Planet Lolita by Charles Foran

may not have shown through the sock. Being a Sailor Moon soldier wouldn’t have kept me from plunging to the floor of the Landmark, the screams of Gloria and the Indonesian helper echoing through the atrium.
    For a second I didn’t trust myself to speak without betraying a sudden fear for my own safety. That was new, and unsettling. Luckily, Mom filled the silence. “Eric Clark was a sweet man. He loved you, loved each and every child at the school … I’monly trying to do what is right for you, and for all of us. I hope we can speak face-to-face in the morning,” she said. “I’d like that very much.”
    She must have bolted down the hall and across the living room to the master suite. Following two, at most three seconds behind her, I watched the bedroom door close with a force that warned against knocking. I veered into the kitchen for a few swigs of OJ, not a visit with my amah. Only Gloria’s muffled sobbing, and the fact that she didn’t call my name no matter how noisily I rattled bottles on the fridge arm, made me knock on her door, and open it, and insert Sticky Fingers, though I wouldn’t call the puppet by that name with her.
    “Who is this?” she said.
    “Put on your glasses.”
    “Not tonight.”
    “Put them on!”
    She complied.
    “Hi there,” I said through fabric. “I’m Sanjay Seran.”
    “You are SeeSee Kwok, very silly girl.”
    “Why Gloria so sad?” I said, crossing to her bed. The joke was from the old days—
Why SeeSee so sad?
she used to ask, offering a sad clown face—but the expression in her eyes made me regret it. Crumpled on her side table was a pile of tissues. On the floor lay my old laptop, its screen blue.
    She shook her head.
    “Did you talk to Miguel and Jesus tonight?” She nodded.
    “Everything
ho-kay
back home?”
    Everything wasn’t
ho-kay
in Batangas City. In a single quavering exhale, delivered while ironing her pillowcase with her hand, Gloriaexplained. Miguel Pacquia, aged fourteen, had been suspended from school the day before. When she Skyped him earlier in the evening he told her he had quit entirely and was moving out of his grandmother’s apartment, which Gloria paid for, to go live with friends. He also called her a name. She begged him to pray with her, to ask the Lord for guidance, but he just stepped away from the screen—and his only real parent.
    “Miguel is a good boy,” I said.
    “I cannot say what he said.”
    “Don’t.”
    “He call me a ‘fucking cunt.’ Sorry—you should not hear such words.”
    “I hear them, Gloria.”
    “These boys are caught watching dirty movies on school computers,” she said, now pounding the pillow with her fist. “Three boys, his best friends. To me, he say, ‘No big deal, I am watching porn since I was eleven.’ ‘Porn’ he call it, like he is grown-up.”
    “Isn’t he too young to quit school?”
    “He is in a gang. Lots of boys with no fathers and mothers who are away join them …”
    “He’s a good boy,” I repeated. But in my head I was saying,
What a punk.
Also,
I’ll hang out with Hey-zeus only, who is still sweet, and better not be into porn yet.
    I had a better idea than flying to the Philippines with Gloria. “If we get evacuated, you’re coming with us.”
    She stared at me.
    “I can’t be without you, Gloria. I need you.”
    “My son …”
    But he called you the c-word!
“He needs you too, of course,” I said.
    We hugged, and though my nostrils flared—she hadn’t showered, hadn’t rubbed her shoulders with Tiger Balm—I was soon holding her, a mother with her child, to contain her sobbing at what her punk son had done.

CHAPTER FIVE
    December 13, 20—
*Infected port
*497 infected, 12 dead
    I was in the room again. Better, it was live inside my computer, and so inside
my
bedroom. The same camera showed the same interior—the bed, the table, the chair—except for two details. Next to the lamp was a bottle of liquor, the sort that men poured out in small glasses,