BEST PHILIPPINE SHORT STORIES: LINES

LINES
by Lakambini A. Sitoy

SHE lived alone, she told me, in an apartment that could house a family of four. To fill the silence, the first thing she did as soon as she had settled in was get a phone.

"Yeah, me too," I said. "I had a second one installed a couple of months ago. Problem is every time it rings it's some asshole looking for a phone pal."

The company was a new one, eager to sign on subscribers. Brand new black wires now webbed the skies across the city. Strangers who had waited decades to get connected suddenly had unlimited access, to me as well as her.

I kept a box of calling cards by my receiver, which was an arm-length from the bed. Each pale rectangle represented someone who'd said they could introduce me to someone else: people who might show me the way to a better job with a fat paycheck and real perks. Those evenings when I was home, itching for something to do, I would dial my collection of numbers relentlessly, banishing the thought of rejection from my mind.

I soon made contacts of a different nature. Night after night, in between my calls, the phone would ring. I'd hear an alien "Haloh?", giggly and juvenile; or sometimes just silence for a heartbeat or two before the line went dead.

"Teenage boys," she laughed when I told her. "They want to make sure it's a girl on the other end. I get calls like that all the time."

She always put the phone down on those cracked, uneducated voices from out of the ether. Like me she was polite only to people she knew. I never counted this as a fault.



THIS was the big city. Unchaperoned, her family tucked away in one of those sleepy, cash-crop provinces, she enjoyed a kind of defiant freedom. Part of it was the license to be anonymous. Another was the right to style herself liberated, to go out to the little bars on Friday nights with guys like me and yet be too nervous to make love when the time came.

For company in the darkness she had her faceless suitors, who never rung her up earlier than half past twelve. I suppose they must have taken note of her number and the light girly voice on the other end, the mysterious woman who refused to talk to them yet never unplugged her phone. What kind of people would be up through the wee hours of the morning? I thought of the security guards at our building sitting slack-jawed beneath spotty fluorescent bars. Those connection fees were cheap, anyone could apply. Driving past squatter enclaves on my way to work, I would marvel at how each ramshackle dwelling, the size of a toilet, was topped with a television antenna. Each shack would hold a new phone. I smiled to myself at what must be taking place nightly in the 2:00 a.m. dark: she in her white, cologne-sprinkled bed, jolted rudely awake by some squatter's bid for contact.

She and I, we were a team, like brother and sister, a most efficient twosome. At the two-bit ad agency where we worked, the projects our bosses assigned us almost always turned out perfect. I hate to brag, but she had a good mind, like a deadly little knife, and so did I. She was as fiercely loyal as I was diplomatic, so none of our supervisors ever got away with stealing our ideas. Of course we were meant for higher things. Overworked and underpaid--that was a given. She spent her salary on clothes and cabfare and accessorized her apartment with books. The money was never enough.

Me, I had the car payments and the baby to deal with.

At least I didn't have to worry about rent. The house belonged to my wife.



"IT'S all here," she would laugh, passing her calling card to those friends of mine we'd run into, in some Malate bar after work. "Trunk lines, direct line, pager, cell phone, home phone but strictly for emergencies and only if it's a pick up and drop off sort of job you wanna talk about; email--"

These men, young fathers like myself, would take the thin scrap of beige from her, pass their eyes over her face and breasts and, imprinting completed, slip the card into some pocket. Then they would turn their inquisitive gaze upon me. I suppose she and I were a unit, even when we sat a chair or two apart--we must have been obvious, even then, before I'd even touched her. But I'd signal the waiter for another beer, my face revealing nothing, and their curiosity would pass.

We had been out for a few drinks, the summer night she showed me her apartment. In the car, she turned her pager over and over between her fingers, as though hoping for rescue. My hand moved to the cell phone at my hip, but if I cut the power my wife would know something was wrong. She noticed my indecision, made a great show of watching the road. We drove through a miasma of invisible waves, through air so thick I found it hard to breathe, my respirations audible over the whump of our wheels on the asphalt. My thoughts spun around in crazy circles until finally, as we neared the end of the journey and the tension between us was so great I thought I would have to crash the car just to relieve it, I ceased altogether to think.

Her place was in a maze of sidestreets off a rundown commercial district. We had never been out so late. As I pulled up, I cut the engine without thinking, and she let her breath out in a sigh. On cat feet, so as not to awaken the neighbors, we found our way to her door. The apartment was a mess, laundry on the couch, crockery in the sink. She was embarassed, and at the same time defiant--so she was no housekeeper, so she was no one's wife.

She offered me something to eat, but there was nothing in the refrigerator but a few shriveled wedges of apple, and some capers and jam. In a recess she found a half-finished bottle of Kahlua, its throat encrusted with sweetness. The kind of treat women keep for an undreamed-of but hoped-for eventuality. We sipped the liquor straight, from plastic ice cream tumblers. The vapors made her sneeze.

We sat for some time while she pointed out spots on the walls where paintings ought to have hung and house plants flourish. Her gestures were small and prim from the tension. I was supposed to compliment her on her independence, I knew, and on how gutsy she was to be living alone, but in truth I wasn't sure what I felt. My voice quavered as we went up to her bedroom--some pretense about listening to a CD or two, at three o'clock in the morning, the two of us mouthing inanities, barely conscious of what we were saying. She clicked on a light. The room was bathed without warning in the warm glow of seduction, and there we stood in the half-darkness, looking inquisitively into each other's faces, until one of us lunged, reaching out too clumsily for the gravity of the moment, and closed the distance between ourselves.

Her flesh was soft and hot, perfumed by the sweat of a day gone by. Her blouse was the thin, fashionable kind that took forever to unbutton, so that ever so often she would stop breathing while I fumbled. An embarrassment that I couldn't help suffused me as zippers opened and garters snapped. Her flesh was so moist and so close, her response so sharp and immediate, and the terrible thing was that I knew her--she was no stranger in a karaoke club. I don't think I once met her eyes. She made just one token gesture of resistance, pressing her thighs together as I pulled her underwear down, the scrap of white cotton slipping unimpeded down her legs. I put my face to her pubis, my lips seeking out her wet folds--like teasing oysters from their weed-encrusted shells. She went rigid, stifled a shout, began to sob. Down in the darkness, gripping her buttocks hard enough to hurt, it was as if I was hoisting her into air, and fleeting images entered my head of my year-old daughter: the dull, half-words she too said whenever I picked her up. Her knees gave way and we fell in a heap, struggled to free ourselves from our clothes. As we moved back and forth, the scent of her sex, our bodies, rose in the air--the scent of sex, on our fingers, on my lips, and then all over my hair as she caressed me. It was an odor of beer and Winstons and sweat and sex and detergent and sun trapped in denim, and the sex was strongest. We were like two children playing pretend--now on the floor, now in a chair, on our knees, in her bed. We grinned stupidly, like wolves, and snuffled at each other.

That first dawn I came twice--the first almost as soon as I had entered her, the second in desperation when it became apparent she had lapsed into a kind of terrified, pained, interminable pre-orgasmic state. "It's not fair," I said afterwards, putting a little humor into my voice as I dabbed at the puddles I'd made on her belly. I was covered in sweat, and a little angry. I had, after all, buried my face down between her thighs. I wanted her to tell me how happy I'd made her. I needed a rating.

Somewhere among my clothes, the cell phone pulsed a couple of times--the battery signalling its temporary death. She stretched out an arm, one breast brushing my lips for a moment while she unplugged her own telephone receiver. Now we were unreachable. Incognito, exiled. I lay against her in the half light, still afraid to look into her eyes, the reality and the uncomfortable intimacy of what we had just done slowly sinking in.



MORNINGS as soon as my wife had left for work we made love, relentlessly, over the phone, her breathing exploding in my eardrum, her voice tiny, taut, almost weeping. In the office we devised little games by which we could do it, in our clothes, without contact, murmuring to each other as we pretended to surf the net. One night we stayed until everyone else had gone home, and as we made our way down a darkened corridor to the exit I pulled her to me, and we stumbled into the meeting room with its glass door and long table and swivel chairs. "This is our secret, ok?" I told her; it would be our private contract. She kissed my lips, slipping me the tongue. "I trust you." The heat was wretched. Her fingers knew nothing about button-flies and it took forever for her to open my jeans. She went for my cock as though trying to inhale it. I propelled her downwards until she knelt before me, then tugged at her hair, hard: "Now look at me. Look up at me." Deep, protesting sounds came from her throat. The darkness whirled. I felt myself coming. I wrenched her to her feet and slung her against the table, slipping into her from behind, one hand strumming the folds of her vulva, the other hard over her mouth. She bucked for a few moments, then turned languid and pliant. Someone entered the outer office then--one of the guards, training his light over the silent computers, the coffee maker, the rubber plant. He looked directly at us through the one-way glass; I met his unseeing eyes over her nape, but never once stopped the gentle movement of my pelvis. I fucked her, from behind, as though in some aquarium, fluid and in total silence. That was the night I found out what it was like to disappear.

Disappear--diffuse into the ether, to emerge in some motel room, falling sideways across the bed, the air crisscrossed with inaudible voices bouncing off our sweat-slicked bodies in waves. That summer I discovered how to live many lives: that you could be a totally different person in secret, that you could have a day face and a night face, a face for your lover, a face for your wife, a face for the fat and aging personnel manager who got you drunk buddy-fashion to hide her desire. I learned you could lie so efficiently as to deceive even yourself: watching my wife get dressed in the morning I would repeat word for word fictitious conversations with drinking buddies I made up then and there. When she had gone I would lie sleepily back in the pillows, staring at the parquet floor, the pink drapes, the shadow of the mango tree against the window--things that were my wife's and were now mine as well--and think with faint disgust of me and my lover lying in each other's arms just hours before.



