"Do it!" Tony shouted. On the curb Elvis wide angled his legs, slunk his ass back, and started grinding, counter-grinding, and bumping there between, slow, fast, pump, hard, his whole body shaking, rattling like to pieces, the ballpoint in shirt pocket stabbing into his chest, he could almost hear the tinkling of spangles of his costume, see the glitter of his jewels, hear the roar of the Vegas crowd he imagined, the squeals of terrified delight; he felt himself awash in strangers' admiration, in a blaze of love, and worth, absorbed the burning will-o'-the-wisps of glory through his pores, what he so sinfully wanted, what was denied so often; finally, snapping his head back, he stared, sweating, into the black sky over del Pilar, therefore a star seemed to twinkle out to him from a break in the clouds; breathing heavily, exhausted, he found people staring at him, some clapping their hands like Tony, who then scurried off to chase a white-suited European, a new face, appearing at the corner. Graciously, Elvis swept them a bow all round and around, before crossing the street. It seemed so quiet and empty. But a hard ping struck off him at the shoulder. A coin, probably, tossed out of a jeepney. Then lost in the asphalt road. He tried, hoped, but couldn't spot what thing shiny. Musta been 20 centavos, a dark worthless coin. My first professional fee, Elvis smiled. Damn, I could've bought a toothpick. He walked back into the noise, awful menthol smoke of Raymond's, but didn't recognize the people, new faces, working behind the counter. Late shift now. One rushed towards him with an upraised finger. Very eager, frizzy hair. Blue polish on her nails, chipped. "One beer?" Okay, he nodded, squeezed ahead, for an empty stool, where? Past faces he knew, from last night, from two or three weeks before, every night? Or faces like them, floating hazy, voices roaring in the crowd, nights roughly blending, like a busy dream, punctured by moments of amnesia. Sometimes, he recognized only a scar on a face, or distinctive behavior, or conceit, a funny remark from behind a cloud of Marlborough. His beer chased after him, held high. "20 pesos!" He had to reach between two guys, mouths blabbing, gesturing, one with a girl on his lap. "Excuse me," Elvis said, preciously polite. One of the guys, elbow on the counter, cigarette in bony fingers, smoke ribboning up one, two feet before breaking, shrugged, a fishy grin in his lips; the other guy just turned away, talking, coughing, while the girl on his lap stared into Elvis's face, a message encrypted in her almost smile. "Pay!" the countergirl said, "Pay now!" "Put it on my tab," Elvis said. Blankly, she looked at him. He panicked a moment, realizing she was a new girl. But he spotted Mandi. Thank god, still there, working into a second shift. "Mandi - ," he pointed, "He knows. I have a tab - for the beer." So, she pivoted round to him, told him, as he glanced at Elvis, and frowned, conscious of his power, and our hero's heart almost stopped, but then Mandi nodded okay, then, and she put in the price of the beer in a notebook under a conch shell at the cash register. Mandi picked his nose. The crisis passed. The future hours of the night assured, and free, Elvis relaxed; anybody watching might have seen scars of care drop from his face, and in his hand the San Miquel beer, ice sliding off its brown surface, steaming frosty pleasure, tickling his nose with the promise of funny dreams. Tock, tick, tock, tick. Again, time breathed forward, pressing on numbed heads, staining bodies with fleeing kisses, bites, wrinkles, momentary brilliances, darknesses, stinking gifts, unrecognized gifts, of the infinite, of eternity, of the lousy, cheap clock nailed on the post above the cash register. Thump, thump came down, thump, thump, loud, of the dancers' feet overhead, in the disco on the second floor. Tock, tock, tock, cock. The glances of the expatriates and the whores hardening into mirrors of desire. Fingers butterflying over knees. Knees pushing into groins. Religious fervor walking on long sexy legs. And the cacophony of ambitions, thwarted, achieved, forgotten, obsolete, burning still, whimpering like mice in an immortal experiment, all the white faces far away from home - San Francisco, Berlin, Switzerland, Paris, Rome, Adelaide - searching for the tanned, the happy poor, the inarticulate saint, the obedient treasure, the dream with stripper's thighs, the brown diamond in the rough; and at the very least, the magnificent beach laced with palms and hot blue - . Sing, sing, oh, one more day in Paradise, one day in Paradise, just one more - ! "She got no fucking genie in her pussy, Archie," said the man with menthol smoke bleeding out of his catfish mouth. "You know fuck," said the other calmly, "A fuckin' teat-hole know more