Fourteen Minutes

The typhoon Neneng raged like a woman maddened by a lover’s infidelity. There seemed to be no end to the rain. There have been no classes in the region for four consecutive days now, but I never really had a break because of my job. I work part time, after school, as a private tutor to two siblings, both in elementary, whose daily allowances sum up to an amount bigger than the money I get from my folks weekly. I have just received my pay for the week and as always, I was excited to get home and treat my family out to dinner.

I sat on a bench at the station, waiting for the train to arrive beside a couple displaying excessive adulation towards each other without shame. The whole picture appeared to me as an interminable kilig scene from a sappy teeny bopper romance flick, with this Romeo and Juliet as the oh-so-in-love-protagonists and I as a misplaced, bitter and self-pitying-single-extra. Disgusted, and ironically, a little envious, I maintained a decent distance from the two, so as not to disturb them.

The time on the clock read 08:59. I fixed my eyes on a huge billboard of a beauty product that claimed, just like every other one like it, to whiten skin in just four weeks. It made me wonder, what’s so special about four weeks? I was trying to answer the unintelligent question in my mind when someone nonchalantly sandwiched himself in between me and Romeo and Juliet. I examined the intruder: muddy sneakers, ripped jeans, and an almost transparent wet white shirt with the word POETRY printed across the chest, in big, bold, black, and grungy lettering.

I recognized his faint scent in one sniff— muskuline is how I label it, having brothers, guy friends and an ex who all wore and might still wear exactly the same perfume. “Wired?” I mumbled, unconsciously.

He looked at me with an eyebrow slightly cocked.

“Oops.” I bit my lip in embarrassment.

He chuckled.

The raindrops kissed the roof like savages, making harsh spattering noises. Despite the weather, the temperature in the station was summery. I felt beads of sweat arise from my skin and descend like tears would, as though my whole body had little unseen eyes that wept in simultaneous grief. I decided to remove my jacket and began fanning myself with a bare hand, wiping away the perspiration from time to time with my dampened hanky.

“Going somewhere?” He asked, this stranger sitting next to me.

“Home.”

“Oh…”

“You?”

“Same.”

“The storm seems to be enjoying her stay here in the metro.” He began once more, as if trying to start a conversation.

I noticed a button pin on his backpack that read good for nothing student, exactly the same as the one I had. I snorted, but he didn’t seem to notice. “She sure does.”

He yawned. “Haaay, I hate the rain.”

“I do, too.”

He, too, seemed to be a bit uncomfortable being on the same bench with Romeo and Juliet. His eyes traveled about the station, surveying ads and passersby, occasionally gawking at female species in minis and low-rise jeans, but never drawing his sight towards the direction of the two. I tried to get a good vision of his face, carefully though, for him not to notice. His skin was the color of coffee with cream, lightly bronzed, perhaps, by the sun that violently scorches the city in midsummer, or any other time of the year when the rains don’t come. It is not too difficult to tattoo his face onto your brain. He isn’t exactly handsome, though. He’s actually just one of the hundreds or thousands of faces you’d come across with during rush hour train rides. He had, however, eyes as round as those balls of gum that paint your tongue and tinge your teeth, only prettier, with a thick layer of fine hair lining the lids and a hue that matches his skin. If eyes were bodies of water, you could drown in his.

“Some people are just shameless, don’t you think so?” He murmured into my ear, as though we’ve known each other for a long time.

I glanced at the two and noticed that Romeo had one hand in Juliet’s cardigan. I grinned, trying hard to suppress a guffaw coming all the way from my stomach. “Let’s go get a room!” I joked almost aloud, trying my best to sound as naive as possible, enough for the lovebirds to hear. We both snickered.

The station was already swarming with people. Strangers, just like me and him. He kept whistling tunes, his soiled hi-tops alternately thumping on the tiled floor, his palms on his thighs, producing what seemed to be pseudo drum beats for his tunes. He could be a musician— a member of a struggling indie band that gets to play twice a month in gigs only they and their friends know about.

The sound of the train’s arrival interrupted my thoughts of him. We stood up in a rush and began pushing ourselves into what seemed to be a war for seats or at least 10 inches of space when I realized that I have forgotten my jacket on the bench. He was the one who noticed it, actually. It must have been his gentlemanly instinct that had him hurry back and get it for me while I was being squeezed into the mob of clashing outfits. I held onto a bar by the door on the opposite side of the train, along with other hands whose bodies I cannot trace.

The door shut.

The engine sprung back to life, revived by a new assembly of commuters. I tried to look back to where I left my jacket, but my height permitted me to see only heads and more heads. I heaved a sigh and shifted my view towards the window near me. City lights passed by like stationary fireflies— dots of yellow radiance marking the black scenery of the urban jungle that was still under the assault of Neneng. I embraced myself, chilling in spite of the warmth of other bodies temporarily pasted onto my own flesh. A watch belonging to an old hand on the pole, right above mine, informed me that it was nine thirteen in the evening. I stood there, breathing in and breathing out, amidst the stench of expensive perfume mixing with sweat and body odor from all around me. There no longer was the faint whiff of Wired.