Summary

Chapter 10 begins with the narrator elaborating upon Joker and Maxima’s relationship. After Maxima’s parents drowned in a typhoon, Maxima and her sister Queenie were raised by their abusive grandmother. Maxima was Queenie’s defender, and was fending off neighborhood bullies with a fishing pole when Joker noticed her potential as a martial artist. He spent the next nine years training her in the art of Philippine escrima, and when she was 19, she was discovered at a martial arts festival by an action movie producer. The producer, who we know as “the eye-patch wearing son of a bitch” promised her a career as a stunt artist and film star, and she abandoned Joker to pursue stardom in Manila. Fifteen years later, the producer left Maxima out of work, out of money, and pregnant with Excel. Joker took his ex-protégé in and...