Girls Don't Cry
20.43
"I'll see you in an hour, okay!" he said. He kissed me then I got off the car. After four months, waiting for an hour was just a grain of sand trickling down in an hour glass.
I went up to Room 16119 to freshen up a little bit after a very fulfilling meal. Since I got sick of being in that beautiful suite all alone, I headed to a nearby shopping mall. To kill time till he showed up again. He won't be long, I kept telling myself.
21.09
However, most of the shops were already closed. There was only a Memory Lane outlet whose doors were still wide open that I dragged my legs in to scrutinize arrays of corny cards, fluffy Teddy bears, - and since the spirit of Valentine's day was still in the air - heart-shaped photo frames.
I bet men who didn't want to bother to twist their little brains to figure out a nice gift for their girlfriends would simply choose the pink colored, heart-shaped photo frames. All they needed to do was having their pictures together with their girlfriends printed then sticking them into the frames.
Under watchful eyes of a shopkeeper, I handpicked my version of the least corny card written: "When I think of you, I go all fluffy" for him. I thought I'd hand it to him when he saw me off at the airport. To remember me by.
22.05
"How much longer till you get here?" I texted him as feeling myself grow impatient.
"45 minutes" was all he replied. I sighed in relief then continued to fix my attention to Great Expectations on TV.
23.11
Finn Bell had sold all his paintings and Estella had given that meaningful look only Finn understood the message it conveyed. My favorite line of "You know what this is? It's my heart. And it's broken" had been spoken. Great Expectations almost came to an end.
But still no sign of him.
23.15
I pulled out a chair to the balcony to seek comfort in the sight of citylights. One cigarette bud after another had laid helplessly in a white porcelain ashtray. I kept looking at my cellphone as finding a clue if it ever functioned at all.
Still no sign of him.
23.54
I took my scrap book out to the balcony and tried to write a bit anything that came to mind.
00.14
When there was no more to write, my cellphone was still silent as the day it was still tucked inside its sealed box.
00.15
"Has it passed 45 minutes or it's just me who feels time go by so very slowly?" I asked myself. The cellphone in one hand and a TV remote in another.
00.17
I typed "Don't bother to come. I'm calling it a day" then pressed 'send' button. Anger was slowly built in me. I should've known better that I couldn't ever put my trust in men.
00.18
I checked on my cellphone again and it turned out the text's status was still pending. Not yet delivered.
Unconsciously, I walked to and fro the room as waiting for the message to finally get through.
00.26
Taking a deep breath, I decided to call him to find out his whereabouts. He said it only took 30 minutes from his apartment to my hotel. So if he hadn't showed up after 3 hours, something could have probably happened to him.
"You are not getting respond from the number you are calling" Some machine picked up the phone. It's a sign of his phone was either switched off or he was somewhere without reception.
00.47
Sitting on a big, cold bed in a big, cold hotel room holding my big, cold cellphone, I tried to watch TV as waiting for him to at least let me know he couldn't make it that night to be with me.
I would be even angrier for sure. But at least I would know he was still alive.
01.19
I placed a call to reach him again. Still the same old damn machine. Still to no avail.
01.34
I walked to the door and peeped through the peeping hole. The alley was so empty. Nobody was seen. Not even a drunk sugar daddy walking as grabbing a teenage whore's tight ass.
01.37
Went to the bathroom to change my clothes and wash my face. I wasn't sure that even water could put off my flame of restlessness.
01.42
A little ray of hope encouraged me to put another call. But hope never did anyone any good, for his cellphone was still unreachable.
The Malay-speaking TV which I normally found it funny would kill me softly if I let it on. So I had to shut it up. When the TV was already off, I didn't feel any better. The silence was so loud that it felt like forcing me to jump out from the balcony.
01.44
"What has happened to him?", "Was he hit by another fast car when he was busy picking up phones while driving?", "Is he really leaving me and he isn't man enough to tell it right to my face?", "But this is so un-him to just disappear like this", "Is he so tied up with his work that he forgets the time?"
I could only ask questions and get no answers because walls couldn't talk.
02.02
The room gradually felt so cold that I needed to turned off the air conditioner and open the balcony door to embrace the midnight heat from outside.
02.03
"I can't do this" I texted him in despair, referring to the conversation the day before when he asked me to not give up on the so-called relationship just because he was so busy that he had to no time to realize that I had stolen some time and flown all the way to spend some quality time with him.
