“So what? I was twenty. But you had to go to the States and get your fancy degree, write your books, go sleeping with American guys, and then marry one. So you could sit in a bar getting drunk on beer and laughing, ha, ha, ha, with all those Americans with their big teeth.”

“You are forgetting that my father is an American.”

“Oh, I know that, Ting. I know everything there is to know about you. I know you were having an affair with your husband’s best friend and that man is now back with his wife—”

“Where did you hear that?”

“—and you’re here with your old titas because they don’t care if you act like a child. They like it. But they’re not going to live forever and you, Ting, probably have forty years left. What are you going to do?”

I went to stand by the door. I could feel the stiffness in my posture and I was glaring at him. “I don’t expect you to understand,” I said. “How could you? All you know is Manila. In the United States, I am an award-winning writer. I’m respected. I like my life in the States. I have friends.”

“Your friends? Girls who look for men online, drinking vodka drinks with stupid names? Is that what you want?”

“Could you please text Top Gun and ask him to drive me home?”

“No one there really knows you.”

“How would you know?”

“I know you,” said Chet. “I know you, and no one else really does.”

IX

IX

I spent the next week nagged by Chet’s insolence. He seemed to think that my separation had created a vacancy that needed to be filled, as if I were incapable of being alone. As if a single woman were something to be fixed. He had made an insane assumption, bypassing any notions of romantic feeling and moving straight to his acquisition of me—as if I were a horse or a piece of furniture. And I wanted to know how he had learned about the affair, when I hadn’t mentioned it to anyone he knew, not even Inchoy.

I walked into the kitchen, got a glass of water, drank it down rapidly, set the glass by the sink, and began pacing around the area by the front door. Tita Rosa was watching from her perch in the study, where she was entering figures in an enormous, clothbound ledger.

“Ting,” she said. “What is wrong with you? You’ve been walking around in circles and muttering under your breath and I keep losing track of the numbers.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ll stop.”

“Why don’t you go to the Santo Tomas? Miggie’s French class was canceled and Mannie’s just sitting there in the driveway. Or gambling with the security guard, which should be stopped before he loses all his money.”

“You want me to go now?”