050

Rheumy Oriental eyes stare vacantly at the expanse of the desk top. Eyes whose sclera’s are marred this morning a more bloodshot hue - the previous evening’s opium being the cause. Bony fingers pull absently at the several hairs sprouting from the mole on the left cheek of his aging face: a cosmetic cultivation effected by many Chinese-Filipinos.

The phone rings discordantly, once, then again.

"Tan Yu Hardware Supplies", old Tan recites into the hastily plucked handset.

"Hello? Hello, can I speak to Vincent?" A young female voice inquires.

"No Vincent here. What number you want?" Old Tan, renowned Chinatown curmudgeon, demands caustically.

"Well, I'm ringing 512 050, for Vincent Almonte", the startled girl explains.
"This 512 628. Tan Yu Hardware. No Vincent here." His acerbic reply completed, the handset returns to its cradle with a rude clatter and concussed ring.

Tan rises from his stool and paces the dusty floor of his dilapidated premises. One hand rubs ponderingly over thin, graying hair atop the sepia-coloured head. He winces and straightens his back.

"050 again? Why 050 again? What this number mean? Three days now, always 050?" Tan Yu whispers to a shelf of mildewed cardboard boxes. He sits deliberately, resting skeletal buttocks upon a timber crate. Shaking his head he ruminates again the significance of 050.
The contractor with his water pump bearings, that was three days ago. Insistent the part number of his old bearings was 050. Tan had no bearings of that number in stock. Had become exasperated when the man wouldn't accept the correct bearings Tan knew fitted that particular model of pump. 050, he had repeated, they were the ones he wanted.

Then the plastic identity sticker at the airport cargo warehouse when he picked up a shipment of engine spares two days ago. Sat staring at it, affixed to his trucks' windshield, as he drove to and from the loading bays. 050. 050. That was two days ago. 050?

And yesterday, the fool postman asking him where number 050 Ongpin Street was. What kind of premises had a number beginning with an 0? "Got one letter for 050 Ongpin, is that further down?"

Tan pondered deeply. It wasn't the usual postman either. Something very strange was occurring. What could the 050 mean to him? Nothing of evil portent obviously, it must be an omen of benign significance - perhaps the venerable and revered ancestors transmitting a message of beneficial content – a timely boon in his twilight years.

The day ended with Tan Yu still undecided on the significance – if any - of 050. His night was disturbed by thoughts of the numbers, and he rose before dawn, making his way along the damp and dirty streets to the house of the Guangzou mystic: a Chinese fortune-teller. Best to be early, before others came to consult Chark Mun and clouded his oracular opinions with trivial requests and occult readings.

The aged soothsayer was perched on a low chair, sipping chrysanthemum tea, when Tan was led into the shadowed musty room by a youthful disciple. He indicated a chair for Tan to sit then squatted cross-legged aside his masters' chair. Chark Mun gazed over at Tan, his liver-spotted hands laying the teacup down on an adjacent side table.

"Tan Yu, what troubles you so much to seek my counsel before the sun rises?" the wizened Chinese asked. "It is many months since you were last here, and never at so early an hour before."

Tan nodded his head with eager agreement, and blurted in staccato fashion his tale and source of dilemma. Chark Mun listened with quiet indifference then thought deeply for some minutes before fixing Tan with his eyes.

"It is a warning to you - one of direct consequences and not to be ignored. You must visit the temple each day, burn incense and pray for ancestral protection!"

"But can it not be what I told you; an omen to buy the Grand Sweepstake ticket that carries the numbers 050 in its sequence?" Tan asked feverishly.

"No, it is a warning that will bring ill-fortune to your door if not heeded" Chark Mun admonished sharply. "Do not see good fortune in omens of ill. Make your peace with the elemental spirits and placate them with incense and prayer."

"You are wrong Mun, for it is my good fortune to be sent this omen. You do not wish to see me prosper. You wish to see me throw away time and money on stupid prayers and incense. You lie to me." Tan retorted with venom in his speech.

