An occult feature

We popped into the first movie theater that caught our eye.

What we ended up seeing was a crime-occult double feature. There was hardly a soul in the place. It’d been ages since I’d been in a theater that empty. I counted the people in the audience to pass the time. Eight, including ourselves. There were more characters in the films.

The films were exemplars of the dreadful. The sort of films where you feel like turning around and walking out the instant the title comes on after the roaring MGM lion. Amazing that films like that exist.

The first was the occult feature. The devil, who lives in the dripping, dank cellar of the town church and manipulates things through the weak preacher, takes over the town. The real question, though, was why the devil wanted to take over the town to begin with. All it was was a miserable nothing of a few blocks surrounded by cornfields. Nonetheless, the devil had this terrible obsession with the town and grew furious that one last little girl refused to fall under his spell. When the devil got mad, his body shook like quivering green jelly. Admittedly, there was something endearing about that rage.

In front of us a middle-aged man was snoring away like a foghorn. To the extreme right there was some heavy petting in progress. Behind, someone let out a huge fart. Huge enough to stop the middle-aged man’s snoring for a moment. A pair of high school girls giggled. By reflex, I thought of Twerp. And it was only when I did that it came to me that we’d really left Manila and were now in Davao. Funny about that.

Amid these thoughts I fell asleep. In my dreams, I encountered that green devil, but he wasn’t endearing in the least. He remained silent and I just observed his machinations.

Meanwhile, the film ended, the lights came on, and I woke up. Each member of the audience yawned as if in predetermined order. I went to the snack bar and bought ice cream for us. It was hard as a rock, probably left over from last year.

“You slept through the whole thing?”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “How was it?”
“Pretty interesting. In the end, the whole town explodes.”
“Wow.”

The movie theater was deathly quiet. Or rather everything around us was deathly quiet. Not a common occurrence.

“Say,” she said, “doesn’t it seem like your body’s in a state of transit or something?”
Now that she mentioned it, it actually did.
She held my hand. “Let’s just stay like this. I’m worried.”
“Okay.”
“Unless we stay like this, we might get transported somewhere else. Someplace crazy.”

As the theater interior grew dark again and the coming attractions began, I brushed her hair aside and kissed her ear.
“It’s all right. Don’t worry.”
“You’re probably right,” she said softly. “I guess we should have ridden in transportation with names after
all.”

For the next hour and a half, from the beginning to the end of the film, we stayed in a state of quiet transport in the darkness. Her head resting on my shoulder the whole time. My shoulder became warm and damp from her breath. We came out of the movie theater and strolled the twilit streets, my arm around her shoulder. We felt closer than ever before. The commotion of passersby was comforting; faint stars were shining through in the sky.

Airport dialogues

We received our boarding passes at the airport check-in counter and said goodbye to Ray Ban. He would have waited to see us off, but as there was an hour and a half before departure time, he capitulated and left. We went into the airport restaurant and had an early lunch. Cream dory on garlic butter for me, Jollibee spaghetti for her. I watched the Airbuses take flight and swoop down to earth with a gravity that seemed fated. Meanwhile, she dubiously inspected each strand of the sweet spaghetti she ate.






“I thought that they always served meals on planes,” Z said, disgruntled.
“Nope,” I said, waiting for the hot lump of fillet in my mouth to cool down, then gulping down some water. No taste but hot.
“Meals only on international flights. They give you something to eat on longer domestic routes. Not exactly what you’d call a special treat, though.”
“And movies?”
“No way. C’mon, it’s only an hour and a half to Davao.”
“Then they give you nothing.”
“Nothing at all. You sit in your seat, read your book, and arrive at your destination. Same as by bus.”
“But no traffic lights.”
“No traffic lights.”
“Just great,” she said with a sigh. She put down her fork, leaving half the spaghetti untouched.
“The thing is you get there faster. It takes... I dunno, 12 hours probably, by boat and bus.”
“And where does the extra time go?”

