SUDDEN PUNCTUATIONS
Story # 1

Fritzie works for Chocolates Limited where she creates and designs chocolate bar wrappers, and she's actually added on five pounds from sampling different chocolate bars by their competitors—not that she really craves for them, it's just that she sometimes runs out of ideas for a new candy wrapper and so she regularly checks out the vending machine at the ground floor for new chocolate bars; but she has spent all her pennies on those bars and nothing seems to be new anymore and so it’s time to go to 7-11 down the corner of Buendia, where, as always, the counter-girl amazes her: Andie her nameplate says, and Andie would always be busy attending to bitchy and snotty yuppies wanting to have the infamous Slurpee and Knorr Cup Noodles for a taste of urban fast-lunch-break: Fritzie never chooses to indulge on these monosodium-glutamate-enhanced gustatory delights for fear of growing an extra arm or intestine—or so her Tita Lyn says—Fritzie goes through the rows in the small store, one by one, passing by the toiletries section where she enjoys the waft of assorted soaps and shampoos and deodorants, the canned goods section where she tries to catch an expired can of corned beef or meatloaf or sardines, which she would buy, open at home, and then return to the store, claiming that the item she got from that store is already expired, and then she would sue the store, the manager, and probably the canned food manufacturer—but never Andie, it’s just her job—and then she wouldn’t have to work for Chocolates Limited because she’d go for an amicable settlement and be rich, she’d put up her own art gallery where her “real” works of art will be, but then it’s absurd because perhaps the manager would just accuse her of stupidity for not checking out the expiry date and then she’d be humiliated in front of Andie, and Andie would just snicker behind the cash register and she would never notice that Fritzie has been wearing the same baseball cap as Andie’s—but Andie has never even looked Fritzie in the eye but she doesn’t lose hope, even if it takes her twenty-thousand chocolate bars and she will have to work for Chocolates Limited all her life, so long as she has a reason to go back to that 7-11 store along Buendia, again and again—even if she loses all her teeth from cavities, maybe, just maybe, Andie would one day ask Fritzie what she does with all those candy bars and how come, how come Fritzie is wearing the same baseball cap backwards too…


Story #2

Fritzie puts on her headphones and she sits up as Young Angry New Yorkers blares because we need to live so we curse at the sun while she toys with her yellow pencil with Ted and Rabi on it, it’s the type that has spare leads which you insert at the bottom so that you wouldn’t have to use a sharpener—it’s the Bensia type, except that it’s not a Bensia—and she remembers her kindergarten days when she’d beg her Tita Lyn to buy her a Bensia because every kid in K1- Mabini has a Bensia and Fritzie did not; a message flashes on her computer screen, and she looks behind her to check if nobody was looking before she opens the message box: it was from this African girl she met at the chat room—her name was Woliya and she wants Fritzie to install a web cam so they could see each other while chatting, but of course Fritzie cannot do that, at least not until she quits working for Chocolates Limited, and then she remembers she has to turn in a new logo design for this chocolate bar with caramel and nuts and peaches called Peachie’s Pack, Fritzie doesn’t know, really, why on earth Peachie’s Pack is called Peachie’s Pack, and she doesn’t think kids would love them—it’s the kind you’d say as lasang tanga—and for one thing, 7-11 Buendia doesn’t sell that stuff, maybe Andie the counter-girl gets to sample what chocolate bars they’d sell, and maybe Andie wouldn’t like Peachie’s Pack, and so, even if Fritzie came up with a new design for Peachie’s Pack wrap, 7-11 Buendia still wouldn’t sell it, and Fritzie wouldn’t have a reason to go buy that candy and tell Andie casually that Peachie’s Pack has a cool wrapper, and maybe, Andie would then see things Fritzie’s way…


Story #3

Fritzie prayed for soft, steady rain today so she could wear her new black trench coat and pink Chuck Taylors she bought from E-Bay as a treat for herself. Chocolates Limited won the account for Peachie’s Pack because of Fritzie’s design and so Cesar decided to give her a bonus for a job well done, which for Fritzie, was really nothing, it was just that: she was doing her job, and between the MRT rides to and from her office and the occasional cappuccino at Starbucks, Fritzie wouldn’t know what else to do, what to do better than contemplating on shampoo, light bulbs, condoms, greeting cards…