Between the Lines

It started on our firm’s anniversary night and it seemed to end at the end of this one.  This is a document to tell the tale of what happened between the ends of the line.

The first night she was stunning, with her yellow and black dress wrapped like nothing around her body.  Her eyes were bright hazelnuts as she stared at the camera before them.  Her hair wasn’t red.  They were colored dull brown - shimmering in the bright lights.  She left me breathless.  She was gone for the night.  I smoked the first and the last (I hope so) sticks of menthol cigarette of my life.  I drowned in the cold and bitter bubbles of kegful of beer.  I tripped my way home with two companions.  I was not thinking of her.  I never knew I will be thinking of her.

          A lot of days passed.  I was still not thinking of her: of her loveliness, of her fine beauty, of her grace, of her eyes, of her everything.  These were the days when I put a lot of savings on finding my way back to the boondocks and cherish the long-days-of-work-is-over sweetness.  I was still not looking and longing for her.  I do not know exactly when the time when I began to miss one thing.  I was pre-occupied with the thought of having to spend a little time with my family again that I missed what I never thought was worth missing.  She was out of my mind when I was going back to the city’s lights.  My heart was beating for no love, save for the life, family and Him. 

          I went down to the bus stop that started to take the daily dreamers to good life at about seven.  My mind was sleepy and my heart was normal.  That was a normal scenario.  The first three buses took some about two hundred people that came before me.  I followed the suit of the last person who filled the end of the longest line that I ever experienced in my first year of working.  Someone stopped behind me; then somebody took the end of the line behind that someone behind me until the end reached the corner of España and Padre Noval, right in front of that photocopying house that I know exist not.  The line moved as the fourth bus took some fifty persons away.  I’m I guessed the thirty-fourth person in the line and the next bus that will come will have me at last.  The fourth bus became out of sight as it rounded the corner and headed south.  That was the time I was wondering what had me last night.  I was recollecting my thoughts about a certain dream of which none of the feeblest wisp of her silhouette crossed.  Dropping the unremembered dream, I trailed the tiny woman in front of me towards the fifth bus.  It took about only three people after me.  Thanking, I sat on an empty three-seater with my mind vacant except for the yearning to sleep for at least three-quarter of an hour.  Two ladies filled in and we were good to go.  As the fifth bus started to move away, I was drooling into the deep swirling nothingness of a short sleep. 

          The trip was at least ten minutes before it reached an hour, but it felt like three minutes or something.  My mind awoke regretting to the boisterous reality of the eight-hour Makati.  I feel nausea hitting my way but did not come.  But the pain of lack of numerous amount of sleep and the clear truth of not getting some in the next few months are like bullets in the ass that will come through your mouth eventually.  But the ugly truth was still no her in mind.

          I walked down Makati Avenue and short-routed through the parking area of a building that until now I still don’t know the name (or was it Makati Stock Exchange?).  Knees wobbling like a Nick character, I pushed my way across Ayala Avenue, put my ID on and strutted (or walked head drop) to meet the Manong Guards.  Usual stuffs were processed for the diminishing streamline of people presenting their laptops.  Here’s the real deal: for people having classical laptops, owners tend to pull a corner of their thing on subtly and show the identifying number; however, for people having their freshly out of the manufacturing laptops, they seemed to brandish it like a discus.  Moaning comes afterwards, saying “what a laptop!” and swearing, “I wish it did slip off!” 

          I am on the latter side.

          Obviously, I didn’t know how to recall the way how I have begun to wish for that girl after that night.  All I know that there was one time in the shuffling mood of the office inhabitants I notice her and there it started, like a phoenix rising from the ashes, like the first drop of sunray on my face. 

Fast forward:

She has a boyfriend.  I saw them, holding hands as they swaggered their affections on a street side of the city.  I don’t know what I felt that time.  I just felt that the future memories that we would create started falling away.  My heartbeat has gone lazy and flat lined.  I felt flitting at random in a sort of a vacuous lonely world.

Before that, I said “Hi!”  I leaned to the possibility that she would hi back.  She didn’t.  That left with a million possibilities that would rather result in to a trillionth of possibilities that my mind has to think of yet.  Days passed and there was nothing else left waiting for.  But as a song goes, “I hope she takes her time ‘cause I don’t waiting on a woman.”

Now, I really want the singer dead.  It took a lot of time, you know, waiting on a woman that didn’t exactly make an intention to get back.  It’s like billowing a balloon to its limits but didn’t burst and you’re left with no air that you wish you just die. 

Yet, thinking of the situation in a quite mature manner, like the behavior of a tweener in the body of a nineteen, I didn’t give off the impression to be answered back.  What’s a “Hi!” from a stranger to a stranger?  It’s empty.  It results to empty results because it begins with empty beginnings.  It’s like trying to seduce an ant with a pinch of salt.  The ant won’t bite, not because it has no teeth (it has pincers, you know) but because it is not seducing. 

A month I think before the fast forward:

She’s looking back in secrets.  I saw her as I secretly stalked her with a pair of dreamy, stalking eyes in the office.  I felt elated.  That is answering back.  Her eyes were like saying, “Geroff!” though.  But I don’t mind.  I didn’t ask her to look back and she just made it.  So, that would make me rather victorious like Severus Snape (The Half-blood Prince, Chapter .  After a day, the whole gang that she was in was now working afar, like some ten tables far from where our table stands in.  I guessed that was because she suggested it.  And, oh, by the way, before that, they were working in every empty cubicle that their eyes lay on.  So, that will not make it “after a day.”  To be safe, please read the fourth sentence before this as this: After some days….

This will be updated if words ended in my head as a result of a few office readings.  (This is not the end of the story so the loving is ending yet.)