All About Blues

Chapter 07

Don Faustino Montreal is absorbed in the game of billiards, usually he was uncommunicative when he's in the middle of it but the very moment he has himself a rival— not really a rival but someone who was playing with him, making the hall loud by chats and laughs.

"I apologize for not making it to your farewell party, abuelo."

"I am really disappointed not seeing your presence last night but I totally understand, young man" his voice is nasal and yet sounding orotund. "Law School. I thought you really just entered into such to postpone your wedding. But seeing how you'd been working hard in your academics lately, I could see that you are sincere in your pursuit."

Klay lowered his gazes down to his hands that's playing with the edge of the cue stick "Why is it everyone seems to have been thinking that, me, entering Law School is only an excuse to not yet conduct the wedding?" He walk towards the pool table to take his turn as Don Faustino did not make it to his previous attack. He bent and positioned the cue stick and shoved it to the mother ball.

He succeeded on getting the first hit and proceeded on another.

"A lot would really assume such. I mean they used to believe that men are only good at the beginning" Don Faustino sat in the nearest stool, watching the young man successively shooting the remaining object balls "and in the meantime we'd lose interest and slip away from our promises and oath. Some has unsolicitedly predicted that men never meant doing what they pledged so. And that we're incapable of reenacting what we are suppose of doing"

"Well, aren't we?" He questioned upon positioning at hitting the last object ball in the pool table "Not being sexist, or so if I am— I suppose being satirical, most of men are indeed stupid. I would not like excluding myself though. But so far I haven't screw much things up in our relationship, and I hope I will never."

"—never be like me..." Don Faustino stood in applause after Klay shooting the last hit. "You're getting good in pool uh"

"I've got the best mentor" he shrugged "Would you mind being asked about something... intrusive... offensive as well?"

Don Faustino paused for some seconds before releasing a gentle laugh as of being hinted what question the young man would ask.

"I would not" he puts the cue stick above the pool table, imposed his palms in the railings to support himself from leaning.

He sighed "How many women have you married, Don Faustino?" courageously, he questioned "or you have really loved?"

The old man smiled, melancholically. "I have a lot of affairs with women, but only few had I been quite romantically attached, and there's only one woman I served in marriage"

"Did you loved them?"

"Only few"

"What about, Mariam?"

"Oh my beloved wife" glee with a glimpse of rue was what could be emphasized in his very voice as he see before his eye the montage of different kinds of memories with her in it.

"Did you loved her more than how you did to the rest?"

"I don't know" with no hesitation, "I don't know how do people even estimate a feeling. How do they identify it as less or much? Is it on how you treat people? If that's the case, I treat them fairly. I treat them the way they deserved to be treated. I never get to deal with my women all at ones, I ain't a player, as a matter of fact my partner was the one to first dump me. When I married Mariam I have ended all my previous relationships, yet I knew I had already a child from other woman. The thing is I did learned quite late already and I didn't told her either, I am afraid to do so. Then years later I learned about the rest."

"Why did you marry her when she got pregnant and didn't do to the first one that you got pregnant with?"

"I learned about my other child when I am already and entirely devoted with Mariam, I don't want to lose her as well as I don't want to be dumped for the nth time" He gulped "When I got her pregnant, it's not by accident and yet not that it was planned either. We are a couple of years in romantic relationship when that happens, thus, we did not really get any sort of remorse when we learned about her having a child in her womb and we're somewhat in the right age already. But then her parents are conservative and that after learning about it they immediately settled our marriage, a civil marriage" calmly, he explained.

"Marriage..." Klay turned to look westward where the sun laid descending over the horizon "It was never part of your plans" he turned back at him "Isn't it?"

"I don't really find it necessary" he nasally averred "What was marriage for? A proof that you really love each other?" He snorted "Back in the days parents would arrange their daughters a marriage into an opulent groom, then back in our generation parents would coerce their children to immediately marry the man that had them pregnant, and now in your generation— you had given all the privilege to decide whether when you would marry and yet it's all due to pressure otherwise the fantasy of wedding"

Bewildered, Klay questioned "What is it you're trying to imply?"

"That marriage most likely occurs not due to intimacy nor feeling, and that it only happens out of some mundane, selfish or selfless reasons" orotund and firm as spitting words, he added "Love— it only did exist as an essence of marriage of few couples that are indeed lovers."

As the sun finally hid beyond the horizon, leaving together with its light, the sky was ones again dominated by darkness that was only lessen by the glimmering tiny stars and the moon that wasn't visibly abroad.

Klay was driving all along the partly busy highway of the closing rush hour. The traffic isn't that heavy, just enough to have his car moved inches per seconds. His route is not the usual route he takes to get to his apartment as he wasn't really heading back there. He was to pick up someone in a general hospital— and that certainly was Consuelo.

Don Faustino asked him to pick up Consuelo as he noticed that he didn't brought her car with her as well the family chauffeur is yet around, and that he just learned from Leonel that Consuelo has an appointment to a doctor.

"Why is it that she keep on leaving without notice?" Klay had asked after noticing Consuelo's unnoticeable departure since then.

"She has been like that since she was a child. It's a bit of a scornful, I considered back then, until I realized that she might also have her reasons— and I think it was that she do not want to gain much of our attention as she seems to have always been given such"

"What does that supposed to mean?" Klay questioned, although already having a notion what was the very statement implies.

"She is such delicate creature and that we— the people that surrounds her, constantly makes sure to not put her in any situation that would cause unlikely aftermaths. We all have our very eyes on her since she was a child, everyone is after her, surrounds her, accompanying her. And due to such circumstance, we deprived her in lots of matter"

Don Faustino did not make it even just a bit specific, nevertheless Klay has known much of Consuelo's life back in the years including her illness, having him perceive what Don Faustino's vague statement implies.

As he drove away the highway the traffic went light that he could freely settle in the constant standard speed. Sooner he arrived in the driveway of the hospital in a pretty perfect timing as he just then sought her walking out the exit doors, genuinely laughing with the woman beside her— which had Klay in brief pause. Absorbing the very view.

And that he just then wondered why they were together. Yet he shrugged his thoughts off and rolled the windows of the passenger seat down and called them.

"Klay?!" Consuelo was knitting her brows while bending over, leaning her arms in the frames of the windows of the shotgun seat. Meanwhile, Azul was just right behind her— standing still, trying to also peep inside the car. "What were you doing here?"

"Picking you up"

"How did you know—"

"Leon told us that you have an appointment to a doctor today and your grandfather asked me to pick you up since it was evening already."

Consuelo did not reply and just opened the door of the passengers seat, and stepped aside in order to have Klay see Azul who just then slouched to greet Klay.

"If you're dropping me home, you better just drive her back in her dorm too!" Consuelo said.

"Sure" not even diffident, instead he's more likely excited.

"Great. Now Azul get in the backseat!"

"I c-can just take—"

"No get in the backseat!"