Conclusion
I began to feel that there was something he needed which I seemed to need too. It might have been the darkness and the overwhelming silence of the night, but I felt very strongly then like opening the door of our room,

believing, wishing, that I would find him there outside, feverishly waiting, yearning and our bodies would crash powerfully in an intense embrace.

I slept only after the sounds had ceased and it must have taken a long time. Maybe an hour, maybe more. By which time, the turmoil in my body had also died away.

The next day was going to be our last working day. There were schedules to meet, socials to attend, farewells to perform.

As we passed by the corridor going downstairs that morning, I had a glimpse of myself in the mirror and saw an image—in that split second—of a 27-year-old woman, looking much younger than her years, and a 19-year old boy clenched in passionate embrace – an image which did happen, but only in my fevered imagination.

The Night at The Beach. The invitation came from the guys from the provincial health office. We were picked up by a blue Volkswagen at 7 o’clock right after supper. We passed by for somebody who was bringing a guitar and proceeded to fetch two girls at the town’s prefab multi-purpose hall. In the dimly lit hall were a long table and a few chairs. Here, we learned, the school-children gathered daily for their ration of snacks concocted by the two girls in charge of the town’s nutrition program.

One of the girls was a Manileña, a nutrition graduate from UST, and hearing her speak the Tagalog which I knew —here in this place so distant and still strange, where everybody came from the same place and spoke the local dialect or else Tagalog with that thick Waray accent—seemed weird and at the same time so refreshingly welcome.

The walk to the beach, on dark asphalted roads, took nearly thirty minutes. On the roadside stood occasional trees around which clustered countless fireflies. Fireflies, fireflies. I had read of them only in books in my grade school, never known what they really looked like. I tried to catch them in my hand. How quaintly lovely the tiny lights swirling around the shadows of trees on an October night.

Finally, the beach. We traversed an area of grass, some parts of which stood on soft and clayey earth, and then the beach was within sight. The wide expanse of water shimmered under the cast of a pallid moon and the reflection of the distant lights from the fishermen’s boats flung away at sea, doing the night catch.

We put down our things on top of a table topped by dried cogon grass: bottles of beer, family-sized Pepsi, chicken barbecue and the radio.

The girls and some of the guys took several dives in the water and I wondered how they managed despite the late October chill. I sat on the bamboo bench and nibbled a leg of chicken while a guy sang songs of the Beatles with a Waray accent. Later on, he tried to teach me to accompany myself on the guitar.

Hours later, around 10 o’clock, we were back at the multi-purpose hall. The guys must have been tipsy by now. Somebody got hold of the guitar and started belting out songs one after another. I recognized the songs from the late fifties’ Four Aces album, songs I clearly remembered, having heard and loved them before: Women in Love, I’m in the Mood for Love, Only Trust Your Heart. Songs of love my 12-year old heart responded to with joy and poignance, singing them, humming them—songs whose lyrics my young heart hardly understood.

The guy who tried to teach me to accompany myself on the guitar never left my side and soon started to say things like what were his chances of seeing us in Manila, or if we would want to see them again at all; that we would easily forget them as soon as we got back to the city; that once upon a time, there had been us, two girls from Manila, and them, and we spent a night at the beach with them and had a nice time together, a happy time. Yes, we would soon forget. Girls from Manila, they soon forget, they rarely remember.

Shadows from the flickering light of the gas lamp hovered above us all as we sat around the drab concrete hall, new friends trying to seize the moment, trying to stretch time to forever.

Finally, we thought we ought to be going. It was past eleven in the evening and we would be disturbing the people in the boarding house with our knocking late at night. We kissed the girls goodnight and promised to write.

Inside the Volkswagen on our way back to the house, one of the guys suggested that we all stay together overnight. We were leaving Maasin the next day anyway. The guy who earlier never left my side asked what about going to that place in town where there was dancing overnight. We politely refused and said how we must have caused the people in the house enough worry having stayed really late. We thanked them profusely for a truly lovely night: their company, their friendship, the music, everything. Somebody said again with the sentimentality of one who had had one drink too many that we would soon forget them, absolutely forget them—their friends in Maasin.

