Moondogs - Alexander Yates [37]
Outside the sun fell fast into the bay, sending streaks of color through the trees and across pastel towers along the boulevard. Drivers from the motor pool chatted beside the evening shuttles, all lined up in the roundabout with windows down. At the edge of the compound, out past the giant mechanical gates, some thirty protesters in surgical masks raised a racket. While never uncommon, the looming national elections had made this a daily occurrence. The protesters chanted the usual: “Go Home, Joe!” A refrain that’d freaked Joseph out until she explained that, in the Philippines, Joe was a standard soft slur for all Americans. Like Yankee, or Gringo.
The protesters shook rain-spotted signs at Monique as she crossed from the annex to the Chancery. She was normally good at ignoring them—she liked to think that their chants of “go home” weren’t really meant for her, because in her own roundabout way she’d thought of the Philippines as home—but today something caught her eye that made her stop. Something blue, about the size of a softball, flew through the gate and splashed against the base of a tree ahead. She recognized the smell—they were throwing water-balloons filled with pig’s blood again. Monique approached the bars even though she knew she shouldn’t. She saw a grinning boy no older than Shawn holding up an illustration of presidents Bush and Arroyo kissing sloppily atop a pile of brown stick-figure corpses. His free hand cupped another balloon and her stomach turned at the thought of how warm it must feel in his palm. She shouted at him in Tagalog. “What’s the matter with you? You can’t throw things in here. It’s serious trouble if they catch you!”
The boy shrank but everyone around him boiled. They beat their signs against the gates and shouted at Monique to go home. To go back where she was came from. That she wasn’t welcome here. “Bunch of idiots,” she said, in English now. “Do what you want, but get the kid away from the gate.”
Her mood worsened, Monique continued to the shaded chancery steps. Joseph met her with a hug and what he must have thought was an indulgent smile. “You have to fight with everybody?”
“Not everybody,” she said into his shoulder. She had to admit, he felt good. His long body, still damp from the workout, was lean and toned. He was coming up on fifty-five, so it wasn’t just about pride anymore. The age gap between them—Monique was only thirty-six—was almost as hard to see now as when they’d first met, she an undergraduate and he a teaching assistant who talked and gesticulated like a genius. Joseph was still as trim as he’d been then, maybe a little more so. On nights when his insomnia was especially bad he’d do an extra hour on the cross-country ski machine in the den, sweating into threadbare briefs, listening to a book on tape, sometimes arguing with the recorded speaker.
Monique and Joseph boarded the lead shuttle. Jeff, the security officer, sat in the front passenger seat but other than that it was empty. The evening caravan rolled out, pulling onto the boulevard and through the throng of protesters. The boy hurled his balloon, but it bounced off the windshield and splashed on the curb. Moments later he was plucked roughly out of the crowd by a Filipino in fatigues. She’d warned them. “Well look at that,” Jeff said, waving at the protesters like they were old friends. He fist-pumped the air. He raised the roof. “You go, girls! That’ll get things done!”
Joseph inspected their signs and sighed in commiseration. “I suppose you can’t blame them.”
Jeff raised his hand in the front seat. “I can. I can blame them.” He treated arguments as games. To Joseph, they were matters of survival. He looked to Monique for support, but she pretended not to see. She didn’t want to look at the protesters either, and instead stared at her cell