Part 33 (1/2)

Until when are we going to walk Arm in arm, hand in hand, friends?

Are we only fooling each other Because neither wants to speak?

”Until When,” Hands Down When Kian first introduces you to Katherine, it is all you can do to stop from breaking her delicate little fingers in your grip. She gives you a Barbie Doll smile and tells you that she's happy to meet you and that Christopher ( Christopher? He had never used that name since high school.) has told her so much about his best friend Rachel. You want to roll your eyes so far into your head that you might be drowned in the dark, but Kian quickly steers her away from you and towards the small round table near the amps. Lia pa.s.ses by and takes you by the elbow, then frog-marches you towards the girls' toilets.

Inside the ceramic-tiled room, she proceeds to tell you how much she hates Kian's new girl and that if she had it her way, she would allow her latent Chinese side (the side that loves pain and torture, which then makes you wonder just how is hers and Paolo's s.e.x life, and if the rope burn rumors are true) to take over and just slice off Katherine's flesh, one sliver at a time, until she's flayed a million times over and blood is dripping on the floor in heart-shaped droplets.

You kindly thank Lia for her thoughtful words as you lean towards the counter and position your hands underneath the sink. Water automatically gushes out from the tap and you turn your wrists, letting the cool, clear liquid wash away the memory of Katherine's touch. A part of you feels that this is a dream, a hallucinatory experience. Your stomach feels like a thousand tiny balloons straining against a net, and you're afraid that you're ready to explode.

There is a knock on the door, and you can hear Raffy, your manager, asking in his disconcertingly nasal voice (even though he says he's not gay) that it's five minutes before the set starts. Lia hollers that you're ready, that you two are just freshening up. You grip the edge of the sink with both hands, and watch in detached fascination as the color of your fingernails slowly seep away, almost matching the pale egg white surface of the sink.

You feel Lia's strong hands on your back, and you dry heave into the sink. You tell her it's just nerves, that you can't remember performing in front of an audience this large, and in a venue this popular-the Hole was like home, but a newer, larger venue, with possible scouts is something else-but Lia just rubs your back harder, until you feel the balloons carefully pop.

You now feed with a vengeance, your wings ripping through the air like sharp claws across a stretch of fine dark silk. Your tongue continually snakes out from between your lips, tasting invisible molecules, your body constantly angled, a stubborn compa.s.s needle pointing towards the next prey.

Before, when you were just starting out and you were unaccustomed to the taste of meat, you decided to just have a meal a night. You were careful to choose only the mothers who never wanted their child, or those who prayed fervently each night that they would be a good girl, that they would never allow that man into their beds and inside their hearts, those who were too frightened of the hilot or the Quiapo vendors who sold herbal concoctions beside the church. You would listen carefully to the susurrus of voices in your head, carefully separating strand from strand, allowing the most fearful to surface inside your head, like a drop of oil in a bowl of water.

But now you are ravenous. Anger fuels your hunt, and it is only after the fifth feeding that you feel slightly satisfied. You lick the blood coating your lips, run your fingers lightly across your incisors in order to check for any stray bits of meat. Carefully, you poise yourself from the edge of the corrugated tin rooftop, ready to take flight. Beneath you, the girl sleeps soundly in a small pool of dark blood, the color of the evening tide. You stretch out your wings and leap on the back of the wind. The thrill of flight still excites you, even after all these years, and you abandon yourself to the moment, the patterns of the wind at midnight, the way the city lights seem to mirror the constellation of stars scattered across the sky.

It has been six months since Kian (or Christopher, as he has decided to be called again) and Katherine hooked up. Each time that you see them, it's like a needle is being driven deeper and deeper into your chest, just above where your heart is located. You are waiting for the day when, in the middle of singing ”Hanggang Saan,” you suddenly keel over the microphone stand, tangling up in the skeins of wires swirling around your feet. When your bandmates turn you over, they will find a small hole just above your left breast, trickling blood down your chest and soaking your blouse. It's an appealing thought, you decide, while watching Kian steal a kiss from Katherine's lips.

