The Pull of Gravity (5 page)

We exchanged a handshake.

“Hey, Frank,” the Filipina he’d been playing pool with called out. “Your turn, honey. Hurry up so I can win.”

Frank shared a conspiratorial smile with us and said in a low voice, “I always let her win a few my first night back. Robbie, glad to see you’re in town. I’ll stop by The Lounge tomorrow night. And Jay, good to meet you.”

Frank turned and started walking back to his table. “Relax, baby. You ain’t won yet.”

As Robbie sat down, our waitress returned with our drinks and asked if we were ready to order. Robbie said he’d have the shepherd’s pie, and I ordered a plate of sliders and a side of fries.

“Frank seems like a nice guy,” I said. “Known him long?”

“Seems like forever, but probably only two or three years. He flies to Manila for work every month or two. Always manages to squeeze in at least a few days here. A real asshole when he drinks too much, though.”

I took a sip of my beer. “He seemed surprised that you were in town.”

Robbie smiled. “I may own a bar, but I don’t actually live here. I’ve got a business back in Sydney. I’m lucky if I can carve out a week every couple of months to come up here. I make a lot more money there than I do with The Lounge.” He laughed. “But The Lounge is a hell of a lot more fun.”

He downed his whiskey like it was a shot, then motioned for the waitress to bring him another. “Actually, that’s kind of what I wanted to talk to you about. I’ve got an opening for a papasan, and I thought you might be interested. No real heavy lifting. Just make sure everything’s going smoothly. Hand out some free drinks now and then and keep the girls from fighting too much.”

“I don’t know,” I said. I won’t deny that I had a feeling this was what he wanted to talk about. But while I had to admit visiting Fields Avenue had broken up the sameness of my new life, making it a permanent addition to my daily schedule didn’t seem like such a good idea. “I don’t really need a job right now. What about Hal?”

“Already asked Hal,” Robbie told me. “He’s happy where he’s at. Says filling in part-time is about all he can handle. He’s the one who suggested you. It’s a great job. All the drinks you want for free. Mind you, I’d avoid dipping into the talent pool, if you know what I mean. The girls have a way of finding that stuff out. It’ll seem like you’re playing favorites, and that’s when you’d lose complete control.”

“Thanks, Robbie, but I’m going to have to say no.”

“You seem like a smart guy, Jay. I could really use a smart guy. My other two guys, Tommy and Doug, they’re okay, but not quite the brightest fellas around, know what I mean? I’d give you any shift you wanted. Daytime, night, whatever. I’d just feel better knowing there was someone here I could count on.”

“How do you know you could count on me?” I asked. “You don’t even know me.”

“I know Hal, and Hal knows you. Says you’re one of the good ones.”

“I still have to say no,” I said. “I just don’t think that’s something I really want to do.”

“Do me a favor?” he asked.

“Depends on the favor,” I said.

“I’m here ’til Sunday. Think about if for a couple of days and get back to me. Would you do that for me?”

I shook my head. “I appreciate your persistence, but my answer’s not going to change.”

I’d love to say I told him no on moral grounds. That I thought maybe it was okay to come down every once in a while and watch the girls dance, maybe even buy them a drink now and then, but there was no way I would actively involve myself in selling flesh. I’d love to say that, but it would have been a lie. I think it was the idea of working again at anything that made me decline. In my mind that evening, I had retired and my time was my own.

Four boring days later, I called Robbie and told him yes.

CHAPTER SIX

Life has the tendency to fall into cycles and rhythms that go on for indeterminate amounts of time before they gradually, or sometimes suddenly, move into a new phase. If you wait long enough, they often come right back to the beginning.

Life on Fields was no different. We had our high seasons and our low seasons. There were good weeks and bad. Sometimes the girls were grooving to the same happy beat, and other times they were so out of sync with each other that I was lucky Armageddon didn’t descend on all of us. But all in all, life at The Lounge was far from bad.

In fact, there were aspects of that life I loved—my relationships with most of the girls, getting to know more members of the ex-pat community, the interaction with the tourists who passed through, at least the non-idiotic ones, for tourists seemed to come to Angeles in all forms. There were also aspects of the life that I was never comfortable with, the foremost being the Early Work Release. The bar fine.

Though it wasn’t the first term that came to my mind when I thought about my time as a papasan, what I had really been was a pimp. I had my girls, I took care of them, watched over them, listened to their problems, and sold them again and again, night after night.

I wasn’t sure how the other papasans on Fields handled this aspect of things. Some, I had heard, didn’t care at all and pushed their girls to go on EWR whenever the opportunity presented itself, thinking only of the money the bar made from its share of the fine and how good that would make them look. Others might have been as conflicted about it as I was, but I don’t really know. I never talked about it with anyone.

When I was on duty, every time a girl was asked to go out on an EWR, I’d take her aside and ask if she really wanted to go. Not surprisingly, they almost always said yes. The guy could have been a serial killer, and nearly half the girls would have still said, “Sure. No problem. I can handle myself.” It was all about the money. Money was everything. Since the moment they were born, money had been what was missing in their lives, and the lives of their families. And now, in a single night, they could make more than their family back in whatever province they came from could make in a month. A thousand pesos a night was not uncommon. So for what amounted to about eighteen dollars in the States, these girls were willing to risk their lives.

