On the Modern Gutter

On the Modern Gutter (a short story)

My stewed feet stood straight behind rusting banisters while looking past the loose stream of dusked Pasig River. The feasting golden ochre has gradually mantled the skyline while the scorching midsummer sun lodges to the west. And the conventional fume reeking along Linear Park no longer surprised me.

"So you're a court clerk," Charlie sighed in disbelief—which have me shouldering a half-baked assumption to put faith with my nonfeasance in law school three years back. But judging by the way he dished out the response, there was not much trail of any reasonable passion for him to lampoon my current career coup. Or so I thought that Charlie from class of 2007 still has that raw psyche of being perceptive or, with least anticipation, of being well-disposed. I guess I might not understand what has been loping now behind his manner of utterance with only obsessing my self-made gospel about him which I decided to carry through when we all dashed away from each other some time ago.

This seeming angle of our exchange had before networked itself from my commiserating failure into his nonfictional tour de force. Charlie is now maneuvering his first criminal case appealed in Makati City's RTC as the case's defense attorney—while I struggle with my choice of becoming the ever overcast, self-absorbed stiff. And I merely exist at the opposite line of Charlie's alluring profession as he casually mentioned earlier my current source of monthly compensation. True, I assemble my deterred grip and existence every six days of the week as a court clerk in Quezon City's MTC Branch 34. If I were to tell one tale of the calculated sum that I have been receiving, I would not refuse to say the least that it is some enormous deal. But if I am going to be candid whenever permitted with what I existentially handle, my ambition is never propelled by reckoning how my pecuniary gain would assist me surviving today or any way in the future. I have no internal motivation of mortifying this line of job but I'm deftly expressing that, just in my loomed outlook for the last couple of years, the post could simply be a seeming euphemism for some law student in an indefinite recess. My current footing could be one of the copious cases in the field and I have no room for skepticism that most have not exonerated their selves yet from this modern immobility.

I might have gone from a longer plunge of my sullen musing. And as a supposed response for his earlier query for confirmation, I tried pressing a smile in periphery. "Yes," I answered in earnest. "Substantially provided under DECS v. San Diego." My voice could crack whenever but I strapped hard to become gathered in my current posture. My vision took the only possible route to look ahead. And it is bound to happen—that I would fix my eyes onto the series of obscuring architecture past the river in front of me now and that he would just come to conclude later that I marooned everything behind because I am psychologically tragic.

I was biding for the time before Charlie snapped a weak laugh on my reasoning. "Square pegs on round holes?" His voice resounded an unpretentious interest—either with the motive of knowing that he assumed it right or of verifying that I am the expended nub end of the world's worst cigarette. But most importantly, I guess, is that he was able to commit the phrase in the interior of his memory.

I slowly bobbed my head in response. The series of our cold exchange has led us in between the bordering murmurs of people around us and the sudden silence of our vocal chords with which end is unknowable in the moment. I decided not to utter a word just as how the night has come into being to justly bask the landscape in the distance and all of us along the Linear Park in the process.

"Nick, you are great," he whispered suddenly in the gale of falling eve—somehow breaking an about meditation. "But you've just authorized your knot be knotted stiffer."

I would have immediately cracked a run of nervous laugh with the moment swinging in my senses. But my knee joints took the reaction and instantly reduced within bounds as it softens feebly. I am hearing that exact Charlie from class of 2007—from the class that I was supposed to be until the end but decided to lurch sideways instead. If I could only respond without my in progress angst or misgiving about myself, I would have presented to him, without delay, all of my official groundings as to why I ended up right here. But the only thing that dominated between us is that cavity that put a hiatus to the question on how we really know each other. I left early, he's uninterrupted. I do not anticipate anything in return even if he did not understand what happened to me some time ago. Could Charlie even remember me exactly?

I chuckled faintly to his seeming obiter dictum. "You know, I agree to Justice Cruz when he had said: 'While his persistence is noteworthy, it is certainly misplaced, like a hopeless love.'" I stilled my eyes without gazing anywhere but the materializing flecks of light ahead as I anxiously sunk my teeth into my wind-chapped lips.

He stood quietly at my right side before heaving a middling sigh. His head never turned away from the current events happening in front of us seeing that the Pasig River's stream is getting more insistent as the day ultimately spun away. His right hand minded itself to be stuck inside his trousers' low pocket while the left one passionately supports his modern briefcase bag strapped on his shoulder. I am beyond positive that what lies inside that tiny luggage is his profession.

I looked again beyond the nightfall's shade as I remember worshiping my isolated passion. And eventually, with every endeavor amassed together to realize my realistic tier in this world, what I received in return is some mania to failure. I knew right then that I was never meant to practice law and so I abandoned a quarter whole of my life behind—just halfway my third year. Easy it may seem as an impression, but it never was. And Charlie did not essentially get the picture when I abstained myself from myself. But I guess we all needed someone to save us from ourselves even in quick flashes. And I had none but a handful of inferior optimism back then.

The world seems to crawl ever slowly. But after a while, everything suddenly went well-defined in my senses—the gradual retreating of laughs behind me, the occasional thud of vehicles exiting the nearby lot, the alternating reek of traditional and spiced cigarettes, and even the cumulative degree of my self-occupation together with the wind speed formally escalating.

I heard Charlie's steps leading away but he halted at the same time I turned my head into his direction. My attention shortly stirred together as both of our eyes chanced before long. "I'm going to Judge Cruz—not Justice Cruz. Want to join?" He drew his lips upward the minute he tossed the verbal summons. I extracted a tangled look in return with my forehead creasing in one-sided confusion.

Perhaps he took the occasion of our earlier stillness to spawn an accidental plan such as this. I am not even in the positive position to decide if I would come to an agreement with myself and him. Classes in College of Law might have been getting underway. And, to a certain degree, it's undiplomatic ever if we disrupt that combat zone of on-going Socratic method of teaching—though it is kind of inviting to witness the reigning stew of this new throng of hoppers in CL. But I do not have the slightest sketch in mind about Charlie's motive to encourage me to come over as if Judge Cruz is some paternal guru who he could come near to or get in touch with whenever he decided.

But in the end, I only heaved a sough that I hope he had heard just so he would come into some conclusion that I am on edge at the moment. I began walking toward him without more ado. "I don't know why I am going to do this, Charlie," I hissed ever so slightly.

He just laughed without discretion at my reply. "On your lead, Nick," he answered. He extended his left hand directing me to go in front and show the way as he does some withdrawn curtsy. What a squire.

I have always known that the law is harsh. And I suppose, so is the world.