My Friend Paul: First Spark

Chapter 1 The Flight

C1.  The Flight

My stomach is grumbling when I slump myself on the cold floor. Paul's sleeping cardboard is close to non-existent, so I have no choice but stay awake the whole night than freeze beside him. Paul, however, dozed off the moment he lay on it, curling himself beneath his trade sack and didn't stir until now.

"Paul," I tap his biting skin and imagine that he is dead, but his arm is still soft assuring me that he survived the night. He turn around. His round face illuminated by streetlight opposite us. I suggested once that any of his parents must be a foreigner because of his pinkish white complexion and unusually steep nose. He turned aloof, so I never talked again about it from that day on.

That's how we sticked together for more than a year now. No idle talks about each other's past. No sharing of where our own families are. It's in fact more convenient and okay for me. Talking about the past will surely make me cry. Make me weak. Making me an easy target of other street rascals.

I nudge his shoulders and ruffle his already untidy hair. He's clearly trying to ignore me. It's not fair that he was able to sleep the whole night while I am rummaging the streets for recyclables. My fingers find his nose and pinch it. Ignore me and you're dead.

Paul, after a moment of trying to hold his breath, grabbed my hand away from his redding nose. "It's still dark, Lo'. Go back to sleep."

"I'm hungry," I say. "Get up now. We need to be on church before first mass."

"We can't go there," Paul yawns. "It's still full of stupid junkies."

"I'm starving. . . ." I whisper on his ears. These are the only words Paul can't withstand. It's even more powerful than the magic word 'please', which we never use here at streets.

Paul jerk his sack vexedly and prop himself on the wall. I watch him as he pegs away litters from his hair and shirt. He is dirty all-over. Even dirtier than me. His once white shirt is now greasily grayed, and on his chest snakes a beaded necklace of rosary. He's not a believer though. Or so I can tell.

Quiapo church is our home. Not because we are devout Catholics, but because it is our main source of living. Everyday, we wake up early to rummage the church premises for plastic bottles. Garbage bins are always full of those, and if we were early enough, we could fill four sacks easily. These can be traded to junk shops at Recto for ninety pesos, sufficient to fill our stomachs for the whole day.

The church, regardless of its busy mass services, is also the coziest place we can get to slumber every night. It was not easy to find a space on its premises though. We were driven out many times by its old dwellers before we discovered our perfect cubbyhole there. It is perfectly hidden by one of the pillars and a lowly-suspended plant box, making a room underneath where we crawl every night to get some decent sleep.

But today is the ninth of January. The feast of the holy Black Nazarene. It is the most awaited annual celebration for the patron, even televised and broadcasted live over the news and commemorated in different parts of the Philippines. It's anticipated that Quiapo church will be full of votaries, but we didn't expect that they will be this prompt and umpteen. They even occupied our niche, forcing us to look for another place to sleep and ended up here.

This street of Evangelista is not very far from the church though. If we walk down this alley on our left, we will end up on Plaza Miranda, an open space at the church's back entrance. On our right is my old residence, Recto train station, towering above merchandize stores and apartment rooms. All of them are still shut though because it's still four in the morning. At eight, vendors will sprout on each side of Evangelista, decorating it with small images of Nazarene, devotees shirts and handkerchiefs, colorful candles and novena booklets, and anything they expect a devout catholic will buy. Necklace of sampaguitas and ilang-ilang is my favorite. I sold bunches of them once, but Paul prefers trading recyclables which turned out to be more sensible.