Maximum Volume

My Life As A Bee: Michelangelo Samson-2

“Does anyone here fit this costume?” asked Kevin, looking at each of us. “How about you?” he said, pointing in my direction.

“Me?”

“Yeah you. Jeric right?” Kevin said. “You look about the right size.”

“But I don’t know what to do,” I said, thinking about the complicated finale where Sabra had to jump through a paper barrier and then run to each end zone doing his Sabre

Dance.

“We’ll simplify. Just do what you do every night to get the crowd into it. Punch the air, clap—you know, normal stuff. We’ll skip the paper thing. Run to each end zone

and point to the crowd, make like you’re throwing a spear or whatever, that should get everybody going.”

“I can’t,” I said, getting stage fright for the first time in my life.

“Dude, it’s the playoffs! Win or go home. You gotta do this. Take one for the team, buddy.”

With that, I found myself bundled into Sabra’s costume, soft body parts covering my limbs, my torso, like armor for a foam gladiator. When they attached Sabra’s head, the fiberglass

helmet settling on me like a crown, I heard Kevin as if from underwater shouting beside me: “You alright in there? Two thumbs up if you can hear me.” I raised my hands—white paws

the size of pillows.

“Great,” said Kevin. “Everyone, follow Sabra out onto the field. Big smiles! Go Cats!”

I ran down the line of cheer-dancers, high-fiving them with my marshmallow fingers, hearing them shout good luck as I passed, before I finally emerged from the tunnel into the arena, a roar

coming down from the roof, lifting me. I felt the crowd’s energy, the voltage jolting me back to my days with The Funks, my old dance moves channeled through Sabra—the Crank, the Jerk,

Cupid Shuffle, Superman—with the SaberKittens behind me playing along as if we had rehearsed it all. The stadium speakers thumped out a big bass line that made my head vibrate. By then, I was

in a trance. It was sweltering inside the suit but I bounded through the end zone without even breathing hard.

Once back in the tunnel, all the cheer-dancers were going crazy. Everyone was hugging me. “Holy s**t,” Kevin said, pounding my chest, “that was awesome!”

Later, a man in a leather jacket came up to me as I left the locker rooms. “You Jeric?”

“Yes,” I said, a little wary.

“Great job back there,” the man said, extending his hand. His grip was firm.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Listen, if you’re looking for some extra work, we could use someone like you.”

I must have looked confused because the man quickly explained. “I’m in the mascot business. We work with the Giants, the 49ers—the SaberCats you know about—there’re

other teams too, smaller ones. Kwame, the guy who got injured today? We represent him. We’re probably the largest mascot network in the Bay Area. And not just in sports. We work with

charities, schools, restaurant chains.”

“But I’m not a mascot.”

“That’s what everyone says at first. It’s not the most glamorous job, I’ll admit, but hey, the pay’s good. And it’s challenging work too. You can’t just

wear a costume and go out there. You need to connect with a crowd through the foam. You need to give a suit personality. You did that. Have you tried this before?”

“Not really, no.”

“See, you’re a natural.”

“I don’t even know who you are,” I said.

He flicked me a business card. “Mitch—Mitch Avery. That’s my company there,” he said. “My number’s on the card.”

“Think it over,” he told me as he walked off.

Reaching the exit, Mitch saw I was still standing there, holding his card. He mimed a telephone with his hand and mouthed the words “Call Me” before the door closed behind him and he

disappeared from view.

There was a long message on my answering machine, mostly in Tagalog. “Hello Jeric? There’re some new developments. The judge we’ve been working on is willing

to hear your case at last. There could be some resolution for you after all these years. We just need a little more funding to move the case forward. I know you’ve sunk a lot into this but

we’re almost there, my friend. Don’t stop now. Let’s speak once you get this message.”

It was my lawyer, Bong Tomacruz. There was a lot of mud slung my way after what I did, and with the mud came a raft of legal entanglements. I hired Attorney Bong to shield me from all that. He

wasn’t very successful. When the Mayor issued the warrant against me, it was Attorney Bong who advised me not to contest the order but to speak through the media and try to appease the Mayor

that way.

So I gave that infamous press conference where I apologized publicly and admitted I was wrong to make a mockery of the film awards, wrong to read out a different name for Best Actor than what

was in the envelope they handed me, wrong to blame it on my manager Boss Douglas who had in fact put me up to it although I had no proof. In the greater scheme of things I said, my crime, if it

could be called that, was a petty one when compared to the crimes that were rampant then—kidnapping, drugs, murder. When I broke down at the end of the press conference, those were real

tears, but people thought I was putting on an act. I had stolen the Best Actor award from a beloved icon, looked doped up doing it, and then cravenly ran away after—never mind the tough guy

image I had cultivated until then.

