Rich Guest

Guiding Moonface through the pathways and into the house turned out to be a tiresome endeavor. The endless nagging of her complaints on everything—from the government deficiencies on services for not doing its work of unclogging the city sewers to the rats’ uncontrolled sexual appetite to reproduce—irritated me a lot. She was sluggish but I learned to forgive her for that because she was carrying her obesity. The flashlight I pointed to her feet to help her in her steps gave me an interesting discovery. I came to realize she was not really obese. As evinced by the swelling of her feet, I assumed her whole body was swollen too.

When we were inside the house the bright light reveal her wholeness in front of me. I came to finally looked at her without the cover of obscurity of her blurry tent lamp. The face that I only saw at night every time I dropped by at her tent had only given me a murky picture of her appearance. Tonight, she was fully unmasked. She was a filthy, foul smelling creature. Inside the not completely enclosed quarter of the living room, her stench overpowered the stale air in the room. She was reeking with the unmistakable smell of urine. The whiteness of her face lacked uniformity. It was an obvious manifestation of a skin disease malevolently populating the surface of her skin. Blemished all over her face were blackheads and skin indentations of scars which clearly were the result of infected pinched pimples that healed. She wore fancy earrings on both ears that were seemed to be wiped clean so often as borne out by their phony glitters. Her earlobes seemed to be the only part of her body that were very much attended to.

I just couldn’t believe that she could comfortably sleep with that so dirty a body, (I presumed that if I didn’t interrupt her night ritual and let her out of her cave she would sleep in that filthy state.) when she had the opportunity to clean the filth by the abundant rainwater brought by the storm. But of course I knew that comfort was alien to her. She was not only filthy, she was also fundamentally lazy.

I was afraid my eyes caught something crawling from that uncombed wavy hair that I nearly shouted in amazement on what I saw. The dropping ends of the hair strands rubbed her eyes, but it bore no consequence to her, nor the small droplets dripping from the ends of her wet hair. I could not offer her a clean towel to dry her hair for obvious reason. I persevered to pretend that I was inured to it all. I tried to put a cloud on my eyes on everything I saw but it seemed I had had a limit of what I could endure. I finally cracked and offered her a clean cloth to dry herself. One thing for sure, I would be discarding that cloth without a moment wasted afterwards.

“Are you okay without ice?” I said, to start a conversation as I put on the table a bottle of one of my imported whiskeys. “I don’t have a refrigerator.” She only nodded. From the corner of my eyes I could almost see the rounding of her eyes looking intently at the bottle in front of her. The unmistakable show of thirst over her face could no longer be held.

“Where’s the glass?” she inquired, as her eyes panned around with a look of suspicion I might be hiding the glasses from her. I rummaged inside a big plastic box where I put my dining pieces to keep them safe from roaming bugs, insects, and mice and rats. With a glass on her hand she reached for the bottle to open it, but I beat her to it. I had a funny feeling that her dirty and greasy hands would defeat the disinfectant nature of the spirit and contaminate it. Worse, I was afraid the bottle would slip from her grasp and spill all its contents. As I poured on her glass, I was thinking whether to bring out the ordered takeout food for munchies. It was still inside the pocket of my jacket. Whatever it had become of it after being battered and pounded, I only wished that it was still intact. I was not used drinking without my mouth munching something. With food, the effect of alcohol would be minimized, and it was not my intention to prolong her state of sobriety. A decision had been preplanned and I was not to divert from it just because I was craving to have a drink. Later, I could take a drinking binge after all things had worked out. For now I must concentrate on my goal.

The first pour was half of her regular-size glass; she drank it in one gulp. I was not at all surprised. The once a week supply of a bottle of gin that I gifted her had made her alcoholic. I took a sip of mine and wondered if I would allow her to let the pouring herself. I didn’t have to wait for an answer. She grabbed the bottle and poured handsomely on her glass. This time it was not half but nearly filled to the mouth.

“Seems you’re in the condition to drink,” I said nonchalantly to egg her to say something. Still no words came from her; she just took a glance at me with a blank expression then turned her focus at the receding content of the bottle. It was a puzzle to me why she suddenly became words shy while some moments ago on the way to the house she was yapping non-stop.

She drank of what remained in her glass then poured another from the bottle before the glass bottom had even touched the top of the table. The more she was in a hurry to get drunk the more I liked her to drain the content of her glass every time. At times I was also a heavy drinker, but tonight I only took a sip on my drink every now and then preferring to just watch her slowly being drowned by the spirit. There was only a small amount left in the bottle when she finally opened her mouth.

“You have any food?” she asked. The whiteness of her face had become whiter. I had seen a drinker who had that kind of face coloration when alcohol started to have an effect on him. Instead of getting reddish his face was so pale that you might suspect blood had drained out of him. Moonface’s eyes had bulged forward from its socket which I figured was also a sign that alcohol had gradually taking its effect.

“I haven’t had eaten a meal since noon,” she added, wiping her mouth with the back of her palm. If her intention was to get empathy from me she got none. I had known her secret long before I began getting acquainted with her. She lived on charity not from the government but from the goodness of people around the city. I had seen her once on a wheelchair being pushed by a street kid on the way to the numerous affluent neighborhoods to beg. She paid kids to transport her around to impress upon people that she had difficulty walking or could not walk at all. One of the boys I’d talked to shared with me a story of her that I could hardly believe. He confided to me that Moonface was rich and kept all the money from her begging deposited in a bank. At first I considered it as tall tale. I even accused the boy of pulling my leg with his not-to-be-believed story. He then challenged me to ask the other boys who had ran errands for Moonface. The tale turned out to be true. She maintained a bank account where she put her money at the end of her days work. Since then I added the word cunning as one of her qualities.

I made some thinking for several moments whether to answer her pleading for food. I might as well feed it to her rather than let the food go spoiled after forgetting about it. I went picking out the food from my shoulder bag hanging on its trap on the chair's backrest. Seeing the food pack, her eyelids widened and her lips stretched on both ends giving an impression of a little smile. It was not a smile of a grateful face that I saw; it was the face of an ingrate who would pull anything to take advantage of my hospitality. She was making me boil inside; she was making me angry.

After the first bottle was emptied, I replaced it with a local one. I doubt if she knew the difference, but I do. Locally made spirits were notoriously rough to shallow and leaves a bad, distinctly acrid taste in the mouth. As I had no such interest in joining her in her splurge, I just contended myself watched her get drunk. Soon the alcohol in her body loosened her tongue. She talked about the hardship that she had been enduring; the selfishness and cruelty of people; the indifference of the government towards her; and other complaints that I could hardly keep up to hear. The rapid talk made her lips quiver pushing her saliva outwards showering the space of the table in front of her. I was thankful that I placed my glass at the edge of the table closer to me a while ago when I noticed the dripping of liquid from her mouth. The food on the table had been devoured solely by her with only the remaining sauce that was left, and soon it would also be consumed before the night ended.

The night had been calmed as the time progressed. Only scant gusty winds and sporadic flash of rain pouring were the early signs that the storm was beginning to leave the city. From time to time I had to leave the table to relieve myself at the bathroom. The leak in the kitchen had also thinned out and the accumulated rain water on the floor had drained itself leaving only the heavy dirt in the aftermath.