If Abu Sayyaf had kidnapped him, why hadn’t they asked for a ransom? Laird had made the news and the photograph of him taken at Jim and Cha Cha’s house was being circulated, one of many stories being broadcast across the airwaves. I wondered when the foreign press would pick it up and if that would pressure someone to do something. Would this reach the top? Would the United States become involved, or would this just be another strange disappearance, a Filipino Picnic at Hanging Rock with Laird slowly stepping across a stream and into oblivion.

Tita Rosa was arranging her papers to make one of her frequent trips to the bank. She sifted through the stacks on her desk, assembling the files. “Ting, can you see the rubber bands? I think they’re on the shelf.”

I handed her the nest of bands and sat on the rocker. I picked up Tito Iñigo and seated him on my lap. Tita Rosa started to bundle pesos, dropping them in a woven straw shopping bag. “You know his parents are coming.”

“Whose parents?”

“Ay dios mio. Whose parents? Laird’s.”

“Do you think he’s dead?”

“What use is thinking like that? He’s in the hands of God somewhere. Maybe he was hiking and fell. Isn’t that what crazy Americans do? Go walking all over the place by themselves where there isn’t a path, falling into ravines, breaking their legs?”

“That is what they do.” I patted Tito Iñigo’s head.

She looked at me with some impatience. “Why are you so depressed? Who was this friend of Inchoy’s?”

“No one important. Just someone I liked.” My aunt didn’t know that Inchoy was gay, and I was hesitant to talk about Bibo to someone so skilled at reading between the lines.

“And how did he die?”

“Accident.”

“Accident? Why so mysterious? Did he kill himself?”

“They’re still figuring it out,” I said, which was both true and untrue. “I don’t have any black and I have to go to the wake today.”

“Get a dress from Carmi. If you go right now you can catch her before she leaves for Punta Fuego.”

The car ride to the wake in Tondo was going to take the requisite two hours. The Grab driver was playing a soap opera on the radio, which offered its usual diet of despair and hope. I listened to how Mario was missing his wife, who had gone to Dubai and hadn’t written him in three weeks. Their child was sick and people were trying to figure out how to reach her. A neighborhood girl had been discovered while selling flowers on the street and was now going to be an actress. That much I could understand.