Free Before the Rain: A Memoir of Love and Revolution by Luisita Lopez Torregrosa

required extensive instructions. No sugar, and just this much foam, two fingers, and the waiter invariably responded, “No problem, mum.” Half an hour later the piña colada arrived in a tall, warm glass, a sugary mix with five fingers of foam topping it off. The piña coladas, sold by the dozen, were swallowed in quick gulps, and not a drop was left in the glass, just wisps of
    foam for the flies to crawl over. It was just about this time that the hottest sun settled in a spot directly overhead and pinned everyone down.
    I am watching you —a note from Elizabeth on one of those days when, wishing to be alone, she dragged a chair under a tree, away from the crowd. I was propped up on my side on a lounge chair by the pool. My hair was wet, slicked back, and my head moved naturally back and forth while I talked to a hefty blond fellow on the chair next to me. I ran my hand over my sweaty thighs and legs, rubbing oil over them, and sensed that she was watching me, could feel her eyes without looking in her direction. The fellow was turning toward me, listening. I was talking about the Philippines as usual,
    playing with my hair, sipping my beer. He seemed charmed, transfixed, lighting my cigarette. I inhaled slowly and let the smoke out in a long stream. I was doing this for her: I knew she was looking at me behind her sunglasses. Everything around me slowed down, the sun burned my skin, and the wind was still, the heat rising.

    Some days the temperature was a perfect 85—the brochure tropics—with the wind off the South China Sea driving out the ghastly odor from the garbage in Manila Bay. The leaves of the trees became a translucent green, and the haze lifted. The sky turned a cerulean blue, just as it does in the Caribbean after midday showers.
    On the day of my birthday, my second Saturday in Manila, we drove down the coast to find Matabungkay Beach. We hired a driver and rode for a couple of hours on a narrow road clogged with trucks, buses, and sputtering jeepneys. There was nothing panoramic about the drive, as people had told us there would be, no coastline to see. But we were involved with each other, barely aware of
    the driver and the road, until we spotted a faded billboard announcing the Matabungkay Beach Resort. We took a dirt road past shacks and beer stalls and at the end of it we found the resort, the main building a large, airy shed of concrete with a tin roof. It wasn’t the enchanting pavilion, the white beaches, we had in mind, but having gone so far and having a day to ourselves, we ran up to the reception desk and signed up for a raft. Cheap, ten pesos for half a day. In the restaurant a throng of people, not the foreign tourists of the Manila Hotel but barrio Filipinos, large, loud parties, were picnicking and drinking, the women with their heavy breasts, the men with their soft bellies.
    Out in the water there were dozens of bancas, narrow-tailed boats, loaded with families.
    Vendors in cutoff shorts and rubber sandals, their skin charcoaled by the sun, their bodies fish-bony and sinewy, waded through the water, carrying boxes of food, beer, and ice cream. We hired two of them to pull our bamboo raft into the water and they anchored it about two hundred feet from the shore. A vendor took our lunch order and one hour later he was back, wading in the sea while balancing a damp box on his head with our rice, crispy fried fish, and a couple of San Miguel beers. We spread the food on a dry palm leaf and ate it with our fingers and drank the lukewarm beer.
    The water was so clear, you could see the bottom. Elizabeth dived in and out, and I dangled my legs off the raft, splashing water on my face and arms to keep cool. I rarely went into the water. I only wanted to smell it, to feel it near me, to feel it like the air. I watched her body swivel, and the changing light on the waves, and the sun spots skittering under water. Around us the boats swayed, like floating huts. Kids jumped naked into the sea,