Orchid House by Cindy Martinusen Coloma Page B

the children, asking for a few coins to buy some food.
    Yes, it had been a long while since he’d been in Manila; he’d forgotten the ramifications of charity. This was the world of democracy, he thought, as he tossed a handful into the air and left behind soft-cheeked children to scramble like dogs for the scraps. A Communist state would eliminate such oppression. It had worked in other countries for a time—and how desperately his people needed some leveling force among the classes.
    He decided to take a longer route to the Korean restaurant that was their destination, and turned down an alley. It amazed him still how Manila could have such streets of poverty just blocks from cinemas and shopping malls.
    Outside a run-down ago-go bar, women, used up from a depraved life, stood and waited for business. They smiled and called to him as he went by.
    â€œTwo hundred pesos,” an older woman said as she stepped in front of him. The makeup on her face did nothing to hide the hardness of her years.
    â€œYou sell your dignity for so little a price?” he said, smelling the stale cigarettes on her breath. “I’m sure men get what they pay for.”
    She might have struck him, but her frame was light from malnutrition, and he pushed her back, moving around her and some emaciated dogs that rummaged through garbage on the street.
    Across the way two young boys played naked in a puddle of water. They were near his twin daughters’ age. He wished to scoop them up from the squalor. Water on a street such as this could be infested with germs.
    He shouldn’t have come this way. Once such sights might have incited him to the cause, the belief in a better world. Why couldn’t the people see that this was the result of “freedom”? No one cared for the poorest children or that the innocents paid the highest price so the wealthy could live in luxury.
    Yet they were losing the battle. Nothing had changed for all the sacrifice of years. For his brother’s life. For his separation from Malaya and the children. For a thousand days of being alone. Worse, now the party had decided to collaborate with less than idealistic people. They called them “friends of the Communist brotherhood.” Friends simply meaning the country’s criminal elements. Was the enemy of your enemy really your friend?
    Manalo had always despised working with these people, who were polar opposites of what their own purpose fought for. While the New People’s Army fought for justice and equality for the masses, these men were motivated by nothing other than their own greed. But working with them had been beneficial, Manalo had to admit.
    For a moment, he couldn’t breathe—the air was thick with vehicle exhaust and thousands of carbon dioxide exhalations. His lungs burned, and he longed for the crisp air of the jungle.
    After walking a few more streets, all crowded and bustling with people, Manalo began to feel confident that they weren’t being followed. No one knew they’d come to the city. He again stopped at a newsstand, this one at a street corner, and perused the papers above a tray of X-rated videos. Timeteo walked by without a glance or comment, sauntering down the alley to knock on a back door. By the time Manalo had paid for a newspaper, Timeteo had disappeared inside.
    Manalo entered the Korean restaurant by the front door and found a small table in a corner. The menu perused, a San Mig ordered, he asked the young waitress, “Where is the CR?”
    He left the newspaper and a few coins for the beer that had not yet arrived and pushed out his chair as if he’d be back soon. Then he headed through the kitchen toward the comfort room. Two young men glanced up from their work over steaming pots and a sizzling grill, while a girl chopping vegetables never looked his way. He moved beyond the bathroom to a door with bold words in Korean that he understood without translation to mean