Fast Times, Pt. 1

September, only on 99.9 OneMetro Radio FM.

“Hey, listen up here, and what I’m about to say here is very important, uhm…fuck, what did you say was your name again?”

“Mel–,” the woman on the other line hesitates. I wonder what she was about to say there. Melissa? Melody? Melba? “Yeah, sorry, Annie. It’s Annie.” You’re a terrible liar, Melanie, I thought to myself with a smirk.

The radio host shadowed me in this humor with a faint chuckle of his own, but the gravity of the caller’s situation brought him back to his train of thought. “Right, Annie, look. Let’s step back and recount the facts here that you yourself told us. This scumbag of a live-in partner of yours got you knocked up, he asks you to take that trip to Singapore so you can get an abortion, and you come back home and catch him with another girl. Now you’re telling me you can’t leave him, I ask you for a reason and you can’t even give me a valid one?” he stressed as he pauses for a moment to take a deep breath. “I mean, not to play pseudo-therapist here but it sounds to me that you don’t see the worth in yourself. Because I’m sure as hell your precious Mr. Casanova doesn’t see it.”

“Mhmm,” Melanie/Annie mumbled.

“And you don’t disagree, right? Right, so I want you to do me a favor and do this one thing for yourself. Nay, make it two things. First off – LEAVE HIM, with a capital L. Second, I want you to stop looking down on yourself so much because you’re so much more than what you think you are,” the host quipped. There was a silence for some time until some sniffling was audible.

Look, I don’t want the call to end this way, but we’re running a little low on time and we still have some song requests in line. Please, please can you do that for me? Can I get that confirmation from you, love?”

“Mhmm, yeah uhm–,” the woman paused for some time. “Sorry, yeah, you’re right, I’ll take some time and think about that. Thank you so much DJ Flojo! I’ve been a big fan of yours since I was in high school.”

“Ah, thanks Annie, I really appreciate that. I hate to make this about myself, but whatever I can do to help, right?” Flojo replied. “And look, call us again, yeah? Hopefully things pan out better by then. Clicks. Damn, that was a heavy one. Uhhh, okay, so time check here it’s 8:21 in the morning, a cloudy Wednesday morning with just about forty minutes left in the show before I get outta here. Got some more calls and music for you guys, next up, how about some John Mayer? Here’s Back to You, only here in One Voice, One Sound, you’re listening to 99.9 OneMetro Radio.”

As soon as the cymbals came to life in the pre-chorus, the traffic lights just before the rotunda followed. I weave my way around to the other end of the juncture that elongates to the outskirts of Bonifacio where even more corporate spaces line up. In a district where C-level Mercedes-Benzes, affluent family-sized Alphards, and European sportscars are king, the 11-year old Corolla I have under me sticks out like an old, sore thumb. In all honesty, though, I didn’t mind as much. To me, a good car means it has three things: a non-defective air-conditioner, a well-maintained engine and brake, and a radio that has OneMetro in frequency. Everything else is either an obvious safety nuance or fluff.

I started driving this Corolla not more than five years ago, succeeding some guy who got fired by Mr. Lim for a DUI that led to a hefty fine and an unfortunate marriage between an electric post, a stray dog, and the car’s right headlight. Mr. Lim was adamant at first in giving me the keys. As a conservative, going from a drunk driver to a woman driver wasn’t of any difference to him, and he couldn’t afford to take on more risks on any of the ten Corollas in his fleet. But when I passed my trial driving week with flying colors, he had no choice but to suspend his prejudices. “Somehow, you got the car in better and cleaner condition after what that son of a bitch did!” he bellowed that one night when I dropped him off at a Chinese restaurant for Mid-Autumn festivities. He gave me a hearty pat on the back, shouted what I believe were Mandarin expletives at the parking boy, and kept the door ajar as he hopped towards the aquarium-lined exterior of Fortune Star 88. The next five years drove by.

The digital clock on the dashboard read half past eight, exactly a minute past the grace period allowed to wait for a passenger by the ride-hailing application that Mr. Lim enrolled the car and myself to. It’s merely a policy, mind you, and they have no way to automatically cancel these bookings unless the technology has advanced enough to determine if somebody’s sitting at the back. For good measure, I give my customers an extra minute or two.

I did a shoulder check for the backseat just to assure I didn’t miss a spot when I was cleaning the car the night before. Spotless. Taking a peek at the rear, there remained no signs of a Raymond Legazpi who was supposed to come from the bank headquarters I’ve been waiting by. So far there was an elderly man rushing to come into the building, and a couple of women in office wear with the bank’s colors having a cigarette for breakfast. I look to the side and see a couple young skateboarders tying their shoes, much to the irate of a passing Caucasian man strolling by.

“And so that was Kitchie Nadal, a little bit of OPM flavor coming in with Same Ground,” DJ Flojo echoed from the radio. “It is now 8:31 in the morning, and remember, the phone number is 8603-4999, for today’s topic–”. I zoned off, pivoting my focus to my phone to cancel this booking. Just as I was about to press the big red button, I notice a man in a pinstripe suit raising his hand at the far end of the complex. He wasn’t there earlier, surely now, I muttered as I squint my eyes and drive my way towards.

As I inched the Corolla closer to arm’s length, the man started rapping on the side of the car, a temperament I found to be quite common with the business folk. He climbs to the backseat and slams the door shut. He’s on the phone, talking ardently to some client about a report. Must be important, or at least, he makes it sound like it is. He raises his head just enough for him to glare at the rear-view mirror and a simultaneous view of his right index finger circling the thin air – a motion for me to start. Needless to say, the observation of a banker in the wild ended at that. My eyes darted for the phone map; on to Makati.

I cranked the radio volume’s knob down, the silence and the muffled client on Mr. Legazpi’s phone dominating the interior. As much as I loved listening to DJ Flojo’s uncompromising advice and turn-of-the-century music taste in the morning, I made it a cardinal rule to defer to my passengers’ inherent preference of not having the car radio take over their sub hour-length’s moment of peace and comfort. Besides, Flojo has never been most people’s cup of tea.

We hummed along a narrow street of reinforced pavement valleyed by shedding acacias and the high walls that house the most privileged. Congestion is insane at this point. I creep my eyes up at the mirror, wondering what the man was up to. He was peering outside, tapping the phone on his lap with his one hand and resting his chin on the other; seemingly deep in thought, laser focused at what’s inside his head rather than what’s out there. All I knew was his name and that he was on his way to Makati in this particular Wednesday. Who knew if this was a weekly thing, what he could be doing at a bank, who he was talking to. It’s none of my business, after all, I thought, as the traffic rocked back and forth to the careful motion of the falling leaves.

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Fast Times, Pt. 2 coming soon…

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