"Then why come to me at all, when you desire only a favourable interpretation of your omens? You are a foolish man to ignore my warning, but a fool is guided by avarice to a path of sure destruction. Go! Go, find your sweepstake ticket and end within the Mother of all Hells!" Chark Mun gesticulated for Tan to leave with an outward motioning of his hands.

Tan Yu exited the fortune tellers' house quickly, ignoring shouts from the attendant disciple to settle the charge for the consultancy. He muttered foul curses as he walked quickly to his store. Damn Mun, he would likely try to find the 050 ticket for the sweepstake himself, but he would have to be fast to beat the wily Tan Yu. Oh yes, Tan had a master scheme forming in his mind.

As the bustling business of Manila's Chinatown began that day Tan had his warehouse boys out on the streets of the Santa Cruz and Quiapo areas, accosting every sweepstake vendor they could locate and scrutinizing their thick pads for a number with an ending sequence of 050. Too, Tan recruited the services of the child cigarette and newspaper vendors to assist with the task, for they plied their wares throughout the metropolis.

Pacing his shop with impatience, Tan waited for his ticket to arrive - then loitering around the street front doorway on the lookout for his agent’s returning. Normal business was neglected as commerce took second place to the task of acquiring the winning ticket for the Grand Sweepstake and its five million pesos prize – providing the means to divorce his fat, shrewish wife, and depart a household of depressions and grasping, slothful progeny.

Yes, a sure fortune would be his. All could be then afforded - the best of Wing Shan's Burmese opium. Perhaps even two pipes each night. And too Mamasan Del Rosas' girls also - not the fat hogs she sold off at seventy pesos an hour, but the budding young Filipinas just growing hair they could sit on – the Visayan virgins, at a thousand pesos each. Oh yes, they would all be his to enjoy – along with a Mercedes saloon, like his more successful contemporaries owned, and chauffeur-driven too.

The day’s hours passed with frustrating returns. Some boys ushered in ticket vendors with pad numbers ending in 5, some with 50, others with 05. But not the elusive 050 - everything but.

Tan leaned against the shop front door jamb, wringing his bony hands, fearful that the Chark Mun had used his occult powers to locate and buy the winning ticket. The red orb of the tropical sun had already started to set over the far horizon of the Manila Bay, illuminating it in a fire of colourful vistas; though the narrow streets of Chinatown were favoured only by long shadows and a dampening drizzle of sooty rain. The busy vehicle traffic hooted and moved steadily along Ongpin Street as evening fell.

Tan's eye caught one of his warehouse boys beckoning wildly from some distance away, across the other side of the street. He shouted incoherently to Tan then pointed to a sweepstake ticket vendor sheltering from the thickening drizzle under a shop front awning.

"He's got the 050 ticket," the youth shouted to Tan as he crossed the street, his arm pointing to the diagonal, "the vendor over there, the one in front of the appliance store."

"For sure he got the ticket with 050 at the end?" Tan demanded of the boy, grabbing his shoulders roughly.

"Yeah, like you said, ending with 050," the youth replied, pulling away from Tan's excited grasp.

Tan fixed the vendor with wide-eyed appraise, just as two women shoppers halted their browsing to buy tickets themselves. Tan was galvanised into prompt action, and left the pavement in rapid fashion, pulling a wad of peso notes from his trouser pocket and shouting and gesticulating to the ticket vendor as he ran across the street.
The vendor switched his attentions from his two female customers to the excited, loping Tan, waving at him wildly as he ran. Tan saw the vendor's eyes widen, and mouth drop agape, but was too slow to turn and see the passenger bus before it impacted with his skinny physical frame. He was aware of the vehicle’s worn brakes giving off a terrifying squeal then no sounds at all, just a sensation of intense white light in his skull.

Was it hours he lay there in the putrid mucky damp of the street, or simply expanded seconds? Tan opened his eyes briefly and gazed up at his nemesis - a red and cream music bus and his own blood dripping from the black bumper bar down onto reaching fingers. In an effort of final will, he straightened his arm to touch the bus' registration plate, right eye cast on sensing fingers. He ran them over the raised figures. NEH. NEH 050. 050.