The Tesseract (8 page)

When the return fire finally came, Sean had already crawled across the carpet and was behind the teak bed. An exploratory bullet was the opening shot, punching through the door, drilling into the brickwork between the windows. Then every inanimate object in the room burst into life. The burned telephone leapt off the bedside table, pillows shuddered and spat feathers, cupboards swung open, glass shattered, fist-sized chunks of ceiling vaporized.

But nothing was finding Sean, curled on the floor with his arms over his head. There was no bullet with his name on it. And better yet, he had a plan of action. The very instant the shooting stopped or there was the faintest click of an empty chamber, he was going to be on his feet and covering the short sprint to the opposite wall. Aiming straight for the hole he’d clawed around the steel plate.

Seconds later, the click came. No nightmare, no treacle-syrup movement, nothing considered except objective and intention, leaving Sean with the mentality of a freight train. Unstoppable; anything in the way of a freight train would have to be insane.

This was in his way: crumbling plasterboard, peeling wallpaper facade, and a token structure of desiccated wooden slats. Asking to be obliterated, it gave way willingly.

Sean stumbled
out of his room and into the next one just as the shooting restarted. Plaster grit was in his eyes and nose, in his hair and between his teeth. He spat, panted, and blinked

Then he saw that he hadn’t stumbled into the next room after all—he was in a corridor. A second corridor on this level of Patay, lined with windows on one side and doors on the other, apparently running parallel to the first. By the light cast through the hole behind him and moonshine from the street outside, he could see down most of its length. There were chairs lying on their sides, folded mattresses, scattered refuse, newspaper pages. And at regular intervals, the corridor seemed to be segmented by jagged ridges and short spikes. It looked like the inside of a vast backbone, a newly discovered fossil.

The guns stopped again. Their magazines were empty, or possibly the door had been blown open by the last fusillade, and the Filipinos were already moving cautiously inside.

Sean took a step forward, then broke into a run. No sense in going forward slowly, and certainly none in going backward. Jumping over the segments and chairs, he registered other details. Under his feet, menthol-cigarette butts. Thousands of them, a year’s worth of emptied ashtrays, white filters heaped and spread like cauterized maggots. Above his head, missing
patches of ceiling through which a higher level of Patay could be glimpsed, darker and dustier.

As the end of the segmented corridor grew nearer, Sean found a moment to think. He had to get out of this corridor and into the other. It was the other that led to the stairwell, and the only way out of the building. And, seeing as the two corridors ran parallel, all he needed to do was duck into one of the doorways he was passing.

He ducked into the next doorway he passed. Ten or so feet to his right, the stairwell. Sixty feet to his left, under the still-swinging lightbulb, Don Pepe and Bubot lay outside the entrance to his room.

Two dead, thought Sean. Two alive.

He flew down the stairs
. Flew, in midair most of the way, his shoes making the barest touch on each step, just enough to control his descent.

Halfway between Patay’s first and ground floors, he heard the sound of Joe and Teroy coming down after him.

“Teroy, you are lucky that you are not a Japanese.”

Teroy looked puzzled. “Lucky, sir?”

“Very lucky. If you were a Japanese, you would be dead now.”

“Dead, sir?”

“Hara-kiri, Teroy. Suicide. Stabbed by your own sword, for shame that you made Mr. Sean spend even five minutes in this cockroach-infested carcass of a hotel.”

“Sir, I can only apologize again.”

“My point is that you can do
more
than apologize. But I suppose it is a good thing that the Filipinos are not like the Japanese. If they committed suicide every time they made a mistake, there wouldn’t be any of them left.”

“Very true, sir,” said Bubot.

“Eeh.” The mestizo sniffed reflectively. “Jojo. Knock.”

Jojo knocked.

It was unusual that there was no movement to be heard from inside the room. After a knock, you might expect to hear a chair scrape backward, or the sound of someone walking to open the door. Jojo glanced over his shoulder at Teroy to see if he had noticed, and he had. There was a slight frown on his forehead, and he was holding his gun hand away from his body, a few inches from where it would naturally hang.

Seconds passed and still the door remained closed, with no sign of its opening.

