Plenty

In a smoke-filled bar where most of the men are shaggy and unshaven, and expletives repeated over and over again qualify as art, the world stops in her drink.

It's just a small glass of ordinary iced tea, so inconsequential that by the time she notices the slice of lemon she's been pounding on with her straw, it's all gone.

She looks around her, scouting for any sign of cute male heterosexual (wild)life, but there are only the long-haired ones, the old ones, the unwashed ones. She is, of course, looking for the man who'd invited her in the first place, but he's nowhere to be found. He is probably smoking weed in his apartment, she thinks, surrounded by his cacti and tribal art, with that wonderful view of Manila Bay, watching as the ships sail far, far into the distance.

She tells her little sister, have faith, it'll all work out. As she says the words, she struggles to believe them herself. She'll be turning 25 soon, half of half a century, a full life, in the Dark Ages she would have been considered ancient, and she is where? In a bar, feeling old men's eyes on her, listening to one of them scream into a microphone. Tomorrow she will start work, and the anticipation is killing her. It's a start.

Everything - even the end of things - is a start.