“Will it hurt?” that was the first thing she’d asked the dog trainer.  “No,” he replied after a moment, “I don’t believe in pain, it doesn’t really work.”  I knew then that he’d won her over, captured her soul with a brazen lie that she’d so desperately wanted to believe in and they were now bonded by a commitment to an animal beyond any love that one might proffer another human being.  I knew at once I’d done wrong.  I knew I’d sealed her fate, and maybe, mine, by bringing the dog trainer, Norberto Reynaldo ‘Norey’ Hidalgo y Anda IV, to Montevista that fateful Sunday morning a month after the turn of the new millennium.

Dennis, the Doberman, was husband Richard’s New Year’s present to Anna Maria Zuloaga-Baluarte.  He’d always thought of her as a dog lover even though she’d never had a dog, or any other pet, since being born to Ricaredo and Carmencita Zuloaga thirty years ago.  “Why do you think so?” I’d ask Richard the day he brought Dennis home to Anna and I’d happen to drop by to show her the books of her family’s estate which she never cared to inspect.  “Just tell me I’m not destitute, Frankie,” she’d whisper to me in her mock plaintive manner and I: Of course not your majesty, I would never allow that to happen.

In the beginning, Richard seemed peeved, if not distressed, by this playful banter between Anna and me but he eventually warmed up to it, having married into a family high on theatrics.  “So how can she be a dog lover who’s never had a dog?” I insisted.  “Spouses know these things,” was all Richard said.  “What things?” I wanted to ask.  “I’ve known her for twenty five years, we practically grew up together.  She’s never liked dogs.…”  I wanted to say but knew it was pointless.  Dennis, muzzled, was straining at his leash as the chauffer, Agno, pulled mightily.  The dog, I surmised then, was Richard’s way of telling Agnes to give up on her idea of adopting some poorly pedigreed orphan at the advice of the family obstetrician who concluded that Richard’s shaky sperm count and Anna’s inverted uterus would bear the couple no heir.

“Dobermans are easiest to train,” Richard had told Anna, “they are hugely intelligent and fiercely loyal.”  Anna did take to Dennis as she’d never taken to any other creature in her life, including Richard.  She dotted on the dog and bought herself a book on dog training, downloaded stuff from the Web about Dobermans, talked and sang to Dennis, prepared gourmet dog food, but after a month, the dog remained a stranger who had to be muzzled half the time by a nerve-racked Agno.  As for Richard, he chose to remain above the fray and spent his days in the family home in Pasay, visiting Montevista – the Zuloaga mansion in Tagaytay, overlooking Taal Lake – only on Sundays.

“I first met Norey when he came to the store looking for Butamine.  The drug is often used to settle overly aggressive animals, including dogs, but had since been restricted after its abuse by human junkies.  I managed however to maintain a line to our supplier and continued to sell the stuff to known clients and their recommendees, like Norey.  I figured out soon enough that he was a dog trainer who worked the plush villages of Makati and Ayala Alabang.  Turns out, Norey was scion to sugar and abaca money, his family home in Negros wasn’t too far from that of Anna’s folk.  But Norey got hooked on cocaine at seventeen, was in and out of rehab and jail for ten years, until his family sent him to Antwerp, cut off his allowance after a year and he apprenticed himself to a dog trainer.  Instead of joining his brother in New York, Norey decided to return home despite his family’s disapproval and he started earning his own keep training the dogs of his rich friends who recommended him to other clients.  Now, he claims to have more dogs to train than he used to have women to date.  Norey boasted that he could train any dog to be the gentlest creature or a bloodhound.  I hesitated to sell him the drug, later on, after hearing about his past but he swore he was now totally clean and vegetarian.

