Monsoon Paste-Up Number Four

By six, June has turned Tomas Morato into a wet smear of headlights, umbrellas, and gutterwater carrying somebody’s ambitious mango peel toward Cubao. Inside the Balintataw Bulletin, every available woman has claimed a task and a chair, except for Aling Perla from the corner stall, who claims both the stapler and a crate of pandesal as if the newsroom were a small republic and she had won the election.

Dalisay Abad, thirty-one, bends over the paste-up table with a metal ruler pressed to a column about drainage permits. Ink freckles her cuffs. The headline is one point too large. One point! Civilization has collapsed for less.

“Your margin is eating my photo,” Bituin Villarama says.

Dalisay looks up. Bituin, thirty-five, has rain beading along the shoulders of her charcoal jacket and a camera slung at her hip. She looks polished even when dripping on the linoleum. Frankly rude of her.

“Your photo has entered the margin without a permit,” Dalisay says.

“It has artistic immunity.”

“Denied.”

Bituin bends over the board, close enough that Dalisay notices a raindrop balanced at the curled end of her hair. “One millimeter.”

“Two.”

“One and a half, and you stop calling my work a border violation.”

Dalisay considers. This is how nations avoid war, presumably. “Done.”

Across the room, printers feed pages into the old machine. Vendors argue cheerfully over which neighborhood rumor deserves a sidebar. Two columnists debate commas with the vigor usually reserved for inheritance disputes. A cluster of readers from the block stands by the window, passing around proofs and offering opinions nobody requested, which is the Bulletin’s most cherished civic tradition.

Bituin slides her photograph into place: three women clearing a flooded alley with brooms, buckets, and the superior posture of people who have already phoned City Hall four times.

“It needs the full width,” Bituin says.

“It has the full width.”

“It needs emotional width.”

“That is not a measurement.”

“It should be.”

Dalisay presses tape along the edge. Bituin’s hand lands beside hers on the table, their knuckles a finger’s breadth apart. Dalisay studies a misplaced semicolon with unusual devotion.

Bituin clears her throat. “We should settle something.”

“Is it about emotional width?”

“More urgent. I would like to kiss you.”

Dalisay’s pencil stops.

Bituin continues, practical as a woman discussing shutter speed. “Not this second. Unless you want that. I am asking.”

The room rattles with presses and laughter. Rain taps at the jalousie windows in impatient little clicks.

“I want that,” Dalisay says. Her face feels absurdly warm. “But we are both on deadline, and if I kiss you before page three is locked, I will set the city budget in Comic Sans out of spite.”

“Terrifying. So we wait?”

“We wait until we are free of deadline work.”

“Defined how?”

“Pages signed off. Cameras packed. No municipal scandal actively dripping onto the floor.”

Bituin’s mouth curves. “Clear terms. I respect that.”

“Also, you may not occupy my desk chair.”

“I may borrow it?”

“For seven minutes.”

“Negotiation is very erotic,” Bituin says.

Dalisay nearly drops the ruler.

At the managing editor’s desk, Candelaria Dizon snaps shut a file. Fifty-eight, exacting, silver-haired, and capable of correcting a caption from across a crowded room, she motions Dalisay over with two clipped fingers.

“Abad. Preserve this.”

She hands over a galley proof damp at one corner. Rain symbols march down its margins: cloud, slanting drops, umbrella, cloud again. The page numbers read 4, 1, 7, 4.

“Those numbers are wrong,” Dalisay says automatically.

“Good. You have eyes.” Candelaria’s attention darts toward the back hallway. “Keep it somewhere dry. Do not correct it.”

Dalisay folds the proof into her folder, puzzled.

Near the exit, Eulalia Ventura slips on a cream raincoat, a thick blue folder tucked under one arm. The revenue director’s lipstick remains flawless despite the weather, which feels suspicious on principle. Candelaria watches her leave, jaw set hard.

“Candelaria?” Dalisay asks.

“Nothing,” the editor says too quickly. “Finish page three.”

Outside, thunder rolls over Quezon City, and the presses begin again.

Ipagpapatuloy...

Late June turns the avenues around the Bulletin into brown runnels and traps everybody indoors with damp hems, wet umbrellas, and opinions about drainage that grow more inventive by the hour.

At seven-thirty, Candelaria carries her blue tea cup toward the darkroom, saying she wants to inspect a photograph before the next issue goes to paste-up.

“Do not let anyone touch page five,” she tells Dalisay.

“Not even with gloves?”

“Especially not with gloves. Gloves make people feel theatrical.”

