before Lolita leaves, Joey introduces himself, and Lolita asks Joey to light her cigarette.

Later that night, Joey is chauffeured by Rainer in a government-issued BMW. Rainer asks Joey about the shower dancers and wants specific sexual details about the boys who soap themselves onstage and dance. Exasperated, Joey suggests they go see the shower dancers and get high, but Rainer would rather spend the rest of the night alone with Joey. They arrive at a mansion. After the servants escort them to the guest room, Rainer and Joey share cocaine and heroin. They undress and go swimming. Rainer wants Joey to stay with him all week. Joey acts stubborn, pretending that he has to go back to work at the club before agreeing and going to bed.

A week later, Rainer is preparing to leave. Joey accompanies him to a coffee shop in a hotel for breakfast. Rainer admits that he is “a little” in love with Joey. Joey orders a large breakfast, but Rainer only drinks coffee and stares at Joey as he eats, which aggravates Joey. Rainer vaguely reminds Joey of Neil. A journalist recognizes Rainer and comes over. As they are talking, Joey uses this opportunity to slip away with Rainer’s bag. He walks away calmly and pockets Rainer’s drugs and money, then leaves the bag on a couch in the hotel lobby. As he nears the doorway, Joey recognizes Senator Domingo Avila walking out of a car and approaching the hotel. As they pass each other, Joey hears gunshots and dives to the ground. When the gunshots are over, he hears screams and turns to see the senator’s body bleeding in the hotel lobby. Afraid that he will be targeted as a witness, Joey flees the scene.

The Weeping Bride

This chapter moves between events that actually occur around Senator Avila’s assassination and events happening in Baby Alacran’s mind. It opens by describing a resplendent twelve-tier wedding cake but continuously changes the description. The cake was made by the Alacran family dentist, who is not at the wedding. As the chapter goes on, the story is rewritten: “the dentist is dead, the dentist never existed,” and this cake was baked by Isabel for her daughter’s wedding. This is the dream Baby has before the night of Senator Avila’s assassination: her wedding, and herself wearing a floor-length veil and a necklace of garlic. The president and his wife are in attendance. The president smells of vinegar and garlic, and he sexualizes her.

Senator Avila is mourned by his family and close friends. Baby also mourns, and remembers the senator with fondness, although she only knew him in passing. At a wedding banquet, Baby thinks about dinuguan, a dish made with pig’s blood, and imagines bathing in pig’s blood as a form of mourning. Baby has stayed in bed sick for a week after Senator Avila’s assassination, and blisters have reappeared on her fingers and toes. Her husband keeps himself busy with his job and is sometimes gone for days at a time. She watches a talent show on TV and thinks about how she would like to have an abortion.

Last Chance

Romeo hurries through a busy street to meet Trinidad at her SPORTEX job for lunch. Romeo hates going into SPORTEX because the store and its employees make him feel inferior. Trinidad, on the other hand, loves her job, despite being overworked and having no benefits other than a twenty-percent employee discount. Trinidad tells Romeo that Mrs. Alacran visited the store the day before, but Romeo is bored by the conversation. He asks her to meet him outside the store for lunch from now on.

On another day, Romeo approaches the SPORTEX building trying to figure out how he will split up with Trinidad. He thinks back to a conversation he had with his mother. Though she has never met Trinidad, Romeo’s mother believes her son is foolish for considering breaking up with Trinidad. She accused Romeo of using Trinidad. He walked out the door and never saw his mother again.

Romeo resents Trinidad for being the only person who continues to believe in him. At one point, he asks his manager at the country club for a promotion, and the manager humiliates him, telling him he is lucky to have a job at all. He decides to attend a banquet at the country club where Tito will be present and plans to beg Tito for a bit part in a movie. Before that, he resolves to break up with Trinidad. As he is building up the courage to do so during Trinidad’s lunch break, he hears screaming, and a man runs by him, being chased by other men with guns. Romeo continues walking to SPORTEX but is then shot. Two men approach Romeo and say, “that’s him.”