BUT the thing was she simply didn't understand the dynamics of fucking. She began to demand favors as a matter of course, and how could I make her understand that these were things I couldn't even give the woman I was married to? She wanted kisses, on the lips and then on and on, over her breasts. She wanted pillow talk, her fingers moving over my chest in the familiar fashion of people you've grown up with. We swapped stories about losing our virginity, but she didn't much care about the women I'd bedded; she wanted to know how she measured up next to them, was she good, was she thin, did I like what I saw?

And she had this hang-up about love, a word she tried to slip in every now and then--"I love your body; I love saying your name"--to see how far she could go.

But it's not about love, it's never about love; it always starts with the clinical act of looking: at some girl, at her red-black hair and skin that's so pale it's literally white, the cute way she enunciates the t's at the ends of her words, the straps of her sandals alien to the accidental touch of lumpy jeepney-riding feet. It's in the looking and the chatting and the choosing, the incomparable thrill of finding a soul as horny as yours. Of finding out which one is attached but will come across, which one will ride in your car with you, direct you in the night to her little apartment with, invariably, a sports bra in the bathroom and a teddy bear on the bed.

It's discovering infinitesimal variations in a multitude, a paradox of flavors and textures, like the salmon and capers in that sandwich I once had at the Pen, at once tart and yielding, oozing pleasure onto your tongue.

There were moments when, listening to her respirations coming slower and deeper from within her chest, the corners of her mouth fluttering, I lost track of my own flesh. Was it the movement of her fingers, or mine, that caused that liquid warmth to spread unnervingly throughout my body; was that her tongue, were these my hands--

When, for a change, she touched herself as I watched, she did so with such sublime confidence, proud of her awakened cunt, offering it up to my gaze like a peeled fruit or a vulnerable and self-inflicted wound. It was unsettling to hear her calling my name. In orgasm she sounded like a child that had been whipped. She came so intensely after a while, and so often, that I found myself rising too soon afterwards to stumble to the bathroom, flagellating myself with cold droplets from the shower. One morning I discovered that a scrap antenna on the garbage truck had knocked our wires down; it was her time of the day to call and, longing acutely for her voice, I jerked off twice before I even got out of bed. After that I found myself putting in extra work not to be involved, and when that time came the sex was no longer fun.

I don't know how the people at work found out. She must have told; I am pretty sure I didn't. A casual mention, over beers, that I was fucking someone at the agency--that doesn't constitute telling, and the folks I was talking to were probably too drunk to hear. But it got around. In record time the usual morality posse in any office, the ones with an axe to grind against the pretty, were giving her the cold shoulder. It didn't help that she had alienated herself from them . Of course those had been my instructions: "to avert suspicion make sure we're never seen together." That put her in an invisible cell, for everyone was my buddy; I'm simply that sort of guy. If she'd been Machiavellian enough to fit into a corporate office she would have ignored my instructions, brazenly kept up our old flirtation. Hiding in plain sight. Instead, she'd sit miserably in her cubicle, occasionally chirping a question to one of her girlfriends, puzzling over the inevitable monosyllabic response.

Then someone took her off the cookie company account. The personnel manager wrote her a memo, but this one was about performance--she hadn't produced anything worthwhile in months--so it didn't have anything to do with me, nothing at all.

The strange thing about it was that everyone loved me; the guys flipped me knowing grins; the girls were extra nice, extra supportive, made it a point to start up private conversations with me whenever she was in the room. They plied me in shrill voices for stories about my wife, my little girl. The boss called me to his office, where to my surprise he poured me a beer. What's between you and her, he said, but he was a man who already knew the answer to that one and I bonded to him instantly. I told him as far as I was concerned, we were just friends; I didn't know what her problem was. We had a good laugh. He shook his head, and as I let myself out of his office, my face warm and my cheek twitching happily from the attention, I saw her, just coming out of the pantry, a styro cup of coffee in one hand. There was something different about her face, a tautness beneath the freshly-applied layer of makeup, and her jacket was something I hadn't seen before, too new, too radical; something a more exciting woman would wear. She looked into my eyes; I saw the panic there.

We encumber ourselves with the internet and phones and pagers, all the modern means of transmitting the word, but in the final analysis, despite the wonderful clarity of voice and image, we have nothing substantial to say. I turned from her and headed for my cubicle.



I STILL think about her sometimes, in the mornings when my wife has left the house and I'm drowsy and erect, my mind reaching for the phone even before I'm fully awake. This is the only time of the day that I have for myself--my nights are spent in bars now, usually with company, and on weekends we take the baby to the mall. My daughter is taller and a whole lot heavier, she talks in a perfect American accent too; I don't know where she gets it, Nickelodeon maybe.

So, taking myself in hand, I think of the woman who was once my lover. I still hear the words she used to murmur, more for their sake than to get any meaning across: You are so good, why is this good, I love this part of you. I remember the curve of her buttocks and how satisfying it was to smack her there, lightly, just hard enough to hear the rich report. I remember the intensity of her gaze, rolling up to meet mine; how close she would come to asphyxiation; how fear and pleasure were indistinguishable in her eyes. All right, I'll say it; I miss her. Maybe I should have changed offices when it started; that would have been a whole lot more convenient. Now my memories are spoiled with a heavy dose of guilt at not once coming to her defense when they fired her, me who knew her work best.

I know it could be disastrous--my wife has been uncharacteristically curious about how I spend my evenings nowadays--but I wish she would call, just once, just to ask how I'm doing, preferably when I'm alone. Is she sleeping with someone now; is he married, too; does she have a new job? I knew her favorite radio station but never heard her speak the dialect she had used as a child. Nor found out what her hometown was called, whether her brother had once touched her breasts long ago the way I'd once explored my sister's, what would have gone into that children's book she was always saying she would write.

Sometimes scents, textures, entire blocks of memory will surface. I know enough about the human subconscious to understand that much of this is censored, broken and reassembled, to form something which, like a well-written advertorial, stops just short of the truth. When I see her again that secret shared pleasure will be gone, that trust, that certainty I had those nights when we were the last to leave the office and I needed to wait only a few seconds before I felt the pressure of her fingertips against my fly. I suppose all the people you ever knew amount to nothing more than impulses in your brain, chains of chemicals with lengthy names. After a while the substances in your system rearrange themselves and then you're all right.

One Saturday we came home later than usual, and as I loaded the week's groceries into the refrigerator, I caught my wife staring in puzzlement at the caller I.D. Someone had tried to contact us for three hours straight that evening, 67 times all told. I went cold. But the number was something I had never seen before.

The phone rang for the 68th time. I picked it up gingerly. It was a man on the other end, sounding drunk, disoriented and more than a little desperate--could he talk to Sheila?

It was a young voice, comfortable with his English, but a public school accent. Intrigued, I found myself being polite, for the first time in my life, to a stranger. I told him he had the wrong number, could perhaps check his address book instead of wasting his time. But the fellow didn't seem to understand. "I just want to talk to Sheila," he repeated; growing more and more blustery the longer he talked, trying to fathom the relationship between his Sheila and this unknown man about his age on the other end. Finally I slammed the phone down. I thought of this phantom Sheila, if that was her name, and wondered where she lived and if she was at home right now, doing stretches on the floor of the bedroom she shared with a friend, after a dinner of Dulcinea carrot cake that she worried would wind up on her bony ass. I saw her laughing goodbye in the first light of morning, girl in platforms, girl with Bellady red hair, slipping this moron a number randomly scrawled before disappearing into a taxi, never wanting to see him again but too charitable to spoil the afterglow. I've taken to dialing pager numbers now, sort of for my own amusement. I punch in the autopage suffixes, and then the other five or so numbers at random. I listen to the greeting messages. It's mostly boring, uninvolved, unemotional stuff. Hi. This is Dr. Enriquez. Please leave your message so I can get back to you.

Some folks, though, they will play their favorite song. Once I even got a blast of synthesized sound. Funny what elaborate forms of camouflage people will erect. Professional tones or electronic noise, it's all the same thing: a bid to keep distance, over a system designed to thwart it.

But one night I got this girl, with a light, scratchy teenage-slut sort of voice. I paged her via the operator and left her my cell phone number, but she didn't return my call. It was a relief to have something else occupy my mind, and the more I dialled her number, the more her message grew on me. A teasing salutation, then a phone number rattled off in some elusive language, too low and rapid to decipher, and then gasping little kissy-kissy sounds as the tape ran out. She was too young, I figured, to have any notion of soul. A clean slate, nascent; no talent, no career and no ripened sexuality to juggle.

I jerked off to the sound of her voice through the receiver. But it wasn't any good. I would have gladly traded in the past six months for a shot at the rest of her. Puppy-ear breasts, dimples, and her hands in particular, pale, perfectly-oval fingernails with cuticles calcified from too much pruning. Hands of which she would be vain.

The touch of a stranger is hot and exotic, a world apart from your own. Tentative at first, it turns forceful right when you least expect it, a foolhardy bid for intimacy, flooding you all the way to your heels with triumph and joy. That's all we look for basically, a little joy.

BEST PHILIPPINE SHORT STORIES: KARA'S PLACE

KARA'S PLACE
by Luis Joaquin M. Katigbak

I'M pretty sure there are only two rats. I've seen both so often that I can tell them apart now, and ever since I gave them names, I've started feeling something almost like affection for them. I mean, I don't feed them or anything -- they manage to steal quite enough of my food, thank you -- but at least I don't freak out any more when they pop up, and I don't reach for the nearest blunt object. I saw Ludlum (he's the smaller, darker one) this morning, just behind the dishrack, and Le Carré paid me a visit as I was eating lunch. I guess that's how I think of them now: they're visitors, and God knows I don't get many of those here in Krus na Ligas.

Well, there's Eric, of course. It's kind of funny; we've known each other for years -- went to the same high school and all -- and we've never really been more than buddies, but nowadays, I think he's gotten kind of sweet on me. Why else would he squeeze his Civic into the narrow streets of KnL? Why else would he hang out in this lousy place? I mean, to call my room makeshift would be an act of kindness; it doesn't seem constructed so much as slapped together. That it's an architectural afterthought is proven by a window set in its back wall: a grimy screen covers said window, and its wooden jalousies have now been nailed shut, but anyone can see that it once served as the house's front window. I guess the owners needed some extra money, looked at the square meter or so of extra space in front of their house, and decided to cobble together a "room" for some gullible student, i.e. me, to rent.

