The Pull of Gravity (8 page)

I was off my stool and heading around the bar, faster than my weight should have allowed. The scream had come from the direction of where the Marines were sitting, but my view was blocked by the stage. Most of the girls had stopped dancing, startled by the unusual noise.

As I raced around the end of the stage, I saw that the Marines’ party had grown to over a dozen. It took me a moment to realize the problem wasn’t actually with them.

Another guy was sitting a couple tables away. He was a bit older, maybe in his forties. He was sporting a comb-over and a small moustache, and had the smug look of a man who’d drunk enough to think he knew the answer to everything. Several feet away, her knees drawn up into her chest, sat Isabel. She was staring at the man, eyes blazing angrily. With one hand she seemed to be holding up the top of her bikini.

Two of the Marines had jumped up, and looked like they were ready to pummel the guy through the back of the cushion. As I arrived, I said, “Thanks, guys. I got this.”

They relaxed a little but didn’t immediately return to their table.

“What’s going on?” I asked the guy with the bad hair.

He snorted. “Nothing. Which, I’m sure you understand,
is
the problem.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t understand what you mean.”

“What kind of bullshit place is this?” the man asked. His accent ID’d him as a Brit. “Look, I come in, buy a couple drinks and expect to be entertained.” He glanced over at Isabel. “Your girl there doesn’t seem to understand her job.”

“And what exactly
is
her job?” I asked.

Comb-over rolled his eyes. “Don’t fuck with me, all right? I’ve been coming to the Philippines for years. I could get you into a lot of trouble.”

I took a deep breath, then reached down and grabbed the man under his arms, yanking him to his feet. It wasn’t hard to do. He was actually a pretty small guy. I started pushing him toward the front door.

“Hey,” he said. “Let me go. You don’t want trouble with me.”

I stopped him, then moved my face in as close as I could without actually touching his. “You’re right,” I said. “I don’t. But when assholes like you come in here, you don’t give me much of a choice. If I were you, I’d get out of town.”

One member of my Marine backup team moved past me and opened the front door. I guided the asshole the rest of the way there, then pushed him outside. The moment he was gone, a loud cheer went up in the bar.

“Thanks,” I said to the helpful Marine.

“Nothing to thank me for. That was all you.”

One of his friends said, “I think that calls for a bell ring.”

Together they walked over and gave the bell a whack. Another cheer went up, and what started out as a potentially nasty situation turned into another Lounge party.

I looked over to make sure Cathy and the other bartenders were on top of the bell ring. Cathy gave me the “everything’s fine” wave, freeing me up to go check on Isabel.

Her position hadn’t changed, but she was no longer alone. Rina, one of our waitresses, was sitting next to her, her arm around Isabel’s shoulder. I walked over and sat on the other side.

“Did he hurt you?” I said.

“She’s okay, boss,” Rina said. “No problems.”

Rina, who seldom worked on my shifts and didn’t know me that well, was trying to protect Isabel in case I thought she was the problem.

“It’s okay,” I said to Rina. I looked at Isabel again. Some of the anger had begun to leave her eyes, but it wasn’t completely gone. What surprised me was, there were no tears. “The guy was an asshole. I just want to make sure he didn’t hurt you.”

“Only a scratch,” she said.

Hesitantly, she moved the hand I thought had been holding up her bikini, revealing a small scratch just above her left collarbone. I looked around. Lamie, one of the other dancers, was standing nearby.

“Go get a wet napkin from Cathy,” I told her.

I turned back to Isabel. “Can you tell me what happened?”

“He keep trying to touch me,” she said. “In places I don’t want him to,
di ba
? He said he bought me a drink, so it’s his right.”

“Did you tell him no?” I asked.

“Of course. Many times.” She paused. “When he try to pull off my top, that’s when I yell. I’m sorry, Papa. I know it’s my job, but I just didn’t like him.” A single tear escaped down her cheek, but, as far as I could remember, it was the only one all night.

