"I like Bienvenido," Juan Diego told the young man.
"I'll be your driver everywhere you go in Manila--not just this trip," Bienvenido said. "Your former student asked for me--that's the person who said you were a writer," the driver explained. "I'm sorry I haven't read your books. I don't know if you're famous--"
"I'm not famous," Juan Diego quickly said.
"Bienvenido Santos is famous--he was famous here, anyway," the driver said. "He's dead now. I've read all his books. They're pretty good. But I think it's a mistake to name your kid after a writer. I grew up knowing I had to read Mr. Santos's books; there were a lot of them. What if I'd hated them? What if I didn't like to read? There's a burden attached to it--that's all I'm saying," Bienvenido said.
"I understand you," Juan Diego told him.
"Do you have any kids?" the driver asked.
"No, I don't," Juan Diego said, but there was no easy answer to this question--that was another story, and Juan Diego didn't like to think about it. "If I do have any children, I won't name them after writers," was all he said.
"I already know one of your destinations while you're here," his driver was saying. "I understand you want to go to the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial--"
"Not this trip," Juan Diego interrupted him. "My time in Manila is too short this trip, but when I come back--"
"Whenever you want to go there, it's fine with me, Senor Guerrero," Bienvenido quickly said.
"Please call me Juan Diego--"
"Sure, if that's what you like," the driver rejoined. "My point is, Juan Diego, everything's been taken care of--it's all been arranged. Whatever you want, at whatever time--"
"I may change hotels--not this time, but when I come back," Juan Diego blurted out.
"Whatever you say," Bienvenido told him.
"I've heard bad things about this hotel," Juan Diego said.
"In my job, I hear lots of bad things. About every hotel!" the young driver said.
"What have you heard about the Makati Shangri-La?" Juan Diego asked him.
The traffic was at a standstill; the hubbub in the congested street had the sort of chaotic atmosphere Juan Diego associated with a bus station, not an airport. The sky was a dirty beige, the air damp and fetid, but the air-conditioning in the limo was too cold.
"It's a matter of what you can believe, you know," Bienvenido answered. "You hear everything."
"That was my problem with the novel--believing it," Juan Diego said.
"What novel?" Bienvenido asked.
"Shangri-La is an imaginary land in a novel called Lost Horizon. I think it was written in the thirties--I forget who wrote it," Juan Diego said. (Imagine hearing someone say that about a book of mine! he was thinking; it would be like hearing you had died, Juan Diego thought.) He was wondering why the conversation with the limo driver was so exhausting, but just then there was an opening in the traffic, and the car moved swiftly ahead.
Even bad air is better than air-conditioning, Juan Diego decided. He opened a window, and the dirty-beige air blew on his face. The haze of smog suddenly reminded him of Mexico City, which he didn't want to be reminded of. And the traffic-choked, bus-terminal atmosphere of the airport summoned Juan Diego's boyhood memory of the buses in Oaxaca; proximity to the buses seemed contaminating. But, in his adolescent memories, those streets south of the zocalo were contaminated--Zaragoza Street particularly, but even those streets on the way to Zaragoza Street from Lost Children and the zocalo. (After the nuns were asleep, Juan Diego and Lupe used to look for Esperanza on Zaragoza Street.)
"Maybe one of the things I've heard about the Makati Shangri-La is imaginary," Bienvenido ventured to say.
"What would that be?" Juan Diego asked the driver.
Cooking smells blew in the open window of the moving car. They were passing a kind of shantytown, where the traffic slowed; bicycles were weaving between the cars--children, barefoot and shirtless, darted into the street. The dirt-cheap jeepneys were packed with people; the jeepneys cruised with their headlights turned off, or the headlights were burned out, and the passengers sat close together on benches like church pews. Perhaps Juan Diego thought of church pews because the jeepneys were adorned with religious slogans.
GOD IS GOOD! one proclaimed. GOD'S CARE FOR YOU IS APPARENT, another said. He'd just arrived in Manila, but Juan Diego was already zeroing in on a sore subject: the Spanish conquerors and the Catholic Church had been to the Philippines before him; they'd left their mark. (He had a limo driver named Bienvenido, and the jeepneys--the lowest of low-income transportation--were plastered with advertisements for God!)
"There's something wrong with the dogs," Bienvenido said.
"The dogs? What dogs?" Juan Diego asked.
"At the Makati Shangri-La--the bomb-sniffing dogs," the young driver explained.