Back in our room, settled in our beds, Laila and I made hushed conversations about having to wake up early and pack our things and settle our account.

It had been a tiring day altogether, and I wanted my body to be enveloped by the warmth of a deep sound sleep. But it wouldn’t come. I thought it must be the excitement and the fatigue, actually a familiar feeling, something I would feel in Manila going home in the wee hours of the morning after a night of partying or night-clubbing with friends.

It was then that I heard the rap on the door. It was very light, the knock on the door, barely audible. It seemed absurd that it didn’t even enter my mind to suspect who it could be, nor wonder what it could all be about.

I shot a glance at Laila’s bed and found her already blissfully asleep. Then I tiptoed to the door.

The Boy. The boy who played the piano. He was standing there outside the door. And he was looking into my eyes with longing. Suddenly, I was touching his face, his nose, his lips and when he drew my face to kiss my lips, I saw—in the pale light of the late October moon wafting in from the window – that his eyes were closed, and I felt his trembling lips brush so tenderly against mine.
“You’re leaving tomorrow,” he said.
“Yes.”
“I will miss you very much. How I will miss you.”
“So will I,” I said.
“If you could only stay a bit longer, a few more days.”

I smiled an anguished smile, and I saw the same anguished look in his eyes. As I drew his face against my breast, I felt the tremor in his whole body. His lips sought my face, my neck, my arms…

In the morning, we were awakened by the sound of the piano playing that familiar melody again. He must have played it six or seven times. I found myself singing the lyrics in my mind: look at me, I’m as helpless as a kitty up a tree, and I feel like I’m clinging to a cloud, I can’t understand, I get misty just holding your hand…

We all took breakfast silently at our usual separate tables. He was not around and I felt a kind of fear—that maybe he would not be around to see us off, that he had gone somewhere and would not come back till we had left. Maybe he hated final goodbyes.

Right after breakfast, Leila and I went back to our room, and hurriedly packed up. Soon our things were downstairs. We settled our account with the mother in the parlor. I took a last look at the room: the small corner where we were seated; the old upholstered sofa, the two one-seaters, the table with a vase of tangerine plastic flowers, the two sewing machines; the mannequins, the cabinet of clothing materials, the long mirror.

“You’re going back to Ormoc now, ma’am?,” the mother was asking.
“Yes.”
“You’re going to Manila straight from there?”
“No, we’re going to Tacloban yet.”
“Then you must be leaving for Manila Sunday?”
“Yes.”
“My boy, the one studying in Cebu, will be leaving soon, too. He’s here only for the semestral vacation, you know.”
“He’s your youngest?”
“Yes, he is.”
“He’s very affectionate.”
“Yes, he is. Earlier this morning, ma’am, he was asking if you were leaving already and I said yes and he was very sad. He said he won’t have anyone to play for anymore. He plays the piano well, doesn’t he, ma’am?”
“Yes, he does. Very, very well”.

She handed us local delicacies to eat on our way. She asked someone to hail a pedicab to bring us to the bus station. We were standing at the entrance of the dress shop when the boy came.

He went to his mother’s side and put an arm around her shoulders. He was looking at me, at our luggage, at his mother. I smiled at him. He smiled back, and I noticed that it was no longer with the same self-consciousness as before.

The pedicab came. He helped carry our things inside.

“Goodbye, Mrs.,” I said to the mother. “You have been very nice to us.” I started to shake her hand but she embraced me instead.

I turned to the boy. “Goodbye,” I said, and shook his hand. “Will you still play Misty for me even after we’re gone?”
“Yes,” he said, tightening his hold on my hand.
“Will you still play it every night?”
“Yes. I will still play Misty for you.”
“I will listen to it,” I said. “I will listen very intently, as I have always listened every time you played it here.”

On the plane back to Manila, I remembered the boy taking up Medicine who played the piano. I remembered the house full of mirrors and I remembered the night on the beach.

I still remember them now, years later.

No, girls from Manila do not easily forget.