The Considerate Killer (4 page)

THE PHILIPPINES, THREE YEARS EARLIER

S
trange that it
could be so easy to travel.

Five hours ago Vincent and Bea had been sitting in a taxi on the way to the airport in Manila, watching the glitteringly hot tin roofs of the slums slip by outside. No stinking jeepney and sweaty T-shirts for them. Just cool air conditioning, a very short line at the check-in and then a bite to eat while they waited to board. Now they lay in matching orange striped lawn chairs, gazing out across the Pacific, even though it had really just been the plan for Bea to stay with her cousin in Manila for a week or so. Vincent had planned trips to the movies, meals at some cheap restaurants, and strolls along the marina. Nice enough, but perhaps a little lacking in home comforts. Female visitors to his six-by-nine closet of a dorm room were
bawal
: strictly forbidden. But then Vadim had turned up with his big smile and the promise of surfing and flame-red sunsets, waving free tickets to Samal, the family's resort near Davcao City. Both Vincent and Victor must join him, he insisted, and Bea was, of course, welcome as well.

The waves beat faintly and rhythmically against the beach, and when Vincent closed his eyes it seemed almost hypnotic. They were holding hands, he and Bea. They had crooked their fingers together over the gap between the chairs. Bea's hand was still wet after her most recent dip in the water. She was wearing the new bikini that Vadim had given her when they met him and his girlfriend at the airport.

At the sight of Diana and the super-expensive designer skirt carelessly wrapped around her slender hips, Bea's self-
confidence had plummeted.

“I don't have . . . those kinds of clothes,” she whispered to Vincent.

Vadim wasn't supposed to hear her, but he did.

“All you need on Samal is a swimsuit,” he said. He measured her expertly with his eyes and bought the robin's-egg blue Dolce & Gabbana on the spot. It meant nothing to Vadim that this was an expensive brand and that the bikini cost the equivalent of a month's spending money for Vincent. It wasn't arrogance, more a form of blindness developed through a lifetime in his father's marble palace.

Now Bea reclined in her chair, looking the very picture of upper-class elegance, just like the girls they had seen by the resort pool—only more beautiful. Her skin glowed golden in the sun, and in unguarded moments Vincent couldn't help glancing at her slender, smooth thighs and the robin's-egg bikini, which hid what bikinis were supposed to hide and no more. Bea had small high breasts. Her stomach was flat and smooth with discreetly drawn stomach muscles. Just above the edge of the bikini bottoms there was a delicate dark birthmark, which he desperately longed to touch. He had never seen her like this before. Almost naked.

Feeling yet another erection coming on, he turned over onto his stomach and raised himself up on his elbows.

“Do you like it?”

Bea sat up and looked across the water, fingering her narrow gold necklace—a gift he had given her on the one-year anniversary of their engagement.

“It's beautiful here, Vincent. And I like your friends, but . . . It's so different. As if you suddenly moved to a different planet. It seems wrong. How do you hold on to yourself when you live in a place where no one knows who you are? Your family . . . everyone you have always known.”

She was so serious. He smiled, leaned across the narrow gap between the two lawn chairs and kissed her carefully on the mouth. Her lips were endlessly soft and tasted of salt after the dip in the Pacific.

“With a bit of luck,” he said, “this will also be our world one day. When I finish my degree and start to make money. You might as well get used to it.”

“You think so?”

She looked at the distant ocean-going ships with a serious expression.

Even though he was only two years older than she was, he sometimes thought of Bea as a child. She was still living with her parents while she studied to become a nurse. Ate with her parents in the evening and played with the dog before going to sleep under the slow-turning ceiling fan. Her childhood room was still completely unchanged, with the little desk against one wall, the bed against the other, and her textbooks piled neatly on the bedside table next to the lamp.

Vadim called them from the wide porch of the house, as he emerged balancing a couple of neon-colored drinks. Soft pop music drifted through the open patio doors.

“Are you coming?”

Bea and Vincent got up. He was already a bit groggy from the heat and the sharp light across the sea. Bea, on the other hand, walked with a dancer's balanced steps, a thin beach shawl wrapped around the blue bikini. He could see her dark, soft silhouette through the light material, and he felt a touch of something that had to be happiness. A sense that he was finally young in the way he ought to be. With a lightness that he had observed in others. Carefree as he had never felt before.