You decide to turn your back on them and help Paolo out with the equipment. Since Katherine started following Kian around like a faithful (puppy?) girlfriend, their nights out as a group has been severely limited. You feel like the odd one out: Paolo and Lia have been a couple since the beginning of time, and Katherine would rather have Kian tied to a pole than leave her line of sight for more than five minutes. Sure, there are boys, and you've gone out on a few dates, only to realize that you have an annoying tendency to compare each and every reasonably interested, hot-blooded male with Kian. It's a depressing thought, and you decided to stop being m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.tic by just pretending to be lesbian. Lia gleefully joins into the fray of pretense, to the point of almost kissing you on the lips after a gig, which forever made Paolo disconcerted about his girlfriend's s.e.xual orientation and Kian laughing so hard that he had to gulp down several gla.s.ses of water just to calm down.

Tonight's different, though. Kian offers you a ride home, even though Katherine lives in Paranaque and he lives in Makati now, while you are still at your old neighborhood in La Vista. He shrugs off your protestations and instead gallantly escorts you and Katherine to his car. Paolo and Lia wave goodbye, and you find yourself sitting at the back seat of his souped-up Toyota Corolla, sharing the s.p.a.ce with the long, hard length of Tobey, his guitar, because the front seat has been taken over by The Girlfriend.

The drive is silent along EDSA, with only Death Cab for Cutie playing on the CD player. Katherine is half-asleep, and the digital read-out on the dashboard tells you it's past two in the morning, and your parents have gotten used to you going home even later (or earlier, whichever strikes your fancy) and have resigned themselves to that fact. Kian hums along, his thumbs occasionally following the beat on the rim of the steering wheel. You are lulled by the lamp lights sweeping past the window at regular intervals, and Kian pus.h.i.+ng the car to almost ninety, and the way the car flows along the avenue, almost as if it were flying.

Katherine lives on a sleepy street inside an exclusive subdivision. The guard already knows Kian, and waves him inside without an ID (just like at your place). The gate is white and tall, and the greenery outside is trim and neat. Beyond the fence, you can see an expanse of brick and gla.s.s. Kian carefully wakes Katherine up and kisses her tenderly. You stare out the window, focus on the stray dog wandering down the opposite sidewalk, occasionally raising up one hind leg and p.i.s.sing on the side of the wall. The street lamp makes the dog's coat s.h.i.+ne like amber. You bite your bottom lip, playing with the tender bit of flesh. They said that in the olden days, when food was scarce, your kind would feed on dogs to survive. You are glad that you have never had to deal with such a problem.

You move into the front seat when Katherine vacates it; you give her a friendly peck on the cheek and resist drawing blood. The door closes with a definitive click as you slide into the front. Kian keeps the engine on as the both of you wait until the gate opens for Katherine. Then Kian puts the car into gear, and you feel it growl to life.

The drive is smooth until you hit EDSA again, just past the Magallanes Station. For some reason, the stretch is filled with heavy-loading trucks and busloads of people on their way north, and half of the avenue is blocked by workmen and piles of rubble. Kian swears and swerves to another lane, only to be hit by another tangle in the mounting traffic jam.

”I don't think we'll get you back home so quickly, Chel,” he says sleepily. You can recognize the warning signs from when you were younger-Kian would become more talkative in an effort to stave off the drowsiness. ”I'm sorry.”

”You can just drop me off at the next station,” you say nervously. ”At least you can go home and sleep, right? Not a problem.”

”What kind of a best friend would I be if I don't bring you home properly?”

You laugh. ”The kind that would kill us in a traffic jam because he could barely keep his eyes open.”

”Well, either way, your parents would kill me,” he says, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hands and leaning to the front (Sign Number Two). ”I can't leave you here, but I sure as h.e.l.l don't think that it will clear up soon.”