Norey was in his standard denim jeans and white long sleeved shirt when I brought him to Montevista.  He said the white shirt somehow calmed the dogs but I thought it had more to do with his being ‘clean.’  In any case, he went to work immediately and offered his leather-wrapped forearm to Dennis who bit into it viciously.  Norey allowed the dog to pull him a few meters until he started to pull back.  For a moment, trainer and dog appeared in a stand-off before Norey suddenly dropped to the ground and rolled down the landscaped garden, taking Dennis with him.  Dennis appeared shaken by this, he backed off and growled at the trainer, preparing to attack but Norey hurled a rubber bone towards the dog who went for it.  Norey allowed Dennis to take his anger out on the bone before grabbing it away.  The dog was upset and Norey again offered Dennis his forearm.  Dog and trainer wrestled once more about the grounds for several minutes before Dennis suddenly gave up and walked away to lie in a corner but still seething at Norey.

Anna was quite impressed by Norey’s performance.  In her mind the dog trainer had tamed a lion, her lion.  “It’ll take longer than I thought,” Norey said, smiling, almost serene.  “That was wonderful,” Anna said, “where did you find this guy, Frank?” she turned to me.  “Where have you been all my life?”  I think I heard her ask Norey in my mind’s ear.  “When have I ever let you down?” I said,  basking in the fallout from Norey’s glow.  “Never,” she whispered and kissed me on the cheek before Dennis started barking at us.

Norey came to train Dennis thrice a week for the first month.  He drove all the way from Makati to Tagaytay since Anna had decided to stay in Montevista for the season and Richard was more than happy to oblige as he was now free to roam the bars of Metro Manila nightly.  By the second month, Dennis was practically trained – he knew when and where to go to toilet, he ate only what Anna and Agno fed him, he sat when told to sit, stood on command, was easily silenced, hopped through Norey’s rings, played Frisbee with Anna and, said Norey, could tear a person to shreds at Anna’s command: kill!

Yet Norey was spending more and more time at Montevista.  He even stayed over for the weekend the last time he visited Dennis, according to Agno who had passed by our place for the doberman’s vitamins.  “What on earth is he up to?” I asked my wife Magda who cared little for Anna, the daughter of her former employers, much less for Dennis whom she’d rather poison were it not that I’d immediately suspect her should the poor dog suddenly drop dead.  “What do you think he’s up to, idiot?  He’s banging her!  Her and the dog!  They’re having a perverted threesome up there!  It runs in the family!”

“I won’t hear you speak that way of Anna!  She’s like a sister to me.  If you ever malign her again I’ll….”

“What?  What will you do, boy?  Like a sister?  Bull shit!  You want to screw her just like that animal doctor!  You’re jealous!  Well let me tell you, lover boy, she’ll do that dog before she even let’s you sniff her crotch!  You’ll never be anything to that bitch but her house boy!”

“Just shut up you…old crone!”

And that was when she pulled the kitchen knife at me, her eyes fiercer than Dennis’.  I could see her foaming at the mouth. I could smell her ugly breath.  She was possessed by a malignant spirit and I knew then I must act before she plunged that knife into my heart some night while I slept.  The same knife, I was now convinced, she used to carve out the heart of her first husband, the one who brought her to Villa Asuncion, the Zuloaga estate in Balayan, Batangas twenty years ago, who was supposedly abducted and murdered by communist rebels he’d betrayed, sending his bloody heart, wrapped in pages of the Party newspaper ‘Liberation,’ to his widow.  Now I saw as clear as daylight how she’d faked it all.  Murder in her heart spilled out through her eyes.  “He was a pig and he died like one,” she once said, now I knew why.

Of the woman who was supposed to be my mother I remember only her breath – warm and tangy, smelling of eucalyptus – so unlike the fervid, sea-scented halitosis of Magda.  She was supposed to have given birth to me in Villa Asuncion – twenty hectares planted to coconut, pineapple and corn – after a fling with the married estate manager, Baluyot, who was let go.  When I was three she married a man who took her away to another country, or so the story went.  I grew up mothered by an assortment of estate women, passed on from one family to another until I found myself inside the ‘big house,’ sharing space with the kitten and the pup, playing with the Zuloaga kids – Jay and Anna – whenever they visited with their mother Carmencita, a plump, kindly lady with dark brows and oyster shell necklaces, who seemed blessed with boundless energy.  Their father Ricaredo, on the other hand, seemed lethargic, he seldom inspected his acres and didn’t ride his horse more than a few paces.  He listened to music from his stereo all day, pretending to be Caruso or Mario Lanza.  Carmencita liked me from the start and taught me to call her ‘Tita.’  They say my mother devoured raw onions when she was pregnant with me and that was how I got my fair complexion – so distinct from the brown tots of the other farm hand.