fuckin' insight than you bastard." "But she don't do anything for you!" "Don't you understand, you fuckin' shit: I Want to love her! I Want to!" But the girl on his lap, the one the man wanted to love, kept glancing at Elvis. He returned her looks, inspite of her drunk lover, exchanging with her gelatine kisses, wordless suggestions like erotic jazz, penetrations, sexual hallucinations almost rank with sweat. Teasing mind to mind, lusting with their eyes, until, becoming bored, Elvis wriggled out his wet tongue for her, and she smiled, a concrete smile, amused at the hardness of a real tongue, which her eager eyes followed on his lips and dove into his eyes and followed again and dove again into his eyes with a sparkle of giddy flirtation, as she opened her mouth to engulf the invisible thrusting of his body. Oh, god, Elvis thought, dying to ejaculate, his balls glowing, his cock-a-doo stressing mightly at his Fruit of the Loom. Finally, he guided his hand to the wet on his pants, a cool salty clue to the violent star within, cautiously began to rub it, the star of his childhood, of his adolescence, the thing that remained constant, rose high and ever bright over all of the snow palaces of his dreams, burning his skin. She knew what he was doing and urged him on by her looks, glancing back and forth, expectantly, between his tongue and furious finger; and then, suddenly, Elvis stiffened. Semen gushed through his pants. "Oh," she whispered. For a moment, within that unique peacefulness of orgasm, Elvis felt love for the entire world around him, from the backdoor of Raymond's Beer Garden to the dumpyard across the street and probably somewhat beyond. But soon, again, he heard the noise of Raymond's Fast Food and Beer Garden and saw the clouds of cigarette smoke and felt again the tropical heat and the hunger in his stomach that he had forgotten. He smelled the smell of sweat and the vinegar and fried pork on a plate on the counter behind him. He swayed as he stood, suddenly feeling a little dizzy. "Hey, mate, easy there!" said the friend of the girl's lover when Elvis bumped into him. "You alright? Good beer, eh." Elvis straightened up and noticed that the girl was looking anxiously puzzled at him, as though he had just done something that terribly disillusioned her, as though what had very recently gone on between them had occured in an atmosphere of sobriety and elegance, as though she had been dressed in a Dior gown, he in a tuxedo, and they had been in a grand chamber of a palace, where they were deeply in love, spotlessly clean and sacredly rich. He smiled at her and she visibly stiffened, darting her eyes away from him. A smile creeped into his face. He didn't want to embarrass her or provoke a fight with her lover, but he started to laugh. It was funny. Ridiculous. Everything seemed to lack real seriousness. Everything seemed to be a cartoon, the civilization in which he lived, the streets, the food, especially the lives of people, their romances, their loves, maybe even their sleep, all things great and small, except the ghost around which they danced compulsively, the fantasy above everything which stole their undivided attention, this desire, moist and mysterious, pulsating amidst the technicolor graphics and celluloid seriousness, this sex against which everything else seemed an aging cartoon in an endless loop, a farce of concerns and devotions. Only that. Goofy characters. Okay, he shrugged, okay. Glad I'm here. Yes. She was looking quite frightened. He affectionately touched her knee as he walked away. And her lover, disturbed by all that crazy laughing right next to him, turned his face to glance superiorly at him who was just then squeezing through the crowd. He desperately wanted to sit down. Up ahead a group of foreigners - Japanese - stood up. Elvis threw himself into a chair at the table they were leaving. Earlier, he'd noticed them. Well-scrubbed Japanese men in Hawaiian shirts, bits of gold jewelry looking dull under the fluorescent illumination. They were advertising to be robbed. They abandoned their beers, some full bottles yet, still chilly, and two plates of finger food, chicken barbeque and pork adobo. He guessed they thought the food wasn't clean enough. And the plates had cracks. The Japanese ate off perfect plates. Also, the action and the people in Raymond's Beer Garden developed rumbunctiously raw, perhaps too openly to satisfy the Japanese's secret desire for killer emotions, even when they were on a holiday. He grabbed the food. Fucking shit, he was hungry. And - he shook the beer bottles - 4 full ones! Ooh, lucky, lucky, lucky! He hoarded his treasures close to him. He knew what was ahead. One of those classic nights of embarrassing, magical oblivion! The beer rushed down his throat in a narcotic flood. One thing - fleetingly - whispered in him and he heard it within the roaring around him and within the sweet excitement within him. A sound like that of a feather brushing against a raw wound. And he glanced at money. Almost immediately, two friends from the street joined him, distracting him back into Raymond's Fast Food and Beer Graden. Earlier in the night, he had seen them at the nearby corner of Santa Monica and del Pilar, across from the little park where just that morning he had sat with Melanie before going off to beg along Roxas Boulevard. Rey and Tanya had been going nowhere in particular, so they simply had stopped walking when they reached the corner. Just two dirty street kids. There was nothing unique or poetic in the way they stood, holding hands by the street sign post. No one paid them any attention whatsoever. In fact, people walking by tried to avoid them. In reality, there could be no literary exaggeration that could make clear with the use of romantic lies, with poetic bullshit, what they felt in their fleshy hearts soaked in vitamin deficient blood. No play of words could make us feel how they felt in their breathing of the air that inflamed their lungs. Nothing to allow us to masturbate upon their existence. They stood on the corner. The traffic went by. Their hands felt moist in each other's soiled grip. A torn piece of cigarette pack cellophane that had been stuck on the sweat on Rey's foreman dropped off at last and tumbled over some of the cracks in the sidewalk. Rey scratched his skin where the cellophane had been clinging. Rey took care of Tanya off and on, finding a squatter's shack, or in an abandoned room somewhere. They would play house during the lucky interlude, a few days, peeping through holes in the wall at the frantic, tropical world outside, making fun of whomever they wanted to make fun of during this time when they were rich. Each of them would think about a future, about a life together, in a real house, with food and money enough, with their own children going off to a nice school. They hinted to each other about these dreams, divulging just bits and pieces, laughing how wonderful it might be to have a refrigerator, getting a pleasant glow as they imagined their comfortable old age, but they, each of them, never held onto what they laughed about as a real goal, not real like the possibility of eating a bowl of rice and fish that night, or real like busing home to the provinces for Christmas time, so they spoke of it just in pieces, pieces of an already shattered dream, but it was nice anyway. Rey greeted Elvis with a nod, leaning forward restlessly. He always scrutinized Elvis's attire as if expecting to find something different each time, a new shirt, a digital watch, a shiny pen. It was impossible to believe an American like Elvis really had no money. Rey searched for a clue to the mechanism that exposed the sleigh-of-hand that could turn a millionaire into a beggar. Now the two plates of food on the table made him suspicious, and hungry as he inhaled the vinegary and burnt smell of the barbeque. He leaned farther towards the plates, fingers creeping for the barbeque. "Help yourselves," Elvis said. "Ah, so you are rich again." "The Japanese left the food." "I don't believe." "Stop it! Okay? You don't want it? I'll finish it." "Okay, okay," Rey said, "Thank you, my friend." They quickly gobbled up the leftover pieces. Afterwards, Tanya took out with a certain listless grace a romance comix book that was in her cloth purse. She held it up in front of her, admired awhile the garish front cover, then turned to the first page. Her brows wrinkled in concentration and her cheek glistened where she had scratched it with a finger greasy from the barbeque. Rey, licking his fingers, resting his head on her shoulder, began to read along with her, both of them understanding with poignant concentration the sentiments expressed in the thought bubbles of the cartoon world created on paper possessing the rough texture of cheap napkins. The front cover, painted in strong reds and mango yellows, depicted a typical fantasy scene of a leering young man, rich and handsome of course, carressing his maid, poor and mouth-wateringly sexy with hard-on legs in a mini servant's uniform, artificially rejecting his advances, while his wife, catching them from behind a door, reacted with aggravated surprise. The thought bubbles' stabbing sentiments were drawn on raw, white paper against the pornographic rainbow of the troubled cartoon world. The young man's bubble read, "Please, Carina, my wife is so ugly and mean. I love you, only you! You are my dream girl." The maid's bubble read, "Oh, sir, please don't. You know I am a virgin. God will punish me!" The wife's bubble read, "The son-of-a-bitch! I'll castrate him! I'll tear out her teats! They'll regret this!"