The right wall was made out of hollow blocks, up to a point, that is. From around waist height upwards, it's just chicken wire, supported by a wooden framework. This fact is just barely disguised by the heavy yellow curtains that hang down from the roof. The left wall is made of wood; but it's also unfortunately a shared wall. Half of it belongs to the people next door, I can hear them arguing from here.

I don't really mind all that, though. I've rented worse places. I spend most of my time asleep anyway, so I don't give a damn about the interior design, or lack thereof. The noise I can tune out, after a while; it just becomes like a background hiss, like the white noise an off-duty TV makes when it's way past midnight and you're nodding off on the couch. The thing that bugs me, though, is when I have to go into the main house to use the bathroom. Of course I know enough never to step out of the bathroom wearing just a towel or even a bathrobe; but for my landlord's useless son it's apparently a turn-on just to see me in shorts and slippers. I have to pass through the kitchen to get to the CR, and if he happens to be there, I'll feel his gaze on me, travelling the length of my body up and down. I don't even have to glance at him to know this; he's not exactly subtle about it. Get a job, I want to tell him; get a goddamned life.

A knock sounds on my door. My door is made of cheap lawanit half-heartedly reinforced by some galvanized iron. Somehow any sounds produced by striking it don't sound quite real, and so I wait until I hear the knock a second, a third time, before I get up to answer.

"Who is it?" I call.

"Just me," a familiar voice replies.

"Eric?"

"Yah."

I push my monobloc chair aside to clear the way to my so-called closet. The chair makes an irritating scraping sound. "Hold on," I say, as I open the closet door, and tug at one of the drawers. "Just give me a minute or two to make myself decent."

"Okay," he says, as I rummage for a bra -- my white T-shirt is pretty flimsy, and there are limits to my bohemianism. I find one, snap it on, then get up and open the door.

"Hi, Kara," he says, with a big grin and a small hand-wave, as though I were several meters away. The goof.

"Hey, Eric," I smile, " -- come in." I point at the chair. "Sit down, feel at home." He sits, quite happily obedient, and I can't help trusty-canine comparisons from springing to my mind. I know, I know, I can be so mean. And to think Eric's one of those rare persons I actually like.

I sit down on my bed; it's an old army-issue steel number whose aged springs creak whenever I shift my weight.

"So. How are your classes?" Eric asks, plunging straight away into the small talk. A new semester has just begun, our second here in this university, and for the first time in a long while I don't feel the usual surge of enthusiasm for a new grading period, that wave of self-delusion that has me telling myself, this time I'm going to work my butt off, this time I'm getting high grades in everything. I just feel kind of blah about it all.

"My classes? They'd be okay if they didn't interfere with my sleep so much."

Eric laughs, and then his face turns serious and he says, "Kara? Can I talk to you about something that's been bothering me a little?" I say sure, go ahead.

Eric starts talking about this quartet of sweaty sando-clad men who don't seem to do anything except hang out at the sari-sari store down the street. He says that, just now, when he got out of his car and glanced at them, he noticed that they were drunk. He goes on about how they could be dangerous, about how one of these nights when I'm going home, you know, something could happen, that I should let him fetch me from my last class every day, it's no big deal...

I feel like telling him that I'm pretty sure they're all right, that they seem nice enough, that all they ever do when they're drunk is sing -- badly -- but I know he'll just say I'm being uncharacteristically naive. I also feel like asking, hey, wait, what are we anyway? What's this fetch-me-every-day business? Did I miss something? Aren't we getting a little bit ahead of ourselves? But sometimes it's just easier to let awkward questions simmer, in the false hope that they'll evaporate completely. So instead, I stare absent-mindedly at my lumpy mattress. It's covered with a shabby white bedsheet decorated with little orange flowers.

Then, just as Eric finishes up his speech, there's a tap on the roof. And then another. And another. We look up. It's beginning to rain.

We sit there for a while, listening to the taps coming faster and stronger, listening to the rain gathering strength. Soon it sounds like the entire Filipiniana Dance Group, on steroids, is performing on the roof.

"Ha! Never fails... Just had the car washed." Eric shakes his head, and then a slow grin spreads across his face. "You remember Jo-ann's birthday, in senior year?"

How could I forget? Jo-ann was one of only a handful of people in our batch who had a car, and she was the only one who had a new car, a brand-spanking-new Galant, as opposed to the secondhand slabs of rust that normally sputtered around the parking lot. And so, on her birthday, the barkada decided to slather gunk all over her car, as a surprise. The plan was that we would bring cans of shaving cream, spray their contents all over the car's surface, put some cherries on the hood, and then hide. When Jo-ann returned to the parking lot, we would savor our view of her stunned expression, and then suddenly leap out of the hedges, scream 'surprise!' and then cheerfully wipe off all the gunk. The problem was, we didn't know that the shaving cream would eat right through the car's paint job. We spent the next few months pooling our allowances to pay for the repair work.

Eric and I are laughing, as we tell each other the story again. "And then," I say, gasping, "and then there was that time when we were sophomores, and it was raining like a bastard, raining so hard they cancelled classes, and then Rachel announced that she wanted to watch a movie...?" Eric is nodding his head vigorously. He finishes the story for me -- "Yeah, and we told her she was nuts, but somehow she commandeered the Assistant Director's official transport, and we got a free ride to the mall!"

Story follows familiar story. Do you remember that time in the biology lab, when...? And how about that day at the fair... We've forgotten the room, the ratty yellow curtains, the question of us. For the moment, we're somewhere else, safe from decisions and possibilities and consequences. We're in a shared area of memory, a kind of amusement park of the heart, where nothing goes awry unless it's for our enjoyment, where days past can be repainted in colors bright as happiness.

Sometimes I think that that's what I really like about Eric -- that we can talk about all that, all the stuff that happened to us in high school.

"Well," Eric concludes, "those were the days."

I make a derisive sound, something that's between a laugh and a snort. I don't know why. Is it because of the cliché? The fact that those words sound kind of stupid coming from someone who's not even twenty? Or maybe it's because his careless, tossed-off statement has scared me a little. What if those really were 'the days'?

Eric senses my unease, and steers the conversation back into safe waters. "So what are you taking this sem?" he asks.

I start rattling off my subjects. Communication II, Social Science, etcetera, etcetera, and Math 17.

"Hey," he says, frowning. "Didn't you take that last sem?"

"Yes," I say.

"So what's the deal?" He has a genuinely puzzled expression on his face.

I wonder how I'm going to answer him. Eric knows me well enough to realize that there's no way in hell I could have failed Math 17.

"I failed it."

"No way."

"It's true." I point at the containers arrayed by the kitchen sink. "Hey. You want something to drink? Iced tea? Coffee...? Some Dom Perignon, perhaps?"

"No, no… I'm okay." He brushes off my attempt to change the topic, with the determination of someone whose mind tends to run on a single track. "How could you fail Math? I mean, you were the best in high school. Everyone copied assignments off you. Heck, you probably solve calculus problems in your sleep!"

I shrug, and look away from him. I suddenly realize that I'm going to give him an explanation, and I don't want to be looking at him when I do. I pick up my newsprint edition of the Math 17 textbook, and flip it open to a random page: a mass of graphs, symbols and equations unfurls. I recognize this chapter, and some of the problems listed.

"Well..." I start, "Well, you know how, in Math, attendance doesn't mean anything?" He frowns. "I mean, that's what all the other Math majors told me. All the teachers care about is if you're good. Some of them don't even bother to check who's absent or present. All that matters is that you pass the exams."

Eric's still frowning. I begin to worry that he might crease his forehead permanently.

"So, my Math 17 class was at seven in the morning. Too early for me. I cut class, a lot. By the end of the sem, I was just showing up for the exams. And let me tell you, I aced those exams." I'm still looking at the open page. With my index finger, I trace an arc of plotted points on one of the graphs. "And then, just after the finals, my teacher asks me to see him in his office." I pause. I take a slow, deep breath.

"I go there, he's all smiles, come in, come in, he says. He sits down, points to a chair just opposite him, tells me to sit down. I do. He starts by saying that I didn't show up for classes enough, that I'm in trouble because I went over the maximum number of absences. I'm listening, and I don't know what to say in my defense. Suddenly his hand's resting on my thigh, and he's telling me that actually, the attendance really won't be a problem, as long as I'm not averse to the idea of having a little 'fun'."

Eric is staring at me, like he can't understand, much less believe what I'm saying, like all he's doing is watching my lips move.

"I left, of course. And when I got my class card, there was a big fat failing grade on it."

Eric blurts out, "Why didn't you tell me?" And then, as if fearing the honest answer to that question, he quickly asks another. "Did you confront him?"

"Sure I did. I asked Rach to come with me, we went to his room, and I told him that I thought the whole thing was stupid. I told him that our last encounter in his office constituted harassment. I also pointed out that there were other people in the section who cut class just as much as I did, and he didn't fail them. He denied that he ever came on to me, and, regarding the grade, he said that he was just executing University attendance policy. He also implied that I would be in big trouble if I spread my story around."

Eric is pissed off. He actually looks more pissed off than I ever was.

"Eric, calm down," I say, but looking at him, I know I'm wasting my words.

"Ba't ang yabang niya? Does he have a frat? Is he the brother of a senator or something?"

"What does it matter?"

"You're right, it doesn't matter. I mean, he's not gonna know who or what hit him anyway."

"That's not what I meant."

"Look, it's in the Bible! If you have a grievance against somebody, the first thing you do is talk to him. Then, if he doesn't listen, you bring a friend and you try to talk to him again. And then, after all else has failed, you have to go ahead and smite him. You know, beat the shit out of him."

