Welcome to Envy Park (13 page)

Ugh. Eeeh. Bleach, for my brain.

He invited me to dinner that night and told me about
the show. They just shot the pilot, and it seemed to have gone
well.

"Do you still need me?" I said, as
I ate my mozzarella-stuffed burger, trying to get the thoughts of
where he was just hours ago and what he was likely doing out of my
mind.

"I think so," he said earnestly,
because he was nothing but earnest. "They might want me to do an
interview next time, so I can’t do as many takes."

"Why are you so nervous? You sound
fine when you talk to me."

"I go blank with other people.
Strangers."

"You chose a funny career for
someone who does that."

JM shook his head. "I didn’t
choose this, but it was offered, and people need me to do well
here."

Oh finally, something to talk
about other than the possibly hooking up with a married woman.
"Does your family live here?"

"We’re everywhere. My dad’s in
Australia. My mom is here. They’re not together
anymore."

"Sorry about that."

"It’s not a big deal. But my mom
really needs her own money, so... well."

"Does she work?"

"Yes, but there’s a lot of debt.
This isn’t the most secure job, but at least it’s easy and they
want me."

I took this for granted because I
noticed that people kept
looking
at him, but JM wasn’t exactly A list. He had one
job, and it was on a small show, and I wasn’t exactly being pushed
violently aside by screaming fans. Was he going to hit it big?
Maybe. But this also might be the best it was going to
get.

And then he’d have to fend for himself, like the
rest of us.

At least my entire livelihood wasn’t dependent on my
looks. How exactly would I have fared? Sure I had confidence now,
but I was judging against my own past performance (I knew I looked
better now than before), and not the prettiest faces in town.

JM

I. CAREER AND FINANCES

- Not really a career, not really stable

+ He has everything he needs though (for now)

II. FAMILY AND FRIENDSHIPS

- Complicated family relationships

- Complicated friendships

III. LOVE AND RELATIONSHIPS

- Complicated relationships

IV. PERSONAL FULFILLMENT

- Focusing on other people, can’t be fulfilling his
own needs right now

Chapter 17

The girl in the ad looked much younger than me, but
she was wearing a blazer and high heels and her hair was tied back,
so that probably meant she was my age. Or what stylists imagined
people my age looked like.

She was pushing a shopping cart
along an animated road and she was putting colorful boxes of
different sizes in her cart. A small box labeled "food." A slightly
larger one labeled "clothes." A huge one labeled "house." And then
a not so large but not so small one, "insurance."

A smartly-dressed lady who reminded me of my mom
facilitated the discussion, asking the eight of us fellow
twenty-something females in the room certain questions about the
ad, if it appealed to us, if we at all related to it.

"My box for food would be bigger,"
Roxie said.

It wasn’t the only thing she said. Roxie had an
opinion on everything from the model’s hair to her shade of
lipstick to the font face used for the slogan. She did disclose
that she worked in marketing, and these things mattered to her.

As for me, my contribution was pretty much just one
thing.

"It doesn’t address to me why
someone my age would buy insurance, the real reason," I said, when
asked directly, given I had been so quiet throughout.
"Fear."

-/\/\/\-

"So how was it?"

"Fine, excellent, until Moira here
made it morbid. I’m Roxie, by the way."

"Ashley. Thank you for coming,
both of you. You really did me a favor. As I said, coffee’s on
me."

Yes it made sense that Ashley, as
in Ashley Lorenzo, as in Ethan’s sister, would invite me to that
focus group discussion. It was being organized by her ad agency and
they needed "women in their late twenties who were starting to make
big purchases and investments" and that was me, exactly. Also it
was happening at three p.m. on a random Friday and not many of
Ashley’s employed friends could make it. She encouraged me to bring
a friend, and Roxie was always up for this.

"Morbid how?" Ashley asked as we
settled into the coffee shop at the ground floor of her office
building.

Roxie laughed, setting her bag
down on an empty chair. "
She
started going on about how the only reason that a
young woman thinks of buying insurance is because of fear. Of not
having enough, of leaving people behind without enough, blah blah
blah."

I sighed. "I don’t know how
helpful that’s going to be, but they did ask my
opinion."

"Oh I hope it wasn’t a waste of
time for you, Moira," Ashley said.

"Not at all. My unemployment hours
are infinitely more useless," I joked.

"And I welcome any opportunity to
get out in the afternoon and hang out with you, because you have
not been updating me lately," Roxie said, and that should have been
my cue to kick her under the table, but I wasn’t fast enough. "Are
you really done with kissing the guy?"

"Excuse me?" Ashley’s eyes lit
up.

"Roxie," I groaned, which was also
the wrong thing to do.

"Is this my brother?" Ashley
squealed, nearly.

Roxie’s mouth dropped open. "Your
brother lives in her building? What exactly is going on
here?"

"Nothing! Absolutely nothing." But
surely my face was bright red and I wished we had ordered coffee
first, so I could hide behind a mug. "Roxie doesn’t know what she’s
talking about."

"I will get us some drinks,"
Ashley said, "But please don’t change the topic."

I tried to anyway, but when she returned she
insisted on sticking to it.

"So, you and my
kuya
," she said. "What’s
the status really?"

"Excellent question," Roxie added,
nodding.

"There’s nothing. No status. In
fact he’s probably mad at me. I said some stuff and I haven’t seen
him in two weeks or so." The coffee was too hot but I took a big
gulp anyway.

