to the exit at the back. He grasped a steel hanger bar and swung down to the pavement. As soon as he let go of the bar, the jeepney pulled away, enveloping him in a cloud of blue exhaust smoke. He stepped onto the crowded sidewalk, out of the path of an onrushing bus.
He took out the map, studied it, trying to orient himself. He was at the intersection of Buendia and Taft avenues. The instructions said that he should cross Taft. But the signals weren’t working. Taft Avenue was a coursing river of traffic, three lanes in each direction. Somehow pedestrians were picking their way through, finding imperceptible gaps in the headlong flow.
The dash across the avenue seemed suicidal. Ronnie thought of how he had long wished to come to Manila, the adventure it would be. Now he wanted to be anywhere but here—anywhere but this sidewalk, with the instructions in his hand that said CROSS TAFT AVE.
Then he reminded himself that he was here for a purpose. This was for Marivic. He was going to clear up this Optimo bullshit.
He moved up to the edge of the sidewalk. He scanned the oncoming stream of vehicles, judging speed and distance, and at the first blink of an opening he stepped out into the street.
“You don’t remember me,” an old man said to Mendonza. “But I remember you.” The man was no more than five feet tall, wispy thin. Mendonza was almost a foot taller, thick necked and burly. But the old man reached out and touched his cheek and fondly tousled his hair as if he were a child.
Apparently Mendonza had visited San Felipe with his mother when he was six years old. He didn’t remember it, but it seemed to be a vivid memory for everyone in the village who was alive at that time, and they had come out to see him now. More than an hour after they had arrived in the village, Favor and Mendonza hadn’t yet spoken to Lorna Valencia about her missing daughter. The first visitors had appeared before Lorna finished boiling water for coffee, and soon there were so many that Lorna moved them all outside. She put out chairs for Favor and Mendonza under the shade of a big tree, and the villagers gathered around them.
They were friendly with Favor, and curious, but he knew that they mostly cared about Mendonza. They fawned over him, they cooed over the snapshots of his wife and children that he took from his wallet to show around. And one after the other they all approached him to speak about his childhood visit and to discuss their mutual lineage. Nearly everyone in the village was related to everyone else. Mendonza, by being distantly related to one of them through his mother, was in fact related to them all. As far as they were concerned, he was a child of San Felipe, and this was a homecoming.
Favor wondered how it must feel, that sense of belonging.
He got up after a while and went into the house. Lorna Valencia kept a neat home. It sat at the edge of a jungle and was surrounded by bare earth, but the furniture was spotless and the floors gleamed. Favor went over to a wall in the front room that was covered in family photographs. The photos were mounted on wood plaques and preserved under clear-coat varnish. Two children, a girl and a boy, dominated the collection. They appeared in various ages, usually together, toddlers through teenagers, with the younger children gradually appearing in the more recent photos.
Favor turned when he sensed movement at the door. It was Lorna, carrying glasses on a tray. She put down the tray and joined him at the wall.
“This is my family,” she said. She pointed to one of the photos, a man standing on the deck of a ship. “My late husband, chief mate on a freighter. Not so many photographs of him. He was gone so much.”
“And the missing girl?”
“Marivic is her name. Here. With Ronnie. My two firstborn.”
“Twins?”
“Yes, twins. They’ve always been very close.”
The most recent photo showed them as near adults, standing at the doorway of the cottage. She was shy and pretty. Her brother was darker, sun bronzed, almost a head taller.
Lorna said, “They’re trying to tell me that she ran off. I don’t believe it. She wouldn’t do that.”
“I’d like to hear about it,” Favor said.
“Good,” she said. “Do you want to do it now?”
“That’s why we’re here.”
She