"I know what smite means, thank you. And just where in the Bible did you read that?"

"I think it's in Matthew. I'm pretty sure that's what it says."

"I find that really hard to believe, Eric."

"Look," he says, and for the first time he frightens me. I'm looking into his eyes, and I realize that Eric, sort-of-goofy Eric, my old high school friend, is perfectly capable of premeditated violence. "Look, we have to do something. He can't get away with this."

"Eric, I swear to God, if I pick up the Collegian next week and find out he's the lead story, I'll never talk to you again."

He has nothing to say in response. He just sits there, his fists clenched, in silence. Finally, he mutters, "He just shouldn't get away with it."

I suddenly feel very tired.

Eric stands up. "I guess I should..." He makes some vague hand-motion in the general direction of the door, but otherwise he doesn't move. I look at his eyes; they're glistening. He puts his hand over them, as if to stop them from leaking.

I get up, walk over to him, and put my arms around him in a reassuring hug. The last time I hugged Eric was our graduation day, right after the last ceremony, when everyone was laughing and cheering, and throwing their programs in the air because we didn't have those silly four-cornered caps. That was a good day. Here, now, his arms wrap around me, and they start to squeeze just a little too tightly. He opens his wet eyes, looks at me, and his head ducks down and his mouth meets mine and I can feel his tongue work its way between my lips.

I push him away, with all the strength that suddenly surges into me. He staggers, and for a second he looks like he's going to fall, but he manages to plant his hand on the table for support.

"I'm sorry," he says, straightening up abruptly. He just stands there, looking utterly lost, frozen for a moment, and then he almost trips over his own feet as he turns around, and lunges for the door. He swings it open, and just like that, before I can say anything, before I can yell at him or offer him an umbrella to borrow, he's outside, running towards his car, getting drenched. I watch as he fumbles with his keys. Finally he manages to get in, and start the engine. His headlights blink on and he honks the car horn a couple of times. I make a small waving gesture, but I'm not sure if he can see me through this downpour.

I close the door, and sit down at my kitchen table. I pick up a screw-top plastic container, it's full of this iced tea powdered mix. I shovel a couple of tablespoons of the stuff into a glass, pour water into it and stir the whole thing vigorously, until I can no longer see the individual grains swirling around, until all that's left is a homogenous dark brown liquid. I take a swig. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Ludlum as he zips across the kitchen sink's edge.

There are times when I wish rats could talk. Hell, there are times when I wish dogs could talk, and cats, and all sorts of animals, and inanimate objects too -- I could have conversations with my books, and ask my clothes which of them wants to go out today. I could go to our old school, run my hand across the pebbly surface of the Humanities building's walls, and thank my favorite narra tree -- the one near the Girls' Dorm -- for pleasant oblivious afternoons spent in its shade. I gulp down the last of my instant, too-sweet tea, and smack my lips. There's an unpleasant puckery aftertaste. I set the glass down on my table and shuffle over to my bed. The springs creak as I lie down. I take a deep breath, close my eyes. I can hear another argument starting next door. I can hear the scratching and scrabbling of my two rodent roommates as they cavort inside the hollow wooden wall to my left. And outside, there's the constant roar of the rain, as if the sky itself is laughing at some great joke that I just don't get.

BESTPHILIPPINE SHORT STORIES: HARVEST

HARVEST
by Loreto Paras Sulit

HE first saw her in his brother’s eyes. The palay stalks were taking on gold in the late after­noon sun, were losing their trampled, wind-swept look and stirring into little, almost inaudi­ble whispers.

The rhythm of Fabian’s strokes was smooth and unbroken. So many palay stalks had to be harvested before sundown and there was no time to be lost in idle dallying. But when he stopped to heap up the fallen palay stalks he glanced at his brother as if to fathom the other’s state of mind in that one, side-long glance.

The swing of Vidal’s figure was as graceful as the downward curve of the cres­cent-shaped scythe. How stubborn, this younger brother of his, how hard-headed, fumed Fabian as he felled stalk after stalk. It is because he knows how very good-looking he is, how he is so much run-after by all the women in town. The obstinate, young fool! With his queer dreams, his strange adorations, his wistfulness for a life not of these fields, not of their quiet, colorless women and the dullness of long nights of unbroken silence and sleep. But he would bend… he must bend… one of these days.

Vidal stopped in his work to wipe off the heavy sweat from his brow. He wondered how his brother could work that fast all day without pausing to rest, with­out slowing in the rapidity of his strokes. But that was the reason the master would not let him go; he could harvest a field in a morning that would require three men to finish in a day. He had always been afraid of this older brother of his; there was something terrible in the way he deter­mined things, how he always brought them to pass, how he disregarded the soft and the beautiful in his life and sometimes how he crushed, trampled people, things he wanted destroyed. There were flowers, insects, birds of boyhood memories, what Fabian had done to them. There was Tinay… she did not truly like him, but her widowed mother had some lands… he won and mar­ried Tinay.

I wonder what can touch him. Vidal thought of miracles, perhaps a vision, a woman… But no… he would overpower them…he was so strong with those arms of steel, those huge arms of his that could throttle a spirited horse into obedience.

“Harvest time is almost ended, Vidal.” (I must be strong also, the other prayed). “Soon the planting season will be on us and we shall have need of many carabaos. Milia’s father has five. You have but to ask her and Milia will accept you any time. Why do you delay…”

He stopped in surprise for his brother had sprung up so suddenly and from the look on his face it was as if a shining glory was smiling shyly, tremulously in that adoring way of his that called forth all the boyishness of his nature—There was the slow crunch, crunch of footsteps on dried soil and Fabian sensed the presence of people behind him. Vidal had taken off his wide, buri hat and was twisting and untwisting it nervously.

“Ah, it is my model! How are you, Vidal?” It was a voice too deep and throaty for a woman but beneath it one could detect a gentle, smooth nuance, soft as silk. It affected Fabian very queerly, he could feel his muscles tensing as he waited for her to speak again. But he did not stop in work nor turn to look at her.

She was talking to Vidal about things he had no idea of. He could not under­stand why the sound of her voice filled him with this resentment that was increasing with every passing minute. She was so near him that when she gestured, perhaps as she spoke, the silken folds of her dress brushed against him slightly, and her perfume, a very subtle fragrance, was cool and scented in the air about him.

“From now on he must work for me every morning, possibly all day.”

“Very well. Everything as you please.” So it was the master who was with her.

“He is your brother, you say, Vidal? Oh, your elder brother.” The curiosity in her voice must be in her eyes. “He has very splendid arms.”

Then Fabian turned to look at her.

He had never seen anyone like her. She was tall, with a regal unconscious assurance in her figure that she carried so well, and pale as though she had just recovered from a recent illness. She was not exactly very young nor very beautiful. But there was something disquieting and haunting in the unsymmetry of her features, in the queer reflection of the dark blue-blackness of her hair, in her eyes, in that mole just above her nether lips, that tinged her whole face with a strange loveliness. For, yes, she was indeed beautiful. One dis­covered it after a second, careful glance. Then the whole plan of the brow and lip and eye was revealed; one realized that her pallor was the ivory-white of rice grain just husked, that the sinuous folds of silken lines were but the undertones of the grace that flowed from her as she walked away from you.

The blood rushed hot to his very eyes and ears as he met her grave, searching look that swept him from head to foot. She approached him and examined his hot, moist arms critically.

“How splendid! How splendid!” she kept on murmuring.

Then “Thank you,” and taking and leaning on the arm of the master she walked slowly away.

The two brothers returned to their work but to the very end of the day did not exchange a word. Once Vidal attempted to whistle but gave it up after a few bars. When sundown came they stopped harvesting and started on their way home. They walked with difficulty on the dried rice paddies till they reached the end of the rice fields.

The stiffness, the peace of the twilit landscape was maddening to Fabian. It aug­mented the spell of that woman that was still over him. It was queer how he kept on thinking about her, on remembering the scent of her perfume, the brush of her dress against him and the look of her eyes on his arms. If he had been in bed he would be tossing painfully, fever­ishly. Why was her face always before him as though it were always focused somewhere in the distance and he was forever walking up to it?

A large moth with mottled, highly colored wings fluttered blindly against the bough, its long, feathery antennae quivering sensitively in the air. Vidal paused to pick it up, but before he could do so his brother had hit it with the bundle of palay stalks he carried. The moth fell to the ground, a mass of broken wings, of fluttering wing-dust.

After they had walked a distance, Vidal asked, “Why are you that way?”

“What is my way?”

“That—that way of destroying things that are beautiful like moths… like…”

“If the dust from the wings of a moth should get into your eyes, you would be blind.”

“That is not the reason.”

“Things that are beautiful have a way of hurting. I destroy it when I feel a hurt.”

To avoid the painful silence that would surely ensue Vidal talked on whatever subject entered his mind. But gradually, slowly the topics converged into one. He found himself talking about the woman who came to them this afternoon in the fields. She was a relative of the master. A cousin, I think. They call her Miss Francia. But I know she has a lovely, hid­den name… like her beauty. She is convalescing from a very serious illness she has had and to pass the time she makes men out of clay, of stone. Sometimes she uses her fingers, some­times a chisel.

One day Vidal came into the house with a message for the master. She saw him. He was just the model for a figure she was working on; she had asked him to pose for her.

“Brother, her loveliness is one I cannot understand. When one talks to her forever so long in the patio, many dreams, many desires come to me. I am lost… I am glad to be lost.”

It was merciful the darkness was up on the fields. Fabian could not see his brother’s face. But it was cruel that the darkness was heavy and without end except where it reached the little, faint star. For in the deep darkness, he saw her face clearly and understood his brother.

On the batalan of his home, two tall clay jars were full of water. He emptied one on his feet, he cooled his warm face and bathed his arms in the other. The light from the kero­sene lamp within came in wisps into the batalan. In the meager light he looked at his arms to discover where their splendor lay. He rubbed them with a large, smooth pebble till they glowed warm and rich brown. Gently he felt his own muscles, the strength, the power beneath. His wife was crooning to the baby inside. He started guiltily and entered the house.