At ten, I was living in the Zuloaga home in Pasay, attending public school.  Eventually, the incongruity of my being chauffered in a sedan to a public school with kids in rubber sandals – since there were no public transport near enough the Zuloaga home – dawned on my benefactors and I was enrolled at De LaSalle along with Jay.  I’ve used my mother’s maiden name – Alosbanos – ever since but have never felt the urge to find either of my parents.  I’ve always wondered what this says of me.  Am I cold hearted or just ‘practical’ as Carmencita says?  “It doesn’t matter where you came from.  It’s where you’re headed that counts,” she always said.  And by her measures, I was still headed for heaven rather than hell.

I liked Anna since we were kids.  She was clever and spunky like her mother.  She made up all sorts of games which she always won, changing the rules as we played.  At fourteen she was a strapping 5 ft. 6, with budding breasts and splendid legs.  At seventeen, she entered the UP, planning to become an architect but dropped out by her third year since no one in school was keen on changing any rules for her.  She had all these flaky ideas about bamboo high rises and ‘zen’ buildings.  At nineteen she designed a new barn for Villa Asuncion which was never built until the estate was sold to pay off the family debt.  At 21 she hied off with her yoga guru to India where she had a miscarriage.  At 25 she entered the nunnery and dropped out a year later.  At 27 she married Richard Baluarte, 35, also of old Negros stock but now penniless.  He was lead guitarist of a blues band and sometime stockbroker.

I never saw Richard as an opportunist nor was he half as useless as others of similar upbringing.  He wasn’t simply after Anna’s money and perhaps he did love her in his own way.  But the guy was unfocused and devoid of talent, nowhere near Anna’s league.  I was sure he would drift away one day like all the other men in Anna’s life, leaving me as always to nurse her broken heart and dwindling fortune.

As for Jovencito ‘Jay’ Zuloaga, he thought himself an artist, entered art school and painted some nudes with his mother’s cronies as models.  But he finally realized the futility of it all and left for the US with a male lover.  It took Carmencita a while to accept the fact of her son’s mediocrity but never his homosexuality.

Ricaredo went through life singing O Solo Mio and Nessun Dorma; on his death bed he presented his family a copy of the oratorio he’d been working on for thirty years.  I have no idea of its merits or whereabouts.

I failed to enter the U.P. or earn a scholarship to the Ateneo and earned my Accounting Degree at the University of the East.  I’d planned to take up Law but Carmencita talked me out of it.  She made me Chief Accountant of the Zuloaga’s various businesses which even then were beginning to flounder.  With Carmencita’s sudden demise from a heart attack, any chance of financial recovery for the family ended.  Ricaredo died two years after his wife.  I sold off the remaining stocks and bonds, the auto insurance business, the pawn shop, the land in Cebu, so Anna could keep the Pasay home and Montevista and continue to rent out the twenty year-old apartment block in Caloocan.

Before her death, Carmencita made a bizarre request of me.  “I’ve always treated you well, Franciso.  Almost like my own son,” she said to me inside her study.  “You are a capable man.  I must admit you’ve turned out better than I expected, better than my own flesh and blood.  I expect much from you. If, God forbid, anything should happen to me, Anna will have no one else but you to care for her.”

“Don’t talk like that, Tita.  You will live to see many grandchildren,” I said.

“Perhaps.  But I must ask you now to show your gratitude to this family by making a commitment.”

