fiction

from Pasquinades
by Adrian Cristobal

A Red Letter Day

MR. MEDINA (he was not known by any other name) was a quiet man who ran a radio repair shop which blared the whole day in our neighborhood of few radios to the annoyance of his landlady of powerful connections who took him to court as a public nuisance, a case which dragged on and on until the high school graduation of Ruby's daughter, Vi, an event of great celebration for which he donated the sound system, Sago and our gang the drinks, gin, rum, and beer (prompting the Mayhaligue sewing circle to remark, rather snidely, that the Merrymen could be trusted to donate only what they could consume), and Ruby had only to take care of the food, which she did extravagantly, as we never saw such an abundance of prawns, oysters, lechon, before or seen, it being a good week for her at Bayside where she worked, as it was then called, as hostess (a more honest and more beautiful distinction than today's hospitality girl), not to mention the generosity of a certain friend from the B.I.R. who came in the latest Nik-Nik shirt which shone as brightly as the diamond-studded bracelet with a large letter N on his wrist and a ring of innumerable carats around his fat finger, making the eyes of the women bulge as they pretended to admire one another's dress, all done with grace and profit by D'Dominga, who, however, reserved for Ruby and herself the silk, clinging dresses with the deep front, which had the young men barely out of their teens making a long queue for the privilege of hugging them tightly in a dance, making them bulge as well, while, we, of course, settled for a long night of boisterous drinking, in which much to our surprise, thinking that he was a teetotaler (a totalitarian, as Asin put it), Mr. Medina joined, telling us, as he steadily kept the pace, of his days as a constabulary noncommissioned officer and a guerrilla fighter, his wild adventures with barrio lassies and the number of Japanese soldiers and Makapili collaborators he had killed, something quite amazing in so quiet and gentle a man, which Sago, putting on a sage look as he sometimes loved to do, said was understandable, for the gentlest are the bravest (perhaps, as Ompong snickered out of hearing, alluding to himself as well), a sentiment heard by Ruby who forthwith asked an awkwardly protesting Mr. Medina to dance to "My Happiness," which turned out to be his favorite song, as it was the days of such sentimental hits as "Tennessee Waltz," "Whispering Hope," "My Destiny," and my own samba favorite, "El Cayman" (to which I imposed perfectly Longfellow's poem which goes: "Tell me not in mournful numbers/ Life is but an empty dream/ For the soul is dead that slumbers/ And things are not what they seem/ Life is real/ Life is earnest/ And the grave is not its goal/ Dust thou art/ To dust returnest/ Was not spoken of the soul"), a piece danced at arm's length but licensing a punctuated pressing of the chest, a maneuver I managed many times with Ruby, who took it rather good-naturedly, for it was known that the Merrymen were superb at street-fighting but all mere bravado in sex, more showy than serious, except for Asin, because as Ruby said, he panted and his palms got watery while dancing, which Ompong in turn attributed to much thinking and reading till midnight, but in the dance with Mr. Medina, we saw Ruby giving him the Bayside treatment, grinding and bumping her hips very slightly but to good effect, now and then pressing her breasts against him, her left hand clutched around his neck, her whole body undulating, and Mr. Medina laughed and talked with her, which we thought was gentlemanly, not wanting anyone else to think of it as anything more than comradely fun, but the young bucks were obviously jealous, wishing that they were in Mr. Medina's shoes at that moment, and so it went on, after which he joined us again, the very image of ecstatic happiness, which made us think, perhaps, that he had won the case against the landlady, to which he replied that the judge was going to hand his decision the next morning, and we wished him well, and he said, he hoped that the judge would be fair, and Sago said that he never heard anything good about that judge who was trying the case and he proposed storming the landlady with powerful connections as a proper climax to the wild evening, but just then Ruby turned off the sound system, not to end the evening, she said, but to introduce for a few moments her friend from the B.I.R. with diamonds, who immediately stood up and combed his hair, grabbed the microphone and started saying that he loved to go to gatherings of like this, where everybody was natural, which Asin instantly interpreted as going slumming, breaking bread with the lower classes, outlaws, outsiders, and Mr. Medina agreed, and he led the long and loud applause to drown out the snob's voice, encouraging him to end his speech and saying, recognizing the hostility, his good-night to Ruby, who smiled at us, indicating she understood and that the man was an ass, for which Mr. Medina kissed her full on the mouth and said he loved her with all his heart even if his wife and kids were listening at the moment though they were not, they were fast asleep, and going over to us, seeing that Sago was pouring rum all over Rudy's head because he refused to drink some more, said that Sago should do the same to him because he wanted to drink and drink until he fell on his face, for he had to be bright and sober the next morning for the judge, a desire which all of us quickly gratified, until he, indeed, passed out, and we carried him to his shop, then returned to our dancing and drinking until everybody, bleary-eyed, sweating, and exhausted, starting retiring at dawn, with Vi happy as a lark and Ruby, maternally pleased, kissed all of us and begged us, as if she had to, to clean up the party place, the passageway surrounded by apartments collectively known as the Looban, by which time it was already nine in the morning and we saw Mr. Medina spic and span in a coat-and-tie (another surprise in such a simple man, but then Sago said one must be well-dressed in a courtroom) wave at us, raising his hands in victory, disappear into a taxi (another surprise, as no one took a taxi in Mayhaligue except the movie bit actor who visited his mistress in Magdalena) and then reappear an hour later in another taxi, come out with his wife and children who walked meekly to the church as he ordered, and then ran up to the landlady's apartment, from which we distinctly heard two shots, and then we saw Mr. Medina go back to his shop, then heard another shot, and the story was the judge had given Mr. Medina a bum decision but apparently the quiet man was prepared for it, for he took out his .45 automatic from his guerrilla days, shot the judge three times on the head, took a taxi, diverted his family, shot the landlady and then put the handgun to his mouth in a shattering climax, after a grand graduation party, to a quiet life.

16 April 1989

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