Lysley Tenorio

“Three words,” Gaz said. “Motion. Picture. History.” He got up, circled the table as he explained his movie: en route to Earth from a distant solar system, the crew of the Valedictorian crash-lands on a hostile planet inhabited by bat-winged pygmies, lobster-clawed cannibals, two-headed vampires. “That’s where your stuff comes in. I’m going to splice up your movies with mine.” He went on about the mixing-up of genres, chop-suey cinema, bringing together East and West. “We’d be the ambassadors of international film!”

“What’s your thinking on this?” Checkers asked me in Tagalog. “Is this man serious? Is he just an American fool?”

“Ask how much he’ll pay,” I said, “get twenty percent more, give him the movies, and show him to the door.”

I unbuttoned her blouse halfway up, rubbed coconut oil on her stomach, forehead, and chin. Then Papa Felix, my grandfather, stepped forward. He rolled up his sleeves, pulled his thinning hair into a ponytail. He put his palms on Mrs. Delgado’s belly and began to massage it, gently at first with his fingertips, then hard and deep with his fists. I closed my eyes, chanting Hail Marys over and over, faster and faster, and when I looked up again Papa Felix’s hands were half gone, knuckle-deep in Mrs. Delgado’s body. Blood seeped out from between Papa Felix’s fingers, and one by one he extracted coin-size fleshy blobs and dumped them into the trash can by his feet.

“Negativities,” he said.

He dimmed the lights and drew the curtains as though someone might be watching from afar, then sat down to reveal his plan: the next day, just before the Beatles boarded their plane, Uncle Willie would divert the Beatles’ security guards and send the group to their gate, where we would be waiting, disguised as airport personnel, ready to attack. “I don’t wish to maim them seriously,” he said, “but we must teach them a lesson.” He mapped out the scene on the table with his finger, drawing invisible X’s and arrows, showing who would stand where and who would do what when it was time to strike. But where he saw battle plans I saw fingerprints streaked over a glass tabletop.

“And that,” he said, “is how we will defeat the Beatles.”