The Chosen by Lee Borromeo

Shadows

She was reading Love in the Time of Cholera. The campus bus stop was deserted; crickets were chirping. The lights came on; there was an orange sunset in the background. She was used to reading here, in the bus stop. This was her special place; here, her friends were all the writers and poets who had ever dreamed of love. She dreamed of him, her someone special. He was in her books, in her dreams, in her secret moments of loneliness. She was in love, but she never knew who it should be.

The bus would take another fifteen minutes; she would not finish the book.

"Hi." It was a stranger's voice, and she saw a pair of brown leather shoes connected to a pair of brown slacks. She looked up; green shirt, brown eyes, brown hair.

"Hi. Are you alone?"

"No; I have my books."

Silence.

"Mind if I sit?"

"If you like." She moved towards the other side of the bench. There was no wind. The crickets had stopped chirping. She was still trying to read the book.

"'You always read?"

"No. not all the time," she answered warily. Headlights appeared in the distance.

"Your bus is here."

The bus slowed down, heaving a sigh as it stopped.

"Goodbye."

"Goodbye." She boarded the bus. The bus started moving. She looked back, and he was still there, waiting, looking off into the distance.

"Hi." He was there again, as usual. Always in earth-colored clothes, too.

"Hi." She smiled. Ever since she had first met him two months ago, they had gradually become friends. They never asked about each other's history; they only found out about each other's private selves. She knew he liked Gregorio Brillantes' Distance to Andromeda, he knew she liked Jessica Hagedorn's The Dog-Eaters. They both liked Garcia-Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera, -- and, interestingly enough, Chocnut chocolate bars. They talked about what they wanted to talk about: all the romantic cliches in the world, all the corniest love songs and courting strategies, anything at all that could be connected to love. The monsoon rains of June passed into the typhoons of July. It was now August, the month of overcast days and stormy nights. She leaned on him, his lean frame somehow pleasant to feel, to touch.

"Let's go somewhere else," she whispered into his ear. The sunset was beautiful today, red and orange with a fringe of blue. Her chin was on his shoulder, and she could smell his hair; a fresh, sweet smell not unlike early-morning grass.

He looked at her, and for the first time that she could remember, a shadow passed across his face.

"I'd rather not, please."

"But why? We never go anywhere; don't you get tired of this place?" She stared at him, her eyes trying to understand his hesitance.

"I... can't."

"But why?" She was exasperated. What was so wrong about going somewhere else, she said with her squinting eyes and pursed lips.

He sighed. He stood up, shuffled in a circle, looking at the ceiling, before he finally looked at her.

"`How do I love thee? Let me count the ways;' do you...know what you've done? All those novels and poems, all those lines of romance and cadenced love; did you really think nothing would happen? When you started reading all these books here in the bus stop, you started wishing, in your secret heart. You cried out to me. I am became what you made me, here in the bus stop, with your thoughts, with your feelings, with your loneliness.

"That is what I am: your little piece of Spring."

The bus came. The headlights intruded into their privacy. She ran to the safety of its fake leather seats, her tears threatening to dignify the cheapness of the upholstery. He was still there, standing, looking at her, his eyes pleading, the brown eyes and brown hair catching the dying rays of the sunset.

The bus started to move. The bus stop drew farther and farther away; only then did she notice its green posts, its brown roof, the shades so like his clothes and his hair. She saw him starting to fade into the colors of the bus stop, into the posts, the roof, the brown benches, the green grass around it. The last she saw of him were his eyes, begging her to stay.

She never went to the bus stop anymore; She read her books in cafes, restaurants, and in crowded places. She read in her bedroom, in school; she read, again, Love in the Time of Cholera by the waters of the bay. She read everywhere, but never in the bus stop.

The heat of May had been too much for her; the breeze refused to blow today. She was now sitting on a bench inside a gigantic mall, and all these people were passing by her, everyone going nowhere in particular. She was reading the line "How do I love thee," when she saw a familiar pair of shoes and slacks walking towards her.

"Hi."

She looked up.

"Hi."

She looked at him. He smiled, his eyes the color of the bus stop's roof.

"Let's go to a restaurant on the third floor; It's a nice place. I go there often."

"Sure."

He took her by the hand, and she led him to the escalator.

Please send feedback to Lee Borromeo

The Chosen main page