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Reine Melvin’s novel The Betrayed is now available in bookstores, at lazada.ph, and at shopee.ph.

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No one has ever cried or had a nervous breakdown at our workshops. But everyone has written something.

Portrait of Bianca Maria Sforza by Ambrogio de Predis from Wikimedia Commons

The Defenestrations
Chapter 2B
by Roni Matienzo

Part 1

It did not even take three seconds. One moment he was living a life envied by many: traveling for likes, partying for views. One, two, three steps and his life was over.

Had Iñigo survived, he would have rued the fact that he wasn’t filming live when he fell one hundred feet. His subscriber numbers would have skyrocketed.

He was too vain to do anything live, though. He wanted to make sure that the camera caught only his best angles, and he edited his work thoroughly. He was proud of his work ethic.

“Is he one of the noisy Chinese tourists from 9:30?” asked one of the workmen.

“I think he’s a mainland Chinese,” a Malaysian Chinese said indignantly to the room at large.

Iñigo’s guide still hadn’t closed his mouth, for he saw his career end with the death of one of his clients. He radioed to security that a tourist had just defenestrated himself and would most probably be found on the East grounds.

Half a world away, Iñigo’s mother Teepee—born Teofista Bautista from Tondo with no particular pedigree—was feeling quite embarrassed that she could only buy opera-length South Sea pearls on terms. She was preparing to call her trust fund manager to ask for her allowance to be increased this one time—for the fourth time this year—when the call came. It was Melissa, Iñigo’s sponsor from the organic juice company.

“There’s no other way to say it. I’m sorry but Iñigo had an accident at the Prague Castle. He did not survive.”

“I’m sorry. I can’t hear you.” There was nothing wrong with her hearing, she just couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

“Ma’am Teepee, I said…”

“Fuck you, I know what you said!” Teepee interrupted. All her pretensions of being a society doyen flew out the window and out came the Tondo girl. “What happened? Where is my son?” She walked out of the store towards the parking lot. She only remembered that she left her bag at the store when she felt tears running down her face and needed a tissue. She hoped that she had worn the Too Faced waterproof mascara and not the Charlotte Tilbury. She could not control the tears, though. Melissa’s voice sounded like a buzzing in her ears.

Death and the Maiden by Egon Schiele, image from Wikimedia Commons

Part 2

The store clerks recognized her and guided her to the back of the store. She did not remember anything that happened afterwards. It was just too much. After Claudio died, leaving her alone with four small children, she found the strength to carry on. Her children needed her. She could be vain, she could be self-centered, but she felt that she did the best she could. That’s all anyone can do, really.

And now one of them was dead. Iñigo, her precious, precious child. He never had anything bad to say to anybody. He sometimes got outshone by his siblings, and maybe that’s why he tried to get validation from his followers. She of all people understood how creating a persona can make you who you are. How you can correct the mistakes of the past with the brightest future you can imagine for yourself.

Iñigo would not be correcting any more mistakes, but she still could.

The security guard at the Lokal Juz attempted to inspect her bag, but Teepee waved him away. Teepee stared down her nose (even if she was shorter by a foot) until he looked away.

She had already contacted her lawyers and they were now with her to coordinate with the organic juice company in Makati on the repatriation of her son’s remains. She wanted to make an event of it, that’s what her son would have wanted. She had a list of demands that she felt were reasonable, given that her son died while promoting their blasted product. What she wanted was for an events coordinator to handle the logistics of repatriation, wake, and interment. She wants to have full-on social media and traditional media coverage, with an after-party to celebrate her son’s life. She did not expect to be denied.

Teepee’s mind was busy with all the possible things that they could conjure up for her son’s event. Hashtags, loot bags, menus. Her mind shied away from what it all meant, she wanted to appreciate the trees without acknowledging the forest. She was walking towards the elevators when she suddenly saw a familiar, confident stride. Iñigo.