02.15
I couldn't stay in the room. It's just too cold. But I also didn't know where else to go. I was 2 hour-flight from the comfort of my own home.
I needed a drink to calm my nerves down but I had difficulty to place my feet firmly on the ground.
Another attempt to call him. Still no sign that he ever existed on Earth.
02.44
Another attempt to call and it's always a woman's voice telling me "you are not getting respond from the number you are calling" immediately.
Crazy bitch!
02.45
I needed my girlfriends back home!
02.46
I couldn't handle this all alone!
02.47
I couldn't take the cold of the room anymore that I had to move to the bathroom where there's warmer. I spread a towel in the slightly wet bathtub and sit right on it. I felt none the better, only much warmer.
02.49
I lit another cigarette in the hope of getting any calmer. But instead, I had this mental picture how his bloody face crashing against an SRS airbag that failed to pop out.
02.50
I stood in front of a bathroom mirror and asked myself: "Miss Regina Fransiska Anggraini, what the hell are you looking for by coming to this strange land?"
The last time I Miss Regina Fransiska Anggraini me was when I stole my father's car key and wrecked it during mere 3 hours after it came out of a showroom.
"Are you looking for love? You don't even believe in it anymore. Are you looking for a man? You don't even need one. Are you looking for sex? You can get it back home easily without having to invest feelings on anyone. Don't you see that he doesn't even want to spend the night with you while normal men would've made love to you without love by now?!"
I hated myself for ever deciding to come to see him.
02.52
I tried to cry. Not because I was sad or too angry. Crying my ass off till my eyes were all red and swollen might make me feel sleepy faster. But I just couldn't cry. Instead, I had a very strong crave to slam any breakable porcelain things available within my reach.
02.53
I shouldn't let him get into my skin this deep, I scolded myself.
02.55
I got up from the narrow bathtub and got back to the bed. On the way, I pressed his stored number again. The one and only number he ever gave me. But again, that bitch speaking.
02.56
The mattress was fine, the pillows were superb, the blanket was soft and warm. But sleep wasn't anywhere near me.
03.06
"I have to get some sleep," I tried to hypnotize myself. At that point I was more convinced than before that I didn't have any whatsoever psychic or mentalist talents.
03.07
I walked up to the phone lying on a desk and dialed the hotel's service center number.
"Good morning. I'm sorry to call at this hour but I'd really appreciate it if you could tell me if you've heard any accident happened tonight between 9 to 12."
"Just a moment, ma'am, I'll go ask my friend,"
03.08
"I'm sorry, ma'am, I'm not sure if there's any accident around here. But I'll let you know as soon as we heard any. Are you okay, ma'am?"
"Can you tell me all the names of the hospitals between Damansara (the area where he lived) and here?"
"Hold on, ma'am, let me check."
03.10
"It's Sunway Medical and Subang Jaya Hospital. Is there anything I can do to help, ma'am?"
"No thank you. You've been helpful enough," I hung up and laid on the bed feeling miserable. It was worse than having been told "I can't see myself with only one woman" by certain someone who previously sort of dragging me to see the possibility of ever walking down the aisle with him.
03.15
"Men are all the same!" I cursed under my breath.
03.16
"I really need to get some sleep in case I'm gonna be summoned to the hospital to recognize his corpse tomorrow," I persuaded myself to doze off.
03.17
"Is it painful to die?" I asked him, imagining he was really dead and that his spirit was around my bed at that time.
05.12
I woke up from sleep. Reached out for my cellphone to find any missed calls or unread messages from him. But my LCD monitor was as clean as any newborn baby's conscience.
05.13
I tried to call him a few times. Each time it was always that bitch's voice again. It was af if he never existed.
05.20
I phoned the hotel's service center asking if whoever picked up the phone had heard any accident. Negative.
05.34
I need my girlfriends! But it was Sunday's break of dawn in where I live when people would normally still be fast asleep after all night partying or a late night movie show.
