Moondogs - Alexander Yates [160]
“I know,” Reynato says, still dripping from all of his faceparts. “I know.” They share a wildly awkward embrace. Then, upon escaping, Reynato continues out to his parked, dented Honda. His beloved bruha’s ash still clogs up the filters and brake assembly. The inside still smells of her. A blackened sack of filthy money sulks in the passenger seat—a spot that Monique occupied not one week ago, on their mini-break to Subic. The cynic in Reynato would like to see this change as an improvement. The cynic in him says: You were just using her, so you can’t be sad about how it ended. To which the rest of Reynato replies: No one tells me what I can’t do.
Chapter 32
DANCER AND DOGS
Benicio didn’t know that Alice had bumped up her departure date until he got out of the shower and found her packing. He dried himself in the doorway and watched as she laid out clothes on the bed, folded them into irregular quadrangles and stacked them in her suitcase. “I’ll be here for the funeral,” she said, a little curtly. “My flight’s not till the second. That’s sooner than I wanted, but the week following is booked solid. And I need time to regroup before classes let out. My kids have been with rotating subs this whole time.” She sounded mournful at this. And who knows, maybe she was.
Benicio put a robe on and went to go sit on one of the red couches. He was supposed to see a funeral director about arrangements in just a half hour, but for the sake of privacy they’d agreed to meet in his father’s adjacent suite; so he had time. “That’s fine,” he said, even though he didn’t really think it was fine. He didn’t want Alice to go.
“It’ll be good for you, too,” she said. “You need time to yourself, with me out of your hair.”
“I like you in my hair.” He watched as she closed the suitcase, stood it upright on its wheels and then laid it flat again to see how things had shifted inside. “I dreamed about this,” he said. “A few days before my father died I dreamed of you packing up your things. But we weren’t here. We were back home, in my apartment. The window screens were frozen over. The suitcase was open on the couch. You weren’t being careful at all.” He took a Fuji apple from the fruit bowl and held it, casually. “You threw clothes in on their hangers, no folding. Your saucepan was dirty on the stove but you just threw it right in also. It got oil on everything.” He set the apple back in the bowl. “I think you were leaving me.”
Alice looked up from trying to make her suitcase less top-heavy. “Well, I’m not leaving you,” she said. “I’m just going home. And that’s a weird fucking thing to say, besides.” She was mad about something.
“I’m sorry,” Benicio said. They looked at one another from opposite sides of the suite. “Just a dream,” he said.
Alice quit fussing with the suitcase. “Who’s Solita?”
He straightened up. “Did she come to the room?”
“No. She telephoned. It was a few days ago, when I was back here getting clean clothes. She said they won’t let her into the hotel now … something you did. So I met her outside. Who is she?”
“She’s the girl Hon mentioned.” He paused, remembering he’d lied at the time about not knowing her. Alice remembered, too. “Dad was having an affair with her. I mean … not an affair. He was paying. I met her before you got here, before I knew what happened to him. She’s after money.”
“She said you’re fucking her.”
“She’s after money.”
“A woman who looks like that tells me you’re fucking her and you want me to infer the no?”
Benicio stared at Alice. This somehow had the feel of a play fight—Solita was a front for something else. “You know I’m not fucking her,” he said. “I was with her on the night of the eruption, but only to talk. Only to ask her about Dad.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Yes, you do,” he said. “If this is about you leaving, you can just tell