As long as it takes, he says.

Tomas has not told the producer what to do with the armor he is holding, and the man awkwardly watches us, waiting to be told what to do with it. He has a bald spot I never noticed before, but in the sun you can see his pale scalp glowing through his dark thinning hair. You gonna be an hour? I say.

I don’t know.

Mom wants to know.

He hesitates, giving me a look that says this is none of my business. He shrugs and says maybe an hour.

I go in and tell this to our mother.

An hour?

Yeah.

She looks at the clock. It is half past noon. From outside a German word comes through the window and then the sound of Heinrich barking.

Why? I say.

They’re supposed to be here at one.

She pretends she is worried about having Tomas free to greet Tita Dina, though really she does not want her sister to see this dog attacking Tomas in our backyard.

You want me to tell him to finish up? I ask.

No, she says, returning to her dishes with trembling hands.

VI

After our father left us, Uncle Betino kept trying to get our mother to bring us back to Manila so we would be disciplined and educated and Asian, but she did not want to leave America.

Nowadays she threatens to return to the Philippines because American wives will not take care of their mothers-in-law, but the last time we went there our mother did not seem to miss the country all that much. She complained about the heat and smelly showers, even the ones in Uncle Betino’s Forbes Park mansion. Relatives took us on trips to Palawan, Quezon, Visaya, and other islands, and when we checked into the hotels each night she unpacked clean sheets she’d brought from America and made us fold them over and sleep in them. She pushed the beds away from the wall so insects would not crawl onto the sheets. She warned us not to eat unpackaged food from local stores, and washed her hands after touching shopkeepers at the markets. In the evenings, when we returned to the room, she threw herself on the chair and sighed.

Manila smells like cockroaches, she said, and scrunched up her nose.

Why are you so tired? Tomas said. He was sitting on a bed, reading a book by James Michener.

It’s hot.

But you grew up here, he said. You should be used to it.

Well I’m not, Tomas. She was plucking off her damp stockings, reluctant to do this in front of us.

Take a shower.

The bathroom’s dirty.

Didn’t you have dirty bathrooms when you were a kid?

I’ve lived in the States longer than the Philippines, she said firmly. I’m American now.

You don’t talk like it.