Chapter 18 - Sweet Haven

HE STRODE up to the gate like a young swain from Sweethaven’s 1950s heyday. He was in khaki trousers, a button-down striped shirt, and polished loafers. He looked as if he were headed to a well-appointed office, with air-conditioning and a sweet, soft-voiced secretary to fix coffee, so that when Narita looked beyond him, to the vehicle that was parked across the road from the gate, she felt a flicker of dismay. He was driving a battered jeep, the exterior unpainted and seemingly made of beaten tin, the kind of vehicle a policeman might drive.

Her eyes met the man’s. She held his gaze a moment or two longer than necessary; it was not deliberate: he had such large and sad eyes. The smile wavered at the corners of his mouth. She glanced away quickly. Her heart thudded; she swallowed hard to calm herself. It was not good to look a stranger so clearly in the eye. It led to expectations; it promised agreements that she was not ready for.

Narita let him through the gate, conscious of her mother’s suspicious gaze from the safety of the house. Give it a rest, Ma, she thought. I’m an adult, I can have sex with whomever I want, but that doesn’t mean I want it all the time, at the first opportunity, and with strangers, no questions asked.

The man was older than he had seemed. His hair was shot with bits of gray and he had a small paunch. There was no wedding ring, she noted briskly. He smelled good, a subtle fragrance she could not identify. She was sensitive to the way men smelled, and partial to expensive odors—they made a fellow more civilized. Had he chosen that scent for himself, or had someone given it to him in expensive black tissue paper wrapping?

As he smiled and took the hand she offered—a dry, firm grip there—she saw her mother’s scrutiny in the proper light. Luth was simply desperate for one good match. For Chrissakes, Narita thought, he’s not for me; we live in separate cities; he’s left-brain; he’s provincial; my English would scare him off. And Ma, the circumstances of this meeting—how could you even think what I know you are thinking?

“We were classmates,” he said.

“Of course!” she cried, calling on her cocktail party ebullience. “In college. I remember you.”

As he advanced down the driveway, she turned around to view the property, trying to see it as he did, conscious of its run-down quality. The garden seemed decent enough, the lawn mown not too many weeks before, most of the orchids in bloom. She did not know their names, saw only charming clusters of burgundy and peach floating above straplike leaves that looked like palm fronds. In the center of the lawn was a set of newly painted metal furniture. No one could accuse the Pastor family of being poor.

Naia had curled herself up in one of those metal chairs, her back to the gate, her face bent over a magazine. It was a twenty-year-old copy of Tiger Beat. Narita had done what she could, years ago, to improve the girl’s reading tastes, sending her the Harry Potter books and a couple of Tolkiens, but there had been an unspoken rejection in Naia’s shy promise to read them when summer rolled around, if and when she would have the time.

Out there in the pale house dress she had outgrown, she looked pathetically small and vulnerable. How many days had it been since she had gone out of this enclosure? She was absolutely forbidden to go downtown, out of the gate even.

“Naia, get in the house; people will see you,” Luth called from a window.

Narita heard footfalls in the dust and turned. Several women were shuffling past the gate, heading toward the seashore. Two were in their forties, one in her teens. Inhabitants of the shanties close by the beach, from their clothes and the dusty quality of their skin. Their heads were turned toward the property, and their faces bore uniform expressions of curiosity at the sight of the girl, and the lawyer in his preppie clothing. When they registered Narita’s challenging gaze, two of them lowered their eyes in mock deference, whispering to each other, but the third gave her a slow, knowing smile.

“Hello, Naia,” the lawyer was saying, choosing a chair at a right angle to hers so she would not have to face him.

The girl regarded him as though there were nothing extraordinary about the circumstances of this visit. Then she looked away, her eye caught by movement among the orchids: a cat was perched on one of the supporting tree stumps and was eyeing her with malice.

“I’m Joel,” he said. “We haven’t met, but I’ve been here before.”

She nodded. After a few beats she opened her lips. He leaned forward to catch the faint words that emerged from her throat.

“I saw you from my window,” she said.

“Okay,” he said in reassuring tones. “Well, Naia, I’m here. You sent me a text message, but when I called the house it was your mother who answered, and we had a short … exchange.”

Narita, taking the lawn seat opposite the girl, flushed.

“Now I’m here, in the flesh.”

“I think I can help you,” Naia said softly. “You want a personal account from one of the … actresses in that video, don’t you?”

“I don’t want you to use that word, please, Naia. You don’t have to use that word, no matter how often you hear it about you. But yes, personal knowledge from a witness is exactly what we need. So please, tell me how you came to know the boys … Tell me about Harrison Co.”

The girl’s eyes widened for a moment in bewilderment.

“You don’t know the name?” said Joel.

The look she shot him was one of suspicion. She shook her head sharply once, as though in annoyance.