It wasn’t that they were stupid. You wouldn’t last long on Fields if you were stupid. It was a case of the here and now. A thousand pesos in their pockets tonight was better than the chance of two thousand pesos tomorrow. It was a grab-as-you-can attitude. But who could blame them? They were all supporting families back home, and probably an unemployed Filipino boyfriend somewhere in the city, and perhaps even a baby. Maybe two.

The real sad part was they seldom had any plans. Dreams, sure. The girls had tons of dreams. Going to college, working in an office in Manila, owning their own bar. Meeting a foreign guy, and getting the hell off this islands. But most of the time, dreams were all they were. Money earned was as good as money spent, if not by the girls themselves, then by their families on things they didn’t need, or by the boyfriend who took her cash to buy cigarettes or beer or a part for his motorcycle that never seemed to run right.

As much as I could, I encouraged them to save their money. I didn’t know if I got through to anyone. They always gave me a big smile, their eyes wide as if they were learning something truly important, but then the next day they’d be just as poor as ever.

About the only thing I could do was try to minimize as much as possible the chance they might get hurt. After a girl told me she wanted to go out on a bar fine, I’d go with her over to the guy and start up a little small talk. If he seemed like an asshole, I’d make some excuse, fill him up with free drinks and send him on his way alone. The girls would be disappointed, but they trusted my judgment. If the guy seemed okay, I’d let the girl go.

It wasn’t a perfect system. To truly gauge a person, you needed more than a few minutes and gut instinct. It worked more than I had hoped, but it didn’t work all the time. Some sons of bitches hid their asshole tendencies well.

Unfortunately, when something bad happened, I didn’t usually learn about it right away, when it might have been possible for me to do something. Something like having another little chat with the guy, only this time there’d be nothing friendly about it. It wouldn’t reverse what he had done, but it might stop him from doing it again, at least at The Lounge.

But the way it worked, news would filter back to me through the girls days or even weeks later. Something like “so-and-so had been roughed up by some guy” or “stiffed on the tip” or “forced to do things she didn’t want to do.” When I did find out, I’d take the news hard. Then I’d tell all the girls again that they didn’t have to put up with any crap, and they had to tell me when they had problems so the same thing wouldn’t happen to any of the other girls. My biggest fear was that one day someone would come to tell me one of my girls was dead.

It never happened to
me
, but that didn’t mean it never happened.

•    •    •

It was my fourth year on the job. It wasn’t summer yet, but there were still plenty of tourists around. Isabel had been working for me for a few months, but hadn’t met Larry yet.

By then I had settled into a pretty regular routine: up by one in the afternoon, breakfast and a beer at The Pit Stop at three, “office” at six, last call at three in the morning, doors locked by four, in bed by four thirty, sometimes alone, sometimes not. Then repeat.

I lost months that way. 

I didn’t drag myself out of bed until almost two p.m. that day. It was March 14
^th
, three days before our big St. Paddy’s Day blowout. We were going all out that year: green beer, body-painting contest, a pot of gold chocolate coins. I was looking forward to it. I had moved from de facto to official head papasan, or, if you prefer the more common term, bar manager. Good or bad, when something happened at The Lounge, I was the one who gave Robbie the news. So as boss, I decided Dandy Doug was going to help me that night. That way I wouldn’t have to work too hard and could actually enjoy myself. 

Even though the event was three days away, there was still a lot to do so getting a late start didn’t put me in the greatest of moods. It was thanks to a few too many San Migs, courtesy of a regular customer who hadn’t been in town for several months. I hoped he didn’t plan on showing up again that evening. By the time I was sitting at my regular table at The Pit Stop, it was closer to four than three.

Dieter Russ, a German ex-pat who’d been working as a papasan almost as long as I had, was already there. His shift at Sinsations didn’t start until the same time mine did. We sometimes called Dieter “Wild Man” behind his back. He had this head of hair that just refused to stay combed. Within an hour of leaving home, he’d always look like he was wearing an unruly brown bush on his head. I bought him a can of gel once, the foamy kind. If he ever used it, I couldn’t tell.

I waved him over, and he joined me. The waitress brought over two San Miguels without even asking. Sometimes it paid to be a regular. I ordered a ham and cheese omelet, while Dieter got a plate of spaghetti. We tapped our bottles together, then took a drink. It was his second of the day, so his perpetual hangover had already subsided to manageable white noise, while mine was still restricting my ability to speak.

Until I was about three-quarters of the way through that first bottle, Dieter did all the talking. About what, I don’t remember. The girls, probably. It was the default subject.

The food arrived just as I was beginning to feel like this wasn’t going to be my last day on earth after all. Fifteen minutes later, my belly full of beer and grease, I was Angeles’ normal: internal temperature approximately ninety-nine degrees, vision slightly blurry, judgment questionable.

“When I have my own place,” Dieter said, “I think I’ll put the stage along one wall and the bar along the other.”

It was a common dream among the papasans to one day own a bar. At that point, I never gave it much thought. After all, I was only doing this on a temporary basis. At least that’s what I told everyone.

