Moondogs - Alexander Yates [154]
“Why are you giving me this?” Benicio asked, doing a passable job of keeping his voice even.
“It’s okay.” Edilberto pulled his hands back and let the bills splay out on Benicio’s lap. It wasn’t as much as he’d given him on the night of the eruption, but almost. “It’s all right. No problem. I don’t need it.” He let out a tremulous laugh and turned to Alice. “He’s great. I needed some money, and he lent it to me. Last week. But now I don’t need it anymore. But he’s great to lend it. Very kind.”
“Oh.” Alice looked from one of them to the other. “That’s good.”
Benicio collected the bills in his lap, stacked them and folded them once over. “You’re sure you don’t need it? No problem, if you do.”
Edilberto looked relieved and shook his head. He didn’t see the guard waving them through with exaggerated, whole-body motions. When the sedan behind them honked he spun forward and accelerated quickly up the ramp to the big glass doors.
Benicio showered first. Then, when it was Alice’s turn, he picked up the hotel phone and called the front desk. He canceled their reservation with Edliberto for the afternoon and reserved another driver. The front desk asked if something was the matter and he said no, they just wanted another driver. Edilberto had done nothing wrong. He said it a few times, but they still sounded wary. “We’ll talk to him,” they said.
Alice came out of the shower and set the alarm beside the bed for early afternoon. They both got under the covers. Benicio told her that if he made any noises in his sleep, or twitched even, that she should wake him right up. She said she would.
HOWARD HAD A LOT OF VISITORS—CHARLIE, Hon, Monique, the ambassador, an almost imperceptibly limping Bobby Dancer, and Reynato Ocampo in an ill-fitting dress uniform. Only family was allowed into Howard’s hospital room, so Benicio and Alice were obliged to take turns receiving people outside the closed door or—in the case of press—in the waiting lounge. By the middle of the week Howard had faded so much that the hospital began keeping his visitors away entirely. This was a small relief.
Just before dawn on Thursday, five days after Howard’s helicopter ride from Corregidor, Benicio watched the night nurse taking extra care with her regimen. She left and returned with a doctor. They both left and returned with a priest and an extra chair. Benicio shook Alice awake and took his seat beside Howard. He didn’t look any closer to death than he had the day before, or the day before that. The priest produced a bookmarked Bible and dangled rosary beads from his knuckles. “Does your father have a favorite passage?” he asked. Benicio said that he didn’t know and the priest opened to Romans and began reading aloud. Something about being buried with Christ, through baptism, into death. Then rising, glory and new life. After a while Alice said that he should maybe go, so he rushed to the last rites, and left.
“I can go too,” she said. “Would you like to be alone with your dad?”
Benicio didn’t answer, so she stayed there at the edge of the room. Howard’s breathing sounded like diving. The way the regulator reverberated; the slight wheeze when the current rushed against the purge valve. He died at six in the morning, which would have been just about suppertime back home.
Chapter 31
SURVIVING KA-POW
Reynato Ocampo hates hospitals. He hates being watched. Not five minutes go by without doctors and nurses coming into his room at Makati Medical. They stare and write smutty notes to each other on his chart. When it’s not them it’s his family with