”Who knows?” you tell him, falsely optimistic. ”Maybe it will clear up after this stretch.”

But thirty minutes later, the car barely moved ten meters. The world seems to have stopped. Kian is staring straight ahead. You adjust your skirt modestly around your thighs, clasping your hands in the middle like a proper Catholic schoolgirl. The air conditioning sputters and spits out small clouds of cool air. The CD has stopped; the interior is quieter than what you imagined a tomb to be like.

Kian peers outside. ”My turn's coming up soon. I don't think this traffic will clear up.”

You shrug. ”If you have a couch and a spare toothbrush, I don't mind cras.h.i.+ng over at your place.”

He looks exceptionally relieved that the suggestion came from you. ”If you're sure...” he says, his voice trailing off hopefully.

You nod, your fingers surrept.i.tiously trailing across the fabric of your s.h.i.+rt, right above the scar. He knows about the operation, but he has never seen the scar. You hope the night won't come to that.

You were fifteen and stupid, and already three months into the pregnancy when you discovered the situation. The boy was also fifteen and stupid, and promptly stopped returning your increasingly panicky phone calls and text messages. Twice, you went to his house, but the maid answered both times and denied emphatically the presence of the Drs. Hernandezes'

unico hijo.

Desperate, you remember the story of one of your friends about the illegal clinics that litter the side streets of the city, and resolve to visit one of them. You bring three thousand pesos and the girl who told you the story, and take a jeep to Sta. Mesa. It started raining lightly then, making the streets look like pea soup, the street ca.n.a.ls carrying with it the vestiges of the city: candy wrappers, plastic wrappers of all colors of the rainbow, dead rats and b.l.o.o.d.y cats gutted by careless drivers.

You didn't know what pain was until you fainted from it. Later on, you remember your friend telling you that there was blood, too much blood, and they had to give you a transfusion. But it was a black market clinic, and the blood was tainted, and it was only three weeks after the operation that you realized that it wasn't just any kind of disease known to man, but something other than of this world.

At first, the bleeding refused to stop. You had to buy rolls of gauze and change your bandages every hour just to avoid staining your clothes. Suspicious, your parents a.s.signed a chaperone, Ate Babing, who spent more time chatting up the tricycle drivers at the corner store than watch you go off with your friends. There was no pain, which surprised you, just a damp feeling around your midsection, like a patch of gra.s.s after a summer shower.

And then you learned about others of your kind. They came to you just as the clock struck midnight: all women, with hair flowing like forest vines around their faces and leathery, batlike wings. All of them were also able to separate their upper halves from their lower halves, the edges of their stomachs distended and glittering from a night's frenzied feeding. You wanted to weep when you saw them, floating outside your window, looking at you with dead eyes, calling you forward. You knew what they were, you knew the stories, half-whispered to children in order to fear the dark, the beat of shadow wings. You thought that being in the city would make you safe.

But you had to accept it. A part of you knew that this was all your fault, and you had to learn how to accept consequences. And if this was punishment for that one night of bliss, then so be it.

Kian's apartment was no bigger than a large walk-in closet. Two steps forward and you were in the kitchen, two steps back and you were almost stumbling into the bed. There was no couch. You look at him expectantly. ”Bathroom's over there,” he says, waving carelessly at a wooden door that was held shut by a length of chain. He rummages inside a synthetic textile closet, the one with a zipper for a door, and hands you a rumpled t-s.h.i.+rt and a pair of cotton shorts. You thank him quietly and close the bathroom door behind you. In the dim light of a single orange electric bulb, you pour the freezing cold water over your head from a pail. There are warning bells going off inside your head, but you force them to be quiet, to still. Kian won't touch you, and you certainly will (try) not to have any physical contact with him.

He has a girlfriend!) You stumble out of the bathroom and into utter darkness. ”Sorry,” came his disembodied voice from somewhere to your left. ”I'm too tired. I'll take a shower in the morning.”