Lantern Ghost by Hokusai, image from Wikimedia Commons

Part 3

“Iñigo?!” Teepee thought she had whispered her son’s name, but she’d actually shouted. The people in the lobby who were lost in their own thoughts were pulled into the here and now with her voice. “Iñigo, wait! Wait!” Teepee hurried after her son, who disappeared into the stairwell. Once she could run in stilettos, but she’s older now, and her knees were reminding her that she’d left her twenties decades ago. The second floor door banged shut just as she entered the stairwell. Her son’s name was a mantra silently uttered with each step she took. She hoped with everything in her that the past few days were just a bad dream. Just beyond that door was Iñigo, and her blasted body was the one preventing her from reaching him.

“Iñigo!” She shouted as she flung the door open. The security guard manning the turnstile at the end of the elevator banks started at the force with which the door hit the wall.

“Good morning, Ma’am! How can I help you?”

“I want to see my son! Did you see Iñigo?”

“Uhm, I’m sorry Ma’am. What is his full name?”

“The young man who just walked through the door! Where did he go?”

The guard shook his head.

“He was wearing a blue shirt!”

“I’m sorry, Ma’am.”

“You must have seen him! He came out right before me!”

“Ma’am, nobody entered the door before you.”

“No! I saw him with my own eyes!”

“Ma’am, do you have an appointment?”

“I need to see my son! He was just here! Tell me where he went!” Teepee was half-aware that she was becoming hysterical, but she didn’t care.

“Mom, let’s go. He won’t be able to help you,” she heard Iñigo say, so clearly he could’ve been right next to her. Teepee whirled but Iñigo was not there.

* * * *
What happens next?
A. The ghost of Iñigo is haunting his mother.
B. Teepee is imagining things. (Maybe losing her mind)

Next week: Chapter 3.

At January’s reading group meeting, our readers suggested a book by an Asian woman, so here it is.

Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata is a comic novel about a socially-awkward woman who finds refuge in the strict routines and regulations of her convenience store job. But after 18 years at what should be a temporary job, her family is asking questions. What is she doing with her life? When will she get married? Has she gone on a single date? When her safe existence is threatened by social pressures, she is forced to take action.

Our next Reading Group discussion will be held on Saturday, 2 March 2019, 4-6pm at Tin-Aw Art Gallery, Somerset Olympia Building (across from Old Swiss Inn), Makati Avenue, beside the Peninsula Manila. Everyone who has read the book is welcome. Convenience store snacks will be served.

* A slightly different version of this piece appears in Esquire.

What I read

Transcription by Kate Atkinson. A new novel by Kate Atkinson is reason to cancel all appointments, turn off the phone and stay in bed reading the book in your pajamas. Coming after what may be her finest novels, Life After Life and A God In Ruins (Though you can make a case for her Jackson Brodie detective novels), Transcription has a high bar to clear, and it wisely does not attempt this. This spy novel set in World War II has a throwaway quality, almost as if the author were talking to herself. The naïve 18-year-old heroine Juliet is warned about trusting coincidences, which pile up as the story careens to an end. But it is wonderfully entertaining, even if it is now mixed up in my head with another novel with a female spy, Restless by William Boyd.

I Served the King of England by Bohumil Hrabal. Yes, I’m still on my Central European reading list. For this I blame the New York Review of Books reissues of almost-forgotten works, which hypnotized me with their solid-colored spines and beautiful covers. Hrabal, Krudy, Szabo, Prus…So I went to Central Europe and wrote a travel book. Please buy it.

Once and Forever by Kenji Miyazawa. Odd fables the length of an elevator ride that will haunt you for days.

The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin. I imagine the prompt was: If you could learn the exact date of your death, would you? The four Gold siblings of New York got the dates when they were kids. This is what happened next.

What I watched.

You must watch this.

BlacKkKlansman by Spike Lee. I cannot believe that this is the first Oscar nomination for the man who made Do The Right Thing and 25th Hour.

Pose by Ryan Murphy (TV series, 8 episodes). Set in the New York ballroom culture of the 1980s (like the documentary Is Paris Burning), it’s really about people cast out by their blood families finding other outcasts and forming their own families. One minute you’re laughing at the shade, the next minute you’re tearing up at the way these fierce bitches support each other. It should be cheesy, miraculously it is not.
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