1
A child’s hands. Close-cropped nails on rather thin and veiny fingers. She said she was thirty-five. He suspected she was between twenty-three and twenty-seven. She actually looked nineteen. She was ageless.

Why should he remember her hands? He could—if he really wanted to—remember her eyes, which were big and dark and soulful. Eyes so soulful except when she wanted to shut off her soul, which she did most of the time.

Eyes with eyebrows dark and thick and very becoming. She looked like some Hollywood actress. Leigh Taylor-Young or somebody, that girl in a sentimental movie called “The Other Side of Midnight,” which drove Celine to tears.

Her hands. Because the first time he saw her, clutched between her fingers, fingers so thin and veiny and with nails cropped short, was a cigarette—a Marlboro Long, he was to learn later—and she always had to have a cigarette dangling between those fingers, which she puffed with insistent vehemence.

“I’m what you would describe clinically as a depressive,” she said, tapping the midarm of the PAL jet’s two-seater which separated them. She was wearing a round-necked T-shirt, denim pants, a checkered overcoat, and dark glasses all through the hour-and-a-half plane trip to Davao City.

He had seen her at the airport lounge earlier, standing up, hands on hips, the huge dark glasses
covering most of the small gamin face and looking about as though waiting for someone. Slung on her shoulders was a native woven bag which could have come from Baguio or Banawe. Something in the way she held her head, maybe the long neck, or the way she had her hands glued to her lips, struck him.

She finally sat down, but still her head kept turning, moving about. Behind the dark glasses, he could sense the tension, the nervousness in her eyes. Maybe she was really waiting for somebody, he thought, and was afraid she would be stood up.

She got up again and walked down the aisle. This time she had lighted a cigarette and was puffing ceaselessly. The call for the flight could come any moment now. He looked at the next seat for his valise. When the call for Davao came, he heard her utter a curse as she grabbed her two hand-carried suitcases, and made for the gate.

He followed her. He realized they were boarding the same flight, as he had secretly hoped. He thought self-consciously what crazy impulse could have driven him to follow her. Was it sheer physical attraction? Or was it because of the anticipated boredom of the long plane ride which he was taking on account of one of those tedious inspection trips he had to do twice or thrice a year for the company?

She had already fastened her seatbelt and was looking out the window when he got inside.

Mercifully, nobody was sitting beside her yet. As he positioned himself on the seat and stretched his body before fastening his seatbelt, he was conscious of an overpowering scent which emanated from her. The scent itself was not disturbingly strong. In fact, it was a very pleasant scent. It was the way it registered in his consciousness which he found unsettling.

As the plane took off, she made the sign of the cross. A few minutes later the flight attendant paused beside them with a stock of newspapers.

“The Journal, please,” his seatmate said.

A child’s voice, he told himself. She was reading with her dark glasses on. He was very close to her, and his eyes scanned her paper.

“Excuse me,” he heard her say, “But I really hate it when somebody reads over my shoulder. Will you ask for another paper?”

“I’m sorry,” he said, jolted, “but I meant no offense.”

“Yes, I’m sure,” she said without looking at him.

He cowered, and felt a weakening in his knees. He felt his lips trying to negotiate a smile – a nervous smile, no doubt, but it gave him altogether a very uncomfortable feeling.

The food came. She asked for coffee. And yet another cup, when she was through with the muffins and the hamburger sandwich. After which she turned to him to his surprise, and said: “I’m sorry about what I said. But I really meant no offense either, shall we be friends? My name’s Marjorie.”
“Noel, Noel Gonzales.” He felt elated.

“Noel! What a beautiful name. I’ve always liked that name. If I had a child I’d call him Emmanuel.”
He smiled. But before he could say anything more, she had resumed her reading.

When she spoke, it was to apologize again. It was her moods, she said. She was disappointed that her companion hadn’t shown up, and here she was flying alone to interview certain people in Davao on a project her company was involved in. She would bestaying in Davao for about five days, at most.

“Small world,” he said. “I’ll be around for just about that length of time, too.”

Suddenly, he had a composite view of how the following days were going to be spent - huddling with the branch manager and other key men, browsing over sales records, financial statements and at night holing himself up in his hotel room because he would refuse the night out that would be so tantalizingly dangled at him; which he would refuse precisely because it would be so brazenly offered. Nights holed up in his hotel room or sitting alone at the hotel bar drinking several shots of whiskey till his eyes got heavy-lidded enough there would be no alternative but to sleep. Which he knew they found odd and which he didn’t mind at all.

Back in Manila he would tell Celine what a boring thing it all was and she would look at him with that resigned look which seemed to say, “Nothing you can do about it, darling.”

But that was his job, and he was in line for promotion. He had grown with the firm which he joined when he and Celine got married ten years ago. Now it was just a matter of time, and of patience on his part, and he would make the last of these out-of-town trips which he didn’t particularly relish. And there was the thought of his children – Alex was in grade school now, Marianne in kindergarten, bubbly, amorous and cuddly at five – which was enough to make the boredom bearable.

It had been different earlier, of course. Going out of town used to excite him. But trips to the same places had become so routine that he earnestly hoped somebody else would be assigned to it. Nothing in Legazpi, Cebu or Davao could thrill him anymore.

Except now. And her name was Marjorie.

2
“Your first time in Davao?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said, with that moping look again.

“You’re not excited about it?”

“No. I should be, shouldn’t I?”

And then suddenly she did look excited, as though trying to please. “Oh, yes, I am. I was, to begin with. But I was stood up and I feel lost, insecure, as I said earlier. I really wish I had a companion.”

“Maybe your companion just got delayed Maybe he …”
“She.”

“ ___ She didn’t make it to the airport on time. And will probably take tomorrow’s flight.”
“Maybe. Oh, it doesn’t matter now. There will be people who will meet me. They know we’re coming.
He looked at his watch. In fifteen minutes, the plane would land.

“Where are you staying?” he asked.

“Apo View, ”she answered. “What about you?”

He hesitated before answering, “Davao Insular.” He had thought of lying, of saying he was staying in the same hotel as she was, but it had been pre-arranged and he really had no time to think if it was going to make any difference. But the Insular was out of town!

“I see,” she said. And went back to the papers.

Fifteen minutes later, they were walking down the ramp of the plane, not saying a word. It was drizzling. She took out an umbrella which he held for her. “I carry one all the time, whatever the season,” she said lightly

To be continued