Moondogs - Alexander Yates [125]
“Same difference; you talk it, you are it.”
“You speak English. What does that make you?” She couldn’t help but smile, a little.
“Versatile. How long would it take you to pack an overnight bag?”
“It doesn’t matter. I can’t get away.”
“Why not? Tomorrow’s Saturday. And you’ve got e-mail on that phone of yours, it’s not like you’ll be out of touch. It’s a whole new futuristic world we’re living in.”
“But …” she stammered. “Where would we even go? Do I need evening clothes, or walking shoes, or—”
“You need nothing.” He took her hands in his. “You’re what you need. And what I need.” He hugged her, working his face into her neck. He smelled like fireworks and fruit.
“All right.” She hugged him back. “Why not? Let’s go.”
MONIQUE THREW SOME SWEATS into one of Shawn’s backpacks and followed Reynato down to his parked Honda. She didn’t ask where they were going until they’d left Fort Bonifacio and turned onto EDSA. The answer cheered her more than she could have imagined. Subic Bay.
“I can’t believe that in a whole year your husband never took you back.”
“That’s not fair,” she protested. “I could have taken me back.”
“Fine then. You’re to blame. But it’s a wrong I’m righting.” Reynato smiled wide. He loved to see himself as a fixer.
Traffic was heavy in the city and didn’t get any better when they hit the northern expressway. He stopped the car once to buy boxed juices and twice more so he could pee beside other people peeing beside the road. Monique didn’t mind, consumed as she was by easy memories of life on the base—memories of home. She told him about their single-story house beside the officers’ barracks, about the front walk lined with porous lava rocks. She told him about the cleaning woman and their trips to and from All Hands Beach. About flying foxes, macaques and turtle eggs. Reynato, normally so skeptical of easy sentiment, went right ahead and indulged her nostalgia. He even coaxed her with questions when she started to flag. What kind of spider was it that bit you? Where was your mother when she went into labor? Have your parents ever been back? Why not?
Traffic got better when they turned onto the Subic-Tipo Expressway and passed an overturned cattle truck blocking the left lane. Plump animals spilled out the back like a litter of stillborn kittens. Butterflies alit on horns and upturned hoofs, supping blood with their delicate curved mouthparts. A lone survivor munched cud in the median, her eyes round and running. Reynato wouldn’t look at her as they passed; he kept his eyes glued to oncoming billboards. Monique couldn’t stop looking.
Mount Pinatubo emerged as a dark shape against dark clouds in the distance. It looked smaller than she remembered. It was smaller than she remembered—the eruption in 1991 knocked nearly a thousand feet off the peak. She’d watched the coverage from her hospital room, recovering from labor while Walter slowly died. Clark Air Base was evacuated right about when he went into the incubator. Nonessential personnel left Subic when they brought him up to the ICU. Monique remembered the ash plume, higher than anything she’d seen since, including 9/11. It was like black-and-white footage of atomic bomb blasts. She never told anyone that she felt Pinatubo erupting. Felt it in her chest. Like there was a string tied around her lungs, running down her leg, out her foot, through the floor, all the way down through the hot, dark planet; attached to the volcano at the other end. The string tugged her lungs when Pinatubo went off. She tugged back and Pinatubo went off harder. She kept all of this from Reynato as well, not wanting to be called a bruha again, even if he was joking.
“I wouldn’t get your hopes up.” His voice broke the quiet in the warm Honda. “The bay is different since they made it a free port. Could be your house is kaput by now. But who knows, your ya-ya might still be there.” He meant the cleaning lady. “What’s her name? We’ll look her up.”
“She wasn’t my ya-ya. And I don’t know her name.”
He glanced at her, sidelong. “I thought you said you were