When Dan met Lin Lin on a crowded sidewalk in the notorious Manila bar district of Mabini, he was just looking around, not wanting a woman for the night.
Plenty of them anyway.
By the time he had to return home, Dan fell in love.
Soon after, Mayor Alfredo Lim closed the Mabini bars, and Lin Lin went to work in a less safe area. Where she met a customer who didn't want any other men to see her pretty face . . .
Now Dan has returned to the Republic of The Philippines, looking to marry Lin Lin. Not knowing what has happened to her since the idyllic weeks they spent together last year.
Will he find her, when she doesn't want him to see her scars.
If so, will he still love her?
The Mabini shadows, who have not forgotten the passions of life, want to know.
So does a police informer hoping to profit from getting foreigners arrested for being with prostitutes.
Genre: FICTION / HorrorThis story was bought by Haunts magazine, but it folded before it published the story.
The week she spent with him last year seemed as far away as America itself. Tonight he would laugh at her. No, he was a nice foreigner. He wouldn't laugh, just turn his face away. Then maybe he would give her money.
That's why she finally decided to go, for the money.
Last year, Dan was her last special customer. Two weeks after their time together, when Dan paid out her bar fine for almost three entire weeks, the newly elected Manila Mayor Alfredo Lim shut down the Mabini bars.
After that she went to The Hollywood Club in nearby Pasay. She couldn't refuse to go with any man who paid her bar fee. Besides, the small elderly Japanese man was nice until they were inside the short-time hotel. Then he bound and gagged her and sliced up her face. The fifty thousand pesos he left her paid for the hospital, but not plastic surgery.
After her wounds healed the only job she could find was in the back room of a dockside bar servicing sailors for twenty pesos. Most were too drunk to notice the quilt of scars that was her face.
She missed the old Mabini, the fun and excitement, the safety and money and, most of all, Dan.
The shadows sensed her approach and understood her misery. She used to share the Mabini sidewalk with them. Many Mabini women loved customers who didn't return that feeling or who still had to go back to their country. Who promised to return next year but often didn't. Feeling Dan's affection for the Lin Lin he remembered from a year ago, the shadows wondered -- could he love the woman now coming to see him?
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French
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Already translated.
Translated by Mariana Kcn
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Author review: Mariana, is a fast and professional translator. |
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Italian
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Already translated.
Translated by Consalvo Cattuto
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Portuguese
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Already translated.
Translated by Antonio Amarante Reis Cintra
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Author review: Thanks for completing the translation so quickly. |
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Spanish
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Already translated.
Translated by René Lozano
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