I miss talking to her, M, my classmate since God-knows-when. We went to kindergarten together, all the way up to elementary and high school. We used to play around the class rankings, outpulling each other for either rank 1 or rank 2, with me getting the better spot at the end as she discovered the wonders of pubertal flirtations.

In high school she never cared anymore while I thought the honors system was a joy from above, killing myself for high grades while she read Harry Potter books in between Daniel Radcliffe daydreams. M even told me, in her own kind of sarcasm, that had I gotten into the Med program, we would have been in UP Manila together, enduring urban toxicity or staring at the grimy city concrete.

Today we rode the LRT together. We hopped in a taxi together, scouring the Makati cityscape for that ubiquitous Shopwise logo that popped out of the aerial background. We asked old men where El Rico Suites were, and then kuya driver just soared through the road. M and I used to just ride padyaks in our small town. We were amazed at the thought of growing old.

MR was the healthier friend. She was my dance partner when we had to perform native dances in fifth grade music. I told her, when we sat at her inn's lobby, that after our every practice, I would wash my hands because her palms were to sweaty. She slapped me on my shoulder and screamed that I never changed. I laughed at her and at the Twilight book she held on her hand. She said it made her shiver during evenings, shiver in romance. And I thought in my mind, God, this girl never had a boyfriend.

MR was in the city for some goal she never wanted. I do not know if she has one right now. But with the goodness in me, I honestly hope she'll fix her life. Not as if it's broken, though, I just like our friendship THAT much so as to hate the day she'll start regretting things. She said she enjoys assisting child births now. She said her hands had acquired that elusive dexterity in aidiing life. I told her when its her time to be someone's mama, she won't have any worries opening her legs and doing the thing.

MR said she only needed her hands and a mirror for that. She had always been a strong, irrational girl.

I think we are friends. They had their girly cliques in high school, though. They always walked home together, or in padyak rides, during the dusks when were still clueless about real life. But this afternoon, we ate lunch together. And MR was that kind to pay for our meals, perhaps, an act of apology that she could only meet us up for two hours. She had nursing duties at afternoons.

I do not think she's happy about the miracle of life and birth. But she seems well, she seems healthier. She had tiredness etched on her face.

We talked about our lives. How it had changed. How intermittent our talks had become. How far the distance had stretched. M talked about slicing human arms, picking out maggots from pig intestines. MR talked about the first time she inserted a urinal tube through a man's penis as she prayed to God she wasn't committing a sin.

I looked at them and I looked at my free meal. Solita Monsod always said there's no such thing as a free lunch. I was having a free lunch with friends, and the only trade-off I saw was that lately, we haven't seen how much we've outgrown our silly selves.

M and I watched MR board the green van along with her nursing classmates, playmates, bedmates or whoever they were. She wore her clean and white nursing uniform, with laces on the front, like their high school uniform. I asked her how many yards it took to make her a nursing getup as decent as that one.

She slapped me again on the shoulder.

When the doors closed, MR's face was blurred by the window tint. We could only imagine her face, in our parting, beneath the opaque blackness and the sun's occasional glare. We watched that green van take her somewhere. To a hospital, perhaps, where mothers nurse their children with their tired breasts. Where people live to die in the end. Where she circles around in uncertainty, in hope and in compromises.

And then I opened my umbrella, because the sun was too hot. M and I walked back. Makati looked so different from where we came.