Love at a Food Stand

Timothy Dodd

Each weekday they met at the bottom of the university’s steps around half past three, except on Tuesdays when they met at noon. When her classes finished, he’d arrive most days from his job at Andok’s. Some days they would stand there for a few minutes, smiling and petting and talking. Some days they’d head right off in a jeepney. But some days they’d stop and get a snack and juice at my street corner stand.

At first they didn’t interest me any more than the other customers. Why should they? Young lovers might give you a momentary dream or a recollection of your own past love, but the more you observe them the more disillusioning, even annoying, they become.

Antonio seemed to have a new hairstyle almost every day. I assume it pleased her. They tell me now you can just use this gel to fix it however you want. Most of the time he’d have on his Andok’s uniform: lemon polo shirt tucked in black pants. If not, he’d show up in sneakers, jeans and those popular t-shirts young people wear—I don’t know the names. But he walked with a slight limp, the deformity of an in-turned foot. 43

You’d know after one look that Ferry, on the other hand, could enter beauty contests, even though I got the feeling she despised them. Like Antonio, she dressed in uniform: hers a navy blue skirt and white blouse for university. She wore simple, black slip-on shoes and usually only a bit of makeup, eyeliner and lipstick, to accentuate her full lips and high cheek bones. Her long black hair, whether simply combed or styled, isn’t anything unique on our crowded streets, but marvelous nonetheless.

When they visited the snack stand, Antonio always paid: often for young, fresh coconuts and maruya. They talked with each other about typical topics: her school friends and assignments in elementary education, clothing, and pop music, mixed with jokes or a little teasing that resulted in Ferry lightly slapping Antonio’s thigh or knee.

She came from a humble background—her father a fisherman in Samar where she grew up until he died of stomach cancer and her mother carted her and her younger brother to Cubao to live with an elder sister. In little less than a year, her mother remarried. Rudillo, the owner of a small bakery in Cebu, adored his new stepchildren, but particularly Ferry, who he set out to spoil. They followed him back to the Visayas.

Antonio, on the other hand, lived all his life in nearby Naga: his father a welder who worked many years in Saudi Arabia before hurting his back, his mother a field manager in a small real estate company. With six sons and three daughters the Salcedos always had enough, but never more than what they needed day to day.

Normally every two or three times Ferry and Antonio came to my stand they were arguing. She could get under his skin, often resulting from jealousy: her talking to other boys or not returning his phone calls and texts promptly. Ferry always 44

spoke calmly and quietly, which in the middle of an argument got under Antonio’s skin even more—his voice, gritty and a bit raspy, growing more urgent. Most times they would get up and walk away before the argument reached its uglier moments, when he’d throw things and sound like a car without a muffler. There was one day, however—I remember it was the day of a jeepney strike when protesters had blocked traffic as they walked with large banners up Osmeña Boulevard, making noise with drums and whistles—when one of my small ketchup dispensers on the counter outside the window landed on the burner inside my cart. Antonio had tossed it as he fumed, jumping off his stool and ripping leaves off the trees and bushes that lined the university’s perimeter, even threatening to thrown himself into traffic. I had to wonder which one was at fault and how they kept together.

But then maybe that was obvious once you looked over at her sitting on the wooden bench: the little turned up nose, silky black hair, shiny skin, eyes that looked like eternity. Intelligent and charismatic too—Ferry would never lose her cool. She could have had most any of the young men, but it seemed she didn’t go for the partiers and players. I guessed she wanted a kindhearted, religious, devoted boy without muscles and macho. I don’t know, maybe she liked someone she could manipulate. Even I told him a day after one of their arguments, while Ferry was still in class, “Don’t let that one go.” But that just goes to show that men, like me, are idiots and never learn: we value too strongly the appearance. Perhaps.