“Tell me what you know, Naia.”

Her eyes flickered up and down his person, as though she were weighing several possible outcomes if she replied.

“If I cooperate,” she said at last, “do I get a reward?”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you watch crime shows? They have this thing about a witness getting some deal in return for testifying.”

He gave a tight smile. “I don’t think that applies to your case. A defendant in a criminal case might possibly get a lighter sentence in exchange for testifying against his codefendants. But you’re a witness. Not one of the accused.”

She mulled this over. “So, no deal?” she said at last, softly.

“Not in the sense of a plea bargain …”

She seemed disinterested in the technicality. “But you need me, I think. What I know is important to you. You don’t really have anyone else.”

She sat back and waited for this to register with him. His face was a mask of professionalism. This might have disappointed her, for she pressed on, “Fine. I will testify, Mister Joel.”

He was silent for a few heartbeats. When he spoke, his voice was gentle, the words slow and evenly spaced. “Your decision makes me very happy, Naia. But are you sure you have come to it of your own accord? Has anyone forced you? Are you aware what testifying will demand of you?”

She shrugged. “It will be a great scandal. Worse than it is already. But we’ll get used to it.” She glanced rather challengingly at Narita.

“You will be seated in a room filled with men,” said Joel. “The video will be played. You will be made to point out which of those … lascivious images are of your body. People will make insulting remarks. They will be looking at you to see if you show any shame.”

The girl, though she sat easily and spoke in a gentle voice, had never seemed more stubborn. “I won’t be, sir. Not in the least bit.”

“That won’t be good, Naia.”

She frowned at him in puzzlement, a good child who had, up to that moment, been doing her utmost to be cooperative.

“ ‘It is inconceivable that an innocent Filipina girl, modest and traditional in her values, would fabricate a rape charge, thus exposing herself and her family to ridicule’,” he quoted. “That’s a line from our jurisprudence, Naia, but I would say it would apply here as well. It means that the braver you are, the bolder, the more casual about your horrible experience, the more scheming you will appear to a judge.”

She didn’t seem to understand. “I’m a majorette, sir. I may not be the prettiest, but I’m never shy before a crowd.”

“You will be asked whether you were … turned on. They will demand that you describe how sexual arousal feels, to check your references. They will sympathize with you only as a victim, and you cannot be a victim unless you were forced.” The strain was showing in his voice now. “If you are cross-examined, the lawyers from the other side will question your credibility. They will try to paint you as a dishonest woman, a loose woman, a whore.”

“I never received money for what I did.”

“People never stick to the dictionary definition of a word, Naia. You know that.”

They stared into each other’s eyes, the man’s jaw tense, the girl’s face bland and implacable.

“You are so young,” he said. “And you have grown up among such intellectual, sophisticated, Westernized people.”

He glanced at Narita, to see if the flattery met her approval. Naia, too, shot her mother a sidelong look, as if for explanations.

“So you probably don’t know that there are men out there, lawyers like myself even, who perceive the enjoyment of sex … by a woman … as unnatural, as something humorous, something to be mocked.”

He was sweating profusely, his face dark with embarrassment. Narita felt sorry for him. He looked so handsome, so distinguished, that he couldn’t possibly be a jerk. But she knew from experience that the well-turned-out men who had clawed their way up from obscurity were the worst.

“Once you submit your testimony, Naia, there will be no backing down.”

“My grandfather says this is the one honest way to get justice, sir,” the girl said.

“I hope you’re not doing this to please him,” Joel said.

She ignored him. “But in return, sir, may I have something? I need a visa to join my aunt, sir. Can you help me? Or maybe the mayor can. My grandparents tell me he’s a very rich and influential man. Could he lend me the money for an airline ticket? I can pay him back when I start to work.”

“Yes, yes, of course,” said Joel. He sat there—waiting, it seemed, for Naia to begin her story, his mouth stretched into a tentative smile.

But the girl refused to yield. In the same unruffled tone, she began to outline travel costs and immigration procedures, step by objective step. It would be important to reserve her ticket well in advance, taking advantage of off-season rates, she asserted. Narita realized that she had been doing tons of research online.

First of all, a passport, came the soft, steady voice. Then a letter of invitation from Tita Antonia. She was confident she would get this; but if the Finns didn’t think Antonia was a credible enough sponsor, then her husband, Lasse, must be persuaded to sign one. Did Joel have a contact at the Finnish embassy, someone who would move her up the line a little? The mayor had said, on TV, that he would do anything he could to help the three girls involved, rebuild their shattered lives. Naia’s life wasn’t all that shattered, but she did intend to collect on the mayor’s promise, and she missed her aunt, who had promised to send for her as soon as she was settled.

The lawyer’s throat worked. “I’ll do my best,” he said at last.

