The Rosarios are having breakfast when a call interrupts Mr. Rosario’s twenty-fifth round of digital slots. The name of the caller pops up on his cellphone screen, muting the satisfying ring of the numbers rolling into another loss. Mr. Rosario could have paid for better odds, but what was the point of playing if you already knew you were going to win?
Besides, their sons refused to show them how to put in their credit card information.
Across the table, Ms. Rosario slides a greasy finger down her own phone screen. An animated lever leans down and her numbers whir into her own loss as she pinches up another helping of egg and rice.
Mr. Rosario stands and reaches over to bat the breakfast from his wife’s hair. She secures a new handful of food to her mouth, as the one that got away falls to the floor at his touch. If not for him, it would have been there all day until right before bed, when she looked at herself in the mirror to remove her false teeth and brush what food she had left. It would have dried and required her husband, beside her with his own toothbrush, his own false and tattered remains hiding, to wet his fingertips and pick each piece away. The longer it stayed, the harder it was to remove.
Mr. Rosario takes the last bit of rice from her hair and eats it. The taste makes him nostalgic for a different time. Before their children were born. Before they played these games. Before they won or lost anything.
It softens and dissolves. It tickles down his throat.
He looks down at his phone and cannot read the name the missed message is from. It is too early to be one of their sons. It is too late to be a friend.
The call starts again but this time on Ms. Rosario’s phone. Ms. Rosario smiles at calls, no matter who it is, and presses the answer and speaker button without a second thought. Mr. Rosario sits down and resumes his game, putting the volume down on his phone to listen.
“Hello Miz Rosario. Have you seen my wife?”
Mr. Rosario watches the tallies settle to the music. He knows it is Mr. Hillside looking for Ms. Hilside again just by his “Miz”. The fruits line up. Two strawberries and three lemons.
“I’m sorry, Timothy, she’s not here.” Ms. Rosario says. She looks at Mr. Rosario and points her lips at the sliding glass door to their backyard. Mr. Rosario presses the start button again before he gets up and goes.
“Can you check outside for me? I’m not home. I’m away on business.”
“How do you know she went out?”
Mr. Rosario peeks out at their yard, full of old junk covered in tarp and tied with rope. Their sons’ bikes, their old school uniforms, their PlayStation games, and exercise machines. All things they did not need anymore, shed off and left behind. They had fit so well in their old house, but had no place in their new one nor the homes of their sons.
“I got a Ring notification. I had it installed since the last time.”
“That’s a smart thing to do. I saw these porch pirates on the news. They were just kids and already no good.”
“Are you checking?”
“Yes, we are.”
Mr. Rosario slides open the door and finds Ms. Hillside sitting on their swinging bench. She is in a pink robe and slippers, smoking a cigarette. Unlike Ms. Rosario, Ms. Hillside is a natural beauty, and the light does not expose her wrinkles as much as it casts her skin in a glow. Unlike Ms. Hillside, Ms. Rosario does not smoke, but to whose detriment Mr. Rosario cannot tell. Ms. Rosario always believed smoking would ruin her complexion, but here was Ms. Hillside, stunning. Mr. Rosario couldn’t stand smoke, but he could respect it like one respects a billowing funeral pyre. They nod at each other and Mr. Rosario slowly retreats back inside and passes the nod to his wife.
“I don’t see anyone out here, but I’ll let you know,” Ms. Rosario says with a wink. “I’m sure she’ll come back. Probably just out for a walk.”
“Miz Rosario, thank you. I just wish she told me when she went out so I wouldn’t have to worry.”
“If you let them go, if it’s true love, they’ll come back to you.”
Mr. Rosario hears a cough on the other end, but it is not Mr. Hillside’s.
“If only it were that simple.”
“It is, dear.”
“Thanks. Well, I’ll see yah.”
When the call ends, Ms. Rosario lifts herself up and hobbles out the sliding door, past her husband. In between blinks, he sees her in her twenties again. Long, dark hair past her knees, thick and heavy at her shoulders. Before he can reach for her though, she is already outside again. They have been married for so long, grown so much alike it is as if they are alone even when they are together. He misses her, even when she is at his shoulder.
Now, outside, together with Ms. Hillside, he can see his wife again. They talk silently through the glass that separates them.
***
Mr. Rosario was in a Casino in Tagaytay when he first won. He was only forty then, but his sons were already very close to leaving. They had vacationed with them, but they had stayed in the resort, uninterested in the wonders of gambling, while Mr. and Ms. Rosario spent all night engulfed in it. Before they left, Mr. Rosario tried to spend his remains on the most expensive slots he could find, and by some luck and prayer, he hit all coconuts for the grand prize of a million pesos, or a little less than twenty-thousand US dollars.
