Read Online Before the Rain: A Memoir of Love and Revolution by Luisita Lopez Torregrosa - Free Book Online Page A

body, the sort of woman who travels to a remote spa in the Alps to have her skin stretched out just so. Easy to see her in thick gold bangles and Oscar de la Renta gowns, her hair bleached and stiff like a wig, swept up in a French twist. She held her body tight, and her face had the shrunken look of years of dieting. She stretched out her leathery legs, rubbing them against each other, while her back reclined on the chaise longue directly under the sun. She wore lavender-frame sunglasses and held up one hand at her forehead like a visor while the other held up one of those summer bestsellers. A flabby middle- aged guest, thin-haired and pear-shaped, turned to me one day and said, aghast, “Do you know, she’s sixty!”
    Most weekdays the hotel was empty. Tourism was down, and the press was out working. The
    waiters lolled under the shade; a few children splashed in the pool. The tennis pro, old Leo, with his oiled black hair and rolling paunch, waddled aimlessly around the clubhouse, recalling old times, checking up on new arrivals, and roughhousing with his boys, young guys who had the arms and legs to take on the toughest players. Early in the morning, right around the time the sun started glinting silver on the bay, the clubhouse crew would line up the blue and white striped loungers along the
    edges of the pool. They swept the grounds and skimmed fallen leaves off the water, and stacked up the tangerine towels, but aside from a few of us, no one was around.
    Every now and then, Elizabeth dropped by the pool between press conferences and interviews, and lay under the prickling sun on the chair beside me, her shirtsleeves rolled up, a bandanna in her back pocket, sweat making her shirt stick to her back. She was there just a few minutes until she had to run out again, always harried. She had a long stride, her head bobbing as she trotted in a rush to get somewhere.

    She didn’t run with the press pack. She didn’t share notes, she didn’t cuddle up with them, she didn’t party much, and she didn’t show up when they showed up.
    But she went with Nick to Cagayan province. Nick, New Delhi Nick, whom I adored and indulged those first years on the Foreign Desk when he was reporting from India and Thailand, from Bhopal and Srinagar and Bangkok. Now he was in Manila, reigning over the press corps from his office on the second floor of the Manila Hotel, handing out chilled beer bottles from his minibar, along with free tips on life in Manila and recycled war stories. He had left me messages as soon as he heard I was in Manila and now was taking me out to dinner at La Taverna, a favorite hangout of the farang, the expats, a grungy place with dusty Chianti bottles lined up on wooden beams around the dining area. Italian flags and posters hung on streaky stucco walls.
    We relived the old days and caught up on our lives (his divorce, my breakup) when midway through the antipasto he mentioned Elizabeth—he called her Whitney. Clearing his throat, a sure sign that unpleasantness was coming, he shifted his body, pulling up the chair closer to me. “She’s stuck up, isn’t she, a bit of a pill,” he said, his mustache wet from the wine, his eyes a little glassy, red- rimmed. He was now peering closely at me, trying to size up my reaction, and he snapped open his silver Zippo and flicked up a flame for both of our cigarettes. “She’s like tear gas, toxic.”
    I felt the sting, and said something inane in return, swallowing hard. He had no idea how it hurt, or why. But I knew she had that effect on some reporters who went up against her—not all, but enough of them to isolate her. She seemed awkward with the gang at the hotel bar where we all put together tables and drank for hours. It was a rite, everyone showing off for each other. But I thought she had to strain to fit in, and it made me uncomfortable for her. “She’s no good in groups,” I admitted, but didn’t agree that her aloof pose meant that she was cold and