Someone tapped me on my shoulder. I turned, expecting to find Lamie with the napkin I’d asked for. Instead I found Larry standing there holding out a cup.

“Tea,” he said. “Maybe it will help.”

My thought was that tea was probably not strong enough, but Isabel reached forward and took the cup. “Thank you,” she told him.

“I’m sorry,” Larry said tentatively. “For what happened, I mean.”

Isabel shook her head. “It’s okay.” She took a sip of the tea.

“Do you want to go home?” I asked.

“No,” she said quickly. “I’ll be okay.”

“He was just a bad man,” Rina said. “He won’t come back.”

She patted Isabel on the shoulder, smiling reassuringly. Isabel’s own smile wasn’t as confident.

Lamie finally showed up with the napkin, and I let her clean Isabel’s scratch. Within ten minutes, the whole place seemed back to normal, Isabel included. Larry left not long after that, but he made a point to check on Isabel before saying goodbye.

He had told me earlier he was going to Manila on Sunday to avoid driving down on the same day he flew out. So when we shook hands, I was sure that would be the last time I saw Larry Adams.

I was wrong.

CHAPTER NINE

When I came into work that Sunday night, the second to last thing I expected was Isabel showing up. I had told her just before she went home the previous night that she should take Sunday off. She’d only been working at The Lounge for around five months at that point, and though she was good at getting guys to buy her lady drinks—drinks for the girls that they got a cut of—she had yet to go out on an EWR. I figured with the incident the night before, she could use a day off to think about things. I would have laid better than even odds she was going to quit altogether.

But Isabel showed up right on time, as if nothing had happened. I stopped her as she walked to the back to change, and asked if she was okay.

“Fine, Papa,” she said, smiling.

Thirty minutes later, Larry arrived. That was the last thing I expected. At that time on a Sunday night, he was the only customer in the place.

“I thought you left already,” I said as soon as I saw him.

“Decided to wait until tomorrow,” he said with no further explanation.

I had a few managerial items to take care of, so I left Larry at the bar and went to the small office in back. When I came back out twenty minutes later, Larry had moved. I looked around and spotted him sitting at the table in the back corner, talking with Isabel.

I got a beer from the bar, and started to head over to them.

“Wait,” Cathy said.

I stopped. “What?”

“Give them a little time alone.”

“Who? Larry and Isabel?”

She shook her head, an expression of disbelief on her face. “Sometimes, Doc, you stupid.”

I wasn’t so stupid that I didn’t understand what she meant. When I looked back at Larry and Isabel, instead of seeing two people sharing a friendly conversation, I saw a couple sitting a little closer together than mere friends would. I saw Isabel put her hand on Larry’s arm as she laughed, letting it linger there a moment, but always removing it. I saw Larry glance at her when she wasn’t looking at him, an unconscious smile on his face. More than anything, I saw two people who had stopped noticing there were other people around.

So instead of going over, I sat down on my stool.

“I didn’t see that coming,” I told Cathy.

“I already tell you. That’s because you stupid,” she said, then added, “sometimes.”

“Don’t you have work to do?”

“Bar is stocked. Everything ready. Larry is only customer.” She looked me in the eyes. “So no, I don’t have work to do.”

“Cathy, if you weren’t so damn cute, I’d fire you right now just because I could.”

“Good thing I’m cute then.”

“Yeah. Good thing.” I picked up my beer and swallowed what was left, then set the bottle back down. “I’ve got something for you to do. Get me another beer.”

She gave me an exaggerated smile before turning to the cooler to pull out a new bottle. A moment later, she set an open San Miguel in front of me.

“No Märzen left?” I asked.

“Plenty,” she answered, then walked to the far end of the bar.

•    •    •

That night was another example of something surprising happening after weeks of boring, interchangeable days. In truth, this new round of excitement started the night before with Mr. Comb-over attempting to force the issue with Isabel. But the next night, that Sunday, things escalated rapidly, so much faster than any of us ever realized. The biggest surprise of the evening happened around ten thirty.

