Every Bright Star – A Christmas Story – final

Every Bright Star

A Short Story by

Tony Killinger

Part IV

Labor is cheap in Manila. There is no such thing as a minimum wage; there are people who will work for next to nothing. Surprisingly enough, that doesn’t lead to the excesses you might imagine, but for a few extra dollars, or Pesos, it allows you to do things your competitors might not do. In Reyna’s case, that meant having valet parking, and in the week before Christmas I would dare say it was one of the best investments she had made for her business. Chris, at least, was greatly relieved.

We could have been in New York, or Los Angeles or perhaps even Paris, Reyna’s boutique was that well done. The street windows featured only a few gowns and the interior of the shop was not visible from the sidewalk. Simple gold-leaf lettering across the cottage style door was the only introduction needed apparently, and always with that one-word, Reyna. Not Reyna’s or some glitzy fashion name, just Reyna, as thought that should be enough to tell you all you needed to know.

There was a large open area in the interior, surrounded by small alcoves. There was not a dress, gown or a counter to be seen anywhere. You didn’t come here to sort through the rack, you came to buy something that would be exclusively your own. After only a few seconds, a young woman came out of one of the alcoves and approached me. “May I be of some assistance, sir?” she asked politely.

“I just stopped by to pass on my personal holiday greetings to Miss De Santos, is she in?” I was getting pretty good at this half-truth routine, but my stomach was a hive of butterflies.

“Please have a seat and I’ll go and check,” she smiled. “Could I bring either of you a cold drink?”

I declined and Chris shook his head. The young lady headed for the back of the shop. “Quite a place, huh Tio?” Chris grinned. “I wonder who does their books?”

I laughed. I was beginning to treasure the Garcia’s as a family, but Chris had been especially good for me. The young woman who took our message to the back reappeared at the door and went immediately to her alcove. I took that to mean that Reyna would come out next.

But it wasn’t Reyna, only someone who looked remarkably like her, walked like her and swiveled her head on that long swan neck the way Reyna had always done. As she approached our sitting area she smiled broadly at Chris and pointed her finger at him. “Oh, I know you,” she chuckled, “I’ve seen you so many times in the Tasa de Oro, how nice of you to come by.”

Chris grinned and stood up. “Yes, I remember seeing you there too,” he said. “But, it’s my Tio here who has brought the holiday greetings. This is Carlton Daniels, and he isn’t really my uncle.”

She laughed and looked at me strangely for a long moment. I stood up, saying, “And you must be Honoria,” I said quietly.

Honoria put her hands in front of her face as though she was smothering a scream, her eyes wide open and rapidly filling with tears. “Oh my God”, she whispered, “It’s you, isn’t it? You’re mother’s Danny. I can’t believe you’ve finally come.”

She threw her arms around me and sniffled into my chest. “You’re exactly what I pictured you would be,” she sighed, “mother will be so very happy.”

“Is she here?” I asked.

“No, she is in Hong Kong buying silk,” Honoria said, pushing back away from me again. “She’ll be back the day after tomorrow. Normally she would be here at this busy time, but we were dangerously low of material and she had to make this special trip. I knew I should have gone, but she insisted. Please sit down; I have so much to ask you and so much to tell you. You have no idea of how she has lived for this day.” She grasped Chris by the hand as he sat down. “And what was your name?” she smiled.

“Chris Garcia,” he answered. His nearly flamboyant mannerisms were gone, but he smiled warmly, I could tell this young lady had really made an impression on him.

“Oh my heavens, what are we going to do?” Honoria grinned at me. “If I don’t tell her you are here she will be terribly upset, but if I do tell her I’m afraid she will be on the next plane home, and we really need that silk. We are behind production on the New Year’s dresses.”

“Perhaps you could delay the announcement for a day,” I suggested. “After all, we have waited twenty-five years, would one more day be so terrible?”

“Not if you order me not to tell her until then,” she laughed. “Mother has said this is her last year and she is going to retire, but no one believes her, but still, we wanted this to be the best year we’ve ever had.” Honoria stood up and nearly beckoned to us. “Please come with me, I want to show you something.”

Both Chris and I followed her towards the rear of the shop. On the other side of the door we saw the real heart of the business. There must have been more than 20 ladies at sewing machines working with yards and yards of billowing material. There were dress forms standing on short tables, all with beautiful gowns in some stage of completion. “You know,” she said, turning to me, “this entire idea came from you?”

“From me?” I objected. “How could that be?”

“Well mother said the one time in her life when she felt most special to someone, was when you had a dress made for her so she could attend a movie premier. She never forgot that feeling and she wanted to give that experience to her clients. So, this is where it all comes together.”

