Episode 22: The Bookbinder's Second Floor

Previously on Chicken Chronicles...

Henrietta called the +63 77 number and a woman answered — voice unhurried, not old, not young. The woman calls herself E. She has known about Chester and Henrietta longer than they’ve known about Ilocos. She has had the name of who sent the 2012 visitors for three years, held until the right person arrived. She gave Henrietta an address: Dapitan, Quezon City, above a bookbinder, green mail slot. Thursday. Bring Chester. Leave the receipt somewhere safe. When Henrietta said “you put it in the car,” E replied: “The window was already open when I reached the car.” She said we — not I. Henrietta wrote three things in her notebook. Chester has been thinking about the window ever since.

Episode 22: The Bookbinder’s Second Floor

The green mail slot was exactly where E said it would be.

Chester stood on the pavement outside the Resurreccion Bindery and took it in — cream-and-faded-red facade, wood and concrete, wedged between a pharmacy and a shuttered barbershop on Dapitan. He’d found parking two streets over. Easy parking in Quezon City on a Thursday afternoon. He took this as a bad sign.

“The gate is open,” Henrietta said.

The external staircase ran along the left side of the building. Iron railing, narrow. A gate at the bottom, unlocked, ajar by two centimetres. Chester went up first.

Halfway up, he thought about a car that had been parked across from his building two nights before they drove north. Three hours. Gone by morning. He hadn’t thought much of it then.

He was thinking about it now.

At the top, one door. Dark wood, frosted glass. He knocked twice. Paused. Knocked again.

The door opened before his knuckle finished.

The woman who answered was maybe mid-thirties, short hair, a manila folder under one arm. She stepped back to let them in without saying her name.

“E sends her apologies,” she said. “She couldn’t come in person today.”

“Was she here earlier?” Henrietta asked.

“Yes.” She set the folder on the table. “She’ll come herself when she’s ready. She asked me to show you this first.”

The room was small and practical — jalousie windows, ceiling fan, two chairs, a low table. A row of reference books on one shelf. No personal effects. The kind of room that gets set up for a meeting and then returned to nothing.

They sat. The woman opened the folder.

Three documents. She laid them in order without touching the pages themselves, the way you’d handle something that might still matter in court.

The first page: a name. A company registration. Manila address.

Chester read it once and then read it out loud. He didn’t decide to — the name was just in the room before he’d thought about it.

Henrietta went still beside him.

“You know them,” Chester said.

“I’ve seen that name.” She was looking at the page, not at him. “Not recently.”

The second page was a transaction record. 2012. The amount wasn’t large — which was somehow worse than if it had been. People hired to take a letter from an old woman in Ilocos Sur for less than Chester made in a week doing catalogue work.

The third page was a photograph. Two people he didn’t recognize, standing outside a building he did — the pension on Calle Crisologo, Room 12. Dated December 2012. Chester hadn’t been to Vigan in December 2012. He hadn’t known it existed.

Henrietta said nothing. Her right index finger moved slightly. She was counting.

The woman reached under the table and set a second item beside the folder. A sealed envelope, small. No larger than a sympathy card.

Chester’s name on the front. Grey ink, angular cursive. The same hand as the name written on the back of the fourth letter.

“Gregory left this separately,” the woman said. “Not for Henrietta. For you.”

Chester looked at Henrietta. She was already looking at the envelope.

“When did Gregory—”

“Before he went silent.” The woman stood. The meeting was ending. “He prepared for both of you separately.”

Chester picked up the envelope. It was light. Whatever Gregory had left him fit on one page.

“E was watching when you opened the folder,” the woman said, closer to the door now.

Chester looked up. “How?”

“She wanted to see what you did first.” A pause. “You read the name out loud. Henrietta didn’t.” Another pause. “Gregory said only one of you would.”

“What does that—”

“She’ll explain.” The woman had the door handle. “When she comes herself.”

The door closed.

The ceiling fan moved the warm air around the room. The envelope was still in Chester’s hand.

Next week on Chicken Chronicles: In the car on the way home, Henrietta says the name once — out loud, quietly. It’s enough for Chester to understand why she hadn’t said it in the room. He opens the grey-ink envelope at a red light on EDSA. Gregory wasn’t watching Henrietta. He was watching both of them, separately, the whole time.