Don Pepe gestured for Jojo to knock again. Behind him, Jojo heard Teroy exhale slowly.

Jojo heard the latch
turn on the door in front of him, and as the door was yanked open, he felt the rush of air on his nose and lips. But the door slam—it came from the side, down the corridor. And it had been the kind of noise he had been waiting for, or expecting. So when it came, that was the direction in which he moved his head. To the side.

There was a hammer blow on his ears and a tight cone of sparks, etched into his peripheral vision even after his eyes had clamped shut. And an airless constriction in his chest, as if he
had dived into the icy water of Don Pepe’s indoor swimming pool, air-con chilled.

Eeeh!

“You see, Jojo, in this tropical Asian climate, it is all but impossible to immerse yourself in cold water. But in Europe, daily immersion in cold water is not only possible but a long-accepted aid to a healthy constitution.”

Eh.

“There are no churches in the Philippines. In Spain there are churches. Here, you have only…”

Ah.

“God in heaven, what have I done to…”

Suck.

“I said hands. Not hand.”

Old as any church that Jojo had ever seen.

“Jojo. Knock.”

The mestizo’s last words. That was the way it was.

Words filtered through the ringing in Jojo’s ears.

“Paré!
Are you hit
?”

Jojo’s head still pointed toward the slammed door.

“
Are you shot?
”

Too dazed to know if he’d been shot or not, he didn’t reply. He might have been shot. He didn’t have the vaguest idea what had happened over the past few seconds, so anything was possible.
And there was a strangely acute heat on the lower parts of his legs, around his shins and calves.

Jojo looked down and saw Bubot. The last time he had seen Bubot, he had been standing up. Now the
sip-sip
king had dropped to the floor and was lying like a Chinese beggar, knees folded neatly under the torso, face hidden, arms flopped out to catch spare change.

Bubot’s head was pouring blood onto Jojo’s trousers.

“
Move away from the fucking door!
” shouted Teroy.

But the only thing that moved was Jojo’s eyes, flicking sideways to Don Pepe.

“
The door
, paré!”

Don Pepe was slumped with his legs splayed out in front of him and his body half twisted, one shoulder leaning against the wall, keeping him from keeling over. His chin and neck and shirt collar were bright red. The splashes around his nose were even redder. Pale skin, never in the sunlight, never out of cover except after nightfall. The whisper had it:
A touch of sun would turn him black in a day
.

“
The door!
”

Teroy grabbed Jojo by the arm and yanked him backward.

“
He can shoot through!
”

“He?”

“The—” Teroy broke off. Maybe it was to catch a breath. He was breathing heavily, almost panting, and glittering sweat beads were forming over his face even as Jojo watched.

Mysteriously, Teroy started feeling around the belt line of Jojo’s trousers.

“Gun?”

“It’s…it’s in the car.” An odd panic slid into Jojo’s gut. Familiar, after a second or two. This was his nightmare coming true: The moment he actually needed to use his gun, he was letting Teroy down. “
Kumpadre
, I left it…the glove compartment. I…didn’t…”

“In the car,” repeated Teroy, anger flashing across his face. Then he nodded, wiped the sweat off his upper lip, and reached somewhere inside his jacket. Pulled out a small revolver. “Okay,” he said, flipping the safety catch as he handed it over. “It’s okay.”

Jojo took the revolver silently.

“Now listen,
paré
. On three, we’re going to shoot at the door. We’re going to shoot at the door before he does. You use
all
the bullets. You
keep
shooting until all the bullets are gone.”

“Shoot into the room.”

“Into his room. On three.”

“Yes.”

“You’re ready?”

“Yes.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

Teroy crossed himself with the barrel of his automatic. “One.”

One, two, three
. Noise, blood, Bubot begging for small change, Don Pepe sitting with his sunless skin and slick red jaw—these things were beyond understanding. But numbers emptied the mind, leaving room for other thoughts.

A single thought, as his thumb turned the wedding ring on his left hand.

