Short Stories

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Bring!

“What? What’s happening?”

George, sleeping peacefully, was rudely awakened by her alarm clock at 8 in the morning. She stumbles for a while and realizes after a few seconds that her alarm clock was the cause of this disturbance in her natural world of rest.

She reaches over to her bedside table to check her mobile phone for new text messages. She got two: one from her best friend, Katrina, and one from her boyfriend, Mark. Both messages (good night!) arrived one after the other, at 10:54:38 pm and 10:576:08 pm respectively. Normally, she would have replied (good night! God and I love you!) right away but she was so tired from running around, doing research and interviewing people all day that she finally arrived at 8 o’clock last night, she only had time to wash her face and brush her teeth before going to sleep at 8:45 pm.

After ten minutes of mindless wandering and dream recalling, George finally forces herself to sit up, move her legs to the left side of her double bed, put on her red thong slippers and finally dragged herself slowly to her bathroom to take a hot shower.

Her mind goes blank as she lets the hot water from the shower head drench her face and wake her up finally. She stays there under the water, not moving, with her hands folded across her chest as if she was praying, with her eyes closed, for what seemed like hours. Finally, after five minutes really, she opened her eyes to reach for the bar of soap to clean her physical body.

After finishing her shower, and her other morning rituals (brushing her teeth and morning prayers), she goes down to the kitchen to fix herself some coffee before she starts to work on her stories and articles. She fills her red mug with instant 3-in-1 coffee and toasts some bread to go along with it.

While waiting for her bread to turn golden brown, she walks to the living room, beside the kitchen, which also doubles as her study, to turn on her laptop and check for new e-mail message. She has ten. Six from a writing support mailing list that she belongs to, one forwarded message about a new shoe store from her sister, one chain mail from an acquaintance, one forwarded joke from her and friend and one message from Sheila, her editor-friend, asking about the status of her latest article. She quickly scans through the emails, deletes the mailing list messages, jokes and chain mails and replies only to Sheila, informing her that it needs a bit more polishing and she’ll have the article by that evening. She clicks Send and, when the window confirming her message had been sent appeared, the toaster rings and she can finally eat her bread.

***

After polishing off her golden bread with egg spread, she goes back to her work table with a fresh mug of coffee. She opens the file on the cover story that Sheila was looking for and started editing. The cover story talked about five individuals who are all under 30 and have already accumulated their first million through the business they’ve started or through the day jobs they have. Two were sisters who ventured in to the food business 2 years ago and have now expanded their business with three more branches in Metro Manila. They used what they liked (food) and made it a profitable business because of “faith, hard work and being at the right moment at the right time”. They are now planning on adding two more branches in Metro Manila within the year.

George also included two friends who set up a literary magazine with several other friends five years ago and are now one of the best-selling literary magazines with a circulation of 60,000 copes distributed nationwide. They took a chance on a risk and it paid off. They always kept it a point to maintain their level of enthusiasm and commitment by not letting their work run their lives.

The last one is a distributions manager for a product manufacturing company. He started out as an intern and when an opening for management trainee came up, he applied and luckily got it. He eventually got promoted because of his hard work and diligence to assistant manager for productions and continued to make his way to the top. He attributes his success to “hard work and God”.

George is writing this article for a lifestyle magazine geared for college students, especially junior and senior college students and fresh college graduates. This magazine is designed to help out these people discover what they what and what they can do professionally the article is an inspirational/motivational story to help them boost their self-esteem of the readers and tell them that age shouldn’t hinder the from such dreams of success.

Just as she finished typing her closing statement, her mobile phone rings. It’s Sheila, asking about the article. Apparently she was out of the office, meeting with her publisher to discuss new concepts for the magazines and, obviously, hasn’t read her e-mail message yet. So George told her that it was finished and she just had to skim it over one more time before she finally sends it out. Sheila is relieved and glad and thanks George for all her help. They hung up after making dinner plans for tomorrow night.

***

After editing the story for the hundredth time, she finally emailed the cover story (The P1,000,000 Dream) to Sheila and got on the phone to order some Chinese take-out. She always ordered the same meals: sweet and sour pork, garlic shrimp and yang chow rice. George is the queen of delivered food and she has lived on it for years.

