Moondogs - Alexander Yates [135]
“I saw Howie on the news,” Solita said. “I saw you, too. They have cable in our dressing room. For the first time, I’m glad we can’t afford it at home. That way June can’t see. My poor Howie.” She stared blankly at the heavy curtains. “My Howie.”
Your June, Benicio wanted to say. My Howie.
“I’m seeing him almost eight years now. June was born in the first year. This is what you want to know?” She didn’t give him a chance to answer before going on. “Howie saw my sister for five years before that, but then she died. Cancer, in her breast. Howie was good to her. He paid for everything. Even a specialist in Shanghai. He loved her. Not as much, with me.”
Benicio blinked. There were worlds in those sentences. His father in love, if that’s what it was. His father grieving, if that’s what he did. He stammered. The only way to get through this was to stick to the trail. “June can’t be his,” Benicio said. “If he was, Howard wouldn’t have let you work here. He can be awful, but not that awful.”
“Shame on you.” Solita scowled at him. “Shame on you to say that, now. Howie is not awful. He is one of the nicest men that comes here. I told you, he gives me some money. But just for June. Enough for school, and clothes, and better food. That’s all that matters.”
“Can you prove it?”
“Prove he gives us money?”
“Can you prove that June is Howard’s son?”
She paused, warily. “Prove how?”
“A birth certificate with my father’s name on it? Some paperwork from the christening, or baptism? Tax forms … anything written down, really.”
She cocked her head and shook it lightly.
“How about pictures. Photos of the two of them or all three of you together?”
“Howie only likes to take pictures … he hates being in them.”
That this was true proved nothing.
“How can you even be sure it was him? Howard wasn’t the only one, was he?”
“No.” She straightened. “But he was the only one who paid extra so he wouldn’t have to use a condom.” This was more information than Benicio was looking for, and she sneered at his reaction. “If you don’t want to know, don’t ask.”
“I don’t want …” He dropped what he was saying mid-sentence—mid-thought. There was something wrong. The shaking that he felt in his fingers had spread wildly through the air. The ground shifted under them. Music in the main room cut off and was replaced by loud banging. Solita stood, fell, and stood again. She staggered to the curtained doorway, pressed her hands against the frame and looked back at Benicio with big eyes. She yelled at him to move, but by the time he stood the earthquake was over. A full ten seconds passed before the lights went out.
Benicio and Solita felt their way through the curtain and out into the main room. The bartenders had flashlights and the patrons who smoked held lighters above their heads like people at a concert. Two of the big floor-to-ceiling air-conditioners had fallen over, crushing empty chairs beneath them, and bottles of San Mig lay shattered and frothy on the floor. Other than that, the club looked more or less as it had when Benicio arrived. He followed the general flow of patrons and girls to the front door and out into a warm night filled with the sounds of car alarms and howling stray dogs. A crowd gathered in the parking lot to wait for aftershocks but Benicio didn’t linger among them. He walked away from the club, out across Roxas Boulevard to the promenade that overlooked the dark bay. Foam splashed against the seawall, haphazard waves butting heads like churned up bathwater.
Benicio sat down on the edge of the crumbling wall, let his legs dangle over the dirty gray water and kept his back to the darkened city. He couldn’t believe it. He couldn’t believe that Howard would let his baby’s mother work in a place like that. Especially when helping her would have meant nothing—an imperceptible dent in the figure Hon had written on the napkin. But she’s lied before,