Dating : Ensnared

Lito buries his head in his hands and takes a deep sigh. It was only his third hour on an eight-hour shift and his mind and soul were tired and exhausted. It must have shown on his face. He slept through the entire weekend, waking only to do the things that he had to, eat, drink, sleep, piss, shit, and now his mind was vexed. Aching for a smoke he stands to get up from his desk chair and make his way outside.

He takes a deep breath and turns it into a sigh, stepping forward his foot snags on the mass of wires that make up a circuit that takes up the entire floor. Only he among the whole office trips on the exposed wires that hadn’t been covered by maintenance. They should really fix this, someone could get hurt. He stops for a moment to consider who might actually get hurt, hell, he thinks, I’m going to get hurt if nobody fixes this.

He makes his way through the cubicles and shields his eyes from the blinding incandescent light. He finds his way outside and is greeted by Amanda who looks at him expectantly. Lito looks at her and flashes her a faint smile that she returns. Lito settles by the vending machine next to the smoking area, fumbling around for some loose change and the pack of cigarettes on his shirt pocket.

“Rough night?” she says and follows Lito into the smoking area.

“Hm? Yeah. I guess.” Lito says. Finally getting hold of a crisp twenty peso bill, he inserts the money into the vending machine and listens to the machines whirring and lighting to show the options available to him. He hears the cup plop down and begins pouring. He sits by the bench and fumbles for his lighter when Amanda extends a lighter towards him. Lit, he only needs to nudge his head forward for the cigarette to catch as he begins to inhale. Amanda brings the lighter up to her head and lights her own stick hanging between her lips. She settles next to Lito, blowing smoke into the humid and warm night and staring into the lights of the skyscraper next to them. The screams of urbanity echo below them and reminded them that there was no escape from the chaos that existed on the streets. The city never rested and neither could they.

Lito takes a drag on his cigarette and reaches over to grab a paper cup full and fresh with sweet dark coffee from the machine. He looks over to Amanda and imagines what it would be like to kiss her. He wasn’t in love or in any rush to do anything — he feels a dull ache in his stomach.

“Back home, in the mountains,” he begins, “you could go up to a peak and look around for kilometers. You could see a storm coming from miles away while another mountain basked in the sunshine of a warm afternoon.”

He pauses for a moment. He takes a sip of the sickly sweet coffee and sets it on the space beside him on the bench. He remembers the saccharine coffee he used to drink in the mountains, fresh with the coffee beans that his neighbors a mountain away gave his family. In return, they gave them sweet potatoes and the morning’s harvest of carrots. A truck blares its horns below and Lito takes a long drag on his cigarette, aware once again of the distance he is from home.

“They should really fix that mass of wires next to your cubicle,” Amanda says. “I saw you trip earlier, one of those could rip and give you a literal shock.” She continues to stare into the lights of the skyscrapers, lighting another cigarette as she does.

“I just need to be more mindful. It’s just a small problem, really, nothing worth bothering anyone about.”

“Those wires are going to be the death of you,” she stops for a moment. “I’m sorry, you were saying something about the mountains?”

“I was just reminiscing about home,” he says as he finishes his cigarette and fishes around for another one. He lights it and relishes the rush the nicotine gives him. “Have you ever been up north in the mountains, Amanda?”

“No, well, once when I was a kid, we just stayed in the summer city where it was so noisy and full of traffic. It really wasn’t worth the bother, my whole life was here in Manila, anyway, I never had reason to go back,” she says, her body tilted towards Lito, she wonders what it would be like to go home with him and forget formalities if only for a while. She wasn’t looking for love or affection, the silence of her apartment screams her at every opening of the door — she dreads the quiet darkness of the static invading her home. She takes a deep breath of the humid air and lets it out violently.

“You should come with me then I can show you how nice the mountain and the forest can be. It’s quiet and clean and cold — you won’t hear a car for miles,” he says, turning his body towards her. They are facing each other now, looking at each other, reveling in the warmth of the night and each other’s company. They wonder what if it would be alright to go out for drinks on a Monday. Amanda scoffs at the thought and Lito takes in a breath of smoke and lets it out with a sigh.

“That sounds like it would drive me insane,” she giggles, “I’ll think about it, is it better than the beaches?” she asks as she tucks her hair behind her ears.

“Well, I guess that depends,” Lito says, “but I can show you how to chew betel nut and cut firewood,” he continues, smiling at her.

“Gee, that sounds fun,” sarcastically, she looks around, “it’s definitely more fun than what we do here, I guess. I’ll think about it.”

