Weekends and summer days I would ride with him on business jaunts, father and son together, widower and only child of a woman who had died when I was two. He was supposed to be buying and selling, but it seemed to me that mostly he talked, aimlessly and too much, not only with equipment wholesalers and rig foremen, but with truck stop waitresses, highway patrolmen, newsboys, roustabouts—he knew hundreds of people. He talked hard, listened hard, too; swapping jokes and ironies and pieces of lives while I shredded toothpicks or scuffed my toe in the dirt.

     I could see that he was trying to be liked, pushing to be liked, putting out the way he did. That bothered me. I doubted the value of any affection so transparently acquired, ignoring the fact that he tried just as hard with me and that I loved him wholly. When he rubbed my head I could have kissed those brown-stained fingers.

     For his funeral they filled three-quarters of the pews of the biggest Catholic church in Bakersfield, and there was plenty of crying, not just women. It was an eternal lesson in the value of effort in friendship. By then, though, I was confirmed in my reserve. I would not presume.

     And yet I am not at all put off by those who do; without them I'd be barren. I am happy to be violated. I am charmed, I am touched, by those who try and absorb rebuff and keep trying.

     This may explain the flush that I felt, my first morning in Manila, when I saw Bembo Rojas sitting in the lobby. He was reading a newspaper, calm as an old dog curled up on the front porch. His suit was the sharkskin again. The cuffs of his trousers were hiked up a few inches, and I could see his stringy legs above black socks. If not for his fresh shirt, he might have been there all night.

     I had been up with dawn, wondering what was a decent hour to telephone a Filipino home. I had tried his number;