“Ask anything of me, Tita,” I said, my heart clubbing against the ribcage, marriage to Anna was hardly a sacrifice.  True, we were practically siblings, but I knew I could learn shortly to make her my wife.  “I’m ready, Tita.”

“Very well.  I want you to marry Magda.”

My heart dropped to the pit of my gut.  Magdalena Osias was twenty years my senior.  She came to Asuncion when I was eight; the harried, quiet wife of a coconut farmer, Benito, who had lost all his land to drink, now indentured to the Zuloagas.  He harvested an acre of coconuts for copra while Magda worked as cook in the ‘big house.’  I feared her as a child.  Feared her silence and her angry, charcoal eyes.  Feared the food she prepared for me.  Feared the rumour that she was a manananggal, who detached from her lower body at night and flew off like a bat to feast on unborn babies.  But Carmencita seemed to like Magda and eventually left her to run the big house.  That was when she moved me out of Jay’s room which I used whenever he was in Manila and threw me into the servants’ quarters, telling me to ‘know my place.’

For some reason, Magda seemed to like Jay and dotted on him just as she appeared to be disdainful of Anna, serving the daughter only when ordered by the mother.  Anna and I were soon bonded by our shared dislike for Magda.  Whenever Anna was in Asuncion, before I came to Pasay, we would make up stories about how Magda flew off at night to hunt pregnant women.  We talked of pouring salt over Magda’s lower half and watching her burn the moment she ‘re-attached.’

When I was fourteen, Benito went hunting for wild boar one morning and never came back.  After three days a boy brought Magda a bayong with a bloody heart inside and a note signed by one Ka Jose who accused Benito of spying for the military, detailed his trial and execution, and demanded P100,000 in ‘revolutionary taxes’ from the Zuloagas.  A week later, Carmencita gave Magda a package and she disappeared for several days.  Jay said Magda was delivering the money to the NPA and retrieving the rest of her husband, but farm hands doubted her tale.  Some said Magda was bringing the money to her own mother in Bicol who was raising Magda’s son by another man, the one she truly loved, a distant cousin who was murdered by Benito.  But no one ever told any of this to Carmencita, fearful as they were of Magda.

A year after Benito’s death, Magda came to work in the Zuloaga home in Pasay.  Asuncion had been foreclosed by the bank.  Henceforth, she would no longer be the strange, unfriendly crone we made up stories about on weekend visits to Balayan but a constant presence in our lives.  More than any member of the family, Magda reminded me of my status in the home and made life miserable for me.  Carmencita gave Magda free rein and simply smiled whenever I mentioned the stern woman’s treatment of me.  Magda forbade the house help from cleaning my room, albeit it was beside that of the chauffer, or doing my laundry.  She switched off the television whenever I was watching by myself.  I even had to cook my own meals whenever none of the Zuloagas was home.  She roused me from bed at the crack of dawn and made me wash the toilet or the car.  She made sure the house help knew I was ‘one of them.’  She went through my things to make sure I didn’t ‘steal’ anything.  Once she even burst into the bathroom while I bathed to accuse me of wearing Jay’s Armani shirt.  It was only when she saw me soaping my member, which by that time had grown to its full stature, was she silenced.  She stared briefly and walked away.

Magda stopped bothering me since then.  She grew distant but occasionally, I’d find a bowl of cream of mushroom waiting for me at the dinner table when I came home from school.  I’d find my clothes laundered and ironed, laid down on my bed.  And for my twenty first birthday, a pair of dark glasses sat on my study table.

Shortly after I graduated from College, Magda went home to Bicol to care for her ailing mother.  She never returned to the Zuloaga home.

“Magda has served our family well, Kiko,” Carmencita said.  “Her mother has passed on and her son has gone off to work in the Middle East, she has no one left.”

“Anna…” I murmured.

“Anna will be fine, she can take care of herself.  Anyway, I know you will always be there for her … won’t you?”

“Yes, of course, Tita.”