05.36
Switching around the TV channels, my mind helplessly formulated all the possiblities of why he disappeared. Somehow it reminded me of a poem written by a Dutch female poet:
A DATE
by Hagar Peeters
He hasn't turned up yet
Maybe he's sick
or got hit by a train
maybe he met someone
and then involved in a nostalgic conversation
Maybe he forgot his watch
Or the hands of his watch forget to show the time
Maybe his car won't start
or the car is in trouble on the way here
Maybe somebody called him right before he left
And that somebody informed him
that he has to go to a cremation
or that his mother has passed away
Maybe he met an old friend
Maybe he had an argument at work
and then he got fired and now is hiding his head under a pillow
Maybe the bridge is opening and so is the next bridge
Maybe the traffic lights have kept forever red
Maybe his ATM card has been swallowed by the money machine
or on the way he forgot his wallet
Maybe he lost his glasses
or he can't stop reading an interesting book
or maybe there is a show on TV he doesn't wanna miss
and intend to watch till it's finished
or his front door can't be locked
maybe he lost his keys and suddenly his dog started to puke
Maybe there is no public telephone around
or he can't find the address of this restaurant
or right now he's waiting in some different place
Maybe - the last possibility unreasonable and unpredictable possibility -
he loves me no more
That made sense. He loved me no more and just simply left.
07.17
I woke up from sleep in heavy perspiration. I missed the comfort of home where I could at least hug my dog whenever I woke up from a nightmare.
07.18
As walking to turn the AC back on, on the way, my eyes stole a glance at my silent cellphone. Still no messages or missed calls.
07.20
I decided to have a nice hot shower before going down to the restaurant to eat breakfast. Food should have done anyone any good. Little did I know it wasn't hungry-man-is-an-angry-man situation.
08.10
Such an overcrowded restaurant with a bad, instant coffee having a little too much tannin. I hated drinking bad coffee to start a day. Especially such a bad day like that.
I couldn't even be amused of what David Sedaris had to say in his book I was trying to read between chewing fresh watermelon.
08.35
I texted 2 dear friends back home telling her about his disappearing act and received 2 replies in no time. A more optimistic friend opined that there must have been something holding him up from going back to the hotel to see me. Not necessarily an accident, but it could be even worse, she said. While a more bitter one told me to just leave the country with the next flight out because no doubts, he had left me.
08.37
I went to the hotel's business center to find his address which I remember he ever wrote in some hotel booking confirmation. There should have been alternative phone numbers to contact as well.
08.38
"Ma'am, the fee for 30 minute of Internet access is RM 20," some Indian lady behind the counter told me.
"No problem. I urgently need to check my emails"
08.40
I wrote everything mentioned in that confirmation letter he once emailed me.
08.45
"Please charge it to my room account," I told the same Indian lady as I finished.
"You still have another 20 minutes. Don't you want to continue using the Internet, Miss?"
"No, thanks. I have to go."
"Where are you from? The Philippines?" she asked while watching me sign the Internet bill.
"No. I'm sorry I can't chat right now. I really have to go." Then I ran out of the room and swallowed my guilty feeling for being rude to her.
08.47
At the concierge...
"I need a taxi, please,"
"Where to, Miss?"
"I need to go to this address," I showed her a piece of paper containing his address.
08.50
"Could you take me to this address?" again I showed that piece of paper. This time to the taxi driver.
"Do you know exactly where it is?"
I frowned and was ready to rage. Instead of saying: "If I had known the address, I would have gone there myself without your help", I told him in a forced calm tone: "If I'm not mistaken it's not far from John Hancock Building. Approximately 10 minutes from there."
08.55
Again I texted the optimistic friend that I was on a cab trying to track down his home address. She wished me good luck and somehow I felt braver knowing I had someone to go through this with. Although she was over the oceans.
09.15
"Are we close now?" I asked the taxi driver who had been making calls asking for directions to reach the address I wrote on a piece of paper. He was talking in some Indian language, though I didn't know a word, I could sense that none he had spoken with knew the mentioned address.
"Let's see. We'll need to get off this highway first."
09.33
The taxi led me to a condominium building being on progress of development.
"Are you sure this is the right address?" he asked me.
I should have been the one who asked him that, since it's far from being logical urgently wanting to see somone who lived in a building that hadn't even been completed.
"I don't think this is it. Do you mind asking someone around?"
He then got off the car and went asking a security guard. The gestures they made when talking screamed a sure fire way that none of them knew where the address was.
I felt my heart jump to my mouth.
09.35
"Let's try the other area," the driver suggested
"Okay," I replied weakly.
"Do you know at least the name of the road where this condominium exists?"
"No. That's all the address I got. I'm sorry."
