CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Someone else to call

•••

Deep holds appeared on Satan's forehead as the usual hustle and bustle of the city welcomed her Monday. 

People clothed with attires of distinctive designs thronged the sidewalks and loading stations aiming for a ride, while some strolled, stood, and sat idly somewhere less populated of stuffy air. Strident blares of car horns disrupted the tranquility of everyone like they were the only individuals at risk for tardiness. And as she rolled down her window to check how long ahead was the traffic, a teenage boy marked with an extreme need for uncorrupt adults invaded her personal space with a deal of ten rounded rags for fifty. 

"Ate, sampu-singkwenta na lang, oh," the boy said. "Bilhin mo na. Punasan ko na rin 'tong kotse mo."

Her eyes swept up and down his pitiable form. He was clad with a worn-out shirt and shorts enough not to devoid him of covering but not to warm him in cold nights. Locking eyes with him crushed her heart even worse. She didn't, for a second, hesitate to share what her mother prepared for her snacks on site. Tears stung her eyes bloodshot as she sped her hands to the parceled Korean french fries corn dogs at the passengers' seat. 

"Here." She gave him the paper bag full of the said snack. "Bibilhin ko na rin lahat 'yan. Pagkatapos nito umuwi ka na sa inyo, ha?"

The smile on the boy's face was irremovable when as an excessive payment for his five bundles of rags, she folded two blue bills small enough to be kept safe and hidden in his closed fist. He thanked her many times with the remains of joy lingering in the corners of his lips, even jested for her to run for a government position and assured her of his vote. 

"Salamat ulit, Ate." He hugged the plastic bag of corn dogs tightly to his chest. "Sa yaman mo, paniguradong masarap lagi ulam mo. Kaya wish ko na lang na sana lagi kang masaya o kung malungkot ka man ngayon sana may magpasaya sa 'yo."

The boy ran away before she could react, leaving her lips touched with a bitter smile the whole time she rolled up her window and waited for the traffic to decongest. 

"I wish the same thing for myself," she whispered unconsciously. 

Cars started to move at a moment's notice, yet stopped after a few meters drive. She sat on the driver's seat in silence, forced herself to imagine something good, something happy, something that doesn't entirely suck as adviced by Sigmund every now and then.

Like last Friday, it took her only a jiffy to reach her siblings' university. A massive count of medical students and staff were already pouring out from the exit when she had her car parked within the confines of the university's hospital. It was where she decided to pick up the two before heading to their weekly siblings' date, for it would be a cause of jealousy if she'd choose the Architecture building where Hudas was or the Psychology building where Lucifer was. 

So as not to kill time, she pinged their group chat to aware them of her arrival. 

Don't call my name

SEPT 15 2047 5:24 PM

I'm already here. Will just wait for you two. 

SEPT 15 2047 5:30 PM

Dismissal na! Papunta na 'ko!

So unfair! Like what the eff!

Karma is real xkskjdjeide

Jokes on you, my professor just said it! Omwt! Whoever arrives first will take the last's allowance for Monday!

You bet, loser!

Bite me, moron!

Before she could completely drown herself from boredom, she caught herself unlocking the car doors when Hudas came knocking on the window. 

"Hi, Tata!" He sat on the shotgun seat. Beads of sweat dripped down his forehead. Some were streaming down his chin. "Libre kita ta Lunet, itang libo baon ko."

"Ipunin mo na lang 'yan." She laughed. "Halika nga rito, pawis na pawis ka, oh. Kung ano-ano kasing kalokohan niyo ni Lulu." She took her hanky from her bag. "Turn around so I can dry your back."

He obliged. "How't your project, Tata?"

"Faring well. Nagsisimula na kami sa foundation." 

"'Yon, oh! Tabi na magiging tuctettful talaga, eh! Tama mo 'ko mintan, ah. 'Pag wala 'kong patok."

"Why not?" she eagerly agreed. "How about you? How was school?" 

"Tame old tame." He turned to face her again. Satan wiped his face with the soft tissue papers she took from the compartment. "Daming requirementt. Gutto ko na lang mag-shift."

"Dalawang taon na lang naman ga-graduate ka na. Don't ever think of shifting. It's not as if you don't like Architecture anymore, right?"

"Gutto. Guttong-gutto. Tapot we'll work together. Then I'll put up my firm 'pag nakakuha na 'ko ng experient at tole trader."

"See?" A smile touched her lips. "So if you're having a hard time with something, ask me and Papa. I'm sure we can help you somehow."

Her sibling smirked, causing her lips to stretch wider as though what she said aroused the confidence in him. She frowned, however, when he spoke. 

"Ayan na 'yong maharlikang mukhang tagigigilid." He pursed his lips at Lucifer running her way to the car. Quickly, he locked the doors. 

