EXILIUM REX

Chapter 9

Angelo and Gemma: A Love Backstory (Part 4)

*

“Deliciously good meal, Ma’am! Thanks!”

Officer Pete was brimming with pure satisfaction – when was the last time he had had such a succulent meal? Somehow, Gemma reminded him of his own Melissa. To his mind, right now, the good woman cooked almost as tasty as his own estranged wife.

Before things unfolded any further in the senior ranger’s mind, however, Rorry tapped him on his back. “I told you it will all be worth it, he-he. Pakapalan lang ng mukha ‘yan.”

Pete’s junior officer just had to add some more and burped it out, “Y’know, Pete, maybe you’re right, after all. Maybe wild country’s just the thing for me. He he he…”

“Shhh, cut it out! The lady might hear us and think we’re being rude.”

But Gemma had already gone around the far backside of the tent and re-appeared seconds later with two bottles of Red Horse already opened. She handed them both over to Pete who was presently sitting on a makeshift bench beside Rorry.

“Here you go, Sir. Don’t worry. They’re ice-cold.”

Gemma had already set up a folding chair nearby and stooped her body down to sit on it, as ladily as her skinny jeans could afford. The buho stick inside her pants’ back pocket, however, announced itself to be a nuisance to her act of sitting; thus, the lady had no choice but to take it out again and she started fiddling with it. Careful not to steer its pointed end into the clear line of sight between her and the two rangers. Particularly the one with the double-barreled rifle.

Pete felt like he will be better holding on to these bottles without a badge neatly pinned on his chest. “Thanks, Ma’am. But, really, we shouldn’t be…”

Rorry had to nudge his senior officer again.

“Come on, Pete, one bottle won’t hurt us! You really have to excuse my supervisor, miss. He’s not a bit of a drinker, y’know.”

“Oh, it’s alright,” Gemma replied. “I mean, you don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

“But we want to,” Rorry grabbed one of the bottles from Pete’s frozen hands and started to take a long gulp of the intoxicating stuff. Afterwards, he wiped his lips with the back of his hand and sheepishly grinned at the young woman. “Ah! Thanks, miss. My partner here’s a bit of a workaholic kasi. A, miss, you do have a lighter lying around here somewhere, don’t you?”

The good camp hostess reached underneath her makeshift apron and took out a disposable lighter. She handed it over even as the junior ranger had already bent his head low expecting the young woman to light his cigarette. But Gemma did not and just kept her hand extended to offer the lighter to Rorry.

Pete blushed. Awkwardly, he pushed the lip of his beer bottle to one of his own and, with eyes half-closed, drank the beer like he’s sipping expensive coffee from a porcelain cup. Meanwhile, Rorry had decided to put back the cigarette inside its pack and politely snubbed Gemma’s lighter offer. The good woman submitted to this and retreated to her own same self once again.

Suddenly, Senior Forester Pete Zacariah stood up and proceeded to a nearby thicket to relieve himself.

Rorry had to ask. “Uy, where are you going?”

“Want to come with me? Nature is calling me!”

“He-he-he! Go ahead! But don’t be a traitor! Face us! He-he-he!”

Gemma felt out of place with Rorry’s bantering. She was more used to the reclusive style of her husband Angelo. Silent but resolute. Just like Pete over there – the good woman surmised as she took a quick peek at the broad shoulders and the straight back of the senior ranger. Rorry saw the woman’s eyes size up his senior officer and nonchalantly stood up to walk in the line of sight of the young lady.

Gemma rubbed the scruff of her neck and politely asked the junior ranger. “Sir, is Mang Kanor a good mountain guide?”

Rorry did not answer. Instead, he moved away from Gemma and approached Pete who had just finished relieving himself in the nearby bushes.

Within hearing range of both Gemma and Pete, Rorry blurted out something which had been trying to jump out from his brain.

“Uy, I just had an insight! I think you two look good together! Yes! What’s that they say about couples who’ve been together already for a long time? A, yes! The more you look to each other, the more you look like each other!”

Just then, a stone’s throw away from the three, Angelo and Kano appeared from a backpacker’s trail out of the thicket.

Slightly deeper into the thicket, a mere step away from Angelo, really, a terribly vilified wolf was now more than ready to do its thing. One of the many reincarnations of the Lai Mabinta-Nong. The Goddess of the Forest. The Virgen dela Monte. The Diwata. More than ready to pounce on the seemingly most hapless creature of them all.

Growl.

*

It was already way past the moon’s sleeping hour when Mang Kanor finally decided to cut the story short of the c****x and asked Manengkal for a cup of water from the banga.

Excitedly, his beloved wife had to ask. “Then what happened next?”

The old man sighed.

“Ay, Maneng, you wouldn’t believe what that young woman did next! We were all stunned by the sight of the Lai Mabinta-Nong ready to bite a big piece off of Angelo’s head! Hahaha! It must have been camera-shy or something! And we – I guess, ah, we all turned g*n-shy. Beken ko man maintindan, ag-atras ngani ang ameng manga butleg! But Gemma! Ay, kayerëp! Angelo must be the luckiest person in the world to have a brave wife like Gemma. She pierced the sharp buho stick right inside the beast’s gaping cave of a mouth!”

Beloved Manengkal placed her arms around the neck of her husband and kissed him twice on his handsomely creased forehead. With this, Mang Kanor continued on with what he had to pursue.

“Anyway, in gratitude, I gave them the comb. I guess it was a comb, with the shaft and the teeth and all. In turn, Angelo and Gemma left me, us, with this Canon EOS camera. They wanted me to tell you that this will be good for our business. Here. In Suba. Of course, you have to teach me how to shoot pictures. You would teach me, wouldn’t you, Maneng?”

From somewhere far out of the kubo-kubo, Kanor would have sworn he heard his best friend Rafael’s familiar childish laughter being drowned out by a royal mountain of nippled silence.