face, same as his own T-shirt, but brand-new and tiny. He picks it up, sees that it’s a one piece (“novelty onesie” the tag says), and possibly the smallest piece of clothing he has ever held. 0–3 MONTHS, the tag says. Strange, Excel thinks, that clothes can be sized according to how much time you’ve been alive.
He slides the onesie from the hanger, lays it flat against his palm. So tiny, nearly weightless. Excel has never held a baby, isn’t sure he’s ever wanted to. But if Sab wants to have it, and if he and Sab get back together, he can imagine the baby wearing the Nirvana onesie, and maybe Sab could get a matching shirt, too. The three of them together, drunk smiley faces on their chests.
Carefully, he puts the onesie back on the hanger, returns it to the rack. Father, he thinks, walking toward the entrance, the same route he’d once walked with Joker. I am a father. Might be, should be. Maybe. Ahead, he sees the brightening day beyond the sliding doors, and just as he’s about to exit an alarm goes off, a high-pitched beep so loud his chest almost buzzes. “Sir!” someone shouts, and a balding guy with a Target nametag and a sagging necktie comes charging toward Excel. “Sir!” he says again, louder and scolding, and Excel has no idea what he’s meant to do. For all the years Maxima warned him about being TNT, the plan, should there ever be trouble, was to call Joker. But Joker is gone, and he has no backup plan, no prepared lines to recite that might keep him safe or buy him some time. “I didn’t do anything,” he says, but the man snaps his fingers and points, says, “The shirt, the shirt,” and Excel looks at himself, sees a price tag dangling from his sleeve. He’s still wearing the shirt, realizes he didn’t pay for it. “It’s a mistake,” he tries to say, but the man pulls him by the arm toward the cash registers, and Excel remembers all the cautionary tales Maxima tried drilling into his brain—about the TNT who was caught when trying to cash a winning lottery ticket, or the TNT discovered not by Immigration but by a collection agency, after two missed credit card payments. He thinks of Lola NeeNee, wonders if she’s even alive.
All those stories and for what? He learned no lesson from them, just fear. They do him no good now.
Then Maxima comes running.
“Is there a problem here”—she looks at the man’s nametag—“Wilbert?” Wilbert points to the shirt, to the security tag affixed to the back of the collar. Excel tries speaking, but Maxima cuts him off. “He gets confused,” she says, “abnormal sometimes. He’s been living in the desert.” She places a hand on Wilbert’s forearm, leans into him. “He was a homeless,” she whispers, “but he’s trying to be normal again. So can we pay for the shirt now? Is that okay, Wilbert?” She keeps patting his arm and saying his name, then carefully places a rolled bill into his palm. “Just a misunderstanding, Wilbert,” she says, in a low and soothing voice, “di ba?”
Wilbert looks at Maxima, then at Excel. “I guess it is,” he says. “But you need to pay for that shirt.” He steps back, waves Excel toward cashier number 3. Excel nods, apologizes for the error, goes to pay.
Later, after they’ve left Target and are standing at the intersection waiting to cross, Maxima finally speaks. “Stupid, kaba? What’s in your head, trying to steal like that?”
“I wasn’t stealing. I was distracted and forgot to pay. Anybody could’ve made that mistake.”
“You’re not anybody. You don’t know that by now?” She looks at the red light, presses the pedestrian crossing button over and over.
“Why did you say those things in there?” he asks.
“What things?”
“About me being homeless in the desert.”
“It’s called an alibi. And it worked. You should be thanking me instead of all this critique-critique
.”
“Fine. But just so you know, I had a home in the desert.” She presses the button again, irritated and impatient with the unchanging traffic light; Excel has no idea if she heard him or not, if she even understands what he said. “Finally,” she says, red light turning green. She steps off the curb. He watches her cross to the other side.
10
Joker didn’t raise Maxima. He trained her. “Big difference,” she said.
She always claimed that she’d raised herself. True, there was a grandmother who took in Maxima and her sister, Queenie, after their parents’ typhoon death, dragged away and drowned in the Pasig River. Maxima was nine and Queenie was twelve, but the old woman’s idea of child-rearing was snapping the backs of their legs with a wire flyswatter if they overcooked the rice or slept past seven on a Saturday. Queenie was older but Maxima was her constant defender, which was how Joker came to discover her power: Walking home from school one afternoon, Maxima and Queenie were followed by a trio of boys who called out, “Orphan girls, hey orphan girls,” while trying to lift the backs of their skirts with the ends of their bamboo fishing poles. “Sons of whores!” Maxima shouted back. “Stop it!” But the boys kept going, and Queenie tripped and fell, skinning a knee and muddying her good school dress. Maxima spun around, snatched a fishing pole from one of the boys, and smacked another in the head. The third boy lunged forward, wielding the pole high like a sword, but Maxima just socked him in the face and grabbed his fishing pole, too. One in each hand, she slammed the bamboo sticks hard against their knees and backs, sent them home crying. Joker, who’d been filling plastic jugs at the village water pump, witnessed the whole thing. “Small girl, big talent,” he said when he’d told Excel the story. “Total untapped potential. Malakas, talaga.” Maxima, who was doing push-ups on the kitchen floor, translated: “‘So strong,’” she said, “‘for real.’”
The Son of Good Fortune Page 8