“I have given Magda the start-up capital for her business in Valenzuela.  She’ll be selling fertilizers, veterinary medicine as well as poultry and livestock feed to people in Bulacan.  I think this is good for the future. I can’t give you any money, Kiko, you know that.  Whatever’s left is for Anna. Accountants these days are a dime a dozen.  But you can have a good life with Magda.  You’ve never had a real mother, it will be good for you to be with someone like her.  Trust me, Kiko, you’ll thank me the rest of your life.”

“Yes, Tita.”

I can’t say whether it was Magda’s idea, whether I was part of her retirement benefits, or Carmencita had realized that somehow my affection for Anna and Magda’s disdain for the same woman made as a perfect couple.  Had Carmencita forseen that my love for her daughter could only feed off Magda’s hatred of Anna?  Had she known that someday my distaste for sharing a bed with Magda every night, for smelling her acrid breath, and feeling her sagging flesh beside mine would only be assuaged by visiting Anna once week, hearing her golden voice, inhaling her minty perfume, her lips brushing my face?

MAGDA’S Livestock and Farm feeds was a few meters off the North expressway toll gate.  Magda’s cousin, Hubaldo, ran the store for a while and taught us the trade before he joined his daughter in the US.  Hubaldo knew enough farmers and hog raisers to make the business a going concern.  An agriculturist, Hubaldo tried his best to explain to us the many uses and abuses of our merchandise.  I learned as much of the business as I could but my heart wasn’t in it. Most afternoons I’d play with the neighbor’s old bulldog, Pogi, who often wandered into our backyard.  Weekends, I continued to visit the Zuloagas and monitor their accounts.  The few times Magda mentioned her son, Juanito, who worked as an engineer in Qatar, I thought she expected him to come home eventually and run the place, but Juanito didn’t seem interested in hog feeds or in having much to do with his mother.  Last I heard, he was married to an Arab woman in Dubai.

Regarding my part in Magda’s death, I can claim the obvious.  I can say ‘self-defense’ but that would be denying Magda’s rightful role in her own demise.  That would be denying the genius that plotted her own murder, if murder it was.  That would be glazing over the intricate, complex way by which she forced herself upon me, maligned the woman I love constantly in my presence, and then, finally, threatening me with the very weapon she used to kill her former husband!  She had chosen me to provide her some carnal pleasure after a lifetime of abuse before putting her out of her own misery and I obliged.  Spouses know these things.

For surely, she, more than anyone, must have known how we were there, daily, surrounded by toxins; how arsenic in weed killers, urea in fertilizers, the many substances in poultry vaccine, dog medicine, even hog feed, when mixed and consumed everyday can poison the blood stream and kill a human in a matter of months.  She must have wondered why I never drank the coffee I brewed for her every morning or ate any of the ginataan or dinuguan I prepared for her on occasion, to show my ‘gratitude’ for all the goodness she had shown me previously.  She must have wondered and smiled to herself, amused how well her plan was working out, confident that I – not she – would be the instrument of her own death, so that she’d soon be at peace, so that the murder of her first husband – a murder whose weight she carried for thirty years and could bear no more – would not be compounded by another crime, another sin – suicide.

And why did she refuse to see the doctor when the boils began appearing on her lips?  Her throat?  And when she became restless, her bowels oppressive, her breathing labored, when her heart began galloping like a mad stallion, and her sweat poured like rain, why did she insist it was the same fate for every woman her age?  Why did she visit that quack Octavio every week for his bag of purgative roots and weeds instead of going to the hospital?  If I am guilty at all, it is of conspiracy to commit suicide – euthanasia.  And why should that hotshot medico-legal officer from City Hall who threatened a full-fledged autopsy, unless I paid for his fare to Canada, suddenly perish in a freak accident unless it was that the departed soul of my late wife had taken over steering that runaway van and plowed it into another corrupt public official?

As I watched the dog trainer prod Dennis to jump over the wooden hurdles, the stone Buddha, laid out across the landscaped gardens of Montevista, like a show horse, as I heard his whistle, his mock praise of the dog, his cajoling; Anna laughing in the background, laughing as I’d never heard her laugh before; something like anger boiled up from within me; something like the confusion and fear I felt on my first night with Magda, unsure what to do, uncertain whether or not the trembling of our flesh would ever overcome the dread we shared.

