Welcome to Envy Park Read online

  Welcome to Envy Park

  Mina V. Esguerra

  Smashwords Edition

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © Mina V. Esguerra, 2013. All rights reserved.

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Contact the author:

  [email protected]

  minavesguerra.com

  Cover designed by Tania Arpa

  Photography by Dominique Tiu

  For Diane, Bianca, and Chris, the single girls of Tiong Bahru.

  Chapter 1

  The plan was this:

  Fly back home and deal with condo turnover paperwork.

  Buy furniture.

  Live in the new place for six months to a year, however long it would take to get a new Real Job.

  Take temporary Not-Real Jobs to finance Real Job search.

  Find a renter for the one-bedroom.

  Fly to Hong Kong, or Thailand, or Cambodia—ideal location of Real Job.

  On my third week back, paperwork accomplished and furniture all delivered and arranged, I finally invited Roxie over. My best friend, my partner in crime since college, was to be my first guest at my one-bedroom apartment in somewhat-swanky NV Park, a new residential enclave within a business district in Metro Manila. It was an honor that she initially refused, insisting that my first guest should be a guy, one who would gladly test out the bed for me, or the couch, or the kitchen table, ideally all of the above.

  "Stop it. You're coming over tonight and that's it," I told her, when she called to tell me this.

  "I'm serious. You know what happens when you come home. A dry spell for you is a dry spell for me, Moira."

  Oh my god. Roxie was referring the oddly parallel romantic lives we'd had in the five years that I had been living in Singapore, while she remained in Manila. On the first year, when I visited for Christmas, I had been dating someone at work. And soon after, she started dating someone from her place of work.

  The following year was difficult for me, and on my second trip home, things were not doing well with the boyfriend. We broke up a few weeks after my return to Singapore. And Roxie's boyfriend broke up with her too. Year three was better, sort of, because I found a great job and got introduced to a new set of people. I dated often, but didn't really click with anyone. Roxie went on a few dates too, but was for the most part single. The fourth year rolled around, and by my holiday Manila visit I didn't even bother to date then, because I'd decided that I was going to let my work contract run out and move back home. Why start something when my stay had an expiry date?

  And on my fifth visit, just last year, Roxie ruefully informed me that her singlehood was my fault. Like when close friends got their periods in sync, but worse.

  "We are not cursed," I reprimanded her, speaking into my cellphone as I browsed through the NV Park supermarket's liquor section. "And I'm not going to let you blame me for your situation. Do you want light beer?"

  "I get off work at seven. You have...three hours to find someone and do stuff before I get there. Please, do it for me."

  "I think we're having tequila tonight," I said. "See you later, crazy."

  "It's your fault! You can do something about this now! Change our lives for the better, Moira!" She was yelling this and more but I had tossed the phone back into my bag.

  The reason why Roxie was still single was because she worked too hard, didn't go out, and expected interesting men to just show up at her door. She was stuck in a rut and I knew it. I was an expert rut-avoidance, and told her that the only way to get out of it was to shake things up. Change jobs, start a new hobby, and there was also my favorite trick: move to a new city.

  Five years in Singapore and I could feel it coming on, the rut. I was comfortable, I liked my job, and I was able to make the payments on my modest property investment. It could have gone on for another year, or three, or even longer, easily. All of my friends from Manila, who had come over to "try it out for a year" that eventually became three then five then ten, they were settling in just fine. Inertia took over, and the new city began to feel more like home than actual home.

  But not for me. I sensed it coming, that poor-me ennui that made me pack up and leave Manila in the first place. I was twenty-two (a kid really), but at the time I really did feel stuck. My days were so alike that I couldn't tell them apart. I kept having the same conversation with different people. And after three years at my first job I could tell that I wouldn't be able to afford a laptop much less a home of my own.

  So I shook things up.

  And that was over, I was back, and now I had an apartment, a small amount saved up, and an empty calendar.

  What was next?

  -///-

  Damn that Roxie. All throughout my walk home I was thinking about finding a guy and getting the whole thing over with. I couldn't help it.

  I didn't want to tell her this on the phone just then, but there were a few good-looking guys just in NV Park Tower 3, where my new one-bedroom happened to be located. I'd had several sightings in the few weeks that I'd been a resident. There was the Smoking Guy who was always by the driveway at eleven-thirty in the morning. Also noticed clean-looking Shorts Guy (always in shorts, at least the two times I saw him), but he was with Slacks Guy both times, and I thought I saw them holding hands at some point, so it may be safe to rule them out. Suit Guy from the mail room was attractive in a Roger Sterling kind of way, but I also saw him with a pre-teen girl who called him "Daddy."

  Not going there.

