road, she said. With me her control was impeccable. Under the scrutiny of her neighbors, and conscious as ever of propriety, she gave me only the tips of her fingers to hold. I held them for a long time. I was holding them when her mother shuffled along, carrying the Santo Nino and her housedresses in a string bag.

     We joined the exodus down to Hermosa. In Hermosa the town council had set aside a couple of vacant lots for use by evacuees from the rural barrios and sitios. In Hermosa they were accustomed to this kind of thing.

     We got there around dawn. The money that I was going to give to the Nobles brothers I gave to Rosita instead. Vangie said it would be much more than enough for a furnished room in town, and that a furnished room in town was much more than she expected.

     Go, go, the old lady told us.

     From Palo we caught the express jeepney straight into Bacolod. We were on Princess of Negros when she sailed that noon.

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I expected Vangie to loathe the duplex with its fog and bland mornings. To my astonishment she nestled in. I still have moments of joyous surprise when I find her sitting with me at dinner or beside me in bed; none is so shocking, though, as the sight of her walking the beach in a heavy wool jacket, out with gulls and seals and hissing wind. I think the grayness appeals to her.

     We were married in our living room, a month and a day after we arrived from Manila. Not long afterward, she returned from one of her sandy treks and announced that she wanted a graduate degree. She is pregnant now with our first child, and in graduate school. I'm still with the