CAUGHT at night in the bustling city, Sonia lingered inside the quaint coffee shop where she usually soothed herself after a tedious week of work at the advertising firm. While smoking cigarettes, she drank coffee to calm her nerves until she fell into a state of wakeful dreaming where the senses seemed to merge into a hazy spell.
It was in this state that Sonia found herself under a familiar gaze.
“Adam!” she shouted as the face registered in her thoughts. Adam returned the greeting with a hug and treated Sonia to a feast of Japanese dishes in a nearby restaurant.
Sonia and Adam were high school friends. When they were young, they did things with wild abandon as the nineties fashioned their adolescent bodies with knitted vests, knee-high socks, and boots. They both loved music and joined every elective involving the subject. But above, they both shared an affinity with their favorite bands: Suede and The Velvet Underground. Like suede and velvet, they were like two different fabrics meshed into perfection, and like the discordant music that their favorite bands had played, their friendship remained beautiful despite their incongruence. Sonia used to visit Adam’s house as they played the old vinyl records of his father. They especially listened to their favorites on rainy days, when it was cozy and conducive to introspection. Once the music started playing, there would only be them and the room, and nothing else around. Adam used to call Sonia as Suede, while she called him Velvet. They were inseparable like peas and carrots. After Adam went to Australia to pursue his studies, he lost touch of Sonia and became ignorant of her whereabouts for eleven years.
“Adam? I haven’t seen you for the longest time! Is this for real? I really missed you,” Sonia said in between mouthfuls of sushi.
“Well, I eat three times a day and live in a decent apartment. The music career didn’t work out, but I’m pretty okay. How about you?” Adam asked.
Sonia was tongue-tied. She could name a dozen things about herself, but she found them all unnecessary and shallow.
“For a change, I don’t listen to Suede anymore,” she found herself saying, not thinking how consequential her reply could be.
“That’s a shame. My daughter listens to it. She likes it even if she’s too young to understand. I want her to know her rock and roll early,” Adam said while staring at Sonia, who had not changed much physically. The few lines under her eyes and the noticeable gauntness in her cheeks failed to cloak her beauty.
“I lost all my records when I moved out of our house. Besides, I don’t have the luxury of the time to keep my ears tuned in to such records,” she said defensively.
Their dinner lasted for two hours, mostly spent with catching up with each other’s lives’ results over the years. For a moment, they started reminiscing about the old days, often sharing the jokes they once considered funny, only to find out that they were not funny anymore. They attempted to fill the sorry void with random quips and one-liners, but there were only awkwardness and surreptitious glimpses at their watches once in a while. Their moves became as heavy as their sighs and a disquieting silence hovered in the air.
When the restaurant was about to close, a sudden alertness enveloped them. They bade each other goodbye and said kind words to each other, realizing that it was easier to say goodbye than to say hello. Sonia went to the parking lot and eventually drove along Makati while thinking about the distant softness of her bed.
Inside her home, Sonia remained mobile and restless. She kept on thinking that despite all the changes that had happened in her life, truth was, she was still the girl who used to weep over a beautiful song. What she said to Adam about losing her records a long time ago was not true. For some reason, she just wanted to show that she had already moved on and grown up. She was always trying to prove something to others, but never to herself. Why did she and Adam have to meet just to realize the gap that stood between them?
Unable to fall asleep, Sonia looked through her old tapes. All were dusty and looked very old under the yellow lights of her room. She decided to play songs by Suede, and the melodies brought back rosy days of high school, slowly lulling her to sleep.
A sunny morning with fluffy cumulus clouds greeted Sonia the next day. She drove happily to the office, listening to random songs played on the radio. When she parked and went out of the car, a burly man grabbed her from behind and pointed a knife at her throat. She did not fight back. The stranger took her wallet, mobile phone, and Ipod, then returned her bag as he let her go. The man ran as fast as he could while Sonia remained motionless, as if she was still under the man’s power.
When reality sunk in, she cried. She did not know whether it was sadness, shock or relief. All she knew was she was crying and running toward the office, like a kid roughed up by the school bully. The thief ran as fast as he could. Sonia ran as fast as she could, too. It was as if for one moment, their paths crossed and now they were running away from one another, wishing that the meeting had not happened.
Unexpectedly, she bumped into someone.
“Oh Adam, it’s you,” she said.
“Yeah, but you look like you don’t want to see me,” Adam smiled apologetically.
“Not really, I just had an awful experience this morning.”
“Tell me about it.”
Sonia and Adam went in the canteen. There was the familiar awkwardness, but once she started telling him her story, a growing sense of warmth emanated from each other. Sonia discovered that Adam was working in the same building, so it was not merely a coincidence that they had met in the café. She and Adam found it hard to break the ice, but Sonia felt that it was not impossible to do it now that they had met again.
Right at that moment, she was placed in the vantage point of seeing her life in the old and new perspective. She was not Suede anymore, or Adam still Velvet, but despite the gap between them, there was not a reason to remain stagnant and awkward because just like clothes, the only way to make it comfortable was to wear it, even if did not feel quite right. She finally felt comfortable in her own skin by simply wearing herself, and not because of wearing fancy clothes or other embellishments, that for years masked her identity.
Although still shaken by the previous incidents, life had to go on for Sonia. The thief might have stolen some things and Adam might have made Sonia question herself, but little did both knew that they were able to give her a fresh start. She rode her car, thankful that it was not stolen, and then decided to go home. She darted off in the winding highways of the city, projecting new trails in her life that was in the process of continuous unfolding. Kristine Joy L. Dabbay
