Spirit Wars (10 page)

O
nce in
your life you’ll find the perfect love and it’ll be everything you imagined,
whether or not you stayed a believer. You’ll find it at the most unexpected
time and in the most unassuming place. It masquerades as something commonplace,
neither remarkable nor memorable. It just happens.

This
is the beauty of the whole thing because later when you look back, there’s no
landmark by which you can say, “Here it is. This is where love started.” Just
this faint recognition of a dream you forgot you ever had and an inescapable,
almost frightening sense of rightness, like the softest scrape of tumblers
shifting into place as the key fits the lock.

This
is what Sam and I had. We
are
soulmates, and it pains me to think I had
to lose her for good before I started believing. Worse, this is the same effect
Sephtimus and I aim to recreate and trap Celestina Conti with.

I
don’t intend to teach Sephtimus any of those reverse-psychology seduction
techniques that are peddled by pick-up artists and have the accuracy of a BB
gun at carnival. But if there was one thing he learned from our lessons together,
I’d rather it was confidence; the spine to stand tall and speak like an
attractive and desirable person (or whatever the hell he is).

I
wish it were all up to me and being sure of oneself was something I could pass
on. But apart from having unresolved identity issues of my own, I’m coaching a
lover who hides 24 hours behind a mask, incinerates others as a knee-jerk
response, and dresses and mopes like he expects rain to fall anytime.

For
someone who oversees the eternal punishment of tens of billions of souls, there
are far too many battles waiting to be fought inside Sephtimus’ frame, too many
inner demons needing to be faced; what he tries to cover up with bravado and a
crabby personality. I never could have imagined I’d be playing psychologist to
the Grim Reaper, but I guess if it wasn’t true in the beginning it’s true now,
Death’s becoming more and more human.

Now,
from the
little I know about the workings of the female heart, those gifts and show of
wealth that some men are too quick to employ act like an invisible barrier that
keep them from getting what they want. They’re magnets that have had their
polarities switched. What we need is a sleight-of-hand – in and out fast, nick
the girl’s heart with the left while her brain’s busy trying to figure out what
the right is doing. The tall, dark, rich, and handsome type might as well be a
neon-colored ninja in our limited timeframe.

O
ut of the
blue, like an answer from heaven or wherever else answers come from, I see a
dark horse on the magic-mirror screens: Manchester Imagay, Filipino
barista
,
dishwasher and loser. By some freakish stroke of luck, he’s the closest man to
the dream girl.

Although
Sephtimus is forbidden from interfering with human affairs, nothing prevents
him from having a bit of clean fun once in a while. Like the freedom of a
naughty but harmless imp. Our con offers itself thus: We slip a mickey into the
tool’s bedside water, he calls in sick the next day, but then Sephtimus shows
up at work wearing a human costume to put the whole Mission Impossible
franchise to shame.

****

Every
trouble starts with a girl. A quick browse through history will show you this:
Eve, Delilah, Helen of Troy, Marie Antoinette, Monica Lewinsky… you’d suppose I
know better but no. For my own personal hell I think the she-devil has never
come in a sweeter name: Celestina Conti. Full-blooded Italian. Model. Love of
my life.

In
my mind she’s always been that: my Evenstar, the unreachable, most amazing,
10-point girl ever to be featured in my dirty mind. That’s her sitting in her
usual corner of the coffee shop, basking in her effortless luminosity.
Completely independent of and oblivious to my existence.

And
this is me behind the counter. Yep, this guy. The meek,
they-don’t-come-any-more-ordinary-than-him Joe whose face and name you’d forget
just as soon as you’ve placed your order. Hi. As you can see here on the name
tag, the name’s Chester. The full name, believe it or not, is Manchester
Imagay. Ih-ma-gaι. Mind the pronunciation and don’t you start making jokes
coz I’ve heard them all.