Just past eight
o’clock, Miranda would be working on her jigsaw. A big one, perhaps two feet square when complete. He’d gotten home early the previous Saturday and found all the little pieces, scattered on the floor at the foot of their bed. Jojo had been surprised, and wondered why she’d bought it. Seeing her crouched over the box, studying the picture for clues, he’d had to ask himself: What would drive her to buy a jigsaw?

“Miranda,” he’d said anxiously. “Am I neglecting you?”

She didn’t look up. “No.”

“Then why did you buy a jigsaw?”

“I didn’t buy it. Nana Conché bought it for her grandson, but he didn’t like it so she was disappointed. She threatened to throw it away. I thought that was a shame.”

“Oh.”

“I thought it might be fun to make.”

Yes, Jojo had reflected, I can see that—remembering the quiet and methodical way she’d worked out how to reload his magazine.

“I was afraid you’d think I was neglecting you. Since I’ve become the mestizo’s driver…working so many nights.”

Miranda still didn’t look up. She’d found two pieces that matched. “Well, that’s why I thought the jigsaw might be fun. To pass time, waiting for you to get home.”

“Ah.”

“Why don’t you help me make it?”

“Okay.”

“Good. You’ll see, there are so many pieces that it is really quite difficult. Probably too hard for Nana Conché’s grandson. He would only have gotten frustrated.”

Jojo knelt beside her and started hunting for a piece with two straight edges. “We should start with the corners. That’s the way.”

Miranda tutted. “I know. I’ve found them already. I have them here.”

“Ah yes.”

“There’s dinner for you under the plate over there.”

“Have you eaten?”

“An hour ago.”

“Well…” Jojo shrugged. “Let’s just work on this.”

“One.”

His thumb turned the wedding ring.

“Two,” said Teroy.

Jojo left the ring alone and gripped his gun with both hands.

“Three.”

Shoulder to shoulder with Teroy, eyes screwed against the sparks and spinning chips of wood, Jojo had a bad feeling about his arms. They felt untrustworthy and oddly disconnected
from the rest of his body. For the moment they were doing everything he asked—keeping upright and as steady as the recoil would allow—but for the next moment, there were no guarantees. They seemed on the verge of rebellion, threatening to seize up and become useless.

It was as though they were aware of something that he wasn’t. If it wasn’t for the convulsion of shock each time the pistol kicked, and the blankness that followed, he felt sure he’d know what the thing was.

No recoil. The chambers were empty. Teroy pulled him to the side of the doorway. Then he grabbed the gun out of Jojo’s hand, reloading it before he reloaded his own, sliding in the new bullets with the same unthinking confidence as a street conjuror rolling a coin between his knuckles.

Teroy said something, loudly, judging by the twist of his mouth. Wasted on Jojo, because directly after the word “Three” and the explosion of shooting, he had gone completely deaf. He couldn’t even hear his own voice, shouting, “I can’t hear you,” at Teroy, who seemed to be equally deaf.

The pistol was thrust back into Jojo’s hands. Teroy held a finger in the air and was staring hard at him with a look of urgent expectancy.

A second finger joined it. The peace sign.

Peace sign?

“
I can’t hear you!
”

Third finger. Oh, thought Jojo numbly. It was starting again.

Again, Jojo had the feeling in his arms. But this time, despite the shock of the kickback, an image was starting to gel. Almost crystallizing in the gaps between the gunshots,
splintering, then reconstructing itself. Each reconstruction a little quicker and more efficient than the last.

Green and blue
.

Jungle around him, blue sky through it, and a clearing ahead.

In the clearing, an almost ordered scattering of slabs and boxes. A group of men in black suits and women with black parasols, gathered around a building.

A large building for the provinces, though small for a city, doorless and windowless, whitewashed stone, ringed by an iron fence.

In this gap between the gunshots, hot sun on the back of Jojo’s neck.

The Chinese mausoleums were spectacular. Huge and ornate, covered in flourishes and inlaid marble—as opposed to thigh-high boxes, rain-stained, with little inscription beyond a series of dates and names. But spectacular though they were, there was another that put all of theirs to shame. Don Pepe’s: the size of a small church, positioned in the very center of the graveyard, surrounded by free-standing statues of chubby kids and the Blessed Virgin, and ringed by its own exclusive cast-iron fence.