"I've seen people barfing in the urinals; I've heard them shitting their brains out in the toilet stalls," Bienvenido warned him.
"Here? At the Sofitel? And you're sure it's the buffet?" Juan Diego asked.
"Maybe the food sits out forever. Who knows how long the shrimp has been lying around at room temperature? I'll bet it's the buffet!" Bienvenido exclaimed.
"I see," was all Juan Diego said. Too bad, he thought--the Sofitel looked as if it might be nice. Miriam must have liked the hotel for some reason; maybe she'd never tried the buffet. Maybe Bienvenido was wrong.
They drove away from the Sofitel without Juan Diego setting foot inside the place. The other hotel Miriam had suggested was the Ascott.
"You should have mentioned the Ascott first," Bienvenido said, sighing. "It's on Glorietta, back in Makati City. The Ayala Center is right there--you can get anything there," Bienvenido told him.
"What do you mean?" Juan Diego asked.
"Miles and miles of shopping--it's a shopping mall. There are escalators and elevators--there's every kind of restaurant," Bienvenido was saying.
Cripples aren't crazy about shopping malls, Juan Diego was thinking, but all he said was: "And the hotel itself, the Ascott? No reported deaths by buffet?"
"The Ascott is fine--you should have stayed there the first time," Bienvenido told him.
"Don't get me started on should have, Bienvenido," Juan Diego said; his novels had been called should-have and what-if propositions.
"Next time, then," Bienvenido said.
They drove back to Makati City, so that Juan Diego could make an in-person reservation at the Ascott for his return trip to Manila. Juan Diego would ask Clark French to cancel his reservation at the Makati Shangri-La for him; after the aquarium Armageddon, all parties would doubtless be relieved by the return-trip cancellation.
You took an elevator from the street-level entrance of the Ascott to the hotel lobby, which was on an upper floor. At the elevators, both at street level and in the lobby, there were a couple of anxious-looking security guards with two bomb-sniffing dogs.
He didn't tell Bienvenido, but Juan Diego adored the dogs. As he made his reservation, Juan Diego could imagine Miriam checking in at the Ascott. It was a long walk to the registration desk from where the elevators opened into the lobby; Juan Diego knew that the security guards would be watching Miriam the whole way. You had to be blind, or a bomb-sniffing dog, not to watch Miriam walk away from you--you would be compelled to watch her every step of the way.
What is happening to me? Juan Diego wondered again. His thoughts, his memories--what he imagined, what he dreamed--were all jumbled up. And he was obsessed with Miriam and Dorothy.
Juan Diego sank into the rear seat of the limo like a stone into an unseen pond.
"We end up in Manila," Dorothy had said; Juan Diego wondered if she had somehow meant everyone. Maybe all of us end up in Manila, Juan Diego was thinking.
One Single Journey. It sounded like a title. Was it something he'd written, or something he intended to write? The dump reader couldn't remember.
"I would marry this hippie boy, if he smelled better and stopped singing that cowboy song," Lupe had said. ("Oh, let me die!" she'd also said.)
How he cursed the names the nuns at Ninos Perdidos had called his mother! Juan Diego regretted that he'd called her names, too. "Desesperanza"--"Hopelessness," the nuns had called Esperanza. "Desesperacion"--"Desperation," they'd called her.
"Lo siento, madre," Juan Diego said softly to himself in the rear seat of the limo--so softly that Bienvenido didn't hear him.
Bienvenido couldn't tell if Juan Diego was awake or asleep. The driver had said something about the airport for domestic flights in Manila--how the checkin lines arbitrarily closed, then spontaneously reopened, and there were extra fees for everything. But Juan Diego didn't respond.
Whether he was awake or asleep, the poor guy seemed out of it, and Bienvenido decided he would walk Juan Diego through the checkin process, despite the hassle he would have to go through with the car.
"It's too cold!" Juan Diego suddenly cried. "Fresh air, please! No more air-conditioning!"
"Sure--you're the boss," Bienvenido told him; he shut off the AC and automatically opened the limo's windows. They were near the airport, passing through another shantytown, when Bienvenido stopped the car at a red light.
Before Bienvenido could warn him, Juan Diego found himself beseeched by begging children--their skinny arms, palms up, were suddenly thrust inside the open rear windows of the stopped limo.
"Hello, children," Juan Diego said, as if he'd been expecting them. (You cannot take the scavenging out of scavengers; los pepenadores carry their picking and sorting with them, long after they've stopped looking for aluminum or copper or glass.)
Before Bienvenido could stop him, Juan Diego was fumbling around with his wallet.
"No, no--give them nothing," Bienvenido said. "I mean, not anything. Sir, Juan Diego, please--it will never stop!"