Portents

SUMMARY

Miggy receives a call confirming her pregnancy. She is shocked and confused as to what she should do. Ramon and Lawrence are possible candidates as the baby’s father but she is not sure nor is she married to either of them.

She is in such a daze when she goes to work that she is already halfway to her office when she realizes that she should have caught a ride. She passes by a church where a filthy man was talking to her in gibberish. She wonders if he chose to speak her because he can see her “dark and grimy soul”. She reaches her office and sees Wilma and Pocholo. The latter talks to her about his worries that the world will come to its end as Nostradamus had predicted. He pointed out that they had had a big earthquake, and now Iraq is at war with Kuwait. Moreover, his aunt and some other kids saw a horseman in the sky which was also a vision that was seen before World War II began. All morning she wonders if she should ask for Wilma’s (she had had four abortions) abortionist.

She has lunch with Lawrence but walks out of the restaurant without informing him of her predicament. She wanders around the mall and thinks about the pros and cons of having the baby. After which, she went back to the office. There, she sees people “scurrying about like newly-beheaded chickens” panicking to go home since the radio announced that there will be a big earthquake at 2:30. The building is closing so she decides to go and use the afternoon off.

She goes home and ordered pizza. The phone rings right after she puts it down. Ramon was on the line asking if he could come over to her house. She said yes and hangs up. At six, Ramon arrives. They go to the terrace where Ramon eats. While he is eating she tells him about her weird day and Pocholo’s fear of the world ending. This leads them to talk about morbid things. Ramon tells her that maybe the world is ending but that does not concern him much. What concerns him more is if he will be the last person on earth. Then it starts to rain so they get up and go inside. As she closes the door to the terrace she thinks she saw “a man on a black horse, riding through the rain” in the sky. She downplays this to be just something that pregnant women experience due to hormone or something.