09.43
I saw a gold colored Volvo stopping at a traffic light. Jumped in excitement, I told the taxi driver to follow the car. A rush of hope filled me again that it could be him. Very few people had that such distinct color for their cars.
09.44
I texted a friend back home again telling her I thought I saw his car.
09.48
A Proton's speed didn't match a Volvo's, of course, that the driver had difficulty in keeping its speed limit. But when the taxi was finally right behind the gold colored Volvo, it turned out it wasn't his car I saw. The series of the car was different.
Another hope was thrown away.
09.56
The car stopped in a neighborhood full of half-developed apartment buildings. Like a movie being rewinded on a DVD player, the driver got off the car again and asked anybody he could find by showing them the piece of paper I wrote his address on. More people shook their heads or raised their hands as affirming the lack of knowledge they had on the address.
09.59
"Could you call your friend and ask the exact address?"
Don't you think I've tried that?, I snapped at him silently.
"He turned off his cellphone. I've been trying since last night," I told him in a trembling voice.
10.28
"It seems nobody knows the address, Miss. I'm sorry. So what are we gonna do now?" the driver had given up on me. Like so many others before.
"Let's go back to the hotel then!"
10.56
By the time I got off the taxi at the hotel's lobby, the meter was RM 75.20. It equaled a pair of Vincci shoes and a hard cover book. Not a taxi fare for a lost cause.
When I handed him the money, he gave me that I'm-sorry-your-boyfriend-is leaving-you-to-reunite-with-his wife-and-that's- why-he-didn't-give-you-the-right-address look.
11.00
I was in the empty room again. Feeling 20 times more miserable than I had the night before. Emptier too.
It wasn't what I had expected to experience by taking a 2-day leave when I had been very busy and paying Rp 1 million fiscal fee. It's worth a decent meal for people living in a remote village of Lombok Island.
11.10
I suddenly remember writing a phone number from the email. I dialed it from the room's phone. It turned out it's his office number, but unfortunately nobody picked it up due to it was weekend.
11.15
I texted my friend telling her about the vain quest. She made an attempt to calm me down by saying that he must have had reasons to do the thing he did.
Little did I know that men didn't need any reasons to disappear!
I just wish I had morphine with me to ease the pain!
11.25
I sat on the bed smoking numerous cigarettes. Every 2 seconds I looked at a sign of him on my cellphone.
13.20
My friend texted me to get something to eat so that I wouldn't get sick of too much being stressed out.
But my appetite failed me this time that I could only manage to chew a few chips.
14.15
Hope had vanished, but I tried to dial his cellphone number again.
When hope was gone, then things started to work my way. It was connected!
He answered the phone in a weak voice like that voice of someone had just woken up from a long sleep.
"What the hell happened to you?!" I barked at him.
"Darling I'm so sorry. I blacked out and has just gained consciousness about an hour ago,"
"How come?!" I still barked. I couldn't control the pitch of my worried voice, actually.
"Last night after I did my laundry, I took an anti depressant pill."
Frankly, I had expected to hear a more dramatic story of why he disappeared. But never in my wildest dream it would only turn out to be a lousy anti depressant story.
"I can't talk to you now. I'll call you later," I hung up the phone. I didn't know if I had to believe his lousy excuse of having been blacked out for more than 12 hours.
14.22
He texted me saying (again) how sorry he was and insensitively encouraged me to carry on to see the city without him because he still needed to see a doctor. But he would come later to see me at the hotel.
Like that would make up for all the tossed-and turned seconds!
After 17 hours of restlessness, yes, all I wanted to do was shop and take pictures at the fucking twin towers!
14.23
I replied telling him that he didn't need to see me at the hotel, since he was still in a bad shape. If ever he was really in a faintable condition.
14.24
A texted came. It was from him simply saying: "Thank you" (for letting him not to see me)
Fuck!
It was a test actually. And he certainly blew it.
I wanted him to say that no matter how bad his condition was, when he had been able to stand on his 2 feet again, even when there were raging storms all over the city, he would still come to see me. No matter what.
He owed me an explanation.
14.25 - onwards
It was the longest day in my life.
It's way worse than having my heart broken. It's much worse than being raped then being left naked in the middle of a highway. Being mutilated by a serial killer should have been a much better luck. But girls are not supposed to cry.
The next day I just left the city without saying goodbye to him. And once again holding a fractured heart in one hand and a lot heavier baggage in another.
posted by Indiaphile @ 10:52 AM
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