Perhaps Vadim could see it.

“How sweet you look together,” he said. “Young love's dream.”

He was already halfway through his own drink, and Vincent suspected him of having had a few while he and Bea were at the beach. His narrow dark eyes wore the musing expression that usually showed up in the course of a sodden evening, and he spoke more and more like a character from an American movie. Even under normal circumstances Vadim spiced up his speech with more English expressions than most Filipinos, but it was especially noticeable when he was feeling emotional or drunk, which with him was often the same thing. Vadim was pure love when mixed with alcohol. Soft as a kitten.

Diana and Victor were already sitting in a pair of broad, upholstered chairs, Victor with a collection of notes and a beer standing at his feet, Diana with a tattered English paperback. She was a year ahead of them, but Vadim had apparently known her as far back as high school, and their relationship seemed . . . complicated. Diana did not have Vadim's lightness, but was beautiful and earnest and wore T-shirts with peace signs and political slogans like “Corruption Stinks,” “Fight Poverty” and “Health for All.” She had started a health clinic out in the slums in Las Pinas City together with a couple of older students. There was something dogged, and contagious about her rebellious frontal attack on the entire world, but when Vincent saw Vadim and Diana kiss and weave their fingers together on the stone wall in the university's garden, it was like observing a wordless and chronically undecided power struggle. Diana's gravity against Vadim's constant attempts at lightness. Occasionally Vincent thought he could see a deep wonder in Diana's gaze when she looked at Vadim. As if she had to search for the reason for the obvious attraction between them. But then Vadim would grab her ponytail, pull her head back and kiss her on the neck and collarbone until she, bursting with laughter, had to capitulate. Until next time.

Vadim handed them each a drink.

“Drink, my young friends,” he said and they all five raised their glasses. Bea drank carefully and with a small wrinkle on her nose. Vincent wasn't sure if she had ever tasted alcohol before, except of course for the altar wine every Sunday at church, but that didn't really count. Father Abuel had the reputation for diluting the blood of Jesus Christ quite a bit, out of consideration for the delicate souls of his congregation.

Vincent bent down and kissed Bea's delicately curved ear.

“Be careful with that stuff,” he said. “It's strong.”

“I know,” she said and smiled. “But I'm with you—so what could happen?”

• • •

Afterward Vadim ordered
takeaway from the restaurant a bit further down the beach. They had hauled some of the solid mahogany furniture from the living room almost all the way down to the water's edge: the dining room table, five chairs, and a three-armed candelabra that might or might not be silver. Vadim had just shrugged when Bea asked him. He didn't know and clearly didn't care. Happy and indifferent.

They ate butter-fried carp with sweet potatoes, and Vadim plucked out the small white pearls of the carp's eyes and gave an enthusiastic lecture on ophthalmology before he plopped them in his white wine and emptied the glass with the triumphant expression of a magician. Diana had lit a cigarette and appeared to be far away in her own thoughts, but Bea was laughing, light-hearted and carefree, and leaned against Vincent with a bright smile.

Her skin was burning hot against his bare arms, and in a glimpse he caught Vadim giving him a complicit I-told-you-she-would-like-it kind of smile, which he returned. The beach and the dark sea wobbled around him, but it was a pleasant inebriation, the kind that only expanded time and made you want to smile at everything.

He placed a hand on Bea's thigh and carefully moved his fingers toward the robin's-egg blue fabric under the beach shawl, and she let him do it. Even spread her thighs a little. She wasn't quite sober either.

“The mosquitoes are coming to devour us,” said Vadim and got up. “I think it's time to move inside.”

He was right. In the gathering dusk, they could hear the whining hum of little wings.

They walked barefooted across the sands to the house, Bea right in front of Vincent, so he couldn't help staring at the swaying pertness of her ass. He suddenly felt dizzy and very far from home. It was the alcohol, perhaps, but also the sound of the ocean and the black starry sky above them.