As for the Mayor, he was livid. He thought I was showing him up when I mentioned the kidnappers and drug-dealers. The Mayor, a former police commissioner, was sensitive to insinuations that he

was soft on crime. He pursued my case with vigor, vowing to make an example of me. After that, I became a walking black hole, pulling in a cascade of misfortune, my contracts canceled, Boss Douglas

dropping me from his roster, civil cases filed against me, even a paternity suit. All the while, the voice of Bong Tomacruz assured me things were under control, his tone hardly rising as we

discussed my situation, like a newscaster reporting on a train wreck.

My uncle’s medical team was the same, doling out bland packets of hope even after it became clear that my uncle’s condition had grown beyond the tumor they first found. “Your

cure is on the other side, Mr. Maculangan,” they told him, just before they wheeled my uncle into the radiation room for his weekly treatment.

During his last days, my uncle lapsed into periods of incoherence, from which he emerged confused, diminished. It annoyed me that even then, he still bought into what the doctors told him.

“I’ll see you on the other side Jeric,” he told me once, holding my hand in his. The last time he did that, I was a boy. We were together on the Ferris wheel, my stomach heaving.

He took me to the carnival because I cried when I heard he and Auntie Fe were leaving for the States and that I would be left with my grandmother. “We’ll see each other again,” he

said then, “this isn’t the end.”

“There’s no other side Uncle,” I said, “there’s only here, with us.”

“I’ll see you there,” my uncle repeated.

A week later, he was dead. My aunt tried calling me but I was at a game, working. By the time I reached the hospital, my uncle was no longer in his room. There were two attendants cleaning

inside. The one who was changing the plastic sheets shrugged when I asked where my uncle was.

On my way out, I thought I saw Uncle Bitong sitting by the nurse’s station, his graying pompadour pomaded back as usual, a gloss of summer burnishing his tan skin. I had to stop myself

from holding the elevator doors open. My uncle had passed on. He was already at the funeral home, in a well of silence, from where he waited to tell me things I already knew.

The orientation started without incident. No one recognized me. It may have been because I wrote out my full name on the label stickers they handed out—Geronimo.

“Your name’s Geronimo?” a woman asked, “that’s Native American, right?”

“Spanish,” I said, pronouncing the G in my name like an H. “He-ro-ni-mo.”

“I get it. Latino.”

“Filipino,” I said.

“Oh, so you know all about this then,” the woman said, sweeping her arm upward toward the large sign behind the registration tables of the smiling, red-faced bee in a chef’s

hat inviting applicants to “BEE ONE OF US.”

“Sure,” I said.

The woman nodded. “Uh-huh. You should keep an open mind. Who knows? You might learn something new.”

I had my doubts but didn’t contradict her. Frankly, I wasn’t even sure I would last the day. When I called Mitch about a job, I didn’t think he’d send me where he did.

“I was just thinking of you,” he said, “there’s this burger joint from the Philippines that’s opening a new branch in San Jose. They’re looking for people to

play their mascot—you heard of him?—his name’s Jollibee.”

“I thought I’d be working as Sabra,” I said.

“I’ve got someone for Sabra now,” he told me. “I didn’t know you’d call back.”

I told Mitch I wasn’t interested.

“Why not?” Mitch asked. “I’m looking at the picture here, I see bright colors—red and yellow stripes—a nice waiter’s jacket, a bowtie, puffy

cheeks—hey, this guy’s cute. What’s not to like?”

“I’m not—it’s not for me,” I said. True, I needed to raise money fast to get my case going again but I didn’t want to do it dressed up as a bee, performing at

kiddie parties, acting the fool. That smacked of desperation.

“You crazy?” Darius said. “You said no to a job like that? Listen, my cousin works in Orlando, he plays Goofy, and you can bet that’s what he does all day, just goofs

around. It’s in his contract. He can’t work more than 40 minutes every three hours. Something about how hot the suit gets. The rest of the time, he’s sitting with the other

mascots in an air-conditioned room just maxing and relaxing. It’s like the song says—money for nothing.” Darius delivered packages for UPS. He tended to see every other job as a

cakewalk.

“You don’t understand,” I said, “what would people think if they found out?”

Darius blew out a few breaths between lifts, his biceps bulging. “Are you kidding me? Nobody can see you in that thing. Who’s gonna find out?”

“People might,” I said.

Darius broke his concentration for a moment—“I think you’re being stupid,” he said, before turning back to the full-length mirror leaning by the TV where his reflection

strained to sculpt a new and better self. He didn’t need to say it. Just then, I turned back into the guy they warned him about, the bum who sometimes missed the rent, the one who was living

in the past, too good for any job.

That look Darius gave me, where had I seen it before?—that cocktail of disappointment and judgment. Something like it flashed across my uncle’s face when he saw Imang Rosing on TV

looking wan and desiccated under the glare of the lights, crying to the reporters that I was a good boy, the sharks around her asking leading questions—did you know about his drinking? what

about the brawls? what can you say about the scandal?

“He never hurt anyone, leave him alone,” my grandmother insisted.

“When this is over, when you get home, you have to fix this. You have to—” my uncle stopped himself. “Just do your best Jeric. That’s all we ask. Find that good man

inside you.”