I also gave up halfway through my meal and ordered two coffees.
“Extra time?”
“You said planes save you over ten hours. So where does all that time go?”
“Time doesn’t go anywhere. It only adds up. We can use those ten hours as we like, in Manila or in Davao. With ten hours we could see four movies, eat two meals, whatever. Right?”
“But what if I don’t want to go to the movies or eat?”
“That’s your problem. It’s no fault of time.”

She bit her lip as we looked out at the squat bodies of the Airbus A330s in the runway. Airbus always reminds me of a fat, ugly old lady in the neighborhood where I used to live. Huge sagging breasts, swollen legs, dried-up neckline. The airport, a likely gathering place for the old ladies. Dozens of them, coming and going, one after the other. The pilots and stewardesses, strutting back and forth in the lobby with heads held high, seemed quaintly planar.

“Well,” she went on, “does time expand?”
“No, time does not expand,” I answered. I had spoken, but why didn’t it sound like my voice? I coughed and drank my coffee. “Time does not expand.”
“But time is actually increasing, isn’t it? You yourself said that time adds up.”
“That’s only because the time needed for transit has decreased. The sum total of time doesn’t change. It’s only that you can see more movies.”
“If you wanted to see movies,” she added.
As soon as we arrived in Davao, we actually did see a double feature.

The entire flight, she sat by the window and looked down at the scenery. I sat next to her reading my Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. Not a single cloud in the sky the whole time, the airplane riding on its shadow over the earth. Or more accurately, since we were in the plane, our shadows figured as well inside the shadow of the airplane skimming over mountain and field. Which would mean we too were imprinted into the earth.

“Why didn’t you give our rock a name all this time?”
“Why indeed,” I puzzled. Then I closed the book and placed it in my side. “I think I just don’t like
names. Basically, I can’t see what’s wrong with calling me ‘me’ or you ‘you’ or us ‘us’ or them ‘them.’”
“Hmm,” she said. “I do like the word ‘we,’ though. It has an Ice Age ring to it.”

“Ice Age?”
“Like ‘We go south’ or ‘We hunt mammoth’ or …”

When we stepped outside at Francisco Bangoy International Airport, the air was chillier than we’d expected, and to think it was summer. I pulled a denim shirt over my T-shirt, she a knit vest over her shirt.

“We weren’t supposed to run into an Ice Age, were we?” she asked on the bus to the metro. “You hunting
mammoths, me raising children.”

“Sounds positively inviting,” I said.

---

Thaks renz of thetravellingnomad.com for the accurate information on things about Davao.

My trip did not push through with this one.

Corridors

She pushed the cold metal button pointing up. Back into that overgrown vacu-pac elevator.

"Stock market?"
"Sure, Mom taught me the tricks. She taught me how to choose among all the information, how to read the market, how to dodge taxes, how to transfer funds to banks overseas, stuff like that. Stocks are a lot of fun. Ever tried?"

"Afraid not," I said. I'd never opened a fixed-term com-pounded-interest account.

The elevator moved at its requisite impossible ascending-or-descending speed.
"Grandfather says that schools are too inefficient to produce top material. What do you think?" she asked.

"Well, probably so," I answered. "I went to school for many years and I don't believe it made that much difference in my life. I can't speak any languages, can't play any instruments, can't swim, can't play the stock market, can't even drive a car."

"So why didn't you quit school? You could have quit any time you wanted, couldn't you?"

"I guess so," I said. "I could have quit, but I didn't want to. I guess it didn't occur to me to do anything like that. Unlike you, I had a perfectly average, ordinary upbringing. I never had what it takes to make a first-rate anything."

"That's wrong," she declared. "Everyone must have one thing that they can excel at. It's just a matter of drawing it out, isn't it? But school doesn't know how to draw it out. It crushes the gift. It's no wonder most people never get to be what they want to be. They just get ground down."