  But then there was the guy I called 9th Floor, from the elevator. Well. Never saw him with anyone else. Much less a girlfriend, a wife, a kid. He wasn't the type who hung back behind everyone at the elevator and smiled too. He just stood there near the front, in his various collared polo shirts (blue and black, with some company name embroidered in front) and khaki pants, looking at the tips of his shoes until the doors opened up at the ground floor.

  Which meant he didn't own a car, if he wasn't proceeding to Basement 1 or 2, where the parking spaces were.

  The second time I was in the elevator with him, this time going up, I managed to sneak a look at the reflective surface of the elevator doors and checked him out without turning my head. It was only a split second look, a quick mental snapshot of him and me side by side... and I was kind of impressed.

  He looked thin to me at first, because his jaw and Adam's apple and cheekbones were the first things I noticed, but with that second look I took in the shoulders, the chest, the arms, and they weren't frail at all. He looked like he spent time out in the sun. Doing stuff. Lifting things. Or that was just me and my dry spell imagining it.

  And then when I shifted my gaze I caught my own reflection, and happened to like what I had become, as a twenty-seven-year-old. The acne seemed to have stopped forever, thankfully. Wasn't as small around the waist as I used to be, but I did stop obsessing about that when I decided that I was leaving Singapore and stopped dating new people. The break away from any kind of work (therefore a break from any kind of stress), took the dark circles away from under my eyes, and I looked fresher and younger then, than on any rando
m day from the past few years. I had let my hair grow long and I was leaving it alone now, letting it fall its naturally wavy way where it wanted to. The last thing I did to it was a coloring that gave it a hint of red, and even as it was growing out, I was happy with how it blended into the natural dark brown.

  I looked like I was settling into my real face and body.

  And 9th Floor and I, together, we looked like poster kids for Asia's young and upwardly mobile. Except it wouldn't be entirely true because I was unemployed, but we looked the part.

  I felt giddy about it for a second. I was just attracted to my own potential.

  Since then, I had happy warm feelings whenever I saw my reflection on the elevator doors. Self-esteem was going to get me through this new aimlessness, I knew it.

  -///-

  By the time Roxie arrived near nine p.m., everything was still alive at NV Park. The small shopping complex surrounded by the three residential buildings closed at eleven, so I planned to give her a tour of that before anything else. I wanted to show it off because I liked how it turned out. When I was convinced to buy a place there years ago, all I had to go on was a fancy slide presentation and a scale model inside a glass box. The real thing wasn't as glamorous, but it felt fresh to me. I really did feel like I was living in a peaceful little bubble inside a busy city. Rare, if you knew what Manila was like.

  I met her at Tower 3's Japanese garden-inspired lobby and saw my best friend alight from a cab and then just stand there at the driveway without coming in.

  "Does it take two hours to get here from Makati?" I said as a greeting.

  Roxie hadn't changed a day since we graduated from college, and I meant that in the best possible way. While I was awkward and self-conscious then, the "settling into her face and body" thing seemed to have happened to her at nineteen. She knew exactly how to dress to look great in any situation, and being that self-aware was surely why her career in marketing just took off as quickly as it did.

  Right then she was in corpo-shark mode, actually reminding me of a shark in a silvery gray pantsuit with a red scarf around her neck.

  "I left late," she said, still standing outside. "I wanted to give you more time with the guy."

  "There is no guy."

  "Don't touch me! Maybe you won't curse me to further celibacy if we don't hug."

  "That just makes me want to hug you more then. We're in this together, girlfriend." And I gave her a big hug, which probably doomed her, at least for the next few months.

  -///-

  I also had a feeling that we would be talking about big things like life, and the future, and our hopes and dreams. It was why I made margaritas. When I first met her, during registration day on our first year at college, I thought we'd be at each other's throats. We were both only children, academic achievers from our respective high schools, vying for recognition in the same business management program. Sometimes she got the lucky break, and sometimes I did, but when we met to compare notes I was always happy for her.

  But I would just never do some things the way Roxie would. We were just wired differently.

  "Your parents haven't been here?" she asked. "I thought they'd be over every weekend, knowing your mom."

  "They've been here. Just not a lot. They discovered a social life now that they're sort of in retirement. It doesn't involve me."

  "Are you okay with that?"

  It was an adjustment, but one I welcomed. "Yeah, for now. I guess I got used to the once-a-year face-to-face thing. It's great when I know I'm here for Christmas, because it's all good stuff. But the rest…"

  Roxie nodded. "It's a stage. Your parents want to continue treating you like a kid, but you're not a kid. They'll get it eventually. Or your mom will. But you have to be around to make it happen."

  "No, it doesn't work that way with them. I have to prove myself somewhere else."

  "I'm not like you," Roxie said. "I stay put. I have roots. I work it out where I am."

  "Living in another country is going to open your mind to everything, Roxie. I think everyone should try it."