I’m
working part-time here at Brew Bear Cafe where Lessa’s a VIP customer; day just
wouldn’t be complete without her. I don’t really know what to tell about myself
and coz squeezing my way into the national workforce and making ends meet are
hottest on my list right now, don’t be surprised if somewhere along this
introduction I start to sound like I’m trying to get employed.

Like
I said, my face and body are the sort that never leave an impression. There’s a
word my English-major friend has for this exact situation: nondescript. It’s
the stuff security guards have and hate and the stuff the criminal element
would love to have. Well, I’m looking to trade any time any day.

Or
not. Be careful what you wish for and all that. Sometimes I think it’d be nice
if, to make up for what I’m lacking in the looks department, I had more brain
cells or something. Alas, as God or the Fates would have it, no such luck. I’m
what you see is what you get. Inside my skull and out of it.

I
don’t have a lot of talent either. But it’s true I can make a mean cup of joe
if you belong to the crowd who gets a kick out of it. I don’t mean to brag but,
I don’t know, I responded pretty well and fast to the training. It’s like I
just take a look at people and – bam! – I just know, you know, what flavor
coffee they’d be and what and how much of it I’m gonna put in the mix.

My
job here at the Bear has put me right in the middle of humanity, the pulsing,
vibrant mess that it is; because a coffee shop’s one of the few places in this
insanely competitive world where people, strangers among other perfect
strangers, can actually sit back and take it easy. Women in particular are
willing to put on their reading glasses and tuck their feet up under them to
read their favorites – Paolo Coelho, John Green, Veronica Roth, Nicholas Sparks
– I just read and memorize the names off the covers, I was never much of a book
person. But here among many of the most heavenly beauties ever to grace the
city, I feel truly blessed.

There’s
the hottie I and my shift buddy like to call Mocha because she’s always buried
deep in her headphones and her skin’s the sexy brown color of those RNB singers
at MTV. Then there’s Green Tea Frap because her figure’s the incredibly willowy
yoga kind, which should be great for bed, my co-barista insists though I’m sure
as hell he wouldn’t know a boob from a bag of sand if he were tested on both.
There’s Raspberry, Vanilla, Strawberries and Cream, and then there’s Celestina
– Lessa – a.k.a. venti triple shot, two pump vanilla, non-fat, extra-hot, light
foam, light caramel Caramel Macchiato, the most high-maintenance chic of all.
Comes and goes in a nice Bentley ride and an even nicer Gucci scent. Best catch
ever, elegance through and through and just oozing with the X-factor.

Every
night I lie in bed I pray to God for the chance to spend one whole night alone
with her. No sexual pun intended, just having the most interesting and intimate
conversation till the break of day. A snowball’s chance in hell, I know.

****

With
a light, reverent touch, the man’s fingers catch the oscillating crucifix of
the rosary dangling from the rear-view and rub it for protection. This cabbie
should be both a religious and superstitious man; in other words, your typical
Filipino. From the steadiness of his hands and the deftness with which they
weave the cab in and out of traffic, I learn that he’s seen a lot of crazy
accidents on the road but never once thought anything of them, or felt anything
out of the ordinary because of them – at least nothing weird enough to mess up
his driving instincts and freak him out of finishing a job.

But
years of driving a cab sharpens a man’s intuition of people, of the different
strangers he picks up on the road. Plus he’s listened enough times to stories
of the “sixth-sense” feeling that forebodes a really bad accident or a violent
holdup, what the old-timer drivers are fond of telling.

His
own psychic moment comes with the most mundane sign: the car radio wavers to
another station just as he picks up a fare. From mellow, cruising light rock,
it’s now growling and disturbing death metal.

The
first thought that enters his mind as he lays eyes on Sephtimus is, quite
ironically, that there’s been a death in the family. The mint-fresh Manchester
Imagay mask is as smooth as a babe’s ass or a grown man’s face frozen in
catatonia. More importantly, I can sense how little by little the cabbie’s
giving in to irrationality, the way you’d be afraid that something bad has
happened to you or a loved one a thousand miles away.

