Once Upon a Sunset

by Tif Marcelo

  Speaking of …

  “Wait a sec, lemme snap a shot,” Margo said, just as Roberta was about to take a bite out of her fritter. The woman grumbled playfully but set it down on her plate.

  Margo angled her camera to get the entire delicious display into view and uploaded it into her feed. Instantaneously, notifications rang out from responses to the photo, emojis of hearts and heart-eyes. But it didn’t have the same effect on her—it didn’t make her grin. A feeling of satisfaction didn’t come. But she pushed those thoughts away as she noted the time on her phone.

  “We’re due at the airport in a few hours. Is Cameron done with the video edit?”

  “Did you have any doubt?” a male voice answered from the doorway that connected their room with Cameron’s. He stepped out onto the balcony, looking more relaxed than Margo had ever seen him. In the last couple of days, she had witnessed him shedding several layers of formality, from his polo and jeans to polo and shorts. And now, after a trip to the local gift shop, an eclectic-patterned short-sleeve button-down, shorts, and sandals.

  She gasped because he was so … sexy. Then she flushed at the fact that she thought the word sexy, and then she was mortified that she thought Cameron was sexy. Not handsome, but sexy, and not in a suit but in a casual, everyday outfit.

  Truth was, while there hadn’t been any more handholding since arriving in New Orleans, she wondered if there might be more in their future.

  As in, hopefully all the time.

  “What’s that look for?” Cameron asked.

  Margo snapped to, and she cut her gaze back to Roberta, who eyed her through narrow lids. “Nothing. I was just thinking of … Anyway, let’s see the video. Our fans are waiting.”

  Cameron set the laptop on the patio table. He scrolled and tapped to open the editing program. “Ready?”

  “More than,” Margo said, setting her focus on the screen, to rev up her anticipation for what would be their second video here. Since arriving, despite her lackluster enthusiasm, they had been productive. Their first video caught fire, their subscribers multiplying and their accounts’ cross promotion causing followers to jump on their video bandwagon. This video, of them on the bus, mixed with shots of the local foods they’d eaten, would no doubt be a hit. It was fifteen minutes of an all-around view of New Orleans, the sweet-spot time frame for a short attention span.

  But as she watched, the only person she thought of was her daughter, whose attention she had not been able to grab at all. Of all the people in the world whom she would have loved to have seen this video, it should have been Diana, not a bunch of strangers. And now, more than ever, she felt less accessible, in the Philippines.

  Where Margo should be.

  No. No, that was wrong thinking. This was where Margo was supposed to be, exactly where her mother instructed her to be—discovering new places and new ways of understanding who she was.

  “So, what do you think?” Roberta asked, in anticipation. “Good, right?”

  “Not just good. It’s great. It’s better than great. Great work, team.” Margo took a bite out of her beignet and shut her eyes to savor the sugar rush. She was in New Orleans, eating a beignet, damn it. Who would want anything different? With a full mouth, she said, “Let’s post it.”

  * * *

  Their flight to Los Angeles was that afternoon at two, which put the threesome at the airport at a little before noon. Bone-weary from all the walking they’d done the past couple of days, Margo pulled her hard-shell suitcase with one hand and held a to-go cup of tea in the other as she headed to the check-in line. As much as she was on social media, there were still habits that she clung on to: banking in person, snail mail, and checking into a flight in person.

  “Over here, North American Airlines,” Margo called behind her. Roberta and Cameron were picking up the rear, though Roberta had her phone to her ear.

  “Margo.”

  Margo turned, now behind the last person in line at the counter. Roberta gestured for her. Margo scrunched an eyebrow and shook her head. Another family had gotten in line behind her, and she didn’t want to lose her spot.

  Roberta gestured again with her hand. “Come here,” she whispered.

  Margo heaved a sigh. She wasn’t a stickler for things, but the last thing she wanted to do was rush through security. But she left the line anyway.

  “What’s wrong?” Margo asked.

  Cameron spoke this time. “Nothing. Except that this is the wrong flight.”

  “Um. No, it’s not,” she said matter-of-factly, then scoured her brain again. Was she wrong? She pulled the information from her memory. “North American flight 1241 to LA, right?”

  “It is right, for us, but not for you.”

  “But we’re on the same flight.”

  “No, we’re not. Or, we won’t be, soon.” Roberta’s eyes flashed with mischievousness. “Cameron and I will be going on this flight, but you’re going on Pacific Airlines, to the Philippines.”

  “What … are you talking about?”

  Her friend rolled her eyes. “I mean, I called the airlines and there’s a flight to the Philippines with stops in San Francisco and Taiwan that leaves in a couple of hours. There’s a seat available on that flight. And I think you should go.”

  Margo shook her head. “That’s nuts!”

  “Not nuts. It makes perfect sense. You’re not in this,” Roberta said.

  At her friend’s implication, Margo’s shoulders slumped. Roberta was right. “I’m … sorry—”

  Roberta threw her arms around Margo. “We don’t need your apologies, Margo. We would feel the same way. But we also know you won’t go unless there’s no other choice. You’re scared. So we’re telling you that you have to go. You don’t need to worry about us. We have each other. You have your passport and your credit card, and you know what hotel she’s staying in. There’s nothing stopping you.”