"How unfaithful he is," Tanya murmured, depressed about infidelity yet thrilled with the luck of the poor girl. But Rey, remaining silent, kept his brightened eyes on the fuckable cartoon bitch and laughed at the common ugliness of the wife. Immersed in the chromatic pages of the comix, they ignored Elvis who, again, was troubled by anxiety, attacked by emotions that were as constructive as the square root of minus 1, totally imaginary in a world of diarhhrea and hunger, of penthouse apartments and garbage dumps. Suddenly, Maricar, plopping herself down on the table, distracted him. His mind seemed to clear. Somehow the fact that she was so young made the solution to his problem (what problem?) seem ridiculously obvious. He knew what he had to do. Finally, God, or whatsover, had pulled his ear and shouted in the directions to go and win. He couldn't waste any more time. There was the story, plain as the nose on her face, that he had to write. Maricar slid onto Rey's knee. She wore a short skirt and loose T-shirt over her small but pointed breasts. As she leaned against Tanya's shoulder, like a child, she crossed her legs, and her lips began moving as she read the bubbles in the comix. Her baby face's eyes jiggled among the foreigners along the bar, then back to the comix. Her knees were covered in dust and goose bumps appeared in the flesh of her legs. She seemed to be cold and shivered now and then. "She has a fever," Rey said, matter-of-factly, "She is sick." Elvis touched her forehead. "She is really hot." "Yes, she is sick." "Where is Melanie?" she asked Elvis, in a voice deepened by heavy coughing. Closing her eyes, she added wistfully, "Melanie is my friend, you remember." "I don't know," Elvis said. Remember? she said, so that word made Elvis think he had forgotten ...... He had a vague sense of having held something perfectly round and pure, that had satisfied him and had focused his desire for happiness. Remember? As though the thing forgotten could be someone in the crowd or someone sitting at the next table or within the pages of the comix or a thought somehow visible and floating through the mists of cigarette smoke, he searched for it anxiously with his eyes. But, almost at once, he knew that it was a foolish and useless effort. Alone, he felt suddenly, alone. "You are drunk," Maricar laughed. "Melanie buy me a mango," Tanya cut in. "When?" Elvis said, surprised. "Today, this morning, when I see her," Tanya said. Elvis thought back. The morning seemed like years ago. He found it hard to remember. The light of another morning. The light that made his coffee in the glass jar shimmer, the crack in the glass glint. Melanie had walked through that old light through the moist weeds. "Where was she going?" "She buy mango." "After. Where did she go?" "I dunno. I stay here." "Maybe she is drunk," Rey said, "You know Melanie." Elvis was bothered by a recurring sense of something in his mind, stirring with a ghostly importance, darkling, but then he said, "No, I don't think so, no. She...she doesn't drink that much." "Shabu-shabu," Tanya said. Asian crack. "No," Elvis said, disturbed. "I hope ... not." Maricar slid off Rey's knee and settled between his legs on the chair's edge. Throwing her head back on his shoulder, peering over her cheeks at Elvis, she said, "Maybe she is fucking. Like me. I fucking, fucking." Giggling, clutching her fingers in front of her mouth. He heard the word. He said it, low, for himself, "fucking". He understood the word was linked with Melanie. That was nothing new. Like hearing the sound of rain. Rain was linked with floods and drowning and sewers overflowing. He felt little and was disturbed that he felt nothing. He should have been angry, or sad, because wasn't he sleeping with Melanie which they - Tanya, Rey, Maricar, everybody on del Pilar - knew? He had to feel something. He sat there, glancing shyly at Maricar, trying to feel. He also knew that he was drunk. Floating in rolling clouds of cigarette smoke, in the fumes of the street, in the noise of rock & roll, in the mellow excuses and fartings of the night. A feeling. Like a moth to a flame. Warm. Sizzling. Melanie. Nothing could touch that. Just then a thing, a movement, in the crowd caught him. Intruding into Raymond's. Blond. Along the other side of the counter. Something familiar there - he stood up - glimpsed after the blur. But faces, backs, shoulders, arms, blocked his view. In a space a moment he saw her, gasped - Doris? The girl from San Francisco? Impossible. Today was - Monday? Thursday? Wasn't it tomorrow she arrived? He called out her name. The girl gave up trying to squeeze through the crowd and turned back for the street. Waving his arms, he was moving away from the table when a hand caught him on the shoulder and roughly shoved him back into his chair. "You sonfbitch! Liar! Vat you think I am!" The man screamed, his fat face distorted in rage framed between shoulders hunched in tension, as if ready to throw himself upon Elvis who responded, "Who