The Missing Skirt and The Irate Caller

Someone had a bright idea to have a wedding photo-op and for some reason everyone agreed. So here we all are again in church, re-constructing our wedding for the camera. In between shots I sit around in my wedding attire sans skirt and put on a pair of shorts.

When it's time to shoot our wedding kiss, I can't find my skirt. I try to convince everyone that my shorts will have to do. Do I not look so deconstructed? So postmodern? This is the look on this month's Italian Vogue, I swear! Perhaps the photographer can later on just photoshop a skirt on my person. But no, everyone insists that I should not stop until I find my skirt. I look everywhere but I don't find it and everyone is so annoyed at me because it looks as if we will have yet another wedding pictorial.

***

Jill answers her cell phone, listens and hands the phone to me. "It's Moe. For you."

I gesture wildly, like in charadres, shake my hands to mean, "No, no, no!"

Jill takes on a very professional manner (I guess it's her call center training) and says to her phone, "She can't come to the phone right now. May I take a message?"

She listens and from time to time covers the mouthpiece to repeat snippets of his message to me. "He hates you. He regrets ever having known you. He hopes you go to hell."

The rest of the barkada form a panel and comment on this new development. It is so American Idol.

"Who is Moe?" wonders Chingkay.

"MInsan mas mabuti na ang walang balita," says TL.

"This calls for an intervention," declares Nins.

As soon as Jill hangs up, she rolls her eyes as if to dismiss the call and says quite lazily, "What an irate caller."

I smile. Irate caller! I haven't heard that term in... years! And what a term to call Moe. It's so ironic but nobody but Jill and I understand the joke so when our eyes meet we burst out laughing.