Fiction from The Literary Review

Losing Part of the Moon

ALFRED A. YUSON

I shouldn't have been seduced by her.
     Young girl. New kid on the block, all that. Hell, they've come and gone. Her feet weren't even good to look at.
     Yeah, first thing I noticed about her that were far from pleasant. When she insisted with that pushy smile — Mr. Aquino, it's about time you picked up some Media Amalgam — all I could do was shuffle about and avoid those sparkling eyes, lower my own and . . . hello there . . . Somehow I was glad to see those stubby toes crimping up all as one in both of her red pumps.
     I almost laughed at the sudden betrayal. She had seemed flawlessly attractive when she first sashayed into the trading floor.
     Actually I'm not a regular myself. Except that I'd occasionally look up Boogie whenever he called to say I should fill up some papers. And that was because I couldn't be bothered by a bell being pressed by any messenger, especially at daytime when I'd be in the balcony studying the clouds.
     The bourse was right across the park, anyway. Meeting up with my broker Boogie meant a little exercise. At fifty-five and a couch potato, I initiated few other forms of exertion: pumping a fist into air whenever Michael Pippen Junior parlayed a fastbreak into a dazzling if unnecessary pirouette, that is, before a dunk. That, and the increasingly infrequent and very brief dalliances with young girls. By young I meant in their twenties, younger even than the Chinese yardstick of times 2 minus 9 for an ideal partnership.
     Who cared for partnerships anyway? I owned stocks of companies that had gone public. Safety in numbers. In like manner, as if to offset the solitude I often found in my highrise balcony, I relished queueing up for pretty young things who had already strung up recent experience as a series of prequels. Before I came.
     Boogieintroed her — Cesar, meet Miss Caroline, she's new at Millennium, and we're all in love with her, right, Caroline? — Oh yes, hello, Mr. Cesar. — It's actually Mr. Aquino, Boogie said. — Primetime player. Blue chops, second liners, third wavers, he's a serial killer, watch it, Caroline. — Hello, Caroline. — It's really funny the way you guys way 'actually,' so Pinoy.
     I found out she had earned her spurs in Singapore. Which explained the veddy pained accent. But God, was she luscious. And I could tell she hadn't wasted her time breaking into the Makati-Ortigas circuit of 'swappering' — as how the yuppies sniggeringly called it whenever word got out on some serious scoring after late lunch.
     — Incest within an exchange that cannot do without, as Boogie defined the daily phenom. He told stories that got me so pumped up that by close of trading I'd touch-cell for some masseuse and go bullish right after the initial strokes, head straight for the pubic offering.
     Three weeks after the clammy handshake with Caroline, I was in bed with her. No great shakes. She tittered and cooed, Lee Kwan Yew-ed, or so I like to think, as she dictated the placements, rise and fall of authorship. I gained, she lost out. But a few days later she had me swearing never again, never mix business with a miss of pleasure, never again compromise your stake in the future, the fucking odds of which you had so carefully studied to the point of fucking science, fuck you, old Cesar, at your age, you fall for a sell-off bitch with stubby toes, and allow your chips to fall where they may.
     — Media Amalgam, she whispered breathily. — Going up, baby, faster than any lift in the Triple Towers. Have it on good authority, babe. Straight from the . . . What the . . . ? — The dick in your mouth, lady? — Oooh, Cesar, ol' boy, you're the first stud who's called me that. — I'll bite you hard now, babe, render unto Cesar what . . . — What the fuck!!!
     I didn't think at all, I just moaned twice or thrice and said go ahead, pick it up, get me laid across the board for whatever you think the play should be worth.
     — Media Amalgam, babe, she breathes into my pores. — At 29 point 5. It's a riser.
     — Sure, sure, go ahead, and lick me up some more.
     — Outright buy or a cross-deal?
     — Sell some, sell anything, enough to cover what we need, little girl, except don't ever touch my San Mig and Fil-Thai. There, there, that you can touch, oooh, that way, girl, atta-matha!
     Three days later I got the pink and blue slips. Never again, I said quickly and harshly to myself. Transactions in bed ought never to go beyond the pale of quivering congress.
     What's this? She sold everything I had of Luneta. My moon shares! My fucking part of the moon!
     Boogie said I could always buy back. True. But by mid-morn Luneta had risen 3.5%. Boogie and I had made it a cardinal rule: never chase any fox that ran ragged beyond 2.75. At least not within the trading day.
     So tomorrow, Boogie said. Or whenever. The fox can't run forever. Just let's give each other a ring. Tomorrow it'll slow down.
     I saw her just as the bell rang. She was all smiles as she neared us, stubby toes pointing every which way as the rest of the neckties swivelled in reciprocated attention.
     — Ephemeris, she cooed. Coming up fast by midweek, new contracts in Myanmar. Can't see you again till Friday, babe, deals a-plenty. You brought me luck with last night's come. Dying to do it again of course. But let's whet our merger of an appetite, hey, what say, ol' man?
     I hadn't heard her speak that way, but what the hell, I knew them all to change as rapidly as those red and green lights on the pentagonal electronic board. No more surprises.
     I walk back across the park and notice it's a darned cloudless day. Totally blue sky, fuck!
     And in the evening when I'm done with my microwaved pap I step out into my little balcony to survey the danged city lights beyond the fucking greenbelt, and I'm almost afraid to do it but I go on ahead, look up at the clean sky and stare at that source of crazed illumination. I see half a moon, and I realize it shines up there free of the least ownership. By me.
     I stand there teetering for a moment, not knowing if I'm halfway up or down while the shadows beyond and below serve notice of an incorrigibly shaky index of nothingness, nothingness. Now that I've lost my part of the moon.