“Why does he still come?” I asked Richard. “What?”

“He’s been training the dog for a year.  Christ, Dennis is well-trained.  He’s over-trained!”

“Oh, she enjoys his company,” was all Richard said, “it keeps her mind off sadder things.”

“What things? Your $300-per-bottle single malt brandy or your $500 pair of Bally shoes?”  I wanted to ask him but kept my peace.  “You’re her husband, God damn it!  Put your foot down even if you’re living off her money, send this circus trainer away!” I screamed wordlessly.

It had been six months since Magda’s death but the sense of relief, of ease, I imagined would come over me with her passing remained elusive.  Anna, on the other hand, was glowing; more beautiful each time I saw her.  Yet she remained sequestered in Montevista.  She had not even come to Magda’s wake, a fact that pained me, strangely.

“There is something I must discuss with you, Francis.  It concerns Anna’s future,” he mumbled, leading me inside.

“She’s fine as long as you guys don’t spend more than 70 thousand a month or catch something incurable.”

“How much is she worth?”

I was surprised by Richard’s ignorance after five years of marriage and for a moment I thought the best of him.

“Minus liabilities, around twelve million.”

“That little?” he seemed quite disturbed.  “She’s got some collectibles. It’s enough to go by for a few more years… I guess.  At some point you guys will have to think of doing something.”

“I’m leaving,” he said. “Traveling?”

“Its over between us.  There’s someone else.  I want this to be as painless and clean for her as possible.  I trust you’ll take care of everything.”

“You’re leaving her?  For another woman?”

“Its best for everyone.  In any case, I’ll only take what’s fair, what’s due me.”

“You’re taking her money?!”

“You don’t know what its been like, Francis.  You say twelve, I take six, that’s all.  You write up the papers, I get the check, it clears, I sign.  That’s it.”

“You bastard.  You’re not getting a centavo of her money.  I’ll make sure of that!”

“We do it your way, or mine.  Either way, I’ll get what’s due me.  So let’s spare her the trouble.  Look, it’s not your money, man … its mine.”

“There’s no divorce law in this country. You can’t hurt her.”

“Try me.”

“We’ll have to sell one of the houses, maybe even the apartment block.”

“Sell Pasay, she hasn’t been there in nearly two years.  Let her stay here with the dog.  She’ll be okay, the trainer visits.”

“How will she live?”

Richard smiled and shook his head, he looked towards the ancient volcano sitting serenely atop its ancient lake, spewing whiffs of sulfuric steam, he looked out at his wife and their dog, and its trainer, enjoying the sun and the cool mountain breeze in the garden at Montevista for the last time and drove off in his Volvo.

“You lied to her,” I said to Norey, “you said it wouldn’t hurt.” 

“It didn’t.”

“Of course it did, it does.  You can’t train anything, anyone, without hurting ….”

“How would you know?”

“I know all about pain.  I just want you to admit it … to me.”

“Okay, if it means that much to you.  Maybe it did hurt a bit.  But what doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger, right?  Makes you a good dog, a darn good dog.  A great dog!”

“You love her?”

“I don’t think that’s any of your business.”

“You bet it is.  You’re just the dog trainer.  I hold her future in my hands.”

“Yes, I love her.”

“Will you ever leave her?”

“I don’t know.  We’re not exactly together yet.”

“I’ll kill you if you ever hurt her.  I swear it.”

“Are you threatening me?”

“Does the dog obey your every command?’

“I trained him.  I gave him his soul.”

“How much do you love her?  What would you do for her?”

I told Richard he had to come to MAGDA’s if he wanted his money.  My neighbors had moved and left Pogi with me.  Brushing the dog’s coat, I kept seeing Anna’s look that afternoon when I confronted her about Richard.  “Give it to him,” she said, seemingly unconcerned about her future.  “He wants half, he wants six million!”