I was genuinely touched. Honoria continued on further back in the rear of the building. She opened the door to what was, I assumed, hers or her mother’s office. It was a simply furnished, comfortable room with two desks and two chairs and half a dozen phones. Between the desks, on a wall completely devoid of any other furnishings, hung a full-length oil painting. It was Reyna, posed against a grand piano, wearing that oyster-white gown she had worn to the premier. “Recognize it?” She grinned.

I stood there looking at the painting, a thousand memories crowding into my mind, every one pleasant and comforting, except one. She was as lovely as I remembered; I could hear her laugh, yet I wondered how she could have laughed, carrying that heavy burden. The McDonald’s hamburgers, the Irish Coffees, the music, the thought of waking up on a Sunday morning and feeling her close to me, it all came rushing back. “I’ll remember you, your voice as soft as a warm summer breeze, your sweet laughter, mornings after, ever after, I’ll remember too.” That song, the omen of sadness that colored the days and nights since that night, was there too.

I felt Honoria’s hands circle my left arm, just as her mother had always done and it brought me back. She was smiling, wondering where my thoughts had taken me, I suppose, but I was there. “Just give me a number where I can reach her,” I said. “I’ll call her.”

* * * *

Manila and Hong Kong share the same time zone, the distance between them in on a North-South line, but I waited until about 9PM to punch the group of numbers into the cell phone Chris had given me. Honoria told me that Reyna seldom left her hotel on business trips, and I took her at her word. It is difficult to explain how I was feeling at that moment, so I won’t try.

It seemed as though the phone was ringing in slow motion, every break between rings seemed like minutes. On the fourth ring I heard a slight click and then a soft, sleepy voice say “hello?”

I thought I had it all prepared in my mind somewhere, but I couldn’t remember what I was supposed to say. “Reyna,” I nearly whispered, “this is Dan.”

At first there was only silence, and then I heard a soft sob, and another pause. Finally, this tiny voice answered; “oh Danny, I’m so sorry,” she cried, “I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t want to hurt you, but I couldn’t risk you getting involved. Can you ever forgive me?”

Hearing her voice again, the absurdity of the whole thing struck me as some obscene kind of humor. We both thought that we could protect the other one by hiding away all the good and honest feelings we wouldn’t admit to and cling to a deception that could only end in tragedy. “I know the whole story now,” I told her, “we have paid for our mistakes a thousand times over. It is all behind us now.”

We talked then, the way we should have talked all those years ago. I told her how I had found her, how and where I was, and all the silly, minor, idiot things that weren’t really important but so terribly vital for us to share. After nearly an hour, she agreed that she would finish her business just as quickly as possible and she would fly back to Manila as soon as she could. But before we said goodbye, she corrected me. “You don’t know the whole story now,” she breathed, “you might have guessed, but I want to tell you, now, I have loved you from the moment you agreed to be my lover, that night at the food stalls.”

“And I had loved you for at least a week before that,” I laughed.

Twenty-seven hours later, at midnight on the 22nd of December, Honoria and I, along with a driver and a van, met the incoming UPS flight from Hong Kong. Somehow or other, Reyna had managed to talk someone, somewhere into letting her fly with her cargo. I’m sure it couldn’t have been very comfortable for her but I was happy she had done it. She ran down the stowed ramp and across the tarmac to where we waited and hit me like a college half back. She fit into my arms just the way I remembered in spite of the heavy overcoat she wore. Tears were running down her cheeks and I’m not entirely sure I wasn’t crying a bit myself. Our kiss was crushing but so wonderfully warm. We stayed in embrace for a bit too long, I guess, because Honoria finally got through an audible “ahem”. Reyna hugged her and then they both cried again.

“Isn’t he wonderful?” Reyna laughed. “Have you had time to get to know each other, because I’ll be honest with you, I have no intention of letting even one more day slip away from us again.”

“Well, he does have a very handsome nephew,” Honoria grinned, “who has been running errands for me all day. If I can get this material back to the shop in a reasonable time we’re going to go out for a nightcap.”

“Oh my,” Reyna chuckled, “he must be quite something for you to be up past midnight. We’re going to have some hectic days coming up, you know?”

“Everyone is on overtime for the next two days,” Honoria said. “It will be touch and go, but we’ll make it now. Chris is helping with the deliveries, serving all the seamstress’ refreshments, sweeping floors and he says if we need more help he can recruit his mother and sister too.”

“Chris?” Reyna said, but then answered her own question. “You mean Danny’s nephew?”

“Adopted nephew,” Honoria laughed. “The whole family; I’m not sure if he adopted them or they adopted him, but we are invited there for dinner on Christmas evening.”

“And how did this all come about?” Reyna mockingly scowled at me.