the fuck are you?" and, blinking to clear his eyes, added with a strangely soft, "Idiot," as he tried to see the blond girl through the crowd. The man thumped him again on the shoulder, making a fist with his other hand. "Why you said girl? Is fuckin boy!" Ignoring him, Elvis pushed himself off the chair to go after the blond but the fat man, with the crowd pressing around them, blocked his way. Now, suddenly, Elvis got angry and, with his palm against the fat man's chest, turned to him, "I don't know you. Get out of the way." "Bullsheet! This queer your boyfriend, maybe, yes!" sneered the fat man. Then Elvis immediately remembered when he saw the tall transvestite huffing up behind and roughly grabbing the fat man's shoulder, shouting, "Hey, you pay me!", then a shrill aside to the crowd, "He don't pay me!", and pinching the fat man's cheeks, "Now, now! Pay, darling!" "I pay you nothing!" "I suck your dick! I suck your white dick! You pay!" and, winking at Elvis, "Small dick." "Liar! Not me! You do nothing for me!" And he tried to convince by his shocked look the strangers around him of his innocence. But, of course, they simply laughed at him and didn't care anyway and the street walkers only flicked their tongues lasciviously for their response to his meaningless denial with boredom in their starving eyes. The fat man felt everybody's disbelief like a blast of bad breath on his lipstick-smudged face and, enraged, he suddenly shouted, "Pimp!", and hit Elvis on the chest, then turned for the transvestite, tall with muscular shoulders, who backed away a few steps but otherwise showed no fear at all of the fat man. "Hello, darling, you remember me?" she cooed, scratching the corner of her mouth with a long sharp nail. Her eyes were alive with amusement glittering within a life like rusted steel. She had dealt with stronger psychopaths than this cheap, white barbeque who had enjoyed her mincing lips. The fat man hesitated, grunting, his fist raised. "No more shit of this, please. You notice I say Please. I am very good. Okay, pay now." Then a shout, shrill "Son of a bitch!", turned around the fat man and Elvis hit him in the guts spilling over his belt. "Uuufffffff!" rounded his cheeks and by reflex flung his arms around Elvis who flailed with fists crashing like bean bags on a pillow; the fat man, eyes dimned by breathlessness, snapped his jaws as though trying to bite off Elvis's ear. So, they huffed, grappled, cursed, and bounced against the tables and the drinkers and whores and innocents and deaf and dumb and smiling pickpockets who made their little fortunes, as the two drunks danced within clouds of smoke and wafted sweat to the accompaniment of crazy shouts and jeers and, for a moment, from a jeepney passing on del Pilar, Presley's "Love Me Tender" from crackling speakers, as the ceiling fans whirred blowing golden-bellied flies into the fray and ears of the kings of the world. Then, three Filipino men, rushing from their pool game, stepped in. "The fatty started it! He hit the other white first!" "Fucker! Trouble maker!" They pulled and pushed him out - "Okay, my friend, enough, huh! Go home!" Blood trickling from his nose, he found himself on the sidewalk. He seemed to want to say something in his defense. Breathing hard and gently stroking his belley, he sought, in truth, for sympathy in the faces that stared at him. He found only bemusement, only insouciance, or a hope for more violence that twisted an attractive smile. So he turned his ass on them, then wary of Elvis glanced back, walking away. But the transvestite would not be cheated. If the fatty didn't know who exactly he was, that was not her problem. If he needed to deny the fact that he had enjoyed her lips and flamboyant ways, that was his property. But she had done her job. And to deny her compensation was a dangerous intrusion of reality into his arrogant delusion. The muscles in her shoulders and her arms felt hot with growing impatience. Now he was wasting her valuable time. She scowled, amazed at the stupid daring of the tub of lard. Didn't he realize where he was? On del Pilar! No one would help him on del Pilar. She quickly caught up to him and pinched the back of his baby-soft neck. "Sheet!" he grunted, "Go avay!" "Be nice," she said, looking up the street to the darkness in front of a bar that had been closed by the police for not paying them the mandatory bribes. The door was shuttered with 4 by 4s. Its neon sign and window broken, so glass littered the dark sidewalk. She pinched him again, between the shoulders. "Money, money, money!" she cooed, "I suuuuuuuuccckkkk youuu, darrlinggg!" He walked on faster. He crossed Santa Monica. She was right behind him. In the light at that corner she glanced at her fingernails. The red polish was peeling off. She cursed lightly, crossing, looking ahead to the darkness. In a few moments reality would face the fat man. Pig, she thought, mincing after him. It would cost him dearly.

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