Supper was already set on the table. Tinay would not eat; she could not leave the baby, she said. She was a small, nervous woman still with the lingering prettiness of her youth. She was rocking a baby in a swing made of a blanket tied at both ends to ropes hanging from the ceiling. Trining, his other child, a girl of four, was in a corner playing siklot solemnly all by herself.

Everything seemed a dream, a large spreading dream. This little room with all the people inside, faces, faces in a dream. That woman in the fields, this afternoon, a colored, past dream by now. But the unrest, the fever she had left behind… was still on him. He turned almost savagely on his brother and spoke to break these two gro­tesque, dream bub­bles of his life. “When I was your age, Vidal, I was already mar­ried. It is high time you should be settling down. There is Milia.”

“I have no desire to marry her nor anybody else. Just—just—for five carabaos.” There! He had spoken out at last. What a relief it was. But he did not like the way his brother pursed his lips tightly That boded not defeat. Vidal rose, stretching himself luxuriously. On the door of the silid where he slept he paused to watch his little niece. As she threw a pebble into the air he caught it and would not give it up. She pinched, bit, shook his pants furiously while he laughed in great amusement.

“What a very pretty woman Trining is going to be. Look at her skin; white as rice grains just husked; and her nose, what a high bridge. Ah, she is going to be a proud lady… and what deep, dark eyes. Let me see, let me see. Why, you have a little mole on your lips. That means you are very talkative.”

“You will wake up the baby. Vidal! Vidal!” Tinay rocked the child almost despair­ingly. But the young man would not have stopped his teasing if Fabian had not called Trin­ing to his side.

“Why does she not braid her hair?” he asked his wife.

“Oh, but she is so pretty with her curls free that way about her head.”

“We shall have to trim her head. I will do it before going out to work tomor­row.”

Vidal bit his lips in anger. Sometimes… well, it was not his child anyway. He retired to his room and fell in a deep sleep unbroken till after dawn when the sobs of a child awak­ened him. Peering between the bamboo slats of the floor he could see dark curls falling from a child’s head to the ground.

He avoided his brother from that morning. For one thing he did not want repetitions of the carabao question with Milia to boot. For another there was the glo­rious world and new life opened to him by his work in the master’s house. The glam­our, the enchantment of hour after hour spent on the shadow-flecked ylang-ylang scented patio where she molded, shaped, reshaped many kinds of men, who all had his face from the clay she worked on.

In the evening after supper he stood by the window and told the tale of that day to a very quiet group. And he brought that look, that was more than a gleam of a voice made weak by strong, deep emotions.

His brother saw and understood. Fury was a high flame in his heart… If that look, that quiver of voice had been a moth, a curl on the dark head of his daughter… Now more than ever he was determined to have Milia in his home as his brother’s wife… that would come to pass. Someday, that look, that quiver would become a moth in his hands, a frail, helpless moth.

When Vidal, one night, broke out the news Fabian knew he had to act at once. Miss Francia would leave within two days; she wanted Vidal to go to the city with her, where she would finish the figures she was working on.

“She will pay me more than I can earn here, and help me get a position there. And shall always be near her. Oh, I am going! I am going!”

“And live the life of a—a servant?”

“What of that? I shall be near her always.”

“Why do you wish to be near her?”

“Why? Why? Oh, my God! Why?”

That sentence rang and resounded and vibrated in Fabian’s ears during the days that followed. He had seen her closely only once and only glimpses thereafter. But the song of loveliness had haunted his life thereafter. If by a magic transfusing he, Fabian, could be Vidal and… and… how one’s thoughts can make one forget of the world. There she was at work on a figure that represented a reaper who had paused to wipe off the heavy sweat from his brow. It was Vidal in stone.

Again—as it ever would be—the disquieting nature of her loveliness was on him so that all his body tensed and flexed as he gathered in at a glance all the marvel of her beauty.

She smiled graciously at him while he made known himself; he did not expect she would remember him.

“Ah, the man with the splendid arms.”

“I am the brother of Vidal.” He had not forgotten to roll up his sleeves.

He did not know how he worded his thoughts, but he succeeded in making her understand that Vidal could not possibly go with her, that he had to stay behind in the fields.

There was an amusement rippling beneath her tones. “To marry the girl whose father has five carabaos. You see, Vidal told me about it.”

He flushed again a painful brick-red; even to his eyes he felt the hot blood flow.

“That is the only reason to cover up something that would not be known. My brother has wronged this girl. There will be a child.”

She said nothing, but the look in her face protested against what she had heard. It said, it was not so.

But she merely answered, “I understand. He shall not go with me.” She called a ser­vant, gave him a twenty-peso bill and some instruction. “Vidal, is he at your house?” The brother on the patio nodded.

Now they were alone again. After this afternoon he would never see her, she would never know. But what had she to know? A pang without a voice, a dream without a plan… how could they be understood in words.

“Your brother should never know you have told me the real reason why he should not go with me. It would hurt him, I know.

“I have to finish this statue before I leave. The arms are still incomplete—would it be too much to ask you to pose for just a little while?”

While she smoothed the clay, patted it and molded the vein, muscle, arm, stole the firmness, the strength, of his arms to give to this lifeless statue, it seemed as if life left him, left his arms that were being copied. She was lost in her work and noticed neither the twi­light stealing into the patio nor the silence brooding over them.

Wrapped in that silver-grey dusk of early night and silence she appeared in her true light to the man who watched her every movement. She was one he had glimpsed and crushed all his life, the shining glory in moth and flower and eyes he had never understood because it hurt with its unearthly radiance.

If he could have the whole of her in the cup of his hands, drink of her strange loveli­ness, forgetful of this unrest he called life, if… but his arms had already found their duplicate in the white clay beyond…

When Fabian returned Vidal was at the batalan brooding over a crumpled twenty-peso bill in his hands. The haggard tired look in his young eyes was as grey as the skies above.

He was speaking to Tinay jokingly. “Soon all your sampaguitas and camias will be gone, my dear sister-in-law because I shall be seeing Milia every night… and her father.” He watched Fabian cleansing his face and arms and later wondered why it took his brother that long to wash his arms, why he was rubbing them as hard as that…

BEST PHILIPPINE SHORT STORIES: FIREWORKS

FIREWORKS
by H.O. Santos

 ENSENADA is only one hour south of Tijuana but what a difference one hour makes. It's still a tourist town--gringos contribute a lot to the town's economy--but it's more tranquil. Unlike the border town of Tijuana, vendors in Ensenada aren't always in your face trying to sell you a souvenir or a bed warmer for the evening. As a matter of fact, many commercial establishments don't have employees who speak English--we do very well without you tourists, thank you very much, they seem to say. Even the popular Hussong's Cantina with its almost hundred percent gringo clientele is outside of town and doesn't affect Ensenada's relative calm.

I love the isolation Baja California provides, all within a day's drive from Los Angeles. My favorite Baja destination is easily San Felipe, a sleepy fishing village on the Gulf of California side, and that's where Barbara and I were headed for. There are many ways to get there from Los Angeles but my favorite route is the one which goes all the way south to Ensenada via Tijuana. You then cross the peninsula through the winding road over the mountains to reach the other side.

Close to the halfway mark, Ensenada is a good stopping point to take a break. We hit it at the right time on this trip, at eleven in the morning.

I was with Barbara Westbay, my girl friend of almost two years. In spite of her decidedly non-Hispanic surname, she claims to have Latino ancestors. You couldn't tell from the way she looked--she had red hair, green eyes, and freckles that showed prominently if she stayed in the sun too long. Lately it had been fashionable among gringos to claim Latino or Native American ancestry. I often wondered if she has been stretching the truth about her ancestry a little too much.

I never fully understood why she put up with my proclivity for these trips since she can't take too much sun, an almost impossible thing to do in Baja. She's envious of women who tan perfectly, those who can take on a beautiful shade of bronze without burning. She has to be careful for it's extremely uncomfortable for her to lie down when she gets burned. I like to think she puts up with these trips because she loves me but I know she does it as much to get away from the madness of city life as she cares for me.

I parked Barbara's Nissan Pathfinder in the center of Ensenada near the beach. We went to look for our favorite food vendors--the ones who plied the streets in their pushcarts and lunch trucks. She went to a truck that sold fish tacos. I found a vendor who served fresh clam cocktails from his pushcart. He picked a live one from a bucket, opened and cut it up, then put the meat into a large plastic cup. He squeezed lime juice into it, added chopped tomatoes, onions, cilantro, and red peppers and handed the cup to me with several packets of Santos saltine crackers.

We stopped at the corner store to buy two cold bottles of Corona Beer before going to the beach to eat our lunch.

"Have a bite of my fish taco, it's good."

"What did you get this time, the usual shark?"

"They didn't have shark but this tuna is good--it's not overcooked, just lightly grilled." I took a bite and agreed it was good.

"Here, have some of my cocktail, it's pismo clam." I brought a spoonful to her mouth to let her try it.

"Super. I wish we had these vendors in L.A. They're so convenient."

"We're starting to have them already. I see vendors selling ice cream and drinks out of pushcarts. They're probably all illegals, too."

"Come on, you wouldn't know an illegal if you saw one. Just because you see somebody who looks Hispanic doesn't mean he's a mojado."

"They mostly are."

"I don't think so. As an immigrant yourself, I expect you'd be more sensitive to their plight."

"But I came to America legally. I'm not against immigration, only against those who do it illegally," I protested.

"You have a lot to learn about how America stole most of the West from Mexico. All of the Western states from Texas to California used to belong to Mexico. The 1849 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo unfairly gave the West to America. Before, those areas were part of Mexico and people could move freely because there was no border. The worst part about it was that land was taken away illegally from their Mexican owners and given to the new settlers."

"All right, but what are laws for if they're not going to be enforced."