“Well it began with Emily, who happens to be a nurse in Virginia, and I being seat-mates on the flight over. She was a little concerned with my health and she looked out for me. Then I met Chris and he has been my chauffeur and guide the last few days, and I just somehow inherited the rest of the family, including Uncle Hector, who is my temporary landlord. It’s all very complicated,” I said, grinning.

Reyna’s mock concerned turned real in an instant. “What is it about your health that she is concerned with?”

Honoria injected another “ahem”. “You two have some talking to do, I suspect.” She hugged me and kissed me on the cheek. “Just tell it like it is,” she admonished me. “No sugar coating, no making it more than it needs to be either. For once in each other’s lives, just put it out there and don’t be afraid.” She hugged her mother, what seemed to be extra hard. “Don’t be an alarmist. You can’t expect him to be thirty-five years old forever you know? He’s going to find out you have sore feet and backaches after a long day too. I’ll see both of you in the morning. Don’t stay out too late.”

With that, she and the driver were off to the customs area. “Do you have to get a passport check?” I asked her.

“Yes, if we can find one awake. It won’t take a minute. Now tell me.”

She grabbed my left arm with both of hers like she had always done and we started walking towards the terminal. It was late, I was just a little tired and I suppose it was natural, given my mental state that my brain would pick that particular moment to send a mild, jumping tic through the very arm she held. She felt it too.

I did my best to explain Parkinson’s to her in a straight forward manner. She listened without showing much emotion. I finished about the time the customs officer came and handed her back her passport that he had taken a few minutes earlier. “Have a Merry Christmas, Miss De Santos,” he said. “And the same wish for you,” she returned.

“Honoria is right,” she smiled. “My feet are killing me right now and I could probably go to bed and sleep right through tomorrow, but I can’t. “ I gathered her up into my arms. “I just want us to be together,” she whispered. “I don’t care where; I’ll let you decide those things, as long as I can see my daughter and eventually my grandchildren once in a while. But, I still need a lover; are you interested?”

“The last time you asked me that, I wasn’t quite sure what to say,” I smiled to myself. “Maybe I’m a little older and a little more worn than I used to be, but I’m pretty sure that I can curl your toes from time to time, if that will help your sore feet. You’re still the most beautiful, exciting woman I’ve ever known, and the answer is definitely yes.”

I suppose it must have looked rather strange to the skeleton crew that were busy doing clean up chores and going about their midnight routine, to have a slightly older than middle age couple, kissing in the middle of a deserted airport, but we didn’t care.

Reyna took a step back from me, her eyes shining brightly behind a thin mist of tears, and she smiled lovingly, and in a soft voice she sang; “To your arms one day, I’ll return to stay, till then – I’ll remember too, every bright star we made wishes upon, to love me always, promise always, we’ll remember too.”

We went to Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve, only a couple of hours after we had locked the doors of the boutique. Reyna knew a little church snuggled away in the back of a residential community in Makati. It was packed with people and children too excited to be at home in bed. We had to stand in the back next to the doors and the crowd overflowed onto the grounds and peered through the windows. We sang hymns and Christmas Carols and shook hands with smiling people who seemed to have left the cares of the world back somewhere else. Afterwards we went home to Reyna’s house and she made excellent Irish Coffees on a small burner. She fell asleep on my lap, stretched out on the sofa and eventually I snuck out from underneath her, covered her in a light blanket and tucked a pillow under her head.

The next morning the three of us opened the very few gifts we had managed to purchase in the bedlam blur of the last days. I made breakfast and then Reyna and Honoria did the dishes. It was all so ordinary and so very natural.

We took a nap in the afternoon and about 4PM Reyna began her dressing routine. When she reappeared nearly an hour later she was as gorgeous as I’ve ever seen her, dressed in a beautiful blue dress and white accents. Honoria wore black and red, and you could tell she went through some extra effort as well. I suspected Chris would be the most immediate beneficiary of her glow.

The Garcia’s opened their home and their hearts to us that evening. Emily was enthralled with Reyna and they had several long and serious conversations during the course of the evening. Gilbert danced with Honoria, Chris doted on her, and Emma hugged her at least three times that I was aware of. Late in the evening, we sang Christmas Carols and drank toasts of a special punch that Emma and Emily had made. Reyna would come by occasionally and touch my arm and smile. I think it was the best Christmas of my entire life.

There are so many lights in Manila that it is often difficult to see the stars, even on a clear night. But that night was different, somehow. Reyna and I stood on the veranda and looked up into the sky. I offered a silent prayer for a skinny old Brit who knew every one of those stars by name and the stories behind each of them. He couldn’t have known how much he had changed our lives, but perhaps he suspected. I lifted a glass of the punch to the sky; “Merry Christmas, Lord Bentley,” I whispered.

End