  She was sitting on my living room floor, barefoot, scarf off, drinking her passion fruit margarita from a jam jar, my attempt at being shabby chic. "You don't realize what would happen to my career if I just suddenly took off now. I get out, and I won't be able to just pick up where I left off. I can't afford to Eat Pray Love myself out of this funk."

  I was lying flat on the sofa just behind her, and I could see that the pitcher on the coffee table needed refilling. But I didn't move an inch. "Well maybe you don't want to go back to the same career."

  "I have a huge payment on the condo coming up. Can't think about that."

  "When do you get to move into that by the way?"

  "Next month, I think, if I'm lucky."

  Roxie and I were an interesting study in parallel lives, if anyone bothered to look. I packed up and left Manila, as so many others did, and at the time it seemed like the only smart thing to do, if you wanted to get ahead. My hometown (if you could call a city of 12 million people "hometown") felt too cramped and crazy. Roxie stayed, because it was her nature to thrive in cramped and crazy.

  Five years later, and what did we have?

  "Well you have this," Roxie said, waving an arm toward my ceiling.

  "And you're getting your own place soon."

  "And you helped your parents with expenses and stuff."

  "You did too."

  "We had that New York trip."

  Yes, that was excellent, I agreed.

  "We don't have cars," Roxie added.

  "We don't drive. But we can afford it if we wanted to."

  "We don't have kids."

  "Yeah, we don't have that."

  "I'd settle for a date on Saturday."

  "Well, I've cursed you, so no."

  "So let me recap. You left. I stayed. Now, we both have some money, helped out our families, went on a cool trip, bought ourselves apartments. But our social lives are still limited to you and me and a margarita pitcher."

  "Huh. It kind of sounds like we're even," I said.

  Were we? Maybe it was the tequila buzz, but I really did think that I had come out ahead. Surely the lessons in independence that leaving home provided a person counted for something. Counted for more, at least, in terms of emotional growth, and maturity, because those years were the most difficult and humbling of my life so far.

  "No we're not even," Roxie said, giggling. "I have a job. You don't."

  She had to refill the margarita pitcher all by herself then, I told her.

  -///-

  ROXIE

  I. CAREER AND FINANCES

  + Upwardly mobile and stable career

  - Hasn’t worked anywhere else

  - No work-related travel, has to be on her own dime

  + Can afford travel on her own dime, and fancy apartment

  II. FAMILY AND FRIENDSHIPS

  + Often sees family

  + Often sees friends (except Moira)

  III. LOVE AND RELATIONSHIPS

  - Dry spell (Possibly related to upwardly mobile career)

  IV. PERSONAL FULFILLMENT

  + Has hobbies (baking, yoga)

  + Travels at least yearly

  + Doesn’t complain that much really, has nothing to complain about, likely

  If you were as interested in planning as I was, you would start to see your life, and maybe others’ lives, in charts. Graphs. Personally, I liked lists and matrices. When I was figuring out what I wanted, I had figured out that I wanted satisfaction (plus signs) on four different aspects of my life. I wanted a fabulous career, a healthy bank account, good friends, peaceful family relations, love, and the freedom to do the things I wanted to do.

  Too greedy? Please. Everyone wants everything. The ones who gave up on having it all just didn’t try enough. (And if they did try hard enough, the solution was to revise what "everything" meant.)

  Too obsessive-compulsive? Noooo. This was a hobby. A
productive one.

  It was only a matter of time before I started applying the matrix to other people in my life. It made sense to me, if I wanted to "have it all," to see what other people had going on, and possibly pick out the things that would work for me. And Roxie, for all her achievements, was holding herself back on some things that I never would.

  Chapter 2

  When someone in your life remains jobless for more than a month, has their first meal at noon, and has color-coded sweatpants for each day of the week, you might feel concerned about them. And you would be right about it, but you should not have worried about me.

  If I had a job, I wouldn't have been able to do everything I'd accomplished my first few weeks back. Steps 1 and 2 of the plan would have stretched out for months, no joke.

  I also wouldn't have been able to get into the glorious habit of sleeping until ten every morning. And spending most of my day in sweatpants, that was not as depressing as I thought it would be. I regretted nothing about my new lazy lifestyle.

  Until Fire Drill day.

  The thing I had forgotten about coming back home was that March was Fire Prevention Month, and if you were working or living in a building that had a fire escape, you were likely going to be asked to try it out then. It was a planned thing, with announcements posted in the elevators and the bulletin board in the mail room, but I couldn't tell my Mondays and Thursdays apart anymore so it didn't matter.

  At eight that particular morning, the fire alarm woke me up. I tried to ignore it, but it kept going, and then I jumped out of bed when I realized that the building might be on fire.

  Please no, not my new furniture! I was thinking, as I quickly made myself decent. Not enough time to change my outfit, so i just slipped on a bra and put my night shirt (yellow with a Winnie the Pooh on it) back on, and didn't change out of my pink sweat pants. While figuring out where my passport was, I heard a knock on the door.