I
t wasn’t until after well over two years that Lance found a reason to revisit Manila. This time it was Malinda who took an assignment East. He went along with her to Jakarta, but spent the week moping around Borobudur.
He knew that Luisito had stayed on in Japan, that Dr. Abellana visited him whenever he could. Lance was tempted to drop in with Malinda, but it would have taken more days if they flew to Tokyo and hopped over to Kyushu.
Besides, now that the boy was in the care of a … what was she called again? A sociomusicologist, Cesar had written. Someone who consulted Luisito about her collected tapes of a volcano’s rumblings. Whoo-hah! Man, the boy’s probably gotten even weirder now.
Malinda was all for a week’s stopover in Japan. But Lance couldn’t stay away that long. A quick we
