My second year in college was the hardest. I was enrolled in subjects that required the submission of research papers as requirements. Add that to the fact that their deadlines were merely days apart. Finally, after finishing my last paper, exhaustion broke out of its cage and raided my apartment. And I was more than willing to welcome it.
For a long time, I slept. Sounded like some Proustian mantra.
But at 2 am, my phone rang. And a phone ringing at this time was the saddest metaphor for a lonely heart. The ringing seemed to come from the depths of a dark hallway, like some scene from a horror movie. I was at the edge of the hallway, feeling my way into the darkness, meanwhile the ringing kept on and on, echoing off from somewhere. When I opened my eyes, it was on the bedside table. When I took a breath, I felt as if I’ve resurfaced from a dive in the Marianas trench.
“Hello?” I said.
It was a woman’s voice. “Dan? Dan, please listen to me.”
I tried recalling what was my name. “No, I’m sorry, I’m not—”
“Please, Dan, I know I messed up, but please, give me another chance. I can be better. I can be better, please.”
“No, I’m sorry, you have the wrong number. This isn’t Dan. I’m hanging up—”
“No, Dan! Give me another chance or I—I will kill myself! I will kill myself! I swear to God right now I will kill myself!”
“Please don’t kill yourself,” I said. I got up. “Listen, I don’t know who you are, and I certainly don’t know who Dan is, but please don’t do that.”
“Just please, Dan. I will wait for you.”
“Wait for me where?”
She hanged up.
Now I feel like killing myself. My head was about to split open.
The woman called again, three days after the first one. It was half-past midnight. This time, I was up, lying on the bed waiting for my girlfriend back then who was at the kitchen fixing some sandwiches and beer. We had just got home from a friend’s party.
“Dan? Dan? I’m going,” the woman was saying.
“Uhm, miss, listen,” I began. “This isn’t Dan. So I really have no idea what you are talking about.”
“It doesn’t matter. I’m going, Dan. I told you.”
“Going where?”
“Remember that poem by Lourd de Veyra? We loved that poem, remember?”
“Listen, I really don’t have—”
The woman on the other line continued talking. “The city. What city? It doesn’t matter. All cities are alike.”
“What are you talking about? Can you even hear me?”
“I can hear you, all right,” the woman replied. “But Dan, you’re not gonna talk me out of this. So I’m going.”
It occurred to me that the best thing to do was to ride along. If she really was planning on going somewhere, then at least I’d know. In case somebody filed a missing case report, somewhere. “Where are you going at this time?”
“The station. Legarda,” she replied. Her voice turned soft this time. “I’m leaving the bag there.”
“Legarda? What bag?” I was surprised. She was just around the area.
“The bag, the books, everything,” she added. “I’m not taking them with me.”
“Why?”
“Because taking them with me means taking you with me.”
I decided to back off again. “Listen, miss, you really gotta understand: I am not Dan. I don’t know who you are or how you got hold of this number, but I’m certainly not the person you intend to speak with.”
“I heard you the first night, all right?” she replied. She sounded pissed. She was silent for a few seconds. “It’s just that, it’s hard.”
“Sounds like it.”
Again, silence. My girlfriend finally returned to the room with a tray. She spoke with her lips. Who is it? I raised a hand to tell her to wait.
“I’m sorry,” the woman said. “I have to go. I’m leaving the bag at the station.”
“O—Okay, I guess. I hope Dan, whoever he is, finds it.”
“He won’t. He’s already dead. I killed him.”
“What?”
The woman hanged up.
Puzzled, I put my phone down as my girlfriend sat on the bed with me. I drank some of the beer she brought.
“Who was it?” she asked.
I told her about the mysterious woman as we ate and she listened intently as if prying open the pages of a mystery novel.
“We should find the bag!” she exclaimed after I finished
“What?”
She looked so excited. “What if she really killed Dan? Wouldn’t the bag hold some evidence or something?”
“I think it’s best if we stay out of it.”
“Come on, don’t be a baby!”
“But we don’t know her! I mean, for all we know she’s some crazy person!” I said.
“Can we please, please, please go? We’ll just take a quick look. Come on, please? My blood is so alive I’d probably think about this until the day I die!”