The place was still fairly empty, probably no more than seven customers. Because of that, the energy level was pretty mellow. That was actually okay by me. We’d had a run of fairly intense nights, so a little ratcheting down would allow everyone to recharge a bit.

Cathy had decided at some point earlier to rejoin me, and we were sharing a couple of apple martinis she’d just recently learned how to make.

“Not bad,” I said, as I finished off the last of my drink.

“Not bad?” she asked. “That’s it?”

“Given the choice, I’d rather have a beer.”

“You have no taste.” She replaced my empty martini glass with a bottle of San Miguel. “I think that—”

She stopped, her eyes moving from my face to a point behind me. I turned to see what she was looking at.

Standing about three feet away was Isabel, smiling shyly.

“Something wrong?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “Nothing wrong.”

I waited for a moment, but when she didn’t say anything else, I said, “Well, what is it?”

I heard a sigh of disgust behind me, followed by Cathy muttering, “Stupid, stupid, stupid.”

I ignored her and kept my attention on Isabel.

It took her a couple tries to finally say what she wanted to say, but when she did, the words rushed out. “Larry wants to pay my bar fine.”

My eyes widened. “Really?”

“Really, really, really,” Cathy said from behind me. “Maybe I should be the one in charge here.”

I continued to look at Isabel.

“Really,” she said.

“What do
you
want?” I asked.

This time the words didn’t rush out. Instead they were spoken as if she’d put a lot of thought into them. “I want to go.”

“You’re sure?”

A wet towel hit me in the back of the head. “Of course she’s sure,” Cathy said. “Can’t you see it? Her eyes are smiling.”

And indeed Isabel’s eyes
were
smiling. It was amazing, less than twenty-four hours earlier, those same eyes looked as if they could kill, and yet tonight all of that anger was gone. There was only happiness, innocence and hope.

But despite this and Cathy’s insistence, this would be Isabel’s first EWR, so I asked again, “Are you one-hundred-percent sure?”

“Yes, Papa Jay. He’s very nice. He says we only have to go out to dinner, then I can go home. No hotel. No sex.”

How many times had I heard guys use that tack? A hundred? A thousand? And it was always with the idea that at dinner, or on a barhop afterward, he’d be able to convince the girl to go back to his room. But I was inclined to believe Larry meant it. After everything I’d learned about his trip so far, it actually seemed like a logical thing for him to do. Of course, he could have been lying to me about everything. He could have been a player who was playing even the papasan. But I didn’t think so. In fact, I was positive I hadn’t misjudged him.

“So, can I go?” Isabel asked.

When I didn’t answer right away, Cathy jumped in. “Of course you can.”

But Isabel knew better than to go only on Cathy’s word. She looked at me, expectant.

“Tell Larry to come over here,” I said. “Then go get changed.”

A smile as wide as Luzon Island broke out on her face. Instead of immediately doing as I told her, she gave me a big hug.

A few minutes later, Isabel was in the back changing into her street clothes, and Larry had joined me at the bar.

I asked him the same thing I had asked Isabel. “You sure about this?”

“Doc, why you always ask this question?” Cathy said.

I looked back at her. “There’s got to be somebody somewhere who needs something to drink.”

“Everybody’s good now. I’ll stay here,” she replied.

Larry nodded. “I’m sure, Doc.” It was the first time he’d called me Doc. So I guessed I had Cathy to thank for that. “I’m just going to take her to dinner. That’s it.”

“You know she’s a cherry girl,” I said.

“She told me. As far as Angeles goes, I’m still a cherry boy,” he said. “So it’s the perfect match.”

Cathy laughed. “That’s funny. You and Isabel a cherry couple,” she said.

“Just be careful with her,” I told him. “She’s still inexperienced and could get hurt really easily.”

“Doc, I told you. It’s just dinner. I’m not planning on breaking her heart.”

I chuckled, conceding his point. “Then you owe me a thousand pesos.”

“What?”

“The bar fine,” I said. “It’s a thousand pesos.”