"Like me," I said.
"No, you're different. I can tell there's something special about you. The emotional shell around you is so hard, everything inside has got to be still intact."

"Emotional shell?"

"That's right," she said. "That's why it's not too late. After all this is over, why don't we live together? It's not like we'd have to get married or anything. We could move to Norway or Netherlands or somewhere easy-going like that and pass the time riding horses, singing songs and backpacking. We'd have plenty of money, and meanwhile you could be reborn as a first rate human being."

"Hmm." Not a bad offer.

The elevator came to a stop. She stepped out and I followed. She walked at a fast pace, as she had the first time we met, the click of her high heels echoing down the long corridor. Before my eyes, her pleasing wiggle, her flashing silver earrings.

"But suppose I took you up on the offer," I spoke to her back, "You'd be doing all the giving and I'd be doing all the taking. That doesn't strike me as fair." She slowed her pace to walk beside me.
"There's bound to be something you can give me," she said.
"For instance?"
"For instance, your emotional shell. That's something I really want to find out about. I want to know what it's made up of and how it functions and stuff like that."

"It's nothing to get excited about," I said. "Everybody has more or less of an emotional shell—if that's what you want to call it. You've never been out in the world. You don't know how the mind of the ordinary person works."

"You act as if you're worthless!" exclaimed the girl. "You can read minds, can't you?"
"Of course I can. But that's just a matter of practice. Not so different from using an abacus or playing the piano."

"That is not all there is to it," she said. "Everyone thought that way at first. That with the necessary training, anyone—anyone who can say they can that is—could read minds. But it isn't. You are the only person I knew who could.

I. Pet rock

At 7 in the morning, that ridiculous submarine of an automobile was waiting outside my apartment building. From my second-story window, the sedan looked more like an upside-down metal cookie cutter than a submarine. You could make a gigantic cookie that would take three hundred kids two weeks to eat. She and I sat on the windowsill looking down at the car.

Yes, Z and I will be off to the Davao -- a city down south of the third land mass in the Philippine archipelago, Mindanao.

The sky was appallingly clear. A sky from a prewar expressionist movie. Utterly cloudless, like a monumental eye with its eyelid cut off. A helicopter flying high off in the distance looked minuscule.

I locked all the windows, switched off the refrigerator, and checked the gas cock. The laundry brought in, bed covered with spread, and an absurd number of medicinal items put in proper order by the washbasin. The rent paid two months in advance, I looked back from the

doorway into the lifeless 40 sqm. fifties-living room converted to an apartment. For a moment, I thought about the two months of reviewing spent there, thought about the things I learned and the things I never had.

The green gate made a creaking sound , and she called to me. I shut the screen door.

Ray Ban, a good friend, offered to drive us to the airport. The guy's really hooked with cars. He was intently polishing the windshield with a dry cloth as he waited for us. The car, not one single mark anywhere, gleamed in the sun to a burning, unearthly brilliance. The slightest touch of the hand and you’d get burned.

“Good morning,” said Ray Ban.

“Good morning,” said I.

“Good morning,” said Z.

She held our pet rock. I carried the rock food and bag of sand.

“Fabulous weather, isn’t it?” said Ray Ban, looking up at the sky. “It’s—how can I put it?—crystal clear.”

I nodded.

“When it gets this clear, God’s messages must have no trouble getting through at all,” I offered.

“Nothing of the kind,” said ray Ban with a grin. “There are messages already in all things. In the flowers, in the rocks, in the clouds …”

“And cars?”

“In cars too.”

“But cars are made by factories.” Typical me.

“Whosoever makes it, God’s will is worked into it.”

“As in ear lice?” Her contribution.

“As in the very air,” corrected Ray ban.

“Well then, I suppose that cars made in Saudi Arabia have Allah in them.”

“They don’t produce cars in Saudi Arabia.”

“Really?” Again me.

“Really.”

“Then what about cars produced in America for export to Saudi Arabia? What god’s in them?” queried Z.