The house's second
floor lounge was enormous, the floor made of cool, smoothly polished stone. Aerosmith was playing from the hidden speakers, Aerosmith and fucking Usher with “Nice & Slow,” one long, rhythmic coupling. Vincent's entire body buzzed with alcohol and the heat that emanated from Bea's body. They sat next to each other in one of the deep sofas that faced the wall-to-wall picture windows. It was already getting so dark that the sea could only be made out as a slightly deeper blackness under the evening sky. Bea had pulled her slender and sun-browned feet up into the sofa and sat with her head on Vincent's shoulder. With his fingertips, he stroked her black hair and her exposed neck and throat.

Victor had gone to bed, and they could hear Vadim and Diana speaking quietly downstairs. Diana laughed, soft and low. Vincent imagined the battle that was unfolding between them. Vadim, dancing around Diana, trying to puncture her gravity. Diana rarely laughed for long or with all her heart, but when she did, Vadim looked like a poodle that had finally been rewarded after a furious round of prancing on its hind legs, playing dead, and wearing a tutu.

Being addicted to Diana's laughter was hard work.

It was quiet for a while. They must be kissing, thought Vincent, but then Diana must have disappeared alone into one of the room's downstairs, because a little later Vadim appeared by the stairs, a glass of rum in his left hand, and threw himself full length onto the sofa that stood kitty-corner to theirs. He saluted Vincent and Bea, and then looked out at the Pacific.

He suddenly looked tired, thought Vincent, like an actor when the makeup was removed and the lights in the studio turned off. That classic movie scene in front of the dressing-room mirror when all the ugliness and sorrow appears.

“I hope you'll be very happy,” said Vadim and lifted his glass just precisely high enough that it turned into a toast. “Vincent, you're my best friend. Perhaps the only one. And I hope you'll be happy together. I envy you. You're so damn . . . I love you.”

He sounded so serious and had adopted such a sad hangdog look that Vincent couldn't help laughing. The rum and white wine had not quite done him in yet. Besides, it was comical that Vadim would envy him anything at all. Here, of all places, where they were lying surrounded by the luxury that was Vadim's life.

“Stop laughing, cow face.”

Vadim hurled a pillow at Vincent and hit him dead center so that the rum in Vincent's glass spilled and made a dark spot on the couch, but at least Vadim looked like himself again. There was light and laughter in the crooked gaze. The exhaustion was erased.

“I think I'm done for tonight,” he said and got up. “I'll leave the house to you two lovebirds, if you think you can behave properly. No ruining the furniture.”

He blinked at Bea, who smiled slowly and a bit absently. She had gotten some of the light sticky rum on her hands and unselfconsciously licked her fingers clean like a child.

Once Vadim had closed the door to his room behind him, they gazed at each other for a long moment.

“You should go to bed, Bea,” said Vincent, getting somewhat shakily to his feet. “It's late.”

She nodded, but remained sitting, looking up at him. Expectantly.

“Don't you want to kiss me at all?” she asked.

He backed away.

“Yes, are you crazy?” he said and again felt the burning sensation spread through his body. The half-erection, which had lurked all evening, the entire day with Bea, in fact, kicked off and became more insistent.

“But I think it's best if we don't. You know . . . We've had too much to drink.”

“We're getting married soon,” she said and took his hands. Pulled him down toward her. “I'd like to.”

The last bit she whispered against his ear, and her scent broke something in him and made him sink down next to her. Let his hand slide up her thigh again. This time all the way up to the robin's-egg blue and further still. She moaned faintly and spread her legs, so he could slip a finger into the moist heat of her while he kissed her. He touched her, and she moved softly under his hand. Everything swam around him and inside him. They were supposed to wait. They had promised each other that they would wait. That she would be a virgin on their wedding night. It meant something to her, and she was drunk now.

Oh, God.

More than he was.

He was the one who needed to stop. He was the man who had to live up to his responsibility—everything his family and Bea expected from him. He should stop right now, but instead he pulled the ridiculous beach shawl off her and loosened the bikini top so he could look at her beautiful breasts, slightly lighter than her stomach and shoulders after the afternoon at the beach. Her nipples were large and dark against the light skin.