"Datdat, ang init-init sa labas! Remove your hands!" She tried to remove his hands from the controls of the lock. To no avail. 

Lucifer kept on knocking at the window while peering into it and raising her middle finger at Hudas. "Open the freaking doors, Datdat! Or else hindi ako tutupad sa usapan! I won't give you my allowance for Monday!"

"Datdat! Stop it! Buksan mo na!" Sasa was still trying to lift his hands off the controls. 

"Tay pleat, Matter!" Hudas yelled back at their youngest sibling. "Only then, will I unlock them!"

"Fine!" She fixed her bag on her shoulder and yelled, "Pleat, Matter!" And she broke into an annoying laugh. 

Then her mind transitioned to the first time she saw her siblings. 

At their play zone where ramps and walkways were bolstered with pads, there were a couple of swings, slides, a small play area with foam blocks, ball pits, obstacle courses, and some plastic animal rockers where she rode the dog; her chin rested on its head and arms circled its neck. Her parents came, with her mother carrying a blue-wrapped bundle in her arms, and a loud crying sound resonated through the playroom. 

There was Malfoy Hudas Torres Alejandro. 

She tiptoed as her mother crouched, then frowned because she wished Hudas would be an exact image of her but he wasn't. Like she is with their mother, her sibling looked so much like their father from his tuft of ebony hair to the attitude in his perfectly-formed brows to his caucasian nose and red-wine lips vibing all and sundry with its poutiness. 

"He doesn't look like me," she was so disappointed. "Can you put him back inside your tummy for another month of development, Mama?"

Melo and Sirach laughed. 

A year after at the same place with the same excitement on her face, there was Myro Lucifer Torres Alejandro in a white-wrapped bundle. It was the first time they were all together as a family. 

Old and strong enough at six, she asked her father if she could have Lucifer in her arms. He nodded. In a blink, there she was, cradling her youngest sibling in her arms as she sat on the matted floor. 

"Lulu," she said after a few funny make faces to paint a smile on Lucifer's tiny lips. "Lucifer's nickname. Lulu."

Her parents laughed, just as they'd done when she announced that Hudas' nickname would be Datdat. 

"As you wish, my little Sasa," Melo replied, kneeling on the floor, thumbing a smear of chocolate at the corner of her lips. "As you wish."

"And they're mine," she said with much possessiveness. "I'll take care of them forever. Love them forever and always. I'll be the best big sister in the whole wide world."

Her lips started to form an upturned curve, but the shock of the hospital where Ulysses was rushed came into view when she rolled her head to the right side of the busy road.

One. Two. Five. Seven. Twelve. Sixteen. Twenty. She realized how powerful seconds were to promptly swell her grief like the overflow of a flooding stream. To batter her heart and mind and soul like a gusty wind blowing at eighty miles per hour. To engulf her with tons of disaster like a seething volcano biding its time, lying in wait. She was right at the entrance when she lost him again. And again. And again. As though he was a never-ending narrative of heartaches; that one person who'd make her think that all there is in love is the art of letting go. 

Something nagged at the back of her mind, a detriment to her heart at large: the multitude of emotions created from their memories. Those that still cut deep to chest although already repetitions, duplications of those that killed her many times since first to third repeats. Her whole body tightened with the pain slashing in between transitions.

She remembered that first out of several instances that they rode the same school bus and Ulysses had torn his eyes from the window time after time just so he could clandestinely idle his eyes on her face. Shy and caught off guard, he would quickly avert to the window with his hands fiddling the straps of his bag when caught.

But he was a good kind of a bother that she turned her eyes upon him, dismissing a line for their first conversation, "You're meaning to say something, I suppose. I'm all ears."

His eyes blinked rapidly, cheeks flushed. Barring the apparent faintheartedness in him, the words that started it all slipped from his mouth, 

"C-can I...have y-your n-number?"

She remembered that night when the sky was blanketed with shining wonders and they were lying on their backs in an empty cornfield surrounded by moon-beaten coconut trees.

"If I were to name the dullest star, I'd name it after you," he said, rolling his head to look at her.

She frowned. "How dare you liken me--"

"Because every time I look up into the sky, I search for it like a hobby I wouldn't outgrow. And it's only when I look at it better, will it show the luster that the brightest ones lacked."

She remembered that sunny afternoon when he took her to an underrated restaurant along backstreets and rears of commercial buildings where cars wouldn't pretty much fit, leading them to ride the MRT.

"We should ride this often, My love," he whispered against her hair, sounding like a male lead wooing a love prospect in an afternoon drama. 

"This is the first and the last, I tell you," she warned, every word punctuated as she shimmied anew with so many bodies pressing in around her who loves to move in her own space.

He ran her hand through her hair and kissed her sweating temple then said, "But I love to be a hairbreadth close to you. Always. Like now."