  “This feels …” Wrong? Sudden? Exciting? Margo couldn’t put a finger on it, because she was utterly speechless.

  “Like exactly what you should be doing. C’mon,” Cameron said, then grabbed Margo’s suitcase and rolled away from the North American Airlines line, toward Pacific Airline’s ticket counter. Roberta hung back.

  After getting in line, Cameron said, with a low voice, “You can do this.”

  “But our trip.”

  “We … I … will be here when you return. We’ll work it out, okay? You can meet us at whatever location we’re stomping through. Until then, we’ll keep going with our TALWAC plans. Maybe you can even do your own photos and videos.”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know if I can do this. It’s so far away. The expense. It will be too much of a surprise.” She bit the inside of her cheek to try to push down this nagging indescribable feeling. “What if …”

  “What if what?”

  She spit out the first thing she thought of, trusting her lips and vocal cords and brain. “What if they don’t want me … again.”

  He laid a hand on each of her shoulders as he’d done a million times before, and it grounded her. “I don’t have any wise words for this, Margo. I can’t even imagine. But I know that your daughter wants you there, and I know you want to be by her side. So I say, fuck them.”

  A laugh burst out of Margo, breaking the tension that had pulled her taut the last few days. She nodded, and then, strengthened by his conviction, echoed, “Fuck them.”

  Cameron’s smile grew to the size of New Orleans.

  The line in front of Margo jumped forward, and she and Cameron were swept along like a wave.

  “Next customer, please,” said an airline attendant. They moved another foot in line.

  “Ready, Margo?” he asked.

  “I guess?” She darted her gaze from the attendant to Cameron, and with it came a surge of bravado. Roberta was right. He was right. She inhaled deeply. “I am. I’m ready. Thank you, Cam. And please, tell Roberta …”

  “Bert will be fine. It’s me who you should feel
sorry for. She’s going to be a bear to live with.” His lips quirked, and as if realizing that he still had her bag in hand, he passed the handle to her. “I’ll … I’ll miss you.”

  “I’ll miss you, too.” It dawned on her then that she spoke to or visited with Cameron almost every day, individually and with Roberta. This would be the farthest they’d been apart, and for a moment she was forlorn.

  “Next,” the attendant said.

  They were now at the front of the line. Cameron shifted, awkward now, and Margo wasn’t sure how to say goodbye. This seemed to warrant more than a wave, so she leaned in, and so did he. She lifted her head to kiss him on the cheek, which wasn’t uncommon. But he tilted his face forward.

  And her lips collided with his.

  Or was it the other way around?

  But she didn’t care. The touch of his lips muted everything else around her. The grumble of the other passengers, the audible sigh of the airline attendant—it all became white noise. There was just her and this man she had known all her life and this kiss that she now realized should have happened long ago.

  “Wow.” Cameron’s cheeks pinked after she finally stepped back, though it had been hard to.

  “Yeah,” she could only say.

  Now that was something they had never done.

  Someone behind her cleared their throat, which brought her back to the present. And with a final nod, she rolled her suitcase to the counter and faced the terminal agent.

  “How can I help you?” he asked.

  “I’d like to buy one ticket to Manila, Philippines, please.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Diana was running. Her footsteps echoed on the asphalt; her breaths kept half-time with her heartbeat. The sky was onyx though her path was brightly lit by cars and jeepneys—open-mode transportation with two bench seats facing each other, decorated in bling and lights and painted in graffiti—packed in fours across two lanes, with passengers all staring at her.

  Her skin burned from their gazes. She could tell that they knew that she didn’t belong here, in Manila, in the Philippines.

  Then her surroundings changed like the fall of a curtain at a play, and she was running through the halls of Alexandria Specialty. Looking down, clogs had replaced her running shoes. She was all alone here, and she passed the closed doors of patient rooms with mothers in labor, all pushing at the same time. The one room she had to get into—she could see it right in front of her—fell farther and farther away despite the length of her stride. She didn’t know what was behind that door but only that the answer was there. The truth. But the muscles in her legs began to burn; a cramp radiated up her thighs. The panic escalated in her chest as she reached out for the doorknob; it was so close.

  Until it wasn’t, because she was no longer in the hallway but outside, on the Mount Vernon Trail. Cement at her feet. Above her, a plane descended, on its way to Reagan airport, the sound of its engine roaring through her ears. It was close, even too close for Gravelly Point.

  As the plane passed, wind whipped through her hair. She shivered at the sudden cold. She looked down at herself; there wasn’t a stitch of clothing on her. She was naked, with her glorious farmer’s tan. The scar from a tumble when she was six years old, her uneven breasts, the sag of nearly forty-year-old skin—despite not having children and pounding the pavement four times a week.