“But it sounds dangerous!” I pressed.
“Then stay here. I’ll go.”
“Oh boy,” I sighed. I gulped down the rest of my beer and ate what was left of my sandwich before finally giving in.
We brought flashlights and waited for a jeep, but considering the time, there was almost none so we agreed to walk to the station. The streets were silent, and cars seldom past our way. Homeless families were soundly asleep on the sidewalk, with sacks as blankets. By now, their skin were oblivious to the frigidness of the night.
We lit our flashlights when we arrived at the station. We checked the grounds, the pebbles crunching beneath our shoes.
“Hey!” a voice roared. It came from the direction of the entrance to the station. It was the guard. He had a flashlight pointed at us, and a radio on his other hand.
“Sorry! We were looking for something,” she said.
“Someone,” I added.
“You have to come back later when the station’s open,” the guard replied. “You’re not allowed to loiter here.”
“No we’re here earlier tonight, I—uh—she…” I stuttered. “She’s just looking for her…”
“Found it!” she exclaimed. She ran towards a corner and sure enough, there was a bag. The corner where she ran to was the often neglected space created when the gates of the station were pushed from the outside. My initial thought was that it’d be a good spot to relieve the bladder after a night of drinking. My girlfriend took the bag. It was a purple backpack.
“You guys should watch over your belongings,” the guard said.
We just nodded and apologized for the trouble, then we walked out of the station grounds and back to my flat. None of us spoke on the way back. I eyed the bag—it’s brand spelled out Heartstrings, written in some girly typeface near the bottom.
“Don’t worry, I took a quick peek,” my girlfriend said. “There’s nothing dangerous inside.”
When we reached my flat she dropped the bag on the carpet and sat down on the sofa. She looked exhausted. She was not used to such long walks.
“Satisfied?” I asked her.
“Not until we open this!”
I sat beside her as she hastily unzipped the bag.
We pulled out the contents one by one. It seemed to have belonged to some Architecture student. There was a ruler, a T-square, a drawing compass, an assortment of pencils, and a notebook full of lecture notes. I flipped through the pages of the notebook. The handwriting was neat, but the notes were unsigned. Confusion was doused on us like gasoline on garbage, ready to be lit anytime now. All of the items were unnamed and they looked as if they were neglected for a long time.
Finally, my girlfriend pulled out the last item in the bag—which at first it seemed like a collection of playing cards wrapped in thin plastic. My girlfriend pried it open and realized they were pictures. A man and a woman…naked. They were nude photos of a couple, taken during their carnal activities: on bed, on a table, consensual fellatio, penetration—the works. They looked like our age. The man was tall and his body was well worked-out—he must be an athlete or something. The woman was quite beautiful. She had long hair and her eyes had a strange hue due to contacts.
There were eighteen photos all in all, printed in some cheap photo paper, probably by a home printer. We flipped through the pictures one by one, as if searching for some clues, or perhaps waiting for the pictures to talk and tell us what the hell was going on. But of course, none of the sort happened. My girlfriend wore a disturbed expression, while I didn’t know exactly what to feel. I sure didn’t get a boner from all these nude photos.
“What’s this?” my girlfriend suddenly said. She was pointing at something in a photo of the woman with the man’s penis over her face, the traces of sperm still on her cheek and eyebrows. My girlfriend turned the photo over, and there, scrawled in the same neat handwriting as in the notes, were the words: TAMAM SHUD. She reached for her phone and googled it. Her lips were shaking with anticipation.
“Finished,” my girlfriend said. “It’s Turkish for ‘finished’. It’s from some epic poem.”
I didn’t say anything.
She placed the photos on the glass table. “I guess that’s that.” She muttered but I knew she wasn’t convinced.
We tried deliberating what it all meant. Whether the guy was Dan and the woman was the one who’s been calling me but we came up with nothing. I tried calling the mysterious woman’s number, but it was in an out-of-coverage area. And I guessed it would remain there, forever.
I picked up the empty purple bag and tried inspecting it further, hoping there was something more in it, but we have already emptied it. I brought back the notes and drawing tools inside. I noticed on the front of the bag, beside the Heartstrings brand logo, were crude images of roses. And right after that were the words: “Friends are blossoms in the garden of life”.