Young Underpaid Professionals

FICTION posted by Rica

If it could only make me forget, she blurted out one day while zipping up her white jacket, not really referring to anything. She had suddenly thought of something that escaped her mind just as quickly as she had remembered it.

Olivia loved going to Masagana and back. She couldn’t understand why the other jeepney passengers hated traveling on Taft Avenue. As for her, she remembered adoring the busy street.

What’s that thick dark smoke, Olivia said to herself. I can’t seem to smell it.

And what’s a pool doing in the middle of the street, she asked the jeepney driver. Where’s the street anyway?

That store, Olivia said to her friend one day while they were somewhere in Taft still, it only sells stationeries. Weird, she said again, but that’s where I bought this jacket.

You’re not wearing a jacket.

Told you that store’s weird. You can’t even see the jacket.

Weird, her friend said.

Who’s he, Olivia said, looking across the street.

You have nicer skin now, said her friend. What happened to your pimples? And the rashes?

Why, I had them?

And your nose, the friend said, what did you do to it? How much?

It’s always been like this.

You seem to have grown three inches.

I’ve always been 5’8″.

Are you on a crash diet? You seem to be losing weight.

I eat regularly. Who’s he again?

The one smiling? You cut him out of your memory just as fast as you could cut him out of all the pictures you have together? That fast, eh?

I don’t know him. Where are we anyway?

Still in Taft, waiting for a ride home. Or have you forgotten?

What’s that thick smoke?

Exhaust from jeepneys.

You don’t seem to like it.

Neither did you, until now.

It doesn’t smell bad at all.

Your make-up, it changed colors.

Oh, I changed them to blue. I didn’t like green anymore.

I swear you’ve changed.

Like my make-up?

You seem to be wearing some protection. Like a second skin.

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