Welcome to Envy Park

Roxie's Doomed

By the time Roxie arrived near nine p.m., everything was still alive at NV Park. The small shopping complex surrounded by the three residential buildings closed at eleven, so I planned to give her a tour of that before anything else. I wanted to show it off because I liked how it turned out. When I was convinced to buy a place there years ago, all I had to go on was a fancy slide presentation and a scale model inside a glass box. The real thing wasn't as glamorous, but it felt fresh to me. I really did feel like I was living in a peaceful little bubble inside a busy city. Rare, if you knew what Manila was like.

I met her at Tower 3's Japanese garden-inspired lobby and saw my best friend alight from a cab and then just stand there at the driveway without coming in.

"Does it take two hours to get here from Makati?" I said as a greeting.

Roxie hadn't changed a day since we graduated from college, and I meant that in the best possible way. While I was awkward and self-conscious then, the "settling into her face and body" thing seemed to have happened to her at nineteen. She knew exactly how to dress to look great in any situation, and being that self-aware was surely why her career in marketing just took off as quickly as it did.

Right then she was in corpo-shark mode, actually reminding me of a shark in a silvery gray pantsuit with a red scarf around her neck.

"I left late," she said, still standing outside. "I wanted to give you more time with the guy."

"There is no guy."

"Don't touch me! Maybe you won't curse me to further celibacy if we don't hug."

"That just makes me want to hug you more then. We're in this together, girlfriend." And I gave her a big hug, which probably doomed her, at least for the next few months.