Manila, Mindoro, Manila - Part One (of Six)
You scoop the water and pour it on your head.
Manila
The air outside Ninoy Aquino International Airport smelled like diesel, chicken, fruit, and labor. Matt Lang held a bag in each hand as he looked for Andrea in the crowd of people waiting to greet the new arrivals. Andrea was a head taller than the rest of the crowd and the only one with long, blond hair pulled back into a ponytail. Her arms were folded across her chest; her head was tilted to one side. Matt thought she looked tired.
When Andrea saw him she straightened her head, took a deep breath in, and waved her hand over her head as if she needed to make herself more noticeable. The people around her cleared the way for her to greet Matt Lang with a hug. A few people clapped. An older woman, who neither of them knew, took their picture.
Andrea was staying in a small apartment off a courtyard behind a church. The apartment had a kitchen/dining room, a bedroom, and a bathroom. The kitchen/dining room had a sink, a water cooler, a hotplate, a plug-in teakettle, a table, and two chairs. The bedroom had a mattress and piles of books on the floor. The bathroom had a toilet with no seat and a large garbage bin filled with water. The bin of water had a bucket floating in it. Overhead fluorescent lights lit each room.
So this is it, Andrea said.
Matt saw a mouse run behind the sink. He kept the news to himself.
He said it was nice and tried to believe his own words.
You’re freaked out.
I’m not freaked out, I’m fucking exhausted.
You can put your things in the bedroom. Are you hungry? Thirsty?
So thirsty.
Matt put his things in the bedroom and took a seat at the table. The room was not air-conditioned and he was well on his way to sweating through every inch of his t-shirt. Andrea filled a plastic cup with water from the water cooler.
Is it safe?
The water?
Yeah, is it safe to drink?
It’s from the cooler. It’s delivered.
Yeah, but —
It’s safe.
Matt Lang had never left the United States before. In fact, he had never been further west than Iowa or further south than Kentucky. By his own estimation, he spent eighty-five percent of his time in Pennsylvania. He was born there, went to school there, and now he lived and taught high school history there, in Erie. When Andre asked him to come visit, he had to ask her how one goes about getting a passport.
He drank the water in one take. His shirt felt like moss, attached to his skin permanently. He felt like a creature not made for this new world, like he had gills on his back that were fighting for oxygen in a hostile atmosphere. He drank two more cups. He wanted to touch her, to kiss her, but his sweatiness disturbed him and he assumed it would have the same effect on her.
I feel disgusting. I need a shower.
Um, I don’t really have a shower so much.
He looked to the water-filled garbage bin with the bucket floating therein. Andrea confirmed his suspicions.
You scoop the water and pour it on your head.
Minutes later, as he stood naked before the bucket, he couldn’t help but feel that, for the first time since he was four, he was going to fail at taking a bath. He dipped the bucket into the water, raised it over his head, and dumped it.
There was a frozen moment between when the water first hit and when he released a scream unworthy of a full-grown man. He was certain he had died and his soul had been ripped from his chest. How could this water be so cold, given that it was sitting in a room so hot? What kind of sinister physics was at play? The water shattered any former frame of reference and washed it down the drain.
Andrea poked her head in the bathroom. Are you okay?
He needed time to form his words. His testicles were somewhere just below his lungs.
It’s so cold.
I forgot to tell you.
Jesus Christ.
You’ll get used to it.
What the hell was wrong with her? You’ll get used to stabbing yourself in the heart with an icicle? Maybe she was fucking with him. This was some Southeast Asian hazing ritual. He would step out of the bathroom to a room full of people laughing at him because he fell for it. Then he would be taken to the real shower, a proper shower, a shower that had some way to regulate the temperature.
While he was drying off, minutes after almost dying from arctic shock, he felt the heat crawl back in, first through the back of his neck and soon through his whole body and then back out in the form of still more sweat. He was dry for, at most, one full second. He didn’t put on a shirt. He sat at the table and tried not to move, tried to not even take deep breaths.
If you’re still too hot, there’s AC in the bedroom.
That sounds amazing.
Just pull the door shut.
He turned on the window unit and lay down on the mattress. He fell asleep with the light on.
Thank you for reading. Up next:
Matt Lang woke up at two-thirty in the morning, which was two-thirty in afternoon in Erie.