Czarina Faces Life

(This is a re-worked version of an earlier story, The Girl with the Limp)

I undress, shower, dry myself, pull on a g-string, wrap myself in a white coat, go to the window, push it open and gaze down at the market place. The early morning air carries the faint odor of rotting garbage and benzene. Tuk-tuks and a multi-coloured jeepney bus wait for custom. Somewhere, a dog barks.

The airport bus pulls in and stops in front of the gleaming new concrete atrocity known as the Hotel City Garden. Passengers tumble out. Romulo is the last off, a hatless, cassocked figure of righteousness stepping down heavily, one hand on the railing, the other holding a small bag, and he glances up to where he knows I will be. His fingers are gnarled and his hair wispy strands of white.

Romulo gives no sign of recognition. He turns away, fetches his suitcase from the hold, and sets off across the market place pulling it behind him, the wheels clickety-clicking over the cobblestones.

He trudges past Robinson's department store, past the arched doorways and iron balconies of the colonial style Farmacia building, past a blood-red Porsche Carrera parked outside the gray baroque of the Immaculate Conception church. He turns the corner and vanishes.

Every time I see that car . . . So Fat Man is back in town. In my mind's eye, I see him swirling along ahead of an entourage of musclemen, his black-grey hair pulled back into a pony tail, caftan pressing against his ample belly and trailing behind him like a fluttering sheet. But not only that.

As I close the window, a wave of emotions hit me, but I push them aside. The first patient of the day is an overweight lady suffering from back pains who I take through a routine of stretching exercises.

###

Romulo arrives for his appointment wearing jeans and t-shirt. His face and neck are lined, his close-set eyes set even deeper than I recalled, but he is in good shape. We have known each twenty years but he acknowledges me stiffly, as if we are vague acquaintances.

I tell reception we are not to be interrupted. No phone calls. Inside the treatment room, I lock the door. Romulo and I embrace briefly. He touches my face and strokes my hair, and stands back, looking me over. His eyes are alight.

We exchange pleasantries.

"Did you have a good flight," I ask lamely.

The question does not match his mood, but I feel a need to say something. He mumbles assent but he's not really listening. He runs his hands up and down my arms.

"How's your health?" I ask. "Aches and pains?" I feel awkwardly distant from Romulo. Our relationship has lost much of its affection, become almost purely physical.

"Only of the soul," he replies. Even after all these years, I don't know if he is serious or not. I want to ask about his arthritis, but I stop before I start.

"Fat Man's Porsche is parked down there," I say. I'm wandering into sensitive territory.

"Oh," he says.

Fat Man owns the Happy Go Go bar in Quezon City and other pleasure pits elsewhere.

The aircon hums. Romulo takes off his t-shirt and his jeans. His scrawny chest is almost hairless and his pallid belly sags. Beneath his underpants, his cock is half erect.

He uses a wooden step to climb on to the table and lies face down. I apply a hot towel to his neck and shoulders, feel the tautness, and dig my fingers in to loosen it. I pour warm oil on to his back.

"Was Fat Man the one. . .? " he trailed off. He is uncomfortable with the topic.

"You know very well he was," I say.

We fall into silence. I work his back, bottom and legs. I part his buttocks and run one finger between them, pause for a tiny second and touch his anus. His buttocks quiver.

He turns over and his cock is fully erect. Slowly, stretching the moment, I massage his shoulders and biceps, and his fingers feel beneath my white coat. I oil his chest and slowly work over his belly in circular movements He touches my inner thigh and sends a familiar surge of heat through me. My nipples ripple with anticipation. I unbutton my coat and throw it off. His fingers find my pussy.

Romulo's breathing is heavier. His fingers are deep inside me. I brush across his cock and testicles. His eyes are shut, mouth open. I stroke his cock, playing with the red knob until the time is right and then I roll on a condom. I climb on to the step, mount the table, straddle Romulo and use two fingers to guide him into me. I move, slowly. A rush of cool air brushes my face. I move faster and faster still until I am a riding a steed, thundering across the tundra. . .

###

Czarina first came to me three years ago, this slender girl whose brown, oval face and close-set darting eyes seemed permanently washed with melancholia.

She had been riding pillion on a motorcycle being gunned along a narrow street when a cow wandered on to the road. The motorcycle swerved out of control, hit a fence and pitched the two of them down a rocky embankment. The rider suffered bruises and shock, but Czarina could not move. Surgeons pinned the pieces of her hip together but she was left with a limp. The motorcycle rider visited her once after the accident, but never again.

Czarina spent her working hours limping between cramped rows of formica tables in the Café Roces, carrying plates of barbequed chicken and steamed rice past forests of male hands brushing her thighs. Many customers were in town to satiate themselves in the blazing neon universe of the Calle Arroceros, one block away.

She was less bothered on Saturday nights at the open-air patio at the back of the Hotel City Garden, where big band musicians clad in tuxedos played old-fashioned dance music. And if that meant two shifts back-to-back, the work was less arduous than the café, the atmosphere more genteel, the tips more generous, and the customers kept their hands to themselves. But Saturdays did leave her physically and mentally spent.

Czarina had had boyfriends; they came and they went. She had become pregnant but, one starry Saturday night, as the band on the hotel patio played "Happy Day Are Here Again", she felt a stab of pain and a rumbling deep down within her. Her pregnancy ended in a fountain of blood inside a public lavatory cubicle.