"Some laws are so unfair they shouldn't be enforced."

I let Barbara have the last word because I suspected she would win the argument. She once told me that new immigrants like myself who have been in the U.S. just long enough are sometimes worse than native-born Americans when it comes to tolerating new immigration. Each new group thinks the door should be closed after they've come in.

After lunch, we bought two more six-packs of Corona and stashed them in our ice chest before going on our way. We were soon outside Ensenada going east and climbing along the winding road. Some parts of the mountain range were as high as seven thousand feet although the highway only reached five thousand. I had a chance to enjoy the scenery as Barbara had taken over the driving chores.

Along the mountain road were large boulders that looked like they could roll down and crush us at any moment. Although I knew they had been there for thousands of years, it was hard not to get disturbed. I was happy when we reached the high plateau and left them behind us.

We stopped to buy gasoline at a small town. The mountain towns didn't have electricity--gas was dispensed in a primitive but ingenuous manner. The dispenser was a graduated glass container set high on a stand. An attendant pumped gas by hand from fifty-five gallon drums on the ground to the container until the desired amount was transferred. The gas was then allowed to flow down through a hose to your tank. We took in fifty liters of regular unleaded gas. I paid in dollars and didn't bother to count the change which was given to me in pesos. In all the times I've been to Baja, no one has yet cheated me on the change owed me.

The gas attendant was an attractive young girl who must have been around ten or twelve. She wore jeans, a Western shirt, and cowboy boots. She had light hair and looked European unlike most of the other children around her who had mostly Indian features.

"You know, she could easily cross the border and won't even get stopped," Barbara commented. "None of her friends will make it, though."

I knew Barbara was trying to tell me looks had everything to do with who was mistaken for an illegal alien in the United States. She was good at giving not-too-subtle hints like that to prove a point.

We were soon on the eastern slope of the mountain. From here on, the road is straight for the most part. It didn't need to snake around since the slope is gentle all the way to the ocean. The landscape also changes radically here--the marine layer which blows in from the Pacific and makes the western side of the peninsula green doesn't reach this far. It is an alkali desert--starkly bright white except for the black cinder cones of extinct volcanoes that rose from the desert floor in the distance. Every now and then we would see green farmland made possible by irrigation. I saw a red double-winged crop dusting plane make a pass to drop insecticide on the crops below. I thought of Snoopy--he would have loved to have been on that plane.

After an hour more, we got to the lowlands and at last I saw the ocean in the distance. I soon heard the ocean's roar and smelled the salt air. Even after all the trips I've made to San Felipe, it was still a surprise to suddenly see an ocean at the edge of a dry and desolate desert.

We turned right when we reached the main highway. The road was surrounded by sand dunes on both sides and gently rose and fell but was absolutely straight. The ocean was only a few miles to our left but it didn't do much to alleviate the July heat. We had turned the air conditioner off to spare the car's cooling system and get used to the heat.

There were no clouds in the sky and it was hard to imagine there was life around except for the few scrub cactus and stunted mesquite that broke through the chalky soil. I knew from previous visits, though, that they were simply hiding from the midday heat and would come out when it got cooler.

As we approached San Felipe, billboards touting campsites along the beach became visible to our left. We turned left at our favorite, the Playas del Sol, which was two-thirds of the way to the center of San Felipe from where the first campground was. We left a trail of dust on the gravel road as Barbara drove to the campground which was half a mile from the highway. We were lucky to find a cabaña still available--the shade provided by the thatched palm roof supported on four wooden posts made all the difference between comfort and torture.

Our chosen spot was on a bluff fifteen feet higher than the beach. Barbara and I quickly got our equipment from the car and set them up. Barbara then moved her car to the west side of the cabaña to block the sun when it got low. We decided we didn't need the tent--the wind wasn't strong enough and we could sleep in the open. We worked quickly and changed into bathing suits so we could get in the water before the tide started receding again.

High tide is the only time you can swim in San Felipe. The water is all the way to the beach then. Fish come close and often jump out of the water. You can see an occasional flying fish skip thirty yards or more before dropping back into the water again.

The water temperature was pleasant--cool enough to be refreshing but not ice cold like it was in the winter. We stayed only long enough to cool off and went back to tidy up our little camp area for the evening. It was better to do this while it was still light because it gets very dark at night.

I had some pork chops marinating in a container in the ice chest. While waiting for the charcoal to get going, I set a couple of beach chairs on the bluff facing the ocean. We sat on the chairs and watched the tide go out. Sea gulls were making their last attempts at catching fish before the tide receded some more. The temperature must have been in the mid-nineties so we were dry without needing to towel off.

We had a good dinner--Barbara's salsa was hotter than usual so it required frequent washing down with beer. Coronas weren't heavy anyway and here in the hot climate you sweated off the effects of beer faster than you could drink it.

We took a shower after we washed our pots and pans in the wash area. The camp site had free toilets but charged a nominal fee for showers. Fresh water was trucked in daily from Mexicali which was sixty miles away. The lack of fresh water is what has slowed developers from fully exploiting this place, thank heavens.

By the time we got back, the camp manager had already turned on the generator that provided electricity to the fluorescent lamps along the main camp road. Besides the road, the wash, bath, and toilet areas were also lit. Lights were turned off at eleven o'clock.

At night, there's absolutely nothing to do in the campground except stroll on the beach. It's the kind of place that drive Las Vegas types crazy. We took a flashlight with us to look around--tiny crabs scurried away as we made our way through the tide pools. The exposed ocean floor was muddy, and we found an occasional fish or shrimp trapped in the shallow pools of water.

After the walk, we sat on our folding chairs, sipping beer again. I loved Barbara for understanding there were times when you could be with someone and not need to say anything. The connection was made through the silence, not the exchange of words.

In the distance, I could see the lights of Mexican towns on the mainland and an occasional ferry or fishing boat crossing the gulf which separated us from them. Looking out towards the mainland made it clear to me why early explorers mistook California for an island.

I looked up the moonless sky and through the clear desert air saw more stars than I could count. The Milky Way and the reddish Magellanic Cloud were clearly visible. I thought about my namesake, my tocayo, Antonio Miranda Rodriguez--he must have gazed at these very same stars from this same spot more than two centuries before.

I had read he was a Filipino carpenter who passed through Baja in 1781 with a group of settlers who were going to start a settlement, near the San Gabriel Mission, which would later become Los Angeles. He never made it because his Mexican wife and daughter got sick. He stayed behind to take care of them until they died. He ended up in Santa Barbara instead of Los Angeles.

I wondered what made him and countless other Filipinos cross the Pacific on Spanish galleons leaving everything behind, how he must have felt upon losing his family to illness just when they were getting close to Alta California where they would have had a better life. It seemed Filipinos had been going to strange lands to find better lives forever.

I counted three shooting stars in fifteen minutes but didn't make a wish. What I wanted I already had.

"Do you mind if I turned the radio on?" I asked Barbara.

"No, it would be good to listen to some music."

I fiddled with the dial--I could only get AM. I got stations from the Mexican mainland, a strong one from Albuquerque, but stopped at a station from Tuczon that was giving a news summary. The temperature had been over a hundred in most places along the border and the Border Patrol had found some illegal border crossers in the desert. Four were dead and seven were suffering from heat stroke and severe dehydration. The authorities were investigating whether their coyote had abandoned them or if they had crossed on their own without realizing how high the temperature would be that day.

"My God, what a terrible way to die," Barbara said.

"I don't understand why people take such chances. It's dumb," I replied.

"Maybe some day you will. I'll love you even more when you do."

"There are legal ways to get in…"

"Most people can't get in legally. One day you'll meet a real illegal and you'll find out why they do things you consider dumb."

The news was over. I turned the dial to a Mexican station that played boleros. It was depressing to hear about people crossing the border only to die after they make it to their promised land. The music helped me push the thought away from my mind. I had more beer and watched the stars until I fell asleep.

IT must have been already in the eighties when I woke up. The tide had started to move out again and it was getting quieter. It had come in during the night, its roar lulling me to a deeper sleep. Its sound is so soothing you tend to wake up when it goes away.

The sun hadn't as yet risen but the eastern horizon already had a pink tinge. Clouds over the mainland were slowly turning crimson. Stars were still visible on the zenith and towards the western horizon. After a while, the sun peeked out and the sky was filled with a riot of colors. I don't think there's a more beautiful sunrise than in San Felipe. Too bad not many people get to see it because they don't wake up early enough.

I placed a towel on Barbara to cover her--I noticed she hadn't bothered to put her clothes back on after we woke up in the middle of the night wanting each other badly. She was still sleeping soundly and I didn't want to wake her up.

I filled a pot with water and made coffee, then watched the sun rise higher as I drank my coffee. A few people around camp were now beginning to stir and move about and so did Barbara. She gave me an amused grin when she realized she was naked--she hastily put her clothes on. As she washed her face in a small basin, I made her a cup of coffee. She didn't say anything but hugged me to give her silent thank you before starting to fry bacon and eggs.

Barbara fried our leftover rice with garlic in the bacon fat. I was surprised how easily she had gotten to like the Filipino breakfast staple I taught her to make. She fixes it every time she gets a chance.

It was a lazy morning and by the time we had everything stowed away, it was already nine o'clock and very hot. We went to town to buy more food, drinks, and ice.

When we returned to Playas del Sol, an itinerant vendor was standing in the shade of our cabaña. He politely waited until we got everything out from the car before showing us what he was selling. He had jamacas, a very compact hammock made from hand-tied twine. It was only a few bucks so I bought one. I didn't necessarily want to sleep in one but I thought it would be handy in keeping our stuff up from the sand.

I was hanging the hammock from the cabaña posts when I saw this young woman carrying a basket on top of her head. She had it effortlessly balanced and didn't need to hold it with her hands. It had been a long time since I last saw a woman do that.