Ashley shook her head. "He won’t
say anything. He’ll just disappear. He’s so good at that. But
you’re really with the other guy now?"

"What other guy?" I
said.

"What other guy?" Roxie
said.

"I asked him about you and he said
you were dating Julian Martin now."

"What?" I said.

"
Holy
shit
," Roxie exclaimed. "I didn’t know
this! You’ve moved on to strippers now?"

So they totally lost me, at least
from "other guy" I was supposedly dating onwards, and both of them
scrambled to catch me up.

"This guy, he lives in your
building," Ashley said, "He used to be an exotic dancer in
Australia and now he’s like a minor celebrity here. But videos of
him at his ‘previous job’ sort of went viral around here months
ago."

Roxie thrust her phone in my face,
a Google image search page open and featuring a scantily-clad
and
oiled
JM.
"He’s your neighbor?"

"It’s JM," I stuttered. "He’s this
really nice, sort of simple guy...and he’s a friend. Get that away
from me."

He didn’t mention any of this. Should he have? He
probably assumed I knew already.

"Well Kuya Ethan thinks you’re
with him," Ashley said.

"He can think whatever he wants to
think," I retorted. "It’s none of his business."

"But...you’re not with him.
Shouldn’t he know that? I’ll tell him that."

"Why should it matter?"

"What is going on?" Roxie
demanded. "I think you need to back up and give me a full update,
with names and dates and places please."

"I don’t need that much detail,"
Ashley said, much to my relief. "But I’m just saying, he should
know that you’re not really with this guy. I mean, I don’t know if
he’ll do anything about it, but at least he knows."

"It won’t matter anyway, right?
He’s leaving soon. I’m leaving soon."

"So that’s the drama?" Roxie said.
"Because you’re leaving at some unspecified time?"

"He’s leaving sooner!" I said
defensively. "It could be any day now. What’s the
point?"

Roxie crossed her arms. "I
disapprove."

"You’re not my mother."

Ashley sighed. "I’m disappointed,
to be honest. I actually thought he’d fight for someone, for
once."

So that stung a bit, because the
two weeks of silence from Ethan really just meant I
wasn’t
that someone. But
that was just one thing on top of a huge pile of WTF for this
conversation already. "You’re not my mother either."

With much difficulty I managed to get them to talk
about other things, but Roxie just had one last word on it when we
shared a cab home later.

"I’m still seeing Peter," she
said, out of the blue.

"What? You can’t be. Isn’t he in
Seoul now?"

"That was before. He’s in New
Zealand now. He comes home every few years. And we see each
other."

"What do you mean..."

And then it sunk in, what it
meant. Peter was an ex-boyfriend of Roxie’s, the one she dated
around the same time I was seeing George. He broke up with her when
he went to grad school abroad. He had been hopping around living
everywhere as some kind of literature professor since then, but I
didn’t think they were
that
in touch.

"But you’ve seen other people
since he left," I said.

She kept her eyes on the road,
which was useless because she wasn’t driving. "I know."

"So how does that
work?"

"We see each other when he’s
here."

"Is that...do you have
coffee?"

Roxie gave me a look. "Sometimes
not just coffee."

I whistled at that. "That is
screwed up. So that’s it then? You’re just going to pine for him
forever. What’s the deal with our ‘curse’ then? You had a reason
for remaining single all this time."

"I like thinking that I’m in the
same boat as you," she said. "You really have everything to look
forward to, you know."

"Don’t say that. My life
is...nothing’s in it right now. I wouldn’t wish this on you, when I
know what you’ve got going on."

"Stop saying that."

"Stop saying what?"

"That you have ‘nothing going on’
with you right now. Are you trying to make me feel better? I know
you’re lying."

Our cab driver coughed, and sort
of fidgeted uncomfortably.
Yeah, I know
the feeling, Manong
.

"I’m not lying, Roxie. I really
literally have
nothing
going on. I’m a bum and I only get to go out when I see you.
While you have so much. I don’t get this drama you’re making out of
it."

"Oh please," Roxie snapped, her
eyes sharp all of a sudden. "You have money, you got to live in
Singapore, you got to go out and experience the world and whatever.
And I know you think I’m a coward for not trying it, so don’t
even—"

"I never said that."

"No, but you thought it, I’m sure.
The way you keep saying that
you’ve got
nothing
is stupid, really, because what
does that even mean? What does that say about what I’ve done,
because I haven’t done half things you have—"

I bristled at this. "It’s not
supposed to say anything about your life, unless you’re being
insecure about it."

"Right. Make this about
me."

"It’s obviously about you! What
are we talking about?"

Roxie shook her head. "We are
talking about you going away, having a great time, and coming back
here telling everyone that it was no big deal. What’s up with that?
You don’t have to pretend to be
dissatisfied with your life
so we
won’t feel bad about ours. I’m not jealous of you at
all."

"Are you sure?" I retorted.
"Because maybe you wish you could just leave anytime, like me. That
you weren’t stuck here so Peter can just conveniently have you when
he’s in town."

"It’s not about that at all. I
shouldn’t have told you," Roxie said bitterly. "I don’t run away
from things."

"What does that mean?"

"It means, Moira, you talk a big
game about seeing the world and experiencing life but why is the
plan so specific and easy? Why so near? Why aren’t you in New York
or Greece or Kenya right now? Because you want to be just
slightly
out of your
mom’s reach, right? And now that you are, because she’s not in
Manila, you’ve got that distance, without really going
anywhere."