Czarina came to me for physiotherapy, but also to talk and listen. I told her that her miscarriage was a blessing, that too many girls bore children, were abandoned by the fathers and trapped in life-sapping struggles for survival.

From what she told me, it was obvious that Fat Man liked the Café Roces. And Fat Man liked Czarina. Whenever he was in town, he came with his friends and sat at one of Czarina's tables. He spoke with her in quiet, reassuring tones and, if she felt flattered by his affability, she disliked his muscle-bound, tattooed cohorts and their glinting bracelets, thin necklaces and loud voices.

Now, I watched Czarina remove her blouse and panties and lie naked on her stomach and I began massaging her shoulders. I had a plan for Czarina, but I would have to sell it to her. I caressed her neck and worked gently down her back.

I lubricated her bottom, delicately fingering the long scars left by the surgeons' knife. I parted her buttocks and allowed a tiny river of oil to run down between them. Czarina gave a little shiver.

She turned over. My hands ran over her breasts and dark nipples. Her eyes were half slits. I felt her excitement. We did not talk. I caressed her inner thighs and felt her whole body stiffen, then loosen. I gently placed one hand on each thigh and pushed them apart. With one hand I caressed her forehead and, with the other hand, played over her pussy.

When Czarina was ready, I pushed inside.

###

I had once been married. I had daughter, now grown up. Somehow I had raised her without a husband. But I had been Romulo's girl for twenty years—when he was in town. I did not know what he did when he was back in Manila, and did not ask. If Romulo had ever had worries of conscience about his lifestyle, he never showed it. But it was he who enabled me to come through the early, hard years.

The next time Romulo was in town, on the occasion of a church conference, I arranged a meeting. I ushered Romulo and Czarina to an empty room and left them alone. Half an hour later, Czarina left and Romulo made a long phone call.

What happened in the Café Roces that afternoon I later pieced together. A male westerner aged about 30, dressed in jeans and grey T-shirt, sat alone at a table facing the street. His name was Leo. He was in town for the priests' conference.

The café was not busy. Leo was served by a young waitress with piercing eyes who seemed to have injured her ankle. Her pensive smile transfixed him. He could not stop himself looking at her and, when he did look, she caught his glance before looking shyly away. She brought coffee to him and lingered at his table.

Czarina thought he was handsome in a rugged way, with large jaw, close-cropped hair, and clear blue eyes.

Leo was nervous. I was told later that, years before, when he was on a break from the seminary, he travelled to another town in another country where met a young man accompanied by two girls. As the four walked along the promenade, one of the girls took Leo's hand. He should have pulled away but didn't. That night he dreamed of the girl. He never saw her again, but years later the same girl continued to wing back to him in the stillness of the night and, whenever she did, the devils swooped on him and tormented him until daybreak brought relief.

That night after seeing Czarina at the Café Roces, Leo dreamed of Czarina, and those same devils again descended on him. The next day Leo visited the Café Roces again. He and Czarina talked for longer this time. Over the following weeks, they met discreetly whenever they could.

Czarina told me about their first time, about the rustling of clothes being discarded, about Leo's clumsiness. She told me how she pulled him on to the bed, and guided his hands to caress her naked breasts. She slid a condom on to his cock. He came quickly, too quickly for her, but she did feel a rush of something resembling hope.

Both fell silent. He clung tightly to her, and told her something of his life, and about his feelings on first seeing her at the cafe. Czarina understood some of what he said. She cradled his head and kissed his forehead.

She ran her hands down his stomach and felt his cock growing again. She reached for another condom. The air con was faulty and the room was warm and their bodies gleamed with perspiration. Again, she did the leading, spreading her legs wide and taking his hand to her breasts, across her belly and down to her pussy. This time it was better.

Leo would be in town for a year, he told her.

They would stand together at the door, arms around each other, both reluctant to let go, barely hearing the distant buzz of the market place. See you tomorrow, he promised. He kissed her on the cheek. Yes, tomorrow.

Leo and Czarina enjoyed one tomorrow after another for weeks on end until one day he did not come as agreed to the cafe. Perhaps he was too busy. The day after that he did not come, either. Nor did he leave a message.

###

The wedding took place six months later at the little Santa Teresita chapel. Friends of the bride and groom mixed amiably at the reception and everyone was having a nice time until about 11 pm when the atmosphere suddenly deteriorated and a fight began.

Fat Man used the chaos as a signal to leave. He and his new wife, Czarina, slipped out through a side door.

###

Romulo lay on the table, snoring slightly. I freshened up in the bathroom and went to the window. The market place below simmered. Stretches of colored awnings covered hawker stalls. Motorbikes wended their way through the crowds. The airport bus was there again, disgorging more passengers.

As Romulo started returning to life, I asked him what had happened to Leo.

"I don't know," he said dismissively.

"But you must have some idea," I said.

"He went back to where he came from, as far as I know. Stop asking me these questions," he said.

"Why are you annoyed with me?" I asked. I had never before spoken to him so directly, and he didn't like it.

"The girl ran off with a brothel keeper," he said.

"I think the brothel keeper comes out of this with more integrity than two priests," I said, and almost regretted it.

Romulo pulled on his shoes and stood up. He moved to the door without speaking.

"Goodbye," he said.

That sounded final. Maybe he would come back. Maybe not. But after twenty years, I now realized that I didn't care any more.

ends