Moondogs - Alexander Yates [5]
Benicio’s father had sent him the book a few months ago. It arrived in an oversized package stuffed with styrofoam peanuts and bubble wrap, covered with bright stamps and postmarked on the same day that Benicio finally agreed to spend the summer with him in Manila. He wasn’t sure exactly what route mail took to travel from the Philippines to Charlottesville, but his father’s package seemed to have had a rough trip. It arrived looking rained-on and dropped, the book inside warped and brittle. His father’s note on the cover page was so smeared it was almost illegible. Benny, it said, I finished this a few weeks ago and couldn’t believe I’d lived here so long without knowing some of this stuff. Think you’ll enjoy it. I mean the book, and the country. So glad you’re coming! Below that, in a different color of ink, his father had added, Thanks again for what you said at the funeral. I’m really so sorry Benny. About all of it. I can’t wait to see you.
Reading the history, like talking one-on-one with his father for the first time in almost five years, had been kind of a chore at first. The book started off with dry descriptions of trade and migrations, broken up only occasionally by colorless maps and arrows. But things picked up after the Spanish arrived, and more so when the Japanese did. Now Benicio could hardly put it down. He glanced at his watch, hoping to get to Corregidor’s surrender before his girlfriend locked up her classroom and came out to meet him. Alice taught ninth- and tenth-grade English at Montebello High and spent afternoons tutoring captive audiences in detention. The next time he peeked over his book he saw Alice emerging from the front door of the school. She waved to him and he stood and waved back. She glanced around, and when she saw that no one was looking, flipped him the bird. He sent one right back and gave her an ugly face.
“My love,” she said as she pecked him on the cheek—as much affection as either of them ever showed on school grounds—and snatched his book from him. “How’s the war going?” she asked.
“Not well.” He kept his hand on her hip as they walked to her truck. “Not at all. Those poor guys are fucked.”
“That’s unfortunate.” She pulled her keys from her purse and threw them in the air. Benicio caught them.
“We need to make a stop on the way home,” he said. “The shop called—my gear’s good to go.”
“If we must,” Alice said, a slight grin marring her put-on pout. She had one of those rare faces that looked much prettier up close than it did from far away, and when she got playful like this he found it downright irresistible. Closing the truck doors behind them, Benicio leaned into her for a real kiss, longer and deeper than usual.
“I’m going to miss you, too,” he said.
“Too? I’m not going to miss anybody.”
And there was that grin again. Benicio returned it, gamely. He put the key in the ignition. “Yes, you are. You’re going to be lonely, and sad. But don’t worry. It’ll be a short trip.”
“Oh yeah?” Alice shifted in her seat and threw her leg over the hand brake. “How short, would you say? Because I’ve got affairs and trysts and whatnot to plan.”
He put his hand on her knee, caressing it for a moment before moving it aside and lifting the brake. He started the engine, shifted into first and brought them out of the lot. “Stay this shitty, and I might not come back.”
“You’ll come back,” she said. “I’m the best thing you’ve got going for you.”
And no question about it, she was right.
THEY’D MET WHEN BENICIO was in his third year as an undergrad at the University of Virginia, the same school where Alice was finishing up a master’s in secondary education. They were little more than casual acquaintances—just familiar enough to exchange smiles and hellos—and only began dating as the result of a drunken hookup, embarrassing only for how utterly typical it was. Benicio had just graduated, and for a while they both seemed happy enough to treat their relationship with the lightness its beginning seemed to warrant. But that changed when