Lito smiles at her half-acceptance of the invitation. The two become quiet and the sound of the airconditioning, the cars, and all the chaos below them invade their ears once again. The city never rested, and neither did they. High above the ground, they could ignore the chaos as static but it never really went away. Lito looks at his watch and sees that it’s been fifteen minutes since he went out and begins to worry that he’s been out too long just chatting with Amanda. The supervisor doesn’t really care about this, I just need to finish those sheets, five more minutes wouldn’t hurt, he reassures himself. He leans back on the bench and Amanda rests her hands on his. Lito wonders if she would say yes to drinks when their shifts were over, Amanda doesn’t want to go home and face the static darkness and the rhythmic beating of the air-conditioner.

“I grew up here, it’s all I’ve ever really known. The noise, the heat, the dirt, the people, they were my forests and mountains,” she says, wistful of the world she had made smaller and smaller to make things more manageable.

“I’ve gotten used to all the noise,” she says, “a man screaming down at the street at 3 in the morning is normal here, and you just get used to it,” Amanda shuffles her feet uneasily, the silence is maddening to her and she does all that she can to avoid it. It was a relative silence, in her mind, the silence wasn’t simply the absence of sound but also an absence of people. Years of living in Manila had never shown her true silence, of oblivion and darkness, only the absence of the living while all the world moved around her like she was the center of a typhoon — the eye quiet and dull in the middle. Most of all it was the silence of her mind she needed above all to dull and quiet. She looks at Lito and imagines what it would be like to grab his collar and kiss him — she feels a lump in her throat and a slight urge to vomit.

Lito is surprised by the sudden confession, he looks at her inquisitively and hoping for more. There’s electricity forming between them that only he can feel, some kind of rising heat that went past the humidity of the city — Lito feels his stomach get lighter and he manages a smile.

“What are you looking at me like that for? You shared something then I shared something, it’s a give and take.” Lito raises his eyebrow and Amanda punches him lightly on the shoulder. They laugh in reverie with the world slipping to become lighter and brighter, their eyes beam at each other. Lito imagines what it would be like to kiss her then and there, Amanda waits to see if he was going to cross that line that night. They are silhouettes against the blinding lights of the world around them, but it didn’t matter. They could be mere shadows and figures, immaterial and subject to existence by a light that gives them form. The world is light for a moment. High and above the world, they could care less about the chaos below them. Lito squeezes her hand.

“It didn’t feel right,” Lito says, pulling his hand away from Amanda’s, “Amanda, it still doesn’t.”

“I know. It isn’t right,” she says.

They mull over the weekend, the bar, the drinks, the rug, the sofa, the bed, and the terror of waking up and realizing what they had done. Ten missed calls on Amanda’s phone, Lito’s idyllic phone, serene and undisturbed in his pants — no one had tried to look for him. They shuffled around awkwardly at the realization of their actions, Lito making an excuse to leave quickly and Amanda dreading the silence of her home. It was afternoon by the time he had arrived.

“Then what are we doing here?” says Lito, remembering the shame of messy hair, messy clothes, and long commute back to his apartment. He had a fondness for Amanda, his first friend in the office — it wasn’t love it was just a dull ache in his stomach.

“As far as I’m concerned, we’re two co-workers enjoying a chat and a smoke,” she says in reply.

“I just don’t get — “

Lito is cut off by the vibration on Amanda’s phone, she looks at it grimly and answers.

“Hi, honey, I’m still at work, please try to stay awake so we can talk when we get home? You just seem to be asleep all the time and I miss you. The apartment’s been so silent since you left for Japan.”

Lito’s ears fill with static and the dull pain in his stomach turns into disgust. He pulls away from Amanda and nudges further into the edge of the bench. Amanda goes on talking to her husband and Lito could see the love she still feels. He throws what’s left of his coffee into the waste bin and lights another cigarette. He stands at the edge of the balcony hoping that the nicotine would drown the disgust he feels. Lito imagines what it would be like to jump from twenty-four stories up, Amanda feels like she is drowning in a sea of her own lies.

Lito looks down and peers into the streets below, into the mess and the chaos of the world below where people weren’t shielded by skyscrapers. They were far above and far removed from reality for the moments that they are, but they have to come back down over and over again. There was nobody that could rest in the city, so nobody let anyone ever rest truly. Amanda gets up from the bench and throws the half-finished cigarette into the ashtray. She dreads coming home to the static and the silence, yet that’s all that awaits her now. She passes Lito and mutters her sorries, but Lito buries his hands in his head and lifts it only to smoke and flick ash over the unsuspecting people below — he turns to see Amanda gone.

He walks back into his cubicle only to have his foot snag on the wires again. This mess is going to be the death of me, he thinks to himself.