She was walking towards us. She was petite, must have been only an inch or two over five feet, and had a nice figure. Her skin was deep brown, perhaps from the sun, and she was wearing an embroidered blouse of rough cotton. She looked like a typical chinita poblana, a Mexican country woman of mostly Indian blood, except she was wearing shorts instead of a skirt. She was a pretty sight to look at--good looking, nice figure, shapely legs, and walking like a model on a runway. The basket on her head made her walk in a sensuous manner, her hips and hands swaying gracefully to keep her balance in the soft sand. I noticed that all the men around us had turned their heads to ogle her.

She approached Barbara and showed what she had in her basket--pork and chicken tamales, she said. She had an intense look in her eyes but they looked like they were ready to turn into a twinkle anytime.

"Do you have salsa to go with it?" Barbara asked.

"Yes, of course," she answered. "It is good and fresh."

"Let me try one chicken," Barbara said.

I brought over a paper plate and a fork. The woman put the tamale on the plate and Barbara split the cornhusk wrapper open with her fork. She then poured salsa straight from the jar and started eating.

"It's good, I can eat another one. Do you want one, hon?"

"I'll try one," I said. I got another paper plate and asked for pork tamale. It was almost lunch time anyway and it was too hot to cook. All we needed was cold beer and our lunch would be complete.

I pulled the beach chairs into the shade and offered one to the woman.

"My name is Tony, this is Barbara. We're from Los Angeles."

"I am Lita," she said softly as she sat down. She had been staring at me for a while. I got a plastic cup and asked if she wanted soda or beer.

"Coke is fine, if you have."

I put ice in the plastic cup for her and poured her some Coke. I got a couple of Coronas for myself and Barbara.

After Lita took a sip, she said, "Dalawa na lang po ang natitira, bilhin na po ninyo para huwag na akong maglakad pa."

I was pleasantly surprised and smiled, "Pinay ka pala. Kaya naman pala napakaganda mo."

She lowered her eyes and blushed. I turned to Barbara, "Luv, she's Filipina. She says she has only two tamales left and was wondering if we want to buy them so she can go home."

"Why not, they're good--I'm sure you can eat another one."

We sat there in the shade eating our lunch. I offered a tamale to Lita but she declined saying she couldn't eat one--she made them every day. I gave her instead a mango we got from town.

"How did you get to Baja?" I asked.

"It is long story, take too long to tell."

"Oh, we got time," I said but Lita didn't say anything.

"Tell you what," Barbara said, joining in. "We'd like to invite you for dinner tonight. It's the Fourth of July and we'd like to celebrate a little bit. Then you can tell us."

Lita thought for a while then said, "Only if you let me cook."

"Nothing fancy, we don't have a lot of utensils here. I was just going to cook what we were able to buy in the market this morning."

Lita checked the icebox. "We have plenty--I bring what else we need," she said as she picked up her basket. "Let me go now so I tell my family about tonight--they are very good to me."

"Do you live far? I can drive you," Barbara offered.

"No, I can walk. The house I live is near entrance to this camp. Across street, on left, only house there."

"I'll see you later then--I won't start till you get here."

Meanwhile, the tide had rolled back in. People were now all over the beach frolicking in the surf. To the right, I could see Cerro El Machorro, dark, tall, and majestic. It hid San Felipe from our view. I imagine it was what fishermen used as a landmark in finding their way back to port. I wouldn't know--I have never been out to sea in San Felipe.

It was a lazy and peaceful feeling, sitting in the shade and listening to the surf. It's hard to imagine how a hot, barren, and remote place could have attracted settlers hundreds of years ago. But then some people tend to occupy niches and would gladly settle for a less abundant place to call home rather than struggle against other people in a more opulent location. I wondered if I had what it takes to live in such a place or if I would do what many of them do--cross the border to find better life in Alta California.

Barbara had gone to the water to cool off. You can't really swim very well in San Felipe, the water is shallow in most places. But you can sit on the sandy bottom and let the cool water splash over you and the strong waves rock you back and forth. It's a great place to pretend you're a seaweed.

By the time I got in the water, Barbara already had her limit of sun for the day. I stayed in the water for an hour while she dozed off on the beach chair in the shade of the cabaña.

BARBARA and I had already showered and changed when Lita arrived promptly at five o'clock. She was wearing a loose, lavender printed shift that draped beautifully over her body. It showed off her figure quite well. She had with her a wok and a small basket filled with vegetables. It seemed she was ready for some serious cooking and wasn't going to settle for anything less.

"Lita, you shouldn't have bothered," Barbara said.

"I want to cook good food this time--we don't have much what we cook here in Baja, we're too poor. And I want to practice, too."

"I leave everything up to you, then. I'll help--tell me what you want me to do."

Lita and Barbara were soon at work--Lita taught Barbara her recipes. I stayed out of their way and helped by washing the dirty dishes, pots, and pans.

It took them a while but when they got done, we had sinigang of mullet, beef fajitas, pepper fried shrimp, and steamed rice. We had more food than we could eat so I suggested they take some to Lita's foster family. Barbara and Lita wrapped food in aluminum foil and took them there. It was a chance to let her family know how good a cook she was.

While they were away, I managed to appropriate for our use a couple of wooden planks which I set across the two ice chests to make a table. I used an extra bed sheet for a tablecloth. I set the food, paper plates, napkins, and plastic flatware on our banquet table. It was beginning to look like a real party and I wished we had dinner candles to make it perfect.

A man selling fireworks out of the trunk of his car was making the rounds when Barbara and Lita got back. I bought a few each of the different kinds he had. Fireworks are illegal in most of California because they're dangerous. But what the heck, I was in Mexico and wanted to live a bit dangerously.

We ate dinner out of styrofoam plates using plastic flatware. Lita was a good cook--I especially liked her pepper fried shrimp which was lightly battered and crispy. I kept going back with my paper cup for additional helpings of her sour soup.

"Where did you learn to cook?" I asked.

"I cook at home when I was young girl. Then I live in Hong Kong, and now in Mexico. I learn all kinds of cooking because I always help whoever cooks."

"Where are you from?"

"I am Bicolana, from Daraga, Albay. I went to Hong Kong as maid. I was sixteen when I left home--I make false papers to show I was eighteen."

"That's interesting. How did you get to Mexico?"

She didn't answer but sipped her tequila instead. Like when I asked earlier, she evaded my question.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to pry into your life."

She looked at me and said, "I like to tell people my story but nobody believe me because it sound not true."

Barbara put an arm around her shoulder and said, "Tell me--I'll believe you." Barbara was a people person, one who easily obtained the trust of those she met. I was her exact opposite, I didn't trust anyone and nobody trusted me.

Lita began by telling us how she got recruited from her hometown in Albay by an agent from Manila. She didn't have enough money for fees and airfare so she signed a promissory note to pay an exorbitant amount for her expenses. The payments would come out of her pay once she started working in Hong Kong. She and several other girls were taken to a residence in Manila where they were briefed on how to behave and how to conduct themselves. More importantly, they were told how a company representative would come around every payday to collect the amount due on the loans.

Things went fine with her--she was able to send a little money home and save a little for herself even after making her monthly payments to the recruiting company. Her dream was to save enough to be able to buy a modest house and start a little dress shop in her hometown when she returned.

It had gotten dark and the camp generator was turned on. People began setting off fireworks and lighting firecrackers. I got mine out and was getting ready to join in the celebration when I saw two local boys looking enviously at everybody else. I called them over and said they could light my fireworks if they felt like it.

"Gracias, señor. Feliz Cuatro de Julio!" one said as they proceeded to argue about who was going to light which rocket. Soon the sky was filled with rockets bursting into multicolored sparklers that floated down leisurely. The pop-pop-pop of firecrackers came from all around. It was strange to see the Fourth of July being celebrated in another country but tonight San Felipe, with all its visitors, was an American town.

Lita continued with her story as we sipped more tequila.

"Everything fine until my master's wife visit her family in New Territories. My amo came home one night and wanted a woman. He force me--I never been in bed with a man before. I was scared and wish to die. He did it again the next night and until his wife return home.

"I told her what happen but she laugh, say to me I only want money from them to make accusation. I went to Philippine Consulate and they tell me go to office that would help. I learn they could not because I cannot prove--I did not run away or call police when it happen.

"I become so sad. I do not know what to do, then later houseboy next door who was good person tell me he leave for America. A ship take a boat full of people to America. He give money for down payment and pay balance after he work in America.

"I ask to come but I do not know if I have enough money so he tell boat officer we are married so I only pay little amount for down payment."

At that point it seemed Lita wouldn't continue with her story. Barbara put more ice in her glass. I poured more tequila and lime soda for her. We watched the last of the fireworks as Lita continued with her story.

It took them four weeks to cross the Pacific. The ship's captain first tried to dump them off in Canada but a navy ship started trailing them when they got close. Their ship moved south but it was impossible to get close to the western shores of the United States--the Coast Guard must have been warned by the Canadian Navy. The ship's officers were getting desperate so when they got to Mexico they packed their load of passengers onto lifeboats and let them paddle by themselves to shore in Baja California.

Unfortunately, the weather wasn't very good. A few boats capsized and some people drowned. Most of those who made it to shore were apprehended and taken into custody. Lita was one of the few who managed not to get caught. Her brown skin helped her blend in with the locals--the Chinese didn't have a chance.

Lita was taken in by a friendly family who lived outside Ensenada. They hid her from the authorities but after a few weeks took her to San Felipe where they said she would be safer. They had relatives there who were just as poor but who understood how it was to hide from the authorities.

After all the fireworks had been lit and exploded, relative peace settled once more on the beach. We started putting things away--tomorrow we'd be on our way back to L.A. Back to routine, back to trying to make enough money to pay off bills and still have enough left for an occasional trip like this.

Unexpectedly, Lita came to me and said, "Manong, if you could be so kind can I go with you to Los Angeles tomorrow? I think I can pass the border checkpoint because they know I am not Mexican and they think I come with you for July 4th vacation."