  Time stopped. Everything halted: the plane midair; the biker who just passed her; the child midskip, holding a balloon. Time stopped for everyone except her, and her body continued to change, skin sagging so that her breasts dragged with gravity. She lifted her fingers; they were wrinkled like her mother’s. She touched her face, leathered and folded in places. The underside of her chin was another chin. Then the point of view shifted again, and she was out of herself, looking through a fish lens. Still, she recognized the image. Herself, except elderly, back in her home, sitting in a robe but with no one in sight but the dog at her feet.

  * * *

  Diana jerked upward but was dragged back, constrained by something. Her eyes flew open, and all at once her hearing turned up to high, and she was bombarded with voices and an incessant bell. She blinked to orient herself. Against her neck was a white, fluffy terry-cloth towel. The voices were from a movie playing on the television. And the ringing bell was her phone alarm.

  Diana thumbed at her phone to turn off the alarm and swallowed a golf ball–sized lump in her throat. Sitting up, reality returned to her. She was in Las Cruces Hotel. She had taken a shower after settling into her room and ordered room service. Her overfull belly and jet lag had kept her up the whole night, until finally she shut her eyes at 6:00 a.m., as the sun came up. She now squinted at the time on her phone, eyelids still heavy.

  Eight p.m.

  She had slept a full day away.

  She stood then, launched by the volition to do something. Relaxation was not in her vocabulary, and a part of her felt guilty about what she had missed. It was a vicious cycle, sleeping after an exhausting day and then wondering what more she could have accomplished had she stayed up a little longer.

  She caught sight of her face as she passed the dresser mirror and jumped back at her wild hair and the dark bags under her eyes. One would’ve thought that taking on-call and night shifts would have had her acclimated to the constant switch from day to night, but with all the decisions she’d had to make—as if everything had all amounted to this one trip—she felt as if she had been hit by a Mack truck. Damn stress dreams. She’d had them growing up, right before each school year started, around college finals or boards. They’d all been some form of her running, of everyone looking at her, of finding herself naked.

  She was supposed to be an expert at managing stress and change. Her job was all about going with someone else’s flow. By God, it wasn’t like women gave birth exactly when Diana predicted. Precipitous births were actually her favorite events, when all she had to do was truly usher along what nature had taken control of.

  And yet …

  Diana’s phone buzzed in her hand.

  It was Carlo. Actually, she’d removed his picture from her contacts and renamed him “The Asshole” after they broke up, and seeing it now made her laugh. She was delirious, obviously. She declined the call, then opened her text box.

  I’m sleeping.

  Apparently, you aren’t.

  What do you want?

  I just wanted to make sure you landed okay.

  You made it through without the bag?

  Diana pressed her lips together. The first flight they’d taken together, she’d thrown up at takeoff. Of course he’d brought it up, to remind her that they had something.

  I took Dramamine.

  I saw that you called.

  I can explain. The person who answered was just a friend.

  She thumbed the screen with more force, admonishing her past self for calling him before takeoff.

  I don’t need an explanation.

  Night.

  But Flossy misses you.

  The next text was a snap of Flossy snuggled up against his chest. He carried her like a baby, belly up, and her sweet face lolled to the side, tongue hanging out.

  Damn it. The guy knew how to get her, knew just how to keep her on the line.

  How is she doing?

  Truth? Awful. She’s had two accidents in the house. It’s like she knows you’re gone.

  I’m not gone.

  You know what I mean. I miss you.

  I’m here for you.

  No, you’re not.

  But she didn’t send it. Instead, she deleted that last message, one letter at a time. What was she doing, entertaining the thought of him? Why did she continue to give him the benefit of the doubt, when his only saving grace was that they’d had a few good years?

  The tension had built up in her legs. They wanted to go; her muscles craved lactic acid. She peeked out the window. Below was the Manila Bay coastline. With its slow-moving and constant traffic, though with fewer p
edestrians at this hour on the baywalk, it would’ve been the perfect time to run. But running in an unfamiliar city might not be the best decision.

  On the bedside table was the list of the hotel’s amenities. She flipped to the back and saw that the fitness room was open, so that was an option. With a quick scan down to Tipanan, her tummy growled. Food and a nightcap sounded like the better plan. But as she opened the door, a man in a suit passed, reminding her that she was in sweats and a T-shirt, which was probably not appropriate for this fancy hotel. She weighed how important getting out of this room was against her opposition to changing clothes.

  Her tummy growled again, sealing her decision.

  Diana pulled a sundress from her suitcase and shook it out. She gathered her hair in a bun and changed out of her pajamas but didn’t bother with makeup. She stuffed the phone in her dress pocket along with her coin purse and walked out of her room.

  Tipanan was packed with a mix of wedding attendees and hotel guests. Diana relaxed; she and her outfit fit right in with the raucous mixing bowl of people and noise. And to her relief, she found an empty seat at the bar.

  She signaled the bartender. “Can I have a food menu and a pinot grigio, please?” As she waited, she willed herself to relax, focused her gaze on an older couple by the window who were having a private conversation. They appeared to be in their sixties, both with gray hair and an air of calm around them. Each held a drink in their hand, but they didn’t take their eyes off each other, not even when they sipped their drinks. They were a couple with an obvious connection, a couple with a history.