It's mid-April and summer classes started once again. Rayel felt a sense of comfort and anxiety all at the same time upon knowing that west of him a 747 would be loading at California one of these days, Jenny settling onto her seat with a book by Rayel Capistrano, Manny Pineda running around the cabin looking for his Spiderman pillow. She'd once mentioned that Manny was a master at sleeping on airplanes but absolutely panicked and couldn't sleep at all without his Spiderman pillow. Rayel just smiled, fearing that Jenny might get offended if he would have laughed. Manny's also a superhero freak, he thought. And he also thought that the big "S" would have crushed Mr. Spideyduds if he wants to, whenever he wants to. Rayel could picture Jenny in her demure, wire-rimmed glasses, glancing at his book, then out the window as the jumbo jet lifted off and brought her back toward him.

Classes began in less than a week, and Rayel was in his office fussing around, hoping he might see Manny Pineda, which would be his signal Jenny had returned. The phone rang.

"Hello, Rayel how are you?" her voice was warm, soft, the diction clear and crisp as always, except when she was sitting at Starbucks talking to a man about secret things she felt and thought he might also feel.

"Jenny --- are you back or what?" he noticed his voice shook out just a little, and he didn't like it.

"Yes, we got in late last night. Manny's still sleeping, but I'm all fouled up timewise, so I've been up since four o'clock this early morning wandering around. Did you get the picture I sent?"

"I did indeed. Thank you. You looked well and happy." He didn't say anything about placing it on his desk. This was an intricate dance along the halls of ambiguity, and Rayel was feeling his way, not wanting to open things too rapidly.

"Yes, I am feeling well. I ran into one of my old friends from California on a movie house in Spring Valley. She got me back into yoga, and it does wonders for my body and my mind."

Oh, Jenny, Jenny, he was thinking, don't say anything about your body. Give the poor man space enough to breathe, space to be less wicked than you already had made him in his impure thoughts.

"Rayel, any chance we might meet somewhere? I'd like to talk, but I don't want to come to your office since I suspect Manny will be up at the university as soon as he wakes up."

"Sure, any place. You name it."

"How about Starbucks again?"

"Fine. When?"

"What time is it now?"

He looked at his watch. "Half an hour before noon."

Silence on the other end for a few seconds. "Would twelve push you too hard? I'd like to be gone when Manny wakes up so I don't have to think up some reason for going out."

"No, that's fine. I have the Crow tied down outside the building. Noon, then?"

"Yes... Rayel?"

"I'm here." Too cool, being way too cool.

"I'm looking forward to seeing you."

"Me too, Jenny. See you in half an hour."

It was only a five-minute ride out to Starbucks, so he went down to cancel his 12:30-1:30 class. He'd told one of his students to write No Classes Today by order of the President on his chalkboard to be sure no one's going to wait.

Jenny was already seated when Rayel got there with the Crow. He parked and secured the bike outside and locked it. He couldn't see her at first, partly because she was back in one of the corner booths off to his right.

"Rayel, over here."

Jenny. After all these months, there she was and calling out to him. Light brown hair gathered high, brown eyes steady on his, light yellow summer dress with sandals. Walking towards her, feeling clumsy, estranged from her. She held out her hand, Rayel took it and slid in beside her. She kissed him on the cheek, then, butterfly-quick, leaned back and looked at him. He was gone again, over hills just seeing her, forehead sweating and heart pedals turning like the Crow.

"You look great, Rayel. Just wonderful, and no presemester haircut yet."

"Nah, I've been putting it off. I hate going to barbers. More likely because when I was about four years old, Mang Rudy, the only barber I trusted, threatened to cut off my ears if I didn't sit still while he was working on me."

She laughed. "Really? Did that really happen?"

"Yes, it did. You look wonderful, too, Jenny. I've thought about you a lot."

She looked down, then up at Rayel, then down again. Rayel ordered two cups of coffee for both of them. Rayel held up his cup, and she touched hers to his. "What shall we drink to, Rayel?"

"How about survival?"

"Rayel, you're just the same." Her chastisement was gentle. "How about we sip to a nice summer day and your success in writing?"

"And your safe return," he said.

"How's the Crow going?"