When I say each weekday they’d meet at the bottom of the university’s steps around half past three, except on Tuesdays when they met at noon, I mean they had met like that for years, since she started as a freshman at Cebu Normal University and 45

lived in a nearby boardinghouse. During that time, Antonio left Naga to live with a brother in Cebu, and went back to complete high school there. I was unclear as to why he originally had stopped attending high school in Naga in the first place. In any case, their relationship had started even before that, and their parents back in Naga were well-aware; during holidays or school vacations he’d visit her parents’ home to spend an afternoon or evening with her. Unlike many agreements these days, their love remained innocent—light kissing the extent of it. Antonio, the perfect gentlemen, never missed a birthday, anniversary, or holiday without presenting flowers and chocolates, the latter preferred by Ferry. And whenever she had a problem, most frequently because of the strictness of her parents who didn’t mesh so well with her independent streak, Antonio always comforted her, telling her soft little words of encouragement as the traffic sliced through the streets behind us.

On the day the state funeral of the former president moved through town, a motorcade of more than one hundred vehicles honking their horns to thousands of people lining the streets, many in tears, Antonio came to the stand crying also. I was surprised, thinking he was never interested in politics. He sat down on the bench as usual, but ordered nothing. He bawled, in fact, and I handed him a few napkins from the dispenser to wipe his face. Classes were cancelled, so Ferry was not with him. Only two other customers came to the cart while Antonio sat there, and they placed quick orders and were on their way, wrapped up like everyone else in the funeral procession.

After twenty minutes of seeing his distress, with no sign he would order food or depart any time soon, I placed a bowl of kwek kwek in front of him without waiting for him to accept or decline. They stayed untouched for five minutes before he 46

finally lifted his head and put a skewer through the first of three. I watched him chew slowly, in a daze. He starred with empty expression, leaning toward the wall of the cart which was no more than a foot in front of his face, only the red from his eyes reflecting any life in his face.

When he finished the three eggs, only the bright red chilies left swimming in the vinegar at the bottom of the dish, he handed me pesos for an orange soda. He finished the can in less than a minute, then put his head back down on the ledge of my cart.

For one of the few days in all my twenty-eight years of work, I stood inside my cart with little to do, my arms folded. “What happened, my friend?” I finally asked.

He was quick to offer me the news. “She left me,” he said softly, without emotion.

“Get your head up, son. She might come back. And even if she doesn’t, you know, it happens. Happened to me twice actually. You’ll find another, and she might even be better. Trust me.”

“No. She left me for a foreigner.”

“Don’t worry about that. Foreigner or local, a loss is a loss,” I said, wiping my hand on my apron. “American?”

“A forty-two-year-old doctor from Amsterdam. Met on a dating website. He came here once, for less than a week, and now they’re engaged.”

I turned around to pick up a fish ball. “And you’re sure? You heard it from her mouth? Not from gossip or a friend?”

I didn’t get an answer, so I turned back to look at him. He had gone. I exited my cart to see if Antonio stood nearby, but there was no sign of him despite few people around in what is normally a chaotic sidewalk and street. Five minutes later, when I walked to the front of the cart to pick up his bowl and empty soda can, I found he had left a small notebook and ballpoint 47

pen. I assumed he had just forgotten it, and I wondered if he had departed in a rush. At first I wasn’t even sure the notebook belonged to Antonio, but I opened to the first page and saw his name printed in neat, black letters at the top right—first name only. The spot where his surname would have followed had been neatly ripped out, leaving a little hole in the corner of the page.

Out of curiosity of course, I turned to the second page and found a few lines scribbled, with some words and phrases crossed out. I read the words, surprisingly emotional and not so long or complicated that they lost my attention, words that reminded me of something poetic. I figured they were quotes Antonio had copied down. I hadn’t read poetry since the required reading of Jose Rizal in high school. People then, as now, were always more interested in sports and girls, or clothes and boys.

After reading the words twice I turned the page in the notebook, but there was nothing more written. I thought I might find a telephone number so I could call Antonio and let him know about the notebook. Or maybe even find his email—one of my daughters could help me contact him through that if necessary. But there was nothing. Then I figured the notebook probably wasn’t that important to Antonio anyway, and that I could just return it to him whenever he came back to my stand in a couple of days, even if he didn’t remember leaving his things.

