Moondogs - Alexander Yates [126]
“We were, but I was little.” Monique chewed her lip. “It was a long time ago. I hardly knew my parents’ first names. I called her Tiya.”
“Auntie? That’s sweet. I’m sure all is forgiven.”
“She has nothing to forgive me of.”
“Sure now,” Reynato said, and went quiet. Sweet as he was trying to be, she could tell something was grating on him. But she couldn’t be bothered to push it, and they finished the drive in silence. The trees ahead became backlit by shimmering port lights. Passing the remains of an MP checkpoint, they rounded a bend and got their first good look at the old base. In a way it wasn’t all that different; the runway down south, the beaches, the orderly rows of housing like suburban sprawl were all familiar. But Olongapo had surged—it glowed bright as any Manila neighborhood—and the low skyline was spiked irregularly with neon.
“I’m starving,” Reynato announced, slowing so abruptly that Monique’s seatbelt locked. “Sorry. Just remembered that there’s a place here I love.” He pulled off the main road, returning the horn-honks of the jeepney behind them, and stopped at a shabby food stand slouching between American franchise burger joints. Greasy smoke rose from a little tin kiosk, licking a plywood sign on the roof that read Junior’s Tapsihan. Reynato ordered for them both: cured beef tapa, garlic rice and eggs over-easy, with bottles of banana ketchup and coconut vinegar for the table. The smell of the food redoubled Monique’s nostalgia. Why on earth had she suffered through Amartina’s faux-American cooking for a whole year when she could have been eating this? Joseph and the kids would have learned to love it.
They sat at one of several rotting picnic tables and ate. The other patrons watched Monique like she was a curious object. A man with horribly scarred arms stared with particular intensity, but turned away whenever she glanced back. Reynato ignored them all, speaking with his mouth full, some yolk clotting the stubble on his upper lip. “You should know that it’s looking pretty good for this Bridgewater guy. It’s confirmed, without a doubt, that he’s alive. We’ve made contact with the kidnappers—”
Monique swallowed too fast and felt the brief vertigo of almost choking. “Can we talk about something else, please?”
“Hey, I know it’s not your favorite subject. But the news is good. One of my best people met them today—and if I trust a life in anybody’s hands, they’re his. Folks on TV say this kidnapping is going to be a long, drawn-out ordeal. But no. I promise you it ends in days, not weeks or months.”
“And how does it end?”
“Howard Bridgewater lives. Good guys go home happy. Bad guys don’t go home at all.”
“Good guys?” Monique grunted in a way that she hoped sounded good-natured. “You sound like my son.”
“Your son’s smarter than you give him credit for. And speaking of that—how’s Howard’s kid holding up?”
“I don’t know. He doesn’t talk to me much.”
Reynato paused, as though he was giving Howard’s kid serious thought. “He’s lucky to have you.”
“Lucky?” Monique put down her large, bent spoon. “How do you figure? I mean, what good am I, exactly? Acting chief of American Citizen Services,” she sounded it out with revulsion. “Bullshit. I’m a phony! I do nothing all day but answer telephones. I carry tiny pieces of useless information from one person to another, and nothing I do makes that kid’s life—or anybody’s life, for that matter—any easier. And the few meaningful things I know—that the kidnappers are talking to police, for example—I can’t share because I’m not supposed to know them. I’m just as useless as all the people sitting at home and watching this awfulness on the news. More so, in fact, because they can at least turn it off when they want to.”
Reynato put his hand on hers. He still had egg on his lip. “You are not a phony.”
She pulled away. Of course she was a phony—it was just another word for liar. And he knew that. Saccharin sweet wasn’t in his usual repertoire. Nor was the quiet, supportive, steady behavior he’d practiced all week. He hadn’t even pulled any cute shit at