And she remembered that morning before her saddest night when he pulled over in front of her office and the warm sun-drenched them in each other's arms--their havens when everything in the world is just too much for everyone not to accept that they just loved.

There were stars in his eyes that made her feel no one had ever been more beautiful. There was a tightness in his hug that she could feel his love through all of her senses. And there was a line spilled from his lips that turned her heart in a state of balloons inflated to their limit. 

"Let's make many more memories together," he whispered against her lips, "until our hairs dull as we age and we can no longer choose which to replay best."

Everything around her was enveloped in a haze. She felt her throat bone dry. Her heart was rough against her chest. Sounds perceived deadened by her ears. Broken veins showed up at the back of her hands with her grip tightened around the steering wheel. She pulled over at a gasoline station when the traffic decongested once again. 

And she broke down on her palms. Lasted for what seemed like a cruel eternity till a set of vigorous knocking came at her window. A muffled voice yelled from outside. Her eyes inflamed to redness wounded their way to the window, which she briefly rolled down upon eyeing who it was.

It was Kean.

He was holding the hose from the air and water. His face was innocent of any emotions.

"Mind pulling somewhere else?" he asked, looking sideways at the vehicles passing to and fro, indicating apparent cluelessness that it was Satan right under his nose. "I need to park--" 

He shut himself up when he had rolled his head to look down at Satan and the tears she thought wouldn't betray her did. Her eyes resembled a river. He was rooted to the spot for a few before he was able to gather his composure back; he pulled the hemline of his shirt to her eye level.

"It's...it's all I got other than t-this shitty hose...Engineer," he uttered in a consoling tone, eyes following the tears trickling down her cheeks. His other hand was uneasy as if wanting to rather use it to sweep her tears away. 

"T-thanks...but...I'm okay..." she sniffled. "I can...I can wipe them...m-myself..."

A quiet fell between them, his query taking over, "W-what happened?"

Her eyebrows fused in question. She had no strength to fathom the expanse of his mind with the presence of the persisting blues inside her.

"The tears..." he sounded cautious like there was a word or a line he shouldn't hit.  

"There's this podcast...I--I left unfinished l-last night..." she lied in developing resistance to vent although he wasn't clueless of the reason. Everyone in their office knew about her grieving. "I--"

"Convoy me." He threw her door close and treaded to his motorcycle the soonest after putting the hose back to where it was supposed to be. 

Her shoulders jerked up at the thud. It consumed her seconds to get by with the surprise he unknowingly supplied. With the remains of memories still threatening to blur her eyes, she forced herself to hold up well and convoyed him.

They stopped in front of four single-floored identical structures piled in a column. Starting from the left, there was a coffee and tea shop, then a spa, a bakery, and a clinic offering psychological assistance.  

Her eyes spun around, heart began to throb hard when Kean started knocking on her window. Cold sweats broke out from her forehead down to her nape, chest, and hands as she felt her own space narrowing and darkening. He knew she have sought for it before, that kind of help. But always would she end up resisting because no one struck her trust. 

Was the engineer some kind of an insensitive asshole? In a numbered times of seeing her wrecked from the reason not unbeknownst to him, how dare he bring her in what for her was a place so horror? She never would have wanted another psychological assistance if it's not going to be the person named after the most notable psychologist: Sigmund Freud. And that is flat-out unnegotiable. 

She slid her window down the sill. "Move or I'll run you down," she threatened between her teeth, revving the car's engine. 

A touch of apparent disbelief was evident in his eyes. 

"Didn't I make myself clear, Engineer Kean?" she hissed. 

And that was when he'd done it, the pull that freed her from oppressive emotions when they walked past the rears of the structures she'd seen earlier and padded in an abandoned building that was anyone's to say a beautiful disaster. 

They stood leaning sidewards on the crumbling wall, neither supplying a word. Specks of dust from the barely-cemented hollow blocks toppled over their shoulders, gray streaks followed their hair strands. The sky was a focal view from where they were in what she perceived to be a terrace. 

From her peripheral, her eyes framed his face for she didn't know how long. Then, finally, she spoke her mind,

"About earlier..." Her chin raised as she fought the warm feeling that every human body naturally gives off when guilt nagged. "I...I--"

"Beat it, Engineer. I ain't mad neither am I offended," he said, lifting his gaze from the ground to her puffy eyes. "I am rather worried." His smile didn't reach his eyes, there wasn't a hint of humor even. "Like one of the many feelings that have remained constant ever since I've known you more than two years by now."

He said it as if he so knew her pain like the back of his hand, ready to rush over with anesthesia at a solitary drop of tear. Still and all, she couldn't possibly comprehend his remark. It only rendered her eyes to glaze over at him with her lips parting to say, 

"Thank you..."

"Like a lyric from an old song, Engineer," he stood two feet parallel to her and dabbed her tear-stained cheeks with his thumbs. "I'm only one call away."