While waiting for her food (we deliver in 30 minutes or your meals free!), she goes back to her worktable, where a new email waits for her. It’s from her friend, Tin, asking for some help with an article. Her commissioned writer suddenly went Mia and she needed an 800-word survival guide for college freshmen article ASAP. Tin wants to know if George would be interested in writing it. George clicked Reply and told Tin that she’d be glad to do it and that’s he’ll try to have it by the end of the week, in three days.

Just as she clicked Send, her doorbell rang. Food’s here (arrived in 29 minutes)! She ran to the door, grabbed the food, quickly paid P200 plus tip to the delivery guy and ran back to her workstations. She cleared a space for her food and sat back down again to work on the article she promised for Tin. So much for finally getting some rest.

She immediately wrote a plan for the college survival guide article, keeping in mind the 800-word limit. While thinking of an introductory paragraph, her stomach whined and grabbed her Chinese food to put it in her mouth and recharge her energy and brain.

When nothing still came out after ten minutes, she decided to take a break, eat the rest of her food and call to check up on the restaurant/café that she owned with some friends. Their most trusted employee, Karen, answered the phone and told her that it was full house again since it was lunchtime after all. George was glad. The restaurant was already a little more than a year old and they’re already beyond the “new restaurant status” and it’s a good thing people still flock to it. They must be doing something good. She told Karen she’ll try to come by later that evening.

The restaurant/café was an investment she undertook with three other friends more than a year ago. Her friend, Lisa, knew the owner and they were accepting applications at that time for franchising the establishment and they thought “Why not try it?” And they did. A year later, people still have it included in their daily routines.

George goes back to her computer after she hangs up the phone and finishes her food. She tries to start the article again and made good progress, adding another two paragraphs. After an hour, she’s already written around a fourth of the article. She quickly saves it and starts burning it into the CD with all of her articles. She continues working on it until two hours and 300 more words later, she saves the files and burns it into the CD for the last time today.

She leans back on her chair and closes her eyes while massaging her head. After a few minutes though (of pure bliss!), she is jolted back to reality by the signal of incoming e-mail. She is not surprised to find two emails from friends in local magazines, both asking if George could review some items for them: two books (31 Songs by Nick Hornby and Living History by Hillary Rodham Clinton) and two CDs (Michelle Branch’s Hotel Paper and Stacey Kent’s In Love Again). They both need it in seven days. She stands up to get more coffee.

***

She brings out her special stash of barako coffee to brew. She always kept this for special occasions but she needed something stronger than her instant 3–in-1 coffee to calm her nerves. She quickly filled her coffee machine with water and ground coffee and turned it on.

She downed a glass of water awhile waiting for her coffee and sat down at the kitchen table to massage her throbbing head. She was starting to get migraines again and she hasn’t had a decent rest in weeks because of all the work she had to do. She was always running to interview someone or grabbing some research or meeting with her editor or serving and running the restaurant. She doesn’t have time to relax anymore.

Just then, the light indicator of the coffee machine turns off and she grabs a clean mug for her coffee. She takes it black and doesn’t even grimace. She turns to go back to her workstation but cannot stand looking at it. She turns to the other directions and heads over to the front door patio to sit on the swing that stays there.

She tucks her legs under her and continues to drink her black coffee while looking at the world in front of her. Outside she can see couples waling slowly, hand in hand, with no destination in mind. She can see owners jogging with their dog (or dogs) in hand. She can see mothers (sometimes with fathers) with their babies in strollers. All enjoying the late afternoon stroll, without the sun glaring in their eyes, heat enveloping them and car smoke blowing in their faces.

“Hi, George! How are you??”

It was her next-door neighbor, Mrs. Reyes, walking with her husband.

“I’m doing good. Out for your daily walk, eh?”

“Just working up our appetite for dinner!”

George laughed.

“Then one block’s all you need!”

“That’s why we’re on our way home now. We’re already hungry!”

“Bon appetit then!!”

George waves goodbye to the Reyeses and brings her mug to her mouth only to discover that it was already empty. Strange. She never tasted the bitterness of the black coffee in her mouth. She goes back inside and puts her mug in the sink, turns off her laptop, clears up her food, gets her bag and walks out the front door. Maybe she’ll go walk around, work up her appetite and just go wherever. Who knows where she’ll end up?

And guess what? George’s migraine is gone now.

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