“Give it to him.”

“We can’t do that!” I shouted.  And that was when her glare cut me in so many places.  It was almost like the time Magda pulled her knife at me.  I knew I had to act.  Anna was no longer capable of protecting herself.

“Sign the waiver, you give up any claim to Anna’s remaining property,” I said, showing Richard the document, “We file for annulment, don’t leave the country.”

“Looks good but I have to show it first to my lawyer and wait for the check to clear.  I’ll give you a call next week .…  Thanks, Francis, we all want the best for her.”

“There’s one last thing I want to show you Richard, in the backyard.”

I saw Pogi growling for the first time.  He stood on all fours almost rubbing noses with Dennis who bared his fangs even as Norey pulled on the Doberman’s leash.  “Norey, what are you doing here?” alarm broke across Richard’s face as he eyed the dog trainer and the two animals ready to face-off.  “Why did you bring Dennis here?  Does Anna know?”

“There’s something you should see, over there,” I said, prodding Richard to approach the dogs.  “Go ahead.”  He smiled and moved on gingerly as I hurried back inside, closing the grills behind me.  “Hey, what’s going on here, guys?  This isn’t funny, this is dangerous.”

Dennis was now barking furiously at Richard – his purported master now turned enemy.  “Stop this Norey, what’s going on?  Back off, Dennis!  Take that animal away from me, Norey!”

Norey sprinkled Richard with the fresh ox blood like a priest expertly administering last rites.  I heard him scream.  I waited for the command: Kill! before closing the door.  I had no appetite for gore.  How could those ancient Romans stand the sight of Christians being devoured by lions? I thought to myself as I covered my ears with pillows.

It wasn’t that ugly, Norey said.  Dennis went right for the jugular as he was trained to do.  It was over in a minute.  When the cops came they saw Pogi lying quietly beside Richard’s corpse.  “That’s how I found them,” I explained.  Richard had come early for our meeting, I said, I told Nestor, my new clerk, to let Richard in, close shop before leaving, while I hurried home.  Richard must have wandered into the backyard, and Pogi, normally friendly, must have snapped for some reason.  “Maybe someone fed him something,” I said.

The cops were far from convinced by my version of events but had no viable theory of their own and Christmas being less than two weeks away, suspicions soon gave way to peace and good cheer.  A reporter for the tabloids wrote a quirky piece about a freak ‘manslaughter by an old dog,’ and it was decided for Pogi to be remanded to the city pound ‘for final disposition.’  At least his last days would be marked by some fierce glory.

Richard’s funeral was spare and Spartan.  His mother had re-married in Argentina and his two siblings were residing illegally in the US, neither of them wanted to risk being banned forever from returning to America by coming home for a wake.  Anna was present for the first evening of the wake, greeting the few friends who came.  It was her first time away from Montevista in over two years.  We decided to have the body cremated by the third day.  I, Norey, and Dennis looked on as four of Richard’s former band mates helped carry the casket into the crematorium.  As they pushed Richard into the oven, I could see Dennis staring sternly, his ears pricked.

These days, I still visit Montevista a few times a month.  I’m thinking of closing shop or selling the store to any interested party.  Meanwhile, I’ve moved into the Pasay mansion to keep the place from going to rut.  I’ve been urging Norey to move in with Anna.  Tagaytay is too far from work, he complains.  You’ve done your best work, I say, you can never do better than Dennis.  Perhaps so, he says, but one still has to work.  Yes, I say, work is what keeps any of us sane and a feeling close to sadness washes over me.  But on some Sundays, basking in the sunlight and the cool mountain breeze of Tagaytay, smelling the volcanic air, I look out to the bougainvillea, the orchids, the Doberman skipping over colorful hurdles and a gray stone Buddha; I hear the wonderful laughter of a woman and her dog trainer and I know, almost certainly, that there is a happiness that awaits each one of us, clearer than sunlight, older and larger than all the mountains.