A difficult question.

“Say now, we have to tell him about the rock,” I launched a lifeboat.

“Cute rock, eh?” said Ray Ban, our chauffeur, also relieved.

"Isn't it?" darted Z.

To give you an idea of what it looks like.

.

By "he" or "it", i mean, the rock.

The rock was anything but cute. Rather, he weighed in at the opposite end of the scale, its surface was rough like an old, overused sandpaper, it smelled of the sea, its color a bit yellowed, a chunk of seaweeds run through its upper extrimities like the hair of Bob Marley or a Jamaican reggae star. We drew eyes on it using a marker before so that by now it could see, eventhough not so much. I was doubtful that it could distinguish between a tennis shoe and a potato. Technically it's been with us for a year, and farted approximately a hundred and eight times.

He’d been a fine young stone the day I found him being washed away in the beaches of Zambales, brought him home, but in the last few months he’d rapidly gone downhill. Like a rock rolling toward the gutter, literally. Also, he didn’t have a name. I had no idea whether not having a name reduced or contributed to the rock's tragedy.

Z always insist that it's so cute she's gonna die.

To be continued.

♒♒ Tully's

"He was so... more than unreal. Do you know what I mean?" said Z.

"I think so."

"I guess it took someone as unreal as him to break through my own unreality. It struck me the very first time I met him. That's why I liked him. Or maybe I only thought so after I got to like him. It amounts to the same thing either way. "

The other piano player returned from his break and began to play themes from old film scores. Perfect: the wrong background music for the wrong scene.

"I sometimes think, maybe, in the end, I was only using him. And maybe he sensed it all along, what do you think?" Z asked.

"I wouldn't know," M said. "That's between you and him."

Z said nothing.

♒♒

After a full twenty seconds of silence, I realized the two had nothing to say. I put the magazine down and checked my watch. Half past eight. There were no people outside the glass walls. The bus that brings people to Ayala Station will soon be on a 30-minute interval round. M placed her hand on the table.

"Z, just be patient. Without this you're pretty much screwed." said M as she fiddled through the ring on her right hand. "I used to think that I was the most impatient person in the world, hell I still am, but somehow with him, It's like he transformed me into a much more patient person. Maybe it's just with him, or maybe I've changed in general."

"I get you."

"I don't know if he purposely tries to play mind games or what, but if you're not familar with him you will automatically assume he's playing hard to get, which pretty much is, he just does it without realizing it or so he wants us to think."

"Mmm.. hmm." Z nodded as she eagerly listened as to what M has to say.

"If he seems like he's ignoring you, he's not, he's busy, doing his own thing, wrapped up in work, or his little box. Ignore him, thats the only way unfortunately, and when you do finally get him off your mind he shows up out of nowhere like nothing happened, ready to talk your ear off."

I couldn't believe that my piano buddy understood me that well.

"Don't call him a lot, don't talk to him a lot, just keep contact to a minimal."

"That's kind of depressing, isn't it.?"

"You bet." M tossed with unparalleled force. Her coif bounced a few inches.  "Anyway, he needs this thing called space, and if you don't give that to him, well, you'll get disappointed and it seems to me the only way for that is to treat him like butter. In all honesty, it's sad, but true, and maybe this is just him that I know but you have to treat him like butter or he will treat you like butter."

Z chuckled. I caught her smile as she put her hands on her lips to clear a speck of orange pulp.

"Understaf he's not like other people. He's different, so different from other people you can't help but want to follow him into the forest of his out of this world perspective... He interests only at the present time and look at the world positively. Many times he feels hurt because of reality, but he will not run away and he will overcome that difficulty." M tried to catch for her breath.

"Go on..."

"Stand by him. He might seem like he's pushing you away one minute then holding you close the next. He's probably testing you, examining you, probing in with a flashlight, trying to figure your motives, your thoughts, et cetera... Don't take too much of his aloof nature though, stand your ground once in a while. Being a bit childish as he may seem, he needs a girl who can handle him,  a-k-a, a very strong individual."