All the while, Mr. Rosario didn’t feel like a winner. As much as he and his wife thanked God, he couldn’t help but feel like He didn’t have a part in it. It was the ache in his bones when it rained. It was the winter wind kissing the bald spot at the top of his head. It was a reminder that invisible gestures like these were omens of trying times.
And a month after they left the Philippines early, his wife’s aunt they were supposed to visit passed away suddenly. What was to blame but his own luck? Surely not the cancer she fought for years. Sickness was a slow killer. Winning struck suddenly, without remorse.
***
Mr. Rosario walks in front of the Hillside’s house and puts his hands up to his mouth as if to call out a name, but he makes no effort to produce a sound. His lips part, but not even a breath comes out. He wonders how desperate he looks on Mr. Hillside’s Ring camera. This blurry figure walking across the fisheye lens, moving from one end of the screen to the other. He waits a few minutes before making his return to where he came from, except now he has his head hung low in mock defeat. He takes no pleasure in fooling someone else, but there is an itch in his heel. He feels it when the tabs sink and slow, when the numbers drop and rise, the music crescendos. A curled line peeks out the corner of his mouth, obscured on Ring and mistaken later for a wrinkle.
He had been a structural engineer for over forty years and retired as a senior estimator. In his younger years, he worked on making elaborate designs work, but in the twilight of his career he discovered his true passion in determining the cost. The last bid his company landed was a big one, and his swan song was a higher return and a calculated minimizing of loss.
Ms. Rosario and Ms. Hillside stand in front of the house. By then, Ms. Rosario has put on a nice sweater and make up, although Ms. Hillside and Mr. Rosario haven’t changed.
“Is it done?” Ms. Rosario asks, linked to Ms. Hillside’s arm.
He grunts at her with his lips. Ms. Hillside looks down at him, a foot taller. He looks down at her feet, her perfectly manicured toes.
“Thank you. Hope that bastard’s having a heart attack.”
“Aye, dear. You shouldn’t call your husband that. He’s just worried about you.”
“He’s just worried that I know. He should worry.”
“Come on now. Let’s go inside.”
“You have to let them sweat. That’s how you punish them. It’s not about the truth. It’s what they make up in their own heads. You get me, Fran?”
“Let’s go inside now.” Ms. Rosario locks eyes with Mr. Rosario and points her lips at the Hillside’s house again.
Mr. Rosario nods and goes back to the Hillside’s driveway. He stands there to look like he is waiting for what he has already found.
“Joe, why can’t my husband be more like you?”
Mr. Rosario shrugs on camera. He does not worry if it shows. A shrug is expected, given their situation, whether it is real or fake.
Ms. Rosario laughs. “You don’t want Robert to be like him. He’s always grumpy.”
“He’s loyal, Fran. That’s the point. And he trusts you. He listens to what you say and does what you ask.”
Mr. Rosario’s ears tingle at the sound of his wife’s name, the compliment passing through him as he looks anywhere but their direction.
“Ay nako. Your husband pays attention to you. Kasi, that’s why he’s worried.”
“He’s only worried about himself. I’m not stupid. I know what he’s doing. What’s more important than loyalty and trust?”
Mr. Rosario feels their eyes. He walks in the opposite direction as if they can roll off him.
“Susmariosep. No drama. Tama na. Let’s go inside.”
“It’s not drama, it’s cheating. It’s facts.”
“Stop that now.” Ms. Rosario says and tugs at Ms. Hillside until she relents and shuffles back to their door.
Mr. Rosario walks all the way to the end of the street before he comes back again. The last time the camera catches him, he looks tired, the wrinkle at his mouth longer, grinning.
***
Ms. Hillside was nineteen when she won the lotto. In between the ten years before she first found her way into the Rosario’s backyard, she had tried her best to spend her fortune, but it was too substantial an amount to lose easily. Meeting and marrying a man who was not satisfied with losing what they already had didn’t help. The money was invested more than it was spent. And at a certain point, she had explained once, you run out of things to spend money on.
The Rosario’s had listened to her story with wonder and pity. Here was someone who could not lose and therefore could not win. They counted their blessings and took her in.
Every time Ms. Hillside tried to share her wealth, they refused. They were retired and well off enough. Besides, losing was a natural part of life.
