KJ
11:29am
BZZZZ! Bzzzzzzzzzzz!
“Ehhhh ohhh, uh oh... –what?” Khirt John wakes up to an insistent buzzing sound. He stares at his mobile phone cross-eyed; why was it shaking so, and blinking at him? Why did it disturb and bother him from his dreams?
“Ay oh, shit!” suddenly he remembers, and through the fog, in his eyes, the date and time numbers on the screen grew clearer - it was Monday already! He jerks upright in bed. “Eleven thirty, oh shit!?” he exclaims to nobody. Except the cockroach that scuttles and slides down his wall – and the cockroach also looked late for something!
“Shit! Gotta get to work!”
Khirt rolls out of bed in his sweaty vest and shorts, kicking over his fan. He jumps up, pulling faces into the grubby sink-side mirror, runs a wooden toothbrush twice up and down on his teeth, then rummages his hands through his greasy mop of curls piled on his forehead. No time to shower or shave! He pulls on a yellow t-shirt and grabs up his phone from the charger.
Eleven forty-five. “Shit!”
Khirt runs for the door, takes his backpack from the hanger, pulls on his flip-flops as he crashes headlong through the doorway. He bounds down the concrete steps two-at-a-time, leaping to the landing, rapidly descending from his tiny apartment on the 11th floor to the underground carpark. He squeezes between the parked vehicles, keys in hand, and dives headlong into his rusting Honda. The ignition fights him and he twists the key left, then right, then strikes the steering wheel –with his forehead.
“C’mon man,” Khirt gasps. “Go, go, go!”
He twists and turns the key. The interior rattles, the engine clatters and grinds and pops as a cloud of grey-black exhaust fumes billow around the car. The smell of gas fills his nose and he grins.
“Can’t be late, Sir Boss will kill me!” Khirt yanks on the gear stick; reversing in a tight half-circle, narrowly avoiding taking the paint off a parked Jeepney. Then he guns for the exit, bouncing the Honda over the speedbump and out into the street.
The cracked glass of the radio display flickers with blue light and the speaker’s buzz into life. Grace Jones sings “Pull up to the bumper, baby,” her voice crooning seductively as he digs into the morning traffic and wrestles his way uptown.
Khirt plants his mobile phone in the plastic holder. The screen lights up immediately with the glowing face of a girl grinning; all teeth, pink dimples, big black eyes, face surrounded with dyed golden curls, impossible filtered colors, digitally painted-on cat ears and whiskers; a frame of flashing hearts and flowers.
“Good morning to you, baby!” Khirt half-sang in the style of the song. “Have you missed me?”
PING! The phone buzzes in reply. An icon pops up on the screen.
“What’s this?” Khirt asks himself, rhetorically. He touches the icon and the screen fills with the text:
“Dear KJ,
Thank you for your sweet emails every day. I love to read them at night in bed. You really are such a thoughtful lover, and because you are special to me, I’ve made a treat, just for your eyes only. Vitamins for your eyes, haha. Look and enjoy and think of me <3!
Love,
Gem Reyes XO
File attached.”
The lights ahead of the car change from green to red. The car pulls to a juddering halt at the crossing. People scuttle from both sides of the street in front of the hood of his Honda, none of them even stopping to glance inside or make eye contact. He smiles to himself and touches the attachment paperclip icon.
The screen cycles from email, to the image viewer, the display fills with a pixelated image: it is his girl, Gem Reyes – the Pinay girl from his mobile wallpaper. She’s leaning forward, dressed in a white tank top and tiny blue jean shorts, buttons and zipper undone and showing a mass of smooth belly. A valley of cleavage between the large round mounds of her breasts – big nipples dark against the cloth, like the tips of two fingers, pointing right at him. Her tongue licks across her perfect white teeth, and along the left side of her parted red lips. Her hair swirls out, and despite the low resolution, he touches the screen, imagining her hair – smooth, soft; like silk on his fingers.
“Mmmm thanks, I love you more, baby,” Khirt whispers to the screen. “Much more.”