"Are you two that close before?"

"Of course! I could say he is a good best friend, until the complexity of a romantic relationship came in. But you know, deep inside, he's shy and has a few close friends, who mean a lot to him... It may seem like he's a social butterfly but that's just his nature. He hates confrontations, and conflict, so if you must confront him, expect to deal with a very stubborn uncomfortable situation."

A brief pause hovered between them.

How about you? How do you see him? M broke the silence.

"Well... He moves very fast and very energetic, and he's very self confident... sometimes. He is not the type to sit down and feel sorry or regret anything for long, especially with "love"?

"Uh-uh. Fill me in."

"Even he is a high and self-confident type and he centers his own thought as a main focus, he certainly is not a mean person. He is the type who feels sorry if you remember bad things he said to you that he had already forgotten, but you did not -- like justice, I think he likes that. At times he  dares to show his opinion or even argue about a certain subject even he knows it might bring him problems." Z said. "You know... A straight forward type of guy." she added.

"Ha ha ha. He's not a good liar, is he? He hardly lies except if he think it is necessary and he will not lie to you about serious matters, but if he lies he will lie only to a small little thing." M interjected.

"But he still lies."

"Aren't we all liars?"

"You have a point."

"You see, he might take forever to say what really needs to be said. Who cares?"

"You're losing me."

"Wait wait wait, what I mean is... Let him say it first. It might take forever but who cares, at least you know when he says it, he means it deeply in his core of his being. You know with his personality he won't say something he doesn't mean, he wont lead you on, he wont push you down, he will be there with kind words, and a gentle voice, then there are times his voice is colder than ice, and his distance is unbearable, but just remember at the end of the tunnel, there is a light, and hope, and if it's meant to be, it will happen."

"Sounds like a hard thing to do."

♒♒

"It's 9, don't you think it's better if we go somewhere else?"

"Sure, I don't mind. It's nice talking to you."

M smiled and got up, whisking away the bill. "Let me take care of this, it's pay day, after all."

"If you're sure then by all means" Z said. "But one more thing, I was wondering If I could ask you another question."

"Certainly."

"Over the phone you said that there are times that I should let go. I don't quite understand that."

"Yes. Sometimes he acts like he doesn't want you there, but in reality I believe he does, the more he acts like he doesn't like you, is probably when he does, and that means you have to let go."

Z nodded.

"He's a complicated creature, but isn't that what you like about him?"

"I suppose so."

♒♒

I didn't follow them. They sure had a great time, and probably they will have another good talk. Clutching my brown umbrella, I went outside and waited for the bus. The rain kept falling on the same rate. From where I stand, through the building arcades, the neon signs of the building next door, a hundred thousand strands of rain sped earthward through an orange glow. If I looked down, the rain seemed to pour straight into one unified point on the ground.

The rain kept falling until midnight.

♒ Tully's

The drizzle still hadn't let up by seven. It was the first rain since last month. The rain had been preceded by four or five days of crisp, clear, late summer skies, fooling people into thinking that the rainy season has started. From the twenty-third floor window, every square inch of ground looked dark and damp, and a traffic jam stretched several blocks from the east 32nd street.

It's 7:30 pm now. An hour and a half past Close-of-Business, and an hour and a half has passed that I should have gone home.

I stared out long and hard, things began to melt in the rain. In fact, everything in this pre-made city  was melting. The premiere hotel across the street, the cranes, the rows of buildings,the artificial open spaces, the figures beneath their multi-colored umbrellas, everything. Even the streak of light that stretched across the horizon of Laguna de Bay. Yet when I shut my eyes for a few seconds and opened them again, the city was back the way it had been. Six cranes loomed in the gray haze in contrast with the black of the night, flocks of umbrellas dodged back and forth across the streets of shops, the artificial open spaces soaked up their fill of May rain.