***
At the kitchen table, the Rosarios’ games recommence in silence as they sit with their guest. A pair of bells and a cherry bounce on Mr. Rosario’s screen.
“You should have a yard sale.” Ms. Hillside suggests, her feet up on the chair besides Mr. Rosario. Twice, she brushes his thigh.
“What would we sell?” Ms. Rosario asks. Her glasses are on now, a diamond and two oranges in their reflection.
“That junk in the back.”
“That’s not junk. Those are our sons’ things.”
“Do they still want them?”
“I don’t know.”
“You should ask. There’s some good stuff there. I could use a pool table.”
Mr. Rosario remembers the sound the balls made sliding on the green baize. His sons would play but never finish a game. After only a year, it was just for show. After they moved, it was covered in boxes of old trophies and plates. The balls and cues separated and went missing.
“We’ll ask. If the price is right, they might be willing to sell.” Ms. Rosario says, but it is an empty promise.
Mr. Rosario looks outside and tries to put a price to everything. The numbers go up. Three lemons appear but they do not amount to anything.
“Wouldn’t the yard look nice with all of that gone? You can grow plants.”
Ms. Rosario taps her screen and the pictures reel. “Plants? That’s too much work.”
“How about just empty then? Nothing’s fine too.”
Mr. Rosario thinks of everything gone. The lemons disappear and are replaced with two bells and an orange. He wishes his sons called more often.
“It might be nice, right, mahal?”
Mr. Rosario’s ears itch at Ms. Rosario calling him Mahal. She has never called him that. He doesn’t know what to feel or why now.
“Like a flood. Nice,” he says in reference to his wife.
“Yeah,” Ms. Hillside says, misunderstanding. “Cleaned out. Like a tsunami.”
***
When Ms. Rosario won big, she did not notice. It was in Las Vegas on their silver anniversary. She played through a nickel slot at Circus Circus and only noticed when it was time to go, and her credits were a hundred-times more than what she started with. Miracles happen when you don’t notice, she said to Mr. Rosario, and when they collected their winnings and returned to their room at five in the morning, they made love for the first time in fifteen years. They found each other in the dark and Ms. Rosario, afterwards, described it as emptying and refilling familiar spaces. Mr. Rosario turned to his wife before nodding off and said it felt like he was putting on old clothes.
***
“You hear about those ghosts in Japan that cab drivers picked up after that big tsunami in 2011? The cars would stop for what they thought were people flagging them down for a ride. Their dashboard cam would show their door open and close, no one stepping inside, while the cab driver greeted someone like normal. The ghost would give them the destination and by the time the cab got them there it would be too late. The ghost would be gone.”
“Cheapskates!” Ms. Rosario exclaims, a term she learned from Ms. Hillside.
“I know! Cab drivers still need to make a living! So what if it’s a ghost.” Ms. Rosario and Ms. Hillside share a laugh. Ms. Hillside taps Mr. Rosario’s thigh as she continues. “Poor things, though. It’s not their fault. They probably don’t know they’re dead. They probably left before they noticed.”
“And how would they pay?” Ms. Rosario asks, oranges in her eyes. “It’s not like they have anything to give except a curse.”
“Maybe a curse wouldn’t be bad. Something is better than nothing.”
“Well, in that case, I’m fine with nothing at all,” Mr. Rosario says and edges away from Ms. Hillside’s touch. “It’s a blessing when nothing happens.”
***
The last time Mr. Rosario won, it was his last day of work and a coworker had gifted him a scratch card. He took a penny and turned it into a grand. He bought his wife a new phone and invited their sons and their families out to eat. Loss management was his specialty, and, even when he was no longer paid to do it, it was still somehow his responsibility.
In the camera, the three blurs hug until one of them departs. Ms. Hillside manifests in the doorway, moving off the screen, but there is not enough light left to know for certain who she leaves in the dark. However, it is no loss to anyone. The strangers disappear off screen, a call is made, and the ghosts are brought to light. But what would they want from the living? What could their lives possibly offer them?
E.P. Tuazon is a Filipinx-American writer from Los Angeles. He has published his works in several publications. His most recent book is a forthcoming novella called The Cussing Cat Clock (Hash 2022). He was a finalist for the 2021 Prairie Schooner Raz-Shumaker Book Prize in Fiction, the 2021 Five South Short Fiction Prize, and a winner of the Berkeley Fiction Review Sudden Fiction Contest 2022. He is currently a member of Advintage Press and The Blank Page Writing Club at the Open Book, Canyon Country. In his spare time, he likes to wander the seafood section of Filipino markets to gossip with the crabs.