bopis

The jerks were asking, “How could you let her go, man?” As if their beer had helped, they kept asking, “How did it happen?” As if they cared, they asked, “You fool, what were you thinking?” My reply was in the order of “Sweltering heat on that late morning hour, on the day we would meet only to part. I was in Laguna, outroads and a highway away from my destination: Festival Mall, the meeting place. Was not a strange song I heard, but sad nevertheless: all meetings were preludes to parting, all songs sing so. Familiar melody: the only bye that ever counted was the last, not a bye good but the bye bes. And so the wind played, the hum of the jeepney motor played, the drums of humps played along, and the hole on the dash that must have been a radio once, it played: we’re minutes away, seconds away from the final hour. I sat in front, the sole passenger. Or behind me there could have been a silent throng, listening as I was to the music, as much a part of that song. Didn’t have it in me to intend the rear view, so I never knew. The song, it played, and I listened well until Calamba Crossing, until a man with a good morning towel turban hailed with high arm and barked from a white megaphone muzzle: SM Southmall! Festival Mall! Alabang! Town! Center Mall! I wanted the passenger seat of the van, but a pair of genderless activists sat there, one in a red shirt and the other in gray, both shirts printed with righteous indignation all over the chest. As they conversed peasantly, their rolled up flag and streamer and academic banter identified them as politically illuminated. On the second row sat what seemed to me a mother and a forty year old son with much luggage. They talked about something that was neither elections nor a family problem. A young couple teaching discipline to their child had the third row. On their right sat a girl who was a stranger to everyone else and was thus pleasant and silent. What were empty were the folding sideseats and the last row. I took the far corner of the last row so I could start fanning myself to sleep without being disturbed by incoming passengers. Prematurely, I gave my fare. Noise when I slept but silence when I woke up at the SLEX, the child and her parents along with most adults were asleep. The man beside me was broad, and so was the newspaper he was reading. He looked like that senatoriable, that Prospero Pichay. All the seats were filled save for the two between the mother and son, they must’ve paid for those to make room for their luggage. I slept again, the drizzle stopped short by the window on its way to spit at my face. Slight vertigo when the van made a turn to Alabang. I woke up, unhappy. A lively tune played on the radio that seemed a cross of Macarena and Dayangdayang. I failed to recognize it, but the volume was low maybe out of consideration of us sleepers. The first voice was the driver’s when he asked: Festival? Disoriented, it took me too long a while to reply. The front of the van was past the street leading to the mall when I said: Yes, Festival! Sorry! Please! The driver braked then pumped on the horn, all madness. Did I make him too angry? Just drop me off here, please, I said. I’ll walk! But the sleepers had woken up, their hair disheveled, their eyes, shot. Then the passengers smiled at each other. The man beside me said: Turn it up then! The driver shot up the volume of the music, and his hand gyrated on its way up to the ceiling light. The light throbbed with rainbow colors and electricity. The son and mother opened their luggage and happily passed around masks and feathers. Everybody laughed as they donned their masks. Each female fished out a lipstick and threw these to the father, who caught each one, not a miss. Both parents painted the face and neck of their child red, laughed at their handiwork face, then threw the child up inches short of the ceiling, only to catch her and throw her up again. She giggled and shrieked and giggled. Stranger lady shouted: Fiesta! Fiesta! A lady sitting on the folding seat beside her, one who looked like Roselle Nava, also began shouting: Fiesta! Then the pair began dancing Itaktak Mo, their heads hitting the roof – nay, pounding it! – one after the other like pistons. The man beside me and his two seatmates rushed to fold sheets of newspapers into party hats. It raced in a contest where everyone was invited to watch but no one had the right to judge. They finished almost at the same time, the one beside me quickest in offering me his hat, almost to my face: Wear this, you wanted a festival! He smiled with fierce dimples. The others pushed him, and they wrestled, their puppet hats laughing all the way to my face: No, choose me, choose me! I pushed against them, trying to lift my leg so I could make my way to the door. But the man who looked like Pichay pushed my knee down and his hat forward, trying to fit it into my bobbing head. Our struggles moved to the beat of the car stereo. The child was still happy, but was gurgling vomit and spattering it out as she was thrown up and down. I could not pass that way, over the heads of those parents. But as I pushed the man’s hand off my knee, I espied the activists between the newspaper hats, they had unrolled the windows, waving their wet flag and equally wet streamer outside as if their revolution had been won so many times over and they just realized it. I took my cue from their radical idea. Speedily, I slid my window forward, threw my bag out, then with all alacrity and force, I threw myself out. I ran to the mall, to the food court where we agreed to meet. It was panting in front of her when I noticed I was wet and thus realized that I had been running in the rain. Of course, she was crying, you didn’t need to ask that. Both wet, we spoke to dry ourselves, but we couldn’t say yes or no at the same time. When it happened that we pronounced the joint word, it ended. And it was in that manner that it happened,” I told those drunkards I had the habit of calling friends.

Etiquetas: woman19