"Good, overall. It's a perpetual battle, but good. I took it down into Subic just a couple of weeks ago, but didn't stay long. I also rode it last Christmas out in Olongapo and stayed a week with my mother."

"How is she?"

"Old, and getting more fragile every day. I'm afraid we're talking of not more than five years away from a nursing home or something along those lines. It's her heart, always has been."

Jenny didn't say anything for a while. He drank his coffee and took out his cigarettes, offered her one. She refused. "I've stopped smoking. Something about yoga that leads to that, not sure what it is."

He nodded and flipped open the Zippo, lit his, and leaned back against the padded booth. She slid over farther so she could turn and look straight at him.

Rayel was tired of holding off. "Where are we, Jenny, the two of us? It's been a long ten months for me." After he said it he wished he'd moved into this a little slower. Typical male fashion --- no foreplay.

She didn't say anything for a moment. He'd forgotten just how pretty her eyes were until she kept them on his for at least ten seconds.

"I've done a lot of thinking, Rayel." Those were bad news words, he could tell. Something in the words themselves, something in the way she said them. What they felt for each other didn't require thinking. It didn't require words. It was more than thinking and words could explain. The happiness from seeing her again started draining down and out of him.

She paused, then went on. "I had the words all ready to say, but it's much harder than I thought it would be. I'd convinced myself the way I felt about you was a kind of girlish infatuation with a man from the past that was just so dear to me. Too dear, if I may add. But with you here looking at me with those dark brown eyes, your hair drifting over your shirt collar and all, it's more difficult... a lot more difficult."

"Say it, Jenny. I already know what's coming."

"I suppose you do, and I'm going to say what I have to say before I get to the point when I can't say it. Rayel --- we've got to cut this clean before real trouble starts." He was prepared for it, but that didn't stop the harpoon from entering his chest and going out the other side. It was painful. "Manny asked me several times in the days before we left for California if there was anything wrong with me. He said I was acting a little strange. It was you, Rayel, no, us. I was thinking about us, fantasizing about things I don't even want to mention."

"That's all right, Jenny. I've had the same kind of images in my mind since our high school days. Mine would just blow you away if I started talking about them."

"Women have those thoughts, too. Let me go on. In ways you'll never know, and I don't want to talk about, I owe Manny a lot. Look, we both know Manny. He's a little goofy in certain ways, but he's very kind to me.

Manny was crushed when the best schools wouldn't accept him for his masterals. His grades were good, but only because he worked so hard. God, his parents just hammered and hammered at him about the whole idea of success. But Manny doesn't have a truly fine intellect. He knows that and has come to terms with it, though it bothers him because of the world in which he'd chosen to earn a living, a world where he's constantly reminded of his limitations just by being around people like you, Rayel."

"Oh, hell, Jenny... please don't bring that up." He looked down and started to do a foot shuffle into something resembling modesty.

"Rayel Capistrano, don't play the country boy with me, please. It's not becoming, and I know better. You scare Manny. He knows he's not in your league. He could teach all his life and never get the chance to be an assistant dean. He could write all his life and never get an article accepted by the journals. I don't mean to imply you don't work hard, I know you do, in spite of the casual way you seem to operate. And Manny likes you. He likes you a lot, and he's appreciative of the good ideas you give him." Rayel was shaking his head all the while Jenny was talking. "If he ever makes full professor, you'll be responsible for it in good part. You do things not normal people can do. Have you realized that? You're Superman." She smiled when she said it.

He smiled back, but only a little. He lit another Marlboro. This was turning into something a little unpleasant, and he didn't want that to happen with Jenny. She was floating off, getting loyalty and Manny's shortcomings and her own emotions all tangled up. Using them as a shield to protect herself from her own feelings.

"Jenny, let me try and say what I think you're telling me. You feel good things for Manny, among them at least a kind of love, I'm sure. You're a loving person. And you feel a gratefulness toward him for something I don't know about and won't ask about. And you know that no matter what you do, it wouldn't affect how I feel about you. And you still love me but, then again, you want to make sure our feelings for each other don't go any further than just that --- feelings. Have I got it right?"

She nodded, tears in her eyes. "Why are you like that, Rayel? How can you be so casual and cool while I cry here? I don't even know if you really care."

