Authors: Kishore Modak
‘I can stay here
for a while,’ I said, lifting the lager to my lips.
‘You know we
can’t carry on for much longer, don’t you?’ she
asked, being quite practical, as regards the nature of socially
illicit relations went, because living publicly with her, as a
couple, was out of the question. It would involve too many civic
brickbats for the relationship to remain intact. It was in the secret
nature that the pleasure was hidden, worth searching for and worth
consuming secretly.
‘I know the
answer. Furniture,’ I said, sipping. ‘Furniture?’
‘Yes furniture,
along with a diesel generator, pots, pans, maybe a few helping hands,
stoves and a beach,’ I said, throwing my hair back in a
practiced feminine move, letting her smile as she pushed her chair
back, making space, folding her leg and allowing her left ankle to
seat comfortably on her right knee. ‘It will let us see each
other, at least for the period that it takes for the furniture to
reach the beach and fail, and if the beach shack succeeds, in a year
we will know if we, too, have a second chance. Just nice, either way,
win-lose, fail-succeed, we can be happy having tried,’ I said,
waving gently for attention, asking for my lager to be replenished.
Asians remain
calculative when it comes to money and its investment, like Mary, who
ran the numbers right there in the café, first in her mind and
then on the napkins, making the afternoon classic. The inheritance,
ours, would not feel the dent from the experiment of the year ahead.
In that conclusion, she picked up the phone and cancelled the
contract of what my mum had termed as
domesti
c
servitud
e
, informing her local agent in Manila and
her international agent in London. I insisted that she also call her
employer, informing her that she was leaving them in the lurch, just
as the schools would reopen that year, herself, rather than the agent
bearing burdens that were hers.
In the evening, she
insisted that we visit the church, where she cried, kneeling, almost
curled in tears as she begged for forgiveness in front of her God,
who in my mind would have been merciful, like any God should be.
At night we did not
sin, because what we had was clean and comfortable. She slipped out
of my bed near dawn and went back to her room, through the corridor
of sin. It was the corridor of the hotel that was sinful, existing to
separate us, trap us till we adventured beyond a line where someone
finally spotted us, and blew the whistle that no God, no matter how
forgiving, could silence.
They should have
noticed us earlier, because there is something amiss in two ladies
checking into the same hotel, preferring separate rooms when the
charges are put on a single personal card, mine, on the following
day.
We moved hotels to a
farther district of the city, avoiding problems that the conformity
of sexual norms thrust, hoping to exist unnoticed, which is
impossible for any meaningful periods of time, without being on the
move. Then we made a list and went shopping, business-like, looking
for deals.
- Beach furniture, for
lounging and for dining (Capacity twenty people)
- Generator of an
appropriate power rating
- Metal, industrial
cooking grill
- Indoor games
- A supplier of
consumables, beer and fresh produce, fuel
- Signboard and its
illumination
- Old books and
magazines by the kilo, including cookbooks
- A used TV and a media
player, along with a collection of discs
- Utensils, pots and
pans
- Used refrigerators
- Mobile Internet and a
laptop
- Construction costs,
for a new life
When we thought we were
ready, she called for the boatman, carrying what we could with us,
leaving the rest to be brought to us when it could be, with
unsuspecting smiles all around.
‘What if it
rains?’ she asked, on our way back home.
‘We will close,
for the rainy season, for light rain we will have awnings and large
beach umbrellas,’ I replied.
‘Hmm, where will
you sleep?’
‘In the kitchen
and store room, after it is built.’ I became lazy, like the
tourists with us on the silly cruise back home.
Lately she was given to
silence, often thinking about us and the tangle that she had found
herself in. It was understandable, because a change needs time to
settle into. Some of her thoughts may be around escape, ejection from
the change of newness, which I understood and promised to adhere to,
if she really wanted me to disappear.
I never felt like
becoming a male again, even
though I was the male
partner in a lesbian relationship. Maleness remains ugly, with curly
chest hair and a false bravado, which I had left behind me.
The year that followed
became busy, mostly due to success, which our little establishment
met with. Unwittingly, we welcomed health inspectors and safety
regulators, who were pointed to our end of the beach by the resort
manager and their dwindling F&B revenue, which had instigated
competition.
Yes, it was ours, our
place with a Philippine flag, and a happy Filipino spirit that the
inspectors picked up and respected, hanging with us for a while
before getting carried away by our Filipino-ness.
The running of the
place, especially at dinner service, was stressful, far more
demanding than lawyering about on Wall Street. We learnt, and we
applied ourselves to the enterprise, giving ourselves a necessary
diversion, necessary for our relationship to mature through the
critical first year.
At the six-month-mark,
the monthly bribes, and the balance of truce struck with the resort
helped us settle into a daily rhythm of quietness, which I invested
in the writing of this last chapter, slowly and unhurriedly, before
marketing it with publishers, unlike my mum who died vindictive,
un-sharing and in pain.
With the Internet, the
university came to Rafael, who headed to sea almost each day, with a
small gang of fisher folk in upgraded boats, netting in the catch of
the day, which flew off the counters within the hour that it got
announced on the menu boards outside.
The old man was happy,
sometimes perching behind the counter, smiling at everyone, as
business became brisk each evening. He smiled a lot at me, and I
liked him.
Through the lean rainy
season, we simply sat around the tables by ourselves, chatting and
sometimes smoking as the stereo gave rock music. I had started
venturing with loved ones in Cebuano, much to their delight, and
their laughter-ridden corrections.
Before the year ran
out, Rafael developed feelings for one of our waitresses, which he
decided to confide in me, becoming trusting of me, unlike me with my
parents. I heard him out and had nothing to offer, except for him to
follow the drive of his own will and the path it might carve out.
In the past year, the
place had also cluttered. I gathered the staff one rainy day, about
four of us, and decided to use the time to clear the place, mainly
throwing things that we did not need but lay in our daily path.
That evening, I asked
for the lights to be left on, even though we were shut. The rain
hammered on the beach outside and on my name, which was in
lights—
Jay’
s
Café
.