“Thank you,” Naia smiled. “Mother,” she addressed Narita for the first time. “Will you remind Mr. Joel tomorrow?”

Then she rose, folding up her magazine.

“The boy—” he said, but she had already slipped into the house.

Narita and Joel gaped at one another.

“The mayor didn’t actually say that about the tickets,” she said at last.

“Oh, he did,” Joel admitted. “Sort of.”

“How sensitive of him,” she sneered. “Where does he plan to get all that money?”

“He’s a very rich man. And he has his pork barrel fund.”

“What did he say—get these cunts out of my city?”

Joel’s embarrassment was obvious; his face turned a definite shade of purple. It did not help that their eyes chanced to meet once more. He dropped his gaze at once.

She felt sorry for him then. She wanted to tell him that she knew what it was like to work for an impossible boss—to be a scapegoat, a whipping boy. That she had no idea who Naia had taken after, that this cunning child was a stranger. Instead, she said, “She had an encounter of sorts last year.”

“With whom?” said Joel, alert again.

“Oh,” she sighed. “Someone from Sweethaven. A classmate, a teacher, a coach maybe. Someone from the high school. It was my mother she told.”

His expression was one of surprise, dismay.

“Look,” she said. “If this is the first time you’re hearing about it, don’t blame my folks. This happened months ago. They’re old. They’re blurry with details.”

“Narita,” he said. “What exactly did Mrs. Pastor tell you?”

For one moment she wondered whether she ought to play games with him, as the girl had done. But her life was complicated enough. “Joel, I don’t want to get anyone innocent into trouble,” she said. “You ought to ask her yourself, though I doubt she would tell you outright.” She wanted to add that Luth was strange, bitter, apt to let the oddest things fly. “Ask around. I’ll bet you know who Naia’s classmates are already. Talk to her friends. Ask them if they noticed anything around the time last year that Naia was suspended from the marching band.”

His eyes were shining with fresh hope.

“Maybe she had a secret boyfriend. If you can find the man, find the connection, you won’t need my daughter. You can prosecute the case, and I’ll get her out of the way for you, bring her to Manila; it won’t cost the mayor a cent.” She knew she was torpedoing Naia’s plans, taking away something the girl had staked her whole future on, but she was desperate. “Get your hands on some evidence. Raw video,” she went on. “E-mails. The insides of a computer. Anything.”

They fell silent. Joel drew out a small appointments book from his trouser pocket and made a note on a corner of one page, with small, precise strokes.

“I will look,” he said at last.

“Thank you very much, Attorney Fortun,” she said.

There was a pause. Joel did not get up.

“You don’t remember me, do you?”

But of course she did. She knew she had seen him before. She faltered, embarrassed, hating moments like these. The truth was, although she could put up an outgoing veneer, she cared very little about strangers, unless her sustenance depended on them.

“We were classmates one semester. Literature, world literature.”

“Oh well,” she said. “I’ve seen a lot of faces in my life. I’m a journalist, you know.”

“I was a skinny, miserable boy,” he said. “I was poor, very poor, or so I thought at the time. And you, you had such a full calendar, and a real social life.”

She tried to laugh it off. “I was always tardy.” With another sort of man she might have embarked on a triumphant reminiscence of how she had never studied, had rarely come to class for even the best teachers, how not even a finals exam could persuade her to come to school on time. But something in his melancholy checked her. He would not have understood why, despite her indifference, she had collected an A-minus average over the three years of her education. He looked to be a man who had strived, who had never taken success for granted, who had pored over How to Increase Your Word Power far into the night in an effort to better himself.

“I sat at the back of the classroom,” Joel said. “With the drug addicts, with the smart alecks. I was a smart aleck, too, a moron quoting Guns N’ Roses. You talked to me two times that semester.”

“Oh?” she said politely.

“You had your eye on my seatmate, Zenon Cuaresma.”

At that moment his phone rang. He rose, moved in the direction of the gate, almost as though it were some secret lover on the line. She was grateful for this; it gave her time to get over her surprise.

When he returned, she could tell his thoughts were elsewhere. Her life had ground to a halt upon his visit, and for the past half hour, he had been the single most significant person in it. But the reality was she was but an appointment on his engagement pad, one of many throughout the day. “It’s my father’s birthday,” he said with some embarrassment. “My mother always makes a big family dinner on the day itself, never mind that he’s passed on.”

Then came the self-conscious scramble to exchange contact data—the totality of numbers and addresses that made up their various selves—hauling out their mobile phones and keying in what the other dictated.

She scrutinized him with a new wariness as he crossed the road to his jeep. So Zenon had been his friend. Which one had he been? She wished she had paid more attention to the people he used to hang out with, but after she and Zenon became lovers he seemed to lose all interest in male company. Had they discussed her, Zenon and this man? How much did he know?