”Did you even change?” you tease, keeping your voice light.

”Of course,” he says. ”Come to bed, Chel.”

You carefully maneuver around the plastic furniture and the plastic bags of clothes and groceries scattered on the floor. Your fingers encounter a soft material, which means you've probably reached the bed already. You slip into the s.p.a.ce Kian has provided, painfully aware of the dip in the center of the mattress, which means that he's already on the other side. Positioning yourself on the edge, you cross your hands over your chest and turn your back towards him. You're not sure whether your eyes are open or closed; it doesn't make much of a difference.

Behind you, Kian moves forward and wraps his around your waist, pulling you to him. You whisper worriedly, wondering what's wrong, but he simply buries his face at the back of your neck. You feel something warm and wet trickle down your nape, and you turn around to face him. ”Are you crying?” you ask quietly, wrapping your arms around his shuddering shoulders. His face is in your s.h.i.+rt, burrowed between the valley of your b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and you have never held him like this, not even when Anita, the love of his life and his first girlfriend, left him for her cla.s.smate Jasmine Toledo. He had also cried then, and refused to eat anything but Meat Lovers' Pizza from Pizza Hut (because that was the last meal that he and Anita had shared) for two weeks.

You hold him to you ( it's not so bad after all), until you feel him s.h.i.+ft slightly and his lips press against your skin, through the fabric. You look down, and he looks up, and then you are reminded of the way the t.i.tanic slammed against the icebergs-the impact was enough to bring the mighty s.h.i.+p shuddering to its knees. Kian's kiss feels that way: breaking all the barriers, refusing to acknowledge their existence, cracking the walls that you have surrounded yourself with. (Twelve years' worth...) You bite down on the flesh of his lower lip; your tongue swipes the drop of blood that wells across the surface. He tastes of metal and cinnamon, bitter and pungent, the salt of the seas. You store the memory inside your mind, where later on, when you are alone, you will roll it over and over in your mind, like a particularly beautiful and intricate plaything.

You gasp as his hands slip underneath your s.h.i.+rt, stroking the flat of your stomach, tracing the line of your wound. ”Is this it?” he whispers, his voice grating the still night air. You nod desperately, squirming underneath his touch, everything be d.a.m.ned.

He lowers his head and you feel the tip of his tongue, like a flower petal dipped in morning dew, slipping/sliding across the cut, tasting your blood. You tangle your fingers into his hair, allow him to uncover your skin beneath the clothes, his hands memorizing the language of your movements. You know you are sinking, that you have abandoned all hope of resurfacing, You, who have known flight, known the names of all the winds that encircle the city-now, you know how it feels to drown. The waters are slowly, slowly closing over your head.

In your mind, there will be no chance for redemption, so you will decide to run away. You will change your city, your name, your face. But to the women, the others of your kind, the foulest of blood that flows hotly through your veins will still sound a clarion call, and everywhere you go, they will gather outside your window, waiting for you like ghosts at a funeral.

You will taste the blood on your mouth, feed because you need to live, but there is no more pleasure in the succulent liquid taste of meat. Even flight has lost its pleasure: every time you take to the air, you remember the fall into his arms, and everything is made bittersweet by the memory.

When you feed for the last time, you will find yourself crouched on the rooftop of a beautiful white house in the outskirts of the village where you are currently hiding in. You will hear the fervent prayers of the woman in your mind. She does not want this child. Carefully, you will unfurl your tongue and search for a gap in the roof. You can smell her already: strong and warm, full of flesh and life. Your tongue enters her belly, laps up the scarlet-and-sunset child that will never know light; only the warm beat of the darkness. You will swirl the liquid inside your mouth, and realize that it tastes of metal and cinnamon, bitter and pungent, the salt of the seas- (..

I know this taste.).

Ode to Edvard Munch.