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.