“He’s saying that the curfew is creating the opportunity to update the LRT. They can build it at night. Construction crews are already being hired. Didn’t you read the interview with Rocco Basilang? It was in the Philippine Telegraph this morning.” Tita Dom gave me a concerned look. “Don’t you think you should book a flight back to the States?”

I had thought about this and then dismissed it. I could not bring myself to leave. “I’m finishing my book.” I shrugged. “I can handle a curfew.”

“You should still get a ticket now,” she said. “Rikki says that flights to the States are full for the next two months.”

But in my mind, I had crossed the Rubicon. I had already begun to envision a life here, a life with my family. A life with Chet in the belly of the snake. And how could I leave when Inchoy needed me? He and I were headed to Baguio the following week. Martial law had initially dissuaded us, then made it seem as good a time as any to escape Manila. We had decided to stick to the plan that Bibo had arranged, although now we would celebrate Inchoy’s birthday in honor of Bibo’s life. In another circumstance, we would have scattered Bibo’s ashes, but in this Catholic country, ashes had not been an option. I wondered if we could do something with Bibo’s hairbrush, which I had been carrying around in my bag, strangely unwilling to part with it.

I hadn’t been to Baguio in years. In my college days, when all Manila’s finest fled the city and the heat at Easter time, I had stayed at Jim and Cha Cha’s ten-bedroom chalet, heading every night to the Goldmine Disco at the Hyatt. The Hyatt was a five-star hotel, an opulent standard, with a great echoing lobby and a glass-and-brass elevator that would shoot one to the heavens with dizzying speed. Or maybe I was just dizzy, since at that time and in that place I was reliably drunk. This is how we spent the days leading to Easter. I remembered appearing on the edge of the dance floor, still hungover from the previous evening, and Chet saying to me: “Ting is risen!”

Jim and Cha Cha’s house, perched on a ravine with broad verandahs and views into the pine-strewn slopes, had slid into the valley in the earthquake of 1990. Much of Baguio had been destroyed in the 7.7 temblor, including the Hyatt and the disco: the setting of so many White Russian–soaked nights reduced to beam and rubble. For weeks, recovery crews had pulled bodies from the site. I remembered that two people had been rescued after being trapped for eleven days, their survival a reason to praise God. Of course, this was the same God who had buried them alive.

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