25... 24, 23. The elevator opened it's steel doors. A late thirties-looking lady was standing on the corner right of the elevator box, alone. She was kind of cute, for a person who might have twins or quadruplets as children. Putting eyes off her curves, I pressed the "G" button. Apparently, the lady behind me forgot to press this button. Or should I say, she did that on purpose? Beats me.

♒

In a sunken area in the middle of a coffee lounge at a building across ours, a girl wearing a bright pink dress sat at a cerulean blue grand piano playing quintessential coffee lounge numbers filled with arpeggios and syncopation. Not bad actually, though not an echo lingered in the air beyond the last note of each number. What striked me is the sheer similarity of the girl I dated in high school. She was also my pre-school crush.

It was quarter to 8 and the queue lines to West Route Bus headed to Ayala station was still unbearable. Since I had nothing better to do, I had a cup of coffee inside and watched the piano player. She was about twenty-one, same as mine, her shoulder length hair immaculately coiffed like whipped cream atop a cake. The coif swayed merrily, left and right, to the rhythm of some classic jazz piece, bouncing back to the center when the song ended. She gazed around after the number and her face showed as clear as day. Back then I knew, she really was M.

at some coffee shop

M was my pre-school and piano lesson classmate. We were the same age, the same class. We sometimes had to do duets together.  But came grade one, and we parted. All that was left of me was a memory of her tiny pale hands and pretty hair and a fluffy dress. We dated when we were in high school, during a fine summer vacation. After a long while, we parted ways again. A summer fling, I guess. But I can say that she was the one who understood me, from all my friends.

It's disturbing to realize this. Have I stripped her of her hands and hair and dress? Is it the rest of her still living unattached somewhere else? Of course this can't be. The world goes on without me. People cross streets through no interventions on my part, sharpen pencils, move 20 meters a minute west to east, fill coffee lounges such as this with music that's refined to nothingness. She sat on the table across mine, looking out of the glass walls. I didn't bother  to call her or even to introduce myself. There's no point in doing that. Besides, I prefer looking at her from a distance.

"Sorry to keep you waiting," a woman's voice from behind her said. "Work ran late, and I just couldn't get free."

"No problem, the piano keeps me company"

She dropped her keys down on the table  and ordered an orange juice without bothering to look at the menu. It was Z, the person I was dating.

I like Z for a lot of reasons. Her dry humour and natural disposition to things of little to no value makes me feel anchored to the ground, but in a good way. Her taste in clothes was nicely succinct as well. This day she wore ample white cotton slacks, an orange and yellow floral blouse, sleeves rolled up to the elbows, and a leather shoulder bag which probably belonged to her mom. None of them new, but all well cared for. She wore no rings nor necklace nor bracelet nor earrings. her bangs were short and brushed naturally to the side. She keeps me up all night, by this I mean in a wholesome way. And I'd like to know her more.

"What sort ofwork?" M ventured to ask.

"Air traffic control at Philippine Air Lines. I've been there for quite some time." said Z.

Their conversation trailed off. I slowly took out a magazine on a nearby stand and covered my face for they might see me. Another piano player sat on the bench, finished a piece, brought the lid down, and retired somewhere else for his break. I envied him.

"How long have you been friends with him?" M asked.

"Two weeks, three days, I guess. And you?" Z said.

"He was my pre-school piano buddy. I knew him since we were little." M answered right off. "From the time I first met him at the recital practice to the time we parted ways after high school. I remember because I keep a diary."

The orange juice came. They talked for a few minutes then the waiter trailed unto my seat. My empty coffee cup was spirited away.

Past eight. The lights in the shop dimmed for dinner hour. The warm incandescent lights began to blink on. Red lights lit up on the crane. Fine needles of rain became more visible through the gathering night. The queue line outside was starting to subside.

♒

"Where were we?" asked M.
"The things I had to know in order to understand him."
"Oh yes, that's it. Believe me he's one complicated intergalactic jerk."