Then the lights die.

The presses cough once and fall silent. Ceiling fans stop mid-turn. Somebody near the classifieds desk curses at the dark with admirable specificity.

Dalisay grips the paste-up table. Across from her, Bituin says, “I have my phone. I am turning on the flashlight. Is that all right?”

“Yes. Please.”

A pale beam opens over rulers, glue pots, and rain-spotted proofs. Bituin keeps it pointed downward, considerate even during an outage, which feels almost offensive.

Nieves Santos is stranded by the crossword desk with a thermos and three sharpened pencils. At sixty-seven, retired detective or not, she has the posture of a woman who expects trouble to introduce itself properly.

“Everyone stay put,” Nieves says. “Count voices. No wandering.”

The emergency strip in the hall sputters alive several minutes later. Greenish light stains the walls. Dalisay notices Candelaria’s empty chair.

“The darkroom,” she says.

Bituin moves first, then stops at the closed door. “It’s locked.”

Candelaria’s key hook sits behind the managing editor’s desk, each key tagged in her narrow handwriting. Dalisay finds DARKROOM, because naturally Candelaria labels things even for catastrophe. Nieves takes the key from her.

“Dalisay, stand back. Bituin, beside her. Nobody enters until I say.”

The lock gives.

Candelaria is on the floor beside the enlarger cabinet, one shoulder against the wall, her silver hair neat despite everything. Her blue tea cup rests near her hand. A ripped strip of invoice shows beneath its saucer, damp with spilled tea.

For one awful second, Dalisay thinks Candelaria is taking a nap in the least sensible place imaginable.

Then Nieves crouches, checks for a pulse, and rises without fuss.

“Call emergency services,” she says. “And no one touches the cup, paper, door, cabinet, or each other.”

Bituin’s face goes still. Dalisay wants to reach for her, then remembers the last instruction and keeps both hands at her sides.

The building camera runs on a backup battery. In the lobby, its tiny monitor supplies a new problem: Bituin at the darkroom door at 7:41, a flat brown envelope under her arm. The blackout begins two minutes later.

“I brought contact sheets,” Bituin says. “Candelaria asked for them. The door was locked when I arrived. I waited, then went back to the newsroom.”

Nieves studies the screen. “That is what you say. We will preserve the clip, and investigators will ask their questions in order.”

“I know how it looks.”

“It looks incomplete,” Nieves replies. “Incomplete is not the same as guilty.”

Much later, after uniforms and careful photographs and too many people saying Candelaria’s name in lowered voices, Dalisay takes the rain-marked proof from her folder. Its bad numbers stare up at her: 4, 1, 7, 4.

Nieves sees it at once. “There. Put your nosiness to work.”

“The numbers are wrong,” Dalisay says. “The rain symbols too.”

“Then find out why. Candelaria gave you a puzzle before someone stopped her from explaining it.”

Bituin sets the brown envelope on the table between them. “I want to help.”

Dalisay looks at her. “We need terms.”

“Good. I like terms.”

“We search records together. We show each other every page, photo, and receipt. No one goes alone into a locked room.”

“Agreed.”

“And our hands stay to ourselves unless we clearly decide otherwise.”

Bituin’s mouth softens. “Agreed. Clue before kissing?”

“Clue before kissing.”

Outside, rain rattles the windows like it has questions of its own.

Continuará...

July arrives sideways, driven beneath the Bulletin’s warped back door and into the feet of the proof cabinets. The newsroom smells of wet paper, glue, and somebody’s heroic ginger tea. Dalisay has put saucers under the two drawers that leak. It is not archival policy. It is what she has.

“Four sheets,” Bituin says, rolling rain-damp cuffs past her wrists. “Four deliberate mistakes. Candelaria would rather print a grocery list in perfect alignment than leave one bad folio.”

Nieves sits at the crossword desk with her thermos. “Tell me what is present. No embroidery. Embroidery is for curtains, cupcakes, and campaign speeches.”

Dalisay and Bituin take the soggy proof cabinets, the archive drawers, and the old classified pages in turns.

“Top drawer is mine,” Dalisay says.

“Then I take the bottom.”

“If you remove a sheet from my stack, say so.”

“If you rename my stack chaos, I invoice you.”

“Accepted.”

By noon, four rain-marked galleys lie across the paste-up table. Candelaria has altered one weather symbol on each: a cloud in place of an umbrella, slanting drops in place of a cloud, a tiny sun where rain should fall. The wrong folios—4, 1, 7, 4—are not pagination at all.