“Right, sure. Here.” He dug into his pocket and pulled out a thousand-peso note and handed it to me. He glanced back at the table he had shared with Isabel. There were several empty glasses. “What about our drinks?”

“Those are on me.”

After they were gone, in what turned out to be a minor send-off party with almost all the girls rushing over to wish Isabel congratulations, it hit me that maybe the reason Larry hadn’t gone to Manila that afternoon was so that he could see Isabel again. Later, Larry told me there was no maybe about it. Something had happened between them the night he brought her the tea. Something that had made him stay in town one more day, and made Isabel hope he would return. He couldn’t tell me what that something was. I don’t think he knew. 

•    •    •

Most of what happened after that I pieced together from things Isabel and Larry told me in separate conversations over the next year or so.

Dinner had been a two-hour affair at a place outside the district, an Italian restaurant Larry had come across in his wanderings. I don’t know what they ate; I never asked. I got the feeling there was a lot of small talk, a lot of gazing into each other’s eyes, and a lot of tuning out everything around them.

After dinner, instead of Isabel going home per the plan she had told me, they ended up going to The Pit Stop, where they found a quiet spot and talked for hours. Isabel learned that Larry was a thirty-seven-year-old only child who had never been married, and had a fondness for chocolate-covered strawberries. Larry learned that Isabel was twenty-one, the third of seven children, sent most of her money home to her family, had a cousin who also worked in the bars, and lived in a small room with over a dozen other girls.

Larry told her about the time he was seventeen and his girlfriend broke up with him at a football game during halftime. Isabel told him how the only boyfriend she’d ever had left for Manila when she was fifteen, saying he’d come back for her but never did.

Around them, couples of the evening came and went. Some played pool, some ate late dinners. Some were just continuing the drinking they’d started God knows how many hours earlier. A typical night on Fields, but Isabel and Larry saw none of it.

Despite several hours of drinking only coffee, Isabel found herself unable to hold back a yawn around five in the morning.

Larry glanced at his watch. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I’ve kept you up.”

“No, no. It’s okay,” she told him. “I’m fine.”

“You’re tired and need to go to bed.” He looked at his watch again. “And I have to pack. There’s a car driving me to Manila in three hours.”

“Oh. Of course.” Isabel picked up her purse, and began to stand up. “I’ve had a great time.”

Larry slipped out of the booth and took her hands in his. “Me, too,” he said. He hesitated before he spoke again, not sure if it was the right thing to say or not, but then decided to go ahead anyway. “Isabel, if you want, you can come back with me to my room and get some sleep before I leave. I’m sure it’s not as crowded as your place. I just, well, don’t want this to end yet.”

Isabel’s face lit up. The way she described it, it was like the breath had suddenly gone out of her, because she didn’t want it to end, either. If Cathy had been there, she probably would have said Isabel’s eyes were smiling again.

“Okay,” Isabel said. “I’d like that.”

They walked back to the Las Palmas Hotel. Larry’s room was in the Mabuhay Building, back beyond the pool and across a small side street that ran behind the hotel. Most of the girls knew their way through the Las Palmas, but this was Isabel’s first time there, so she let Larry show her the way. He took her through the front bar, past reception, past several rooms in the main building, past the swimming pool and up a metal staircase that led to a short bridge which spanned the side street and connected with the second floor of the Mabuhay Building.

Isabel tried to walk as lightly as possible across the bridge, but no matter what she did, her wooden-heeled platform shoes—the only shoes she owned—sounded to her like the loudest things on earth every time she took a step. But if Larry noticed, he didn’t say anything.

His room was on the third floor, number 35, next to the stairs. He told her there were drinks and food in the minibar and she could help herself. She said thank you but she didn’t need anything. He asked her if she wanted to watch TV. She asked him if he did. He said no, not really, but he sometimes liked to turn it on for the background noise. Then turn it on, she told him. So he did.

“Don’t you want to sleep?” Larry asked as he opened his suitcase, preparing to put all his things back inside.

“Not yet.” She was sitting on the bed, her back against the wall.

On the TV was a music video from a Japanese band