By Crystal Koo
USHA DOESN’T EXIST outside of
Migs’s admittedly enjoyable dreams.
She’s a vessel for excitement, a destination for his neurons to fire at
because they’re bored of the pathways his resentment takes when he thinks of
Lani. So bored they’re willing to go all the way to answering Aimee’s call for
interviewees to make himself feel like he really is cheating on Lani, which he
doesn’t have half the courage to do.
The woman with the bright red
blouse and the effortlessly chopsticked hair is at the corner table with an
untouched coffee.
“Hi,” says Migs, glancing at the
blank notebook the woman has been pretending to stare at.
“Are you Aimee?”
“Migs, right? Hi.” She’s pretty, a
morning bell, angular yet comforting, new world, warm, real. “Thanks again for
doing this.” She brings out a recorder. Migs imagines his own voice, which
would probably sound nothing like what he imagines, echoing in a small art
gallery in Makati, telling everyone, no, no, you don’t get it, I still love
Lani (Aimee assures him all names will be bleeped out), this has nothing to do
with how much I love her.
Migs tells Aimee about Lani. Lani,
a right jab at the jaw, a dramatic orchid.
Don’t leave the towel bunched up on the table, for God’s sake wipe the
countertop when you’re done with the dishes, that mothering role Lani had slipped around her shoulders without
introduction, like an earthquake, like a cold. Migs waits for Aimee as she
bends over, taking notes, impressions, then he tells her that for the past year
he’s been sleeping with another woman, Usha.
“Why do you do it?” asks Aimee.
Her fingers are long and candle-like.
Lust. A lack of
self-discipline.Usha is a trainee with a cubicle in front of Migs’s at the
advertising firm. She was put under Migs’s team and eventually under Migs’s
something else.
“Do you love Usha?”
No. He needs Usha but he doesn’t
love her. He loves Lani.
How often does he meet Usha? Once
a week. Does Usha know about Lani? Yes, Migs had told her on the first night,
he’s not a nasty person. Is Usha in love with him? He can’t say but he hopes
not.
Would he ever leave Lani for Usha?
No.
Why did he agree to talk to her
about this?
Migs’s voice is thick. “I don’t
know.”
Aimee thanks him and turns the
recorder off. Migs doesn’t want her to leave yet. “I can tell you what it feels
like, that difference,” he says. “Between Usha and Lani.”
Aimee looks at Migs askance, a
movement that Migs instinctively loves. “Sort of like what you get from it that
Lani doesn’t provide?” she says.
Migs likes the way she puts it.
“It’s cathartic, I know,” says
Aimee, staring intently at Migs, who can’t look away. “You’re not the first
cheater I’ve interviewed. Yeah,
intentions. Motivations. I want to focus on those anyway.” Aimee turns the
recorder on again. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
Later Aimee orders a coffee for
Migs and starts talking about the news, recent movies she’s seen. Migs knows
she’s trying to ease him back into the world she think he’d want to be back in,
the world where he doesn’t cheat on Lani. Migs smiles but the guilt sloshes
around his tongue and down his stomach. •
> Crystal
Koo was born and raised in 
No comments:
Post a Comment