He had momentum and kept it rolling. "Here's the bottom line, Jennifer Tablante Pineda: I'm in love with you, truly and powerfully in love. I've known it since high school. I knew it when you walked in the dean's kitchen a year ago, knew it when we sat on the back steps that day. Christ, swinging with you at Ocean View. Do you have any idea of how much I've wanted you, all of you, everything that makes you up, tangible and otherwise? The whole works, that's what I want. I'm no youngster anymore, Jenny. I know what I want. Do you understand that, Jenny, then and now, how deeply I feel?" finally tears flowed from his eyes.

"Rayel... don't..." she reached in her purse, took out a handkerchief, and put it against her eyes for a moment then wiped his cheeks. The girl at the counter was not insensitive; she had a feel for what was going on and turned up the television to cover their conversation. Rayel nodded at her in thanks, and she gave him a little wave. Then looked back again at Jenny, who was now trying to compose herself, but couldn't.

"I love you, too, Rayel. And I'm saying this not because I want to hurt you more, I know you are already. I'm saying this because this is what I feel. What I've always felt. But, right now, I know you know we can't be... what we want us to be."

He put his arm over her shoulders and he felt happiness. The hum started again inside of him, but this time made low, sad sounds for all the times he'd never feel it again. "It's okay, Jenny. We'll make it work. We'll put some bandages on the cuts and promise not to look under them ever again. We'll stay as friends and I want that to be forever. I'm not sure I can stay in the same area with you, but I'll try. Really, I'll try, Jenny. Maybe we can eventually let it go so we can have coffee here again sometimes. Maybe it'll all spiral down and diminish, we can do that."

She stuffed her hanky back in her purse and reached out for his left hand, holding it tight in both of hers. "You're right, Rayel, in everything you said. Damnit, I know why people get frustrated with you some times and are secretly afraid of you. Your mind is faster than a speeding bullet when you decide to let it run full tilt, and that's scary. The dean's wife, Jessica, said that about you the first day I met her at that party. She said, 'Rayel Capistrano frightens the hell out of Rodrigo, and Rodrigo retaliates in mean little ways.' The dean was supposed to turn you down as assistant dean, even though you'd done twice as much work as it took to qualify. Jessica told him, 'Rod, you pull that piece of crap on Rayel and you'll see me waving from the first bus out of Manila'."

Now they had Jessica and Rodrigo into it. Jenny kept wandering away from the subject, but he understood why. There was a door closing behind them, and she wanted to keep it open all the while she was pulling it shut.

"Jenny, let's let it rest where it is. You know where to find me. Come by if you feel you can. Hell, I just like to be around you, to look at you, to smell your perfume when I get close, which I haven't done nearly enough."

"I don't think so, it ain't going to be easy. There's something about being in each other's presence that's just too strong for me --- for both of us. When we're together it's just like magic. I came off the plane clear-headed and ready to tell you exactly how I felt and what I was going to do, now here I am turning into buko pie. I've got to get my life organized again. I'm going to take another class this summer, so I'll be in campus three days a week. If I feel okay about it, I'll stop by to see you. If I don't, and I probably won't, it's not because I'm not thinking about you. You understand that, don't you?"

"Yes. I understand, Jenny, more than you'll ever know. I don't like it, but I understand. And I'll be thinking about you, too. That's all I ever seem to do anymore."

As they left Starbucks, Jenny gave him a plastic bag. "I forgot to give you this."

He looked inside. Inside was a t-shirt with Tweety printed at the back.

Rayel took the Crow out of Manila and let it go all the way to Novaliches, where he turned around and came back into Sampaloc through one of those soft April twilights. Going home past Angelicum College, he could hear the marching band practicing. They were playing some old song from some old movie. Rayel Capistrano couldn't remember the name of either the song or the movie, because he was thinking about Jenny and wondering how he was going to get through the years ahead without her.

For a friend,

I would try to erase

The frown on his face and

Replace it with a smile.

When love gets in the way,

I would try even harder

To make him smile

Because of thoughts of me.

For a friend,

I would offer an embrace

For comfort

Through his pain.

When love gets in the way,

I would offer my arms

As assurance that with me

Pain would never be felt.

When you were just a friend

Everything was complex

And colorful in a plain

And uncomplicated way.

But love got in the way.

Now everything between us

Is just

Complex and colorful.