I sat up slowly. On the table, the bottle of whiskey was significantly diminished but not empty. I reached for my phone. It was noon. The previous evening was coming back in flashes, some of which I doubted as real. I remembered Inchoy going through his drawer as I exited the bathroom, him shutting it with drama as if caught at something. And then me rifling through his underwear when he was in the bathroom, because he’d seemed so suspicious. There had been a gun. Was I making this up? I had taken the gun and switched it with Bibo’s hairbrush. If this had indeed happened, the gun was now in my handbag. “I’ll order room service,” I said. “We should eat before we start to sober up. What do you want?”

“What are you getting?” He still had not moved nor opened his eyes.

“Tapsilog?”

“Okay,” he said. “Do you think they’re still serving breakfast?”

“I’ll ask nicely,” I said, which was a joke with us, because in situations like this I didn’t ask nicely because it didn’t work.

Inchoy soon managed to crawl out of bed and into the bathroom. My bag was on the floor beside the nightstand and I peeked inside. Yes, there was a gun in there. I wondered if it was loaded but wasn’t sure how to check and was worried that if I messed with it, the thing would go off. I held it gingerly. The gun was small, couldn’t have weighed much more than a pound, and looked as if it were designed to fit in a pocket. This was nothing like the competition pistol Inchoy had back in college when he was on the shooting team. This other must have been the gun that Inchoy had wanted to give to Bibo back when it still might have mattered. But would it really have made a difference? Would Bibo have had time to fish it out of her knockoff Louis Vuitton? Would she have had the stomach to use it on her assailants?