I was flabbergasted. I felt sorry for her but I knew what would happen if we got caught trying to smuggle her in.

"It's not a simple task," I said. "If they get suspicious, they'll not only get you but also put us in jail. Barbara has a lot to lose because they can take her car away."

"Oh, I don't mind," Barbara said. "I think it's the best time to get her in because there'll be thousands of other people returning to the U.S. from this three-day weekend. The border agents will have their hands full and won't be able to scrutinize everybody as much as they normally would."

"Well, it's still a big risk--we should really think it over before we say yes or no. If we get caught, they'll take away my green card and kick me out of the country."

They didn't say anything more but gave me a pained and disappointed look. The mood turned dark.

"Let me take you home, Lita," Barbara finally said. "We'll get this settled somehow."

WHEN Barbara returned, she was sullen and quiet. I tried to make small talk but she kept ignoring me. Finally, she blurted out, "Dammit, why can't you have compassion for other people for once. Here's your chance to do something good and you refuse to do it."

"You know I can't take the chance--you're safe because you're American-born. You know what they would do to me if we get caught."

"You're so fuckin' gutless you can't even stick your neck out for one of your own kind. You know what she's been through? You haven't even tasted a fraction of what she's been through. How can you be so smug in your self-righteousness about what's right or wrong?"

"I can't take the chance…"

"Look, if you're so fuckin' chicken you can get out from the car before we get to the border. You can fuckin' walk across--you have papers. Why don't you let us take that chance? Just make sure you have enough money for bus fare to L.A. because I wouldn't want you back in my car… Gosh, I thought I knew you better."

With that she started crying and moved her sleeping bag as far away as she could from mine. Barbara tended to use colorful language when she gets mad but I had never seen her so agitated before. It bothered me because it seemed we truly didn't know each other very well.

I had a fitful night--I wanted to reach out and touch Barbara but she seemed so far away. I had nightmares about being left behind and walking all the way across the desert to get back to L.A. The sun was mercilessly beating down on me and I wanted water but there was none.

The next morning started out exactly like the last one--hot and muggy. I didn't feel like drinking coffee so I didn't make any. Nobody bothered to fix breakfast. I knew Barbara was feeling as badly as I was for her eyes were red from crying and she was unusually quiet. We packed our things and loaded them into her car in silence. So this was how relationships ended. I didn't know it would be so quiet.

I had a sick and empty feeling as we left the campground. I drove along the gravel road towards the main highway where I had to turn right to get back to California.

As I stopped at the corner to check for cross traffic, I saw through the already shimmering haze of the midmorning heat a lone shack across the road on the left--it looked so far from Daraga. I remembered my tocayo who vainly tried more than two hundred years ago to take his family north from here to give them a better life.

I wasn't sure whether it was because borders didn't make sense to me anymore or if I was simply scared of losing Barbara. Whatever it was, I crossed to the other side of the highway and turned left. When she noticed, Barbara reached out to touch my hand and started weeping. Her touch made me feel good again.

WE had Lita sit in the front with me, Barbara moved to the back seat. It would look better that way at the border. Lita only had one duffel bag--I thought it odd that one can move from one country to another with so very little. It made clear to me one doesn't need much in life except his own wits to survive.

We were quiet on the way back to the border. The long drive gave me time to reflect on what happened the night before--I began to understand how my dreams had shaped not only how others saw me but how I perceived them as well.

Barbara was right--the immigration officer was busy and only asked how long we've been away, where we've been, and whether we had purchased anything in Mexico. He entered our vehicle's plate number into his computer and waved us through when he found nothing.

When we got back on the freeway inside the U.S. I told Barbara I needed to stop in San Diego to do something. I got off the freeway and drove to the parking lot at the Amtrak station.

I got out of the car, opened the back door, and picked up my knapsack. I handed Barbara the car keys and gave her a long, lingering hug. I found it hard to keep everything in as I said, "Luv, I'm taking the train home."

BEST PHILIPPINE SHORT STORIES: ESSENCE

ESSENCE
by Jose Claudio B. Guerrero

WE had just finished lunch in a small café along Katipunan Road. Two cups of steamy brew enveloped our table in a delicious aroma.

"So where did you meet?" I asked my friend Patrick as he put down his coffee cup.

"In the Faculty Center in UP."

"Again? How come you meet a lot of guys there? I'm always there and nothing ever happens."

Patrick pointed to his face and smiled.

"Che!" I replied laughing. But I knew that it was true. Patrick was not really that good looking, but he had this sexy air about him. And he had fair skin which is, for most Filipinos, a prerequisite for beauty. I looked at the mirror behind him and saw my dark, emaciated reflection.

"So anyway, I was washing my face in the ground floor washroom when in comes this really cute guy. I've seen him on campus a few times before. So anyway, he goes and takes a leak," Patrick paused. "You know those FC urinals, right?"

I nodded. "No partitions."

Patrick took another sip from his cup and continued. "So anyway, this guy sees me checking him out. To my surprise, he turns to me, giving me full view of him in all his glory and smiles. I smile back. And," Patrick took a deep breath, "the rest is for me alone to know." He ended by dabbing the sides of his napkin to his mouth.

I knew pressing Patrick for more details would shut him up just like that so I let it pass. I could wheedle out all the details later. "So what's his name?"

"Carlo."

I raised an eyebrow and gave Patrick my you've-got-to-be-kidding look. He laughed and nodded in agreement.

"Yes it's another Carlo. It's always Carlo, or Paolo, or Mike, or Jay--"

"So what name did you use?" I asked, cutting him short.

"My favorite, Paolo." We both laughed. "Enough of me. Tell me about yourself. It's been what, a month since we've talked?"

"More like three weeks," I answered as I motioned to a waiter for the cake menu.

"Oh no. You're ordering cake."

"Why?"

"You order cake when you're depressed."

"No I don't. And anyway, I'm not depressed this time." The waiter arrived with the cake menu. After giving our orders, Patrick continued pressing me for news.

"I told you, I lead a boring life."

"I'm sure," answered Patrick mischievously. "So how's your Chinese boyfriend?"

Patrick's question caught me off-guard as I sipped from my cup. I snorted and felt coffee go up my nose. We both started laughing. "He's not Chinese," I answered when I had recovered. "He's Korean. And he's not my boyfriend, excuse me. I'm his tutor."

"I'm sure," said Patrick needling me. "And what are you tutoring him in?"

"English."

"I'm sure. Oh good, here's the cake."

As I dug my fork into my cake's rich cream cheese, I happened to look at the mirror and saw the café doors open. A dumpy, fair-skinned guy walked in. "Oh my God." I froze.

Patrick saw the expression on my face and looked around for what caused it. Finding it, he said, "Don't tell me you're still crazy over Mark."

"No I'm not. It's just that, well…"

"Well what?" asked Patrick, his eyes suddenly alive with curiosity.

"It's…you know," I answered. My eyes told him the rest.

"No," he answered not wanting to believe it.

I smiled.

"When?"

"Two weeks ago."

"Why didn't you tell me sooner?"

"You're always busy."

"Well I'm not busy anymore. Tell me everything." Patrick leaned over to me forgetting all about his cake. "It's not everyday your best friend loses his virginity."

"It happened two weeks ago. Our teacher dismissed us early so I was walking in the AS parking lot looking for my driver. It was already dark and only a few cars were left. Well, one of the cars was his. He smiled at me and asked me what time it was," I paused and took a bite from my cake.

"And?"

"And what happened next is for me alone to know." I replied mimicking him.

"Fuck. Don't do this to me. Tell me. I have to know. I won't be able to sleep," Patrick begged. Noticing his unused fork, he grabbed it. "Tell me or I'll stab you with this." Just then Mark passed so he hurriedly lowered his fork. "He looks conscious. Maybe he suspects you've told me."

I just smiled.

"I know some guys who are like that. Once something has happened between you, they suddenly feel awkward when you're around. Eventually you end up avoiding each other." Patrick studied his cake for a while then started eating. After some time he spoke up. "I'm so happy for you," he said smiling as he grabbed my hand and shook it warmly. "I remember all those times we sat here eating cake and talking about your to-die-for classmate Mark. Mark and his cologne, Mark and his new cologne, Mark and his crew cut, Mark and his burnt-out cigarette butt." He considered for a moment and then said, "Boy, am I glad those days are over." He laughed. I smiled.

"Is it really true that you took puffs from his cigarette butt?"

My ears went red and I nodded. "Whatever he touches, he leaves an essence. When I take a puff from his cigarette butt, our essences meld. We become one," I hastened to explain. "It's like we've shared something. Like a bond."

Patrick gave me a pitying look. "At least you don't have to do that anymore."

I smiled and mashed the blueberries on my plate.

We finished our cakes as we updated each other with what has happened to our high school barkada. As we waited for our change, Mark stood up to leave and finally noticed us. He smiled and went out. Patrick pinched me as I smiled back, my ears burning.

PATRICK dropped me off at the Faculty Center after lunch and rushed to the theater for rehearsal. Having thirty minutes to waste before my next class, I decided to go to the FC washroom and tidy up.

The faint scent of detergent, cigarette smoke, and stale urine greeted me as I opened the door. As I expected, the washroom was deserted. I stood in front of the mirror and took out tissue from my bag. As I dabbed moistened tissue on my face, the washroom door opened and a woody cologne scent wafted in.

It was Mark. He went straight to the urinals. I pretended not to notice him. When he finished peeing, he joined me by the mirror, washed his hands, and then straightened his shirt collar. As he looked at his reflection, he saw me watching him and smiled, "It's you again." I smiled back and offered him a tissue. He declined and left.

When the door closed, I hurried to the urinal. I unbuttoned my fly and peed. I looked down and watched my pale yellow fluid join his, a bit darker and frothy against the white porcelain. As I watched the fluids mix, their colors getting more and more difficult to distinguish until finally no difference could be seen, a warm pleasurable sensation from within me slowly surged, growing more and more powerful, until finally shudders of ecstasy racked my still untouched body.