fate, fickle-minded fate

It had been two years and Lee still had not divorced Rosaire but we continued to live together. My affair with Benjamin fizzled on its own, mostly because I had gone back to school to study law. My quest for more education made him so insecure, and school work left me with no time for anything else. Somewhere I read that "absence makes the heart grow fonder". But with the length of time that we haven't seen each other, things switched to "out of sight, out of mind".

And Lee, he immersed himself in work and travelled more frequently. The demands of school gradually made it impossible for me to accompany him on his travels. In my articling year, we found it easier to live apart and slowly we saw less and less of each other. Eventually, our affair tapered off, too.

But fate wasn't finished yet with Benjamin and me. A chance meeting was all it took and the ebbing embers suddenly got re-ignited.


Odette and I had spent more than three hours at Rustan's native crafts department to find a gift for one of our departing expatriates. Something distinctively Filipino. At the same time elegant enough to fit in a European home. I had been avoiding coming to this store, but Odette insisted on buying "just the best". The item we chose was a set of wooden bowls. The saleslady suggested we might want to have them engraved and proceeded to call the person in charge of engraving.

"Is that Ben Suarez?" I asked.

"Why, yes, ma'am," she replied. "Do you know him?"

"He's a friend."

"Well," Odette said, "does that mean we might get a big discount?"

And there he was, looking dapper, as always. Smiling like he was the happiest person on earth with that special sparkle in his eyes. The eyes that widened when he recognized me.

"C!" he exclaimed, ignoring the saleslady as she explained what we wanted to have done with the wooden bowls. "Two years! What happened to you?"

"Has it been two years?" I asked. "Time flies, doesn't it?"

"Aherm!" Odette said. "I hate to break some news to you two, but there are other people around you."

"Ben, this is Odette, my friend and co-worker. Odette, this is Ben." They shook hands and Odette picked up from where the saleslady stopped with her explanation about the wooden bowls. But Benjamin wasn't listening.

"Why did you stop calling me? Every time I called your office, your secretary always told me you weren't in, so I gave up."

"There you go," I said, "you gave up."

He winked at me.

"How's Lee?" he asked as he picked up one of the bowls in the set and examined it.

"He's fine."

"Who's Lee?" Odette interjected. I glanced at her. I had never told Odette about Lee except that I had previously lived in with an American boyfriend.

"The American," I said. "Ben, how much would it cost us to engrave two-letter initials on these bowls?" I had to take the initiative to get the conversation to the matter at hand.

Benjamin looked at the price tag on the box, tapped the bowls, all five pieces of them, and without hesitation, replied, "It's free."

Odette gasped. In delight.

"There's a catch, 'though," he said laughing.

Odette laughed, too. "Whatever, we take the catch, or shall I say, Cynne takes the catch." She poked my back, discreetly.


The catch was we will take Benjamin to dinner. At the last minute, Odette bailed out.

"Plus," she said, "All he really wants to be with is you."


Sakura, the Japanese restaurant where we ended up going that night, boasted having the best tempura meal in the city. Lots of people, mostly expatriates and American tourists. For twenty pesos that Benjamin slipped into the waiter's shirt pocket, we ended up sitting at a quiet corner table.

"You were hiding from me," he started as soon as the waiter had left after taking our orders. "You avoided me."

"I didn't hide from you nor did I avoid you. I got busy."

"For two years?"

"Let's face it, Ben. You weren't exactly a free man, and I had a commitment with Lee."

"You could at least have said goodbye."

"Goodbye is so final. I didn't want any goodbye's. Besides, I felt guilty. I don't want to be a home wrecker."