My
mind-reading abilities are working overtime again. From the backseat, I share
the man’s nameless fear like what the veteran drivers describe: the feeling
that he’s about to have a serious accident and he’s all at once inadequate for
the task at hand. The only trouble is, he doesn’t have the heart to tell an
otherwise normal passenger to get out and walk. 

“Carreon
St. Downtown. Take Lourdes Boulevard.”

As
the cabbie mindlessly races up the street, he steals another glance in the
rear-view and discovers that his fare’s young – in fact, they could’ve been on
the same grades in elementary school, he guesses from the face looking all
innocent, effeminate, and just a little blanched (Sephtimus has been sitting on
the edge of his seat). And were it not for the palpable saturation of
melancholy, Chester Imagay would be the type that young girls let in as their
male confidant.

Another
curious thing is how the passenger has stood in the black mouth of no-man’s
alley as though he had an offer that the devil himself prepared. Dressed in
some khaki uniform, spotless and starched, he waited there as though he
belonged to the place – or owned it. The cabbie decides to keep an eye on the
fellow, as much as he could take it off the road.  

If
lone passengers at night are cautious, it follows that the guy at the other end
is on guard too. A cabbie is perhaps even more cautious of who he carries. It’s
a good thing there’s the panic button under the radio and working for a big
taxi company has its upsides. Help could be as close as the next block.

“Are
the tips big at night?” Sephtimus asks out of the blue. Still uncomfortable
with human speech and much too proud to make mistakes, he ingeniously picks out
the moment when the driver isn’t looking to send forth bursts of telepathic
signals that come across like words.

The
cabbie (Ray, as introduced by his ID hanging with the rosary) checks him out in
the rear-view again before grunting an indefinite answer. Sephtimus has
slightly improved from a throat-ulcerated, malnourished Mafioso to a wimpy
undergrad with glasses and braces and whose only saving grace is perhaps his
newfound voice, a rather pleasant blend of a gruff bark and the kid’s natural
geeky whine; now deep and whole.

“I
think,” Sephtimus continues
speaking
in the local tongue, “people should
make it a point to always tip the driver that takes them home at night.”

Now
in all his seven years as a cab driver out of his twenty-six as a human being,
Ray has never heard anything make better sense. “You think so?” He joins in
casually but with little expectation for a high-quality conversation, no
different from the reckless way he switches lanes.

“Has
nothing to do with security,” the young passenger keeps on speaking in that
absent-minded way of his, like he’s been living by himself a while. “Has
everything to do with memory.”

“With
what?”

“Memory.
What guides all those pet pigeons back home. They’re actually very much like
you, you know. They just follow signposts and landmarks. You’d be surprised.”

“No
kidding.” Ray
is
surprised. Especially because he was a pigeon-breeder
himself once in his fleeting youth. Still.

“What’s
that got to do with my tip?”

The
young man’s gaze is vacant, but unlike the eyes of countless other passengers
who have sat and gone, his seem to swallow all the city-lights outside and give
none back.

“I
suppose,” Sephtimus replies after a long pause, “lone passengers on their way
home are wounded one way or another. All these lights outside are tempting but
fake. You’re always welcome and everyone laughs with you, but only for as long
as you’re a paying customer or a dear friend. In the end, they all say goodbye
and you’ve got to have that one place that you can call home. When all other
doors close, there should be one door left that’ll open for you.

“…
A taxi offers an altogether different kind of companionship. Right from the
start, it doesn’t promise what it can’t give. You can say it doesn’t deliver
but it does deliver you. Provided you have the magic words. You just say them
to the driver and they chase away all the coldness and strangeness outside.
Little by little, everything starts to become familiar. It’s memory that’s
leading you, that’s taking all the turns by itself. And you don’t need to trust
that at the end of the road, someone’s waiting for you, that a bed or a warm
meal’s made because these things are almost always there. Can you imagine what
a luxury that is?”