I put the little notebook in the pocket of my apron and looked out at the empty streets, the university behind me silent, and nearly all of the businesses across the street closed for the day. Then I walked back inside my cart and placed the notebook high up on the shelf where I keep my business certificate and other important papers.

To my surprise and disappointment, a week passed and Antonio did not return. In fact, I never saw him again. The 48

following Friday I carried his notebook home, and while resting after dinner I showed the lines to my daughter. After some discussion and checking online, Claire said they weren’t quotes at all. “If they were famous quotes, we could find them on the internet, Dad. I’m sure these are that boy’s own words. It’s like a poem. Fiery, too. Moving.” After that, I just called Antonio’s word a poem.

The next day I walked over to Andok’s and asked for Antonio by name, but they said no Antonio had ever worked there. And on Sunday I went all the way to Naga, went to the cathedral and the main square and the town’s Baywalk and asked randomly for Antonios and Ferrys. An hour of searching proved nothing but my own stupidity, but yet on Monday morning I still went to the university, kicking myself for not thinking to go there first. I asked for a fourth-year Ferry, but surprisingly I was told there were no fourth-year students named Ferry.

I began to retrace my own thoughts about this girl and boy. Had I mistaken their names somehow? Was there information that might help me locate them which hadn’t registered? And was this so important anyway? A notebook and some poetic lines from a boy whose girlfriend had just broken up with him—what’s so unique about that? But somehow it all persisted, kept sticking to my brain.

After the notebook sat another week on the shelf inside my food cart, no updates on Antonio or Ferry, I decided to copy the words freshly on a new piece of paper, in bold ink, then took two little pieces of tape and attached the poem inside my cart. I would read the words each morning when I arrived, and usually before I departed in the evening as well. Sometimes I’d read the poem more than twice a day. I did this on every day of work, six days a week. It became like a prayer. 49

On the joyous, yet hectic, day that I finally retired eleven years later, I sold my food cart and all the utensils inside. Before selling it, I scraped off the two little pieces of tape which had by then grown to become part of the cart itself, and took the poem down, took it home with me. It was good tape to last that long, I should add—an American soldier had actually given me the half-used roll—and the poem was the only thing I kept from all my years of working my food stand.

At home, I found a new place for the little poem, a little spot on the wall in my den, next to the photos of children and grandchildren. I put it right next to the last photo ever taken of my late wife, Miriam. In fact, I almost read Antonio’s words at her funeral, but I talked myself out of it at the last minute and let the words sit in my pocket, thinking how people might react when learning the words were from a young man jilted in love who once sat at my food cart over a decade ago, and nothing more.

But then later, after the funeral, I regretted not reading that little poem. I thought, why shouldn’t I have read it? We really don’t know in this life where or when we’ll find love. I mean, a love that actually means something to you. We don’t know how it will reach us. We often don’t even know when it’s a love worth pursuing. And, sadly, we don’t know when a love will leave you with empty hands. It might be the lost love of Antonio. Or the day your wife of forty years passes on. It might be the day your first child is born, or it might be the days the child grows up and you see a heart losing interest in you. It might be the one you meet in a foreign country. Or the one who loves you a little, but loves someone else more. It might be the day you wake up and realize you have lost the zeal for life—that you only wake up tired, wash because you must, eat the same breakfast, and rush 50

off to work to make ends meet. It might be the day you realize the freshness of life is gone, and that you’re on the road to a gravestone and nothing more.

Since I never read the words out at my beloved wife’s funeral, would you like to read the words now? You must be wondering, what are these words of Antonio that stuck with me for so long? I could tell you what he wrote. But, then again, honestly, shouldn’t you find your own words? Your own words to love? From a poem. From a song. From some mystery. Yes, find the words that teach you whether you’ve ever been in love or not. No matter they may come from an unlikely source. No matter if they cause discomfort or even pain. Find them. Don’t wait until they fall in your lap like they did for me. For waiting may mean they never come, and without them, you might never understand what it is you have, or what it is you cannot afford to lose.