“Tita Dom, you are as bad as Tita Rosa. I could have brought Inchoy.”

“Remi called me this morning and asked me what I was doing, and then she was saying that Laird would like to go to a play, and you know, one thing led to another.” She gave me a guilty look. “What could I say? Laird is staying in Malate. Besides, they’ll be singing and dancing around, so you won’t have to talk to him.”

“Singing? Is this a musical?”

Tonio and Meli started giggling and Tita Dom joined in. They were all guilty.

“Oh, for pity’s sake,” I said. “Fine.”

Luke looked confused. He was only ten and didn’t know about my musical aversion. “Can we go to Jollibee?” he asked.

“Sure,” said Tita Dom, “but just the drive-through. I don’t think we have time to stop and eat.” We had allotted the usual two hours, but with the reliable traffic and the exceptional rain, we could be cutting it close. A Jollibee was soon located and after the standard order, which I yelled into the speaker in the shelter of a concrete overhang, we returned to the pounding rain of the street and the ceaseless splashing made by the tires as they pulled through the inches-deep water. My aunt, paper bag in hand, tendered the burgers.

The play, now revealed to be a musical, was Obra ni Juan, about the artist Juan Luna, who, in addition to painting and fomenting revolution, was also known for having murdered his wife. Juan Luna’s most famous painting was Spoliarium, a work that had won him the gold medal in the Madrid Exposiciones in 1884. Another painting, Peuple et Rois, was posthumously entered in the Saint Louis Exposition, where it earned a gold medal, while around the corner, the Bontoc were eating dog—at regular hours—for tourists. I wondered how the play—no, musical—was going to handle the fact that Juan Luna was both a national hero and a murderer. I wondered if it would be a comedy.

Mannie pulled the minivan into the covered drive in front of the auditorium and we spilled out like soldiers from a helicopter. The rain was so heavy that you couldn’t make out the drops, and its pounding on the roof and exercising of the gutters was deafening. “Ay naku!” exclaimed my aunt. We pressed into the crowded lobby, which was slowly emptying into the auditorium.

“Do you see Laird?” asked Tita Dom.

“No. Let’s leave a ticket for him at the desk?” I said. “We’ll say to give it to the tall, joyless Fil-Am.”

“Okay,” said Meli. She took a ticket from my tita Dom and headed to a table, where two polished college girls sat looking excited and poised and wholly without purpose.

“I guess we should find our seats,” said Tita Dom.