To hear Dieter or some of the other papasans talk about it, their places would be the best on Fields. They’d never make the mistakes their bosses did. They’d have better lineups, cheaper drink prices, nicer layouts. And something special, a hook that would keep people coming back. Like the almost nightly contests at Torpedoes, or the fireman pole through the ceiling they put in at Blenders so the girls could slide down onto the stage. I have to admit that last one was clever.

But few papasans ever actually took the step and bought a bar. And those who did soon found that their lineups weren’t any different than those at the other bars, that they couldn’t afford to offer cheaper drink prices, that most layouts were just a variation on a theme, and every gimmick they came up with had been done before.

“And I’m thinking of maybe a Hawaiian theme,” Dieter continued. “Maybe call it The Luau, something like that. What do you think?”

“How about The Stuffed Pig?” I said.

“Hey, that’s not bad.”

He started riffing on a list of possible special contests he could offer, but I barely heard him. My attention had been drawn to the entrance, where Tom Hill had just walked in looking very serious. Tom was a short, wiry man in his sixties with the reputation of never being happy about anything. He owned a small Internet café just up the road. After a disagreement with Carter, The Pit Stop’s owner, over something so stupid I couldn’t even remember it, Tom seldom set foot in the place anymore.

“So?” Dieter asked. There was a moment of silence, then, “Doc, you’re not even listening to me.”

“Sorry,” I said, then nodded my head in Tom’s direction.

Dieter turned to take a look. “Shit,” he said. “What’s this all about?”

“Don’t know.”

We both watched as Tom walked quickly past a waitress as she tried to offer him a table, then past the pool tables and over to the door of Carter’s office. He went in without knocking.

“Do you think we should check to make sure everything’s okay?” Dieter asked.

“Carter can handle himself,” I replied.

But when Dieter started to speak again, I held my hand up to silence him. I wanted to be able to hear if things got out of hand, just in case we did need to break it up. But moments later the door to the office opened again, and both Tom and Carter stepped out, not a smile between them. Only it didn’t appear they were mad at each other. When Carter spotted Dieter and me sitting there, he put a hand on Tom’s arm and said something, motioning in our direction. The two conferred for a few seconds, then Carter waved at us.

“You guys have a minute?” he called.

“Sure,” I said.

Dieter and I got up and walked over.

“What’s up?” Dieter asked.

“Not here,” Tom said.

Carter led us back into his office. It was a small room with a desk crammed into the corner, stacks of paper and files everywhere, and a couple of chairs for guests. Nobody sat.

“So?” I asked.

Tom looked at Carter before speaking. “There’s a dead girl at Las Palmas.” The Las Palmas Hotel was a favorite place to stay for the average Fields Avenue tourist, and only a couple blocks from The Pit Stop.

For a moment none of us moved or spoke. “Do they know who she is?” I asked.

“The only thing I heard was that she worked at The Lynx,” Tom said. “But I got that from one of the maids, so who knows.”

“What happened?” Dieter asked.

“Apparently the guest left her in his room and went out to party for a few hours. When he came back, she was dead. Couldn’t get much more. Anthony’s trying to keep a lid on it.” Anthony Staley was the owner and manager of the hotel.

“That won’t last long,” Carter said.

“Thanks for the tip,” I told Tom, meaning it.

There really wasn’t anything else to say, so Dieter and I headed back into the restaurant. We were barely through the door when Dieter stopped in his tracks.

“Aw, fuck,” he said.

I followed his gaze. Near the entrance several of the waitresses were gathered around another girl who looked like she’d just arrived. They all looked serious, and a couple were even beginning to cry. Out on the street, another girl ran by, headed for Jolly Jack’s. No one ever ran here. Not unless they had a really good reason.

The news was out, and within an hour, all of Fields would know. I don’t know how the girls did it, but they always had a way of finding out things they were better off not knowing. It was like a wildfire. We even had a name for it: The Bamboo Network.

That afternoon, it was in full swing.

•    •    •

While the network was great at spreading news quickly, it was lousy at reporting anything accurately. I heard all sorts of rumors and wild stories. At The Lounge that night, it was everything I could do to keep the girls calm. It got so bad I had the bartenders pass out two rounds of undiluted tequila shots just to take the edge off everyone.

One girl told me she heard that the dead girl had been murdered. “He hack her up,
di ba
? Blood all over. My friend’s cousin is a receptionist there, so she knows. This guy crazy.”

Another said she heard it was two girls fighting over a guy. I also heard drug overdose, suicide, jealous Filipino boyfriend, slip in the shower and heart attack. One girl even said it was from too much boom-boom.

The same informal survey revealed it had happened in room 66, 68, 72, 45, 59, 17 and 23. The only thing that was common was that a girl was dead and it happened at the Las Palmas Hotel.

“I’ll never go there again,” Bell, one of my dancers, told me. “If a guy want to bar fine me and he staying at Las Palmas, I say no way.”

She wasn’t the only one to express this same thought. A few hours later, though, after several drinks, she said that maybe the Las Palmas was okay, but she’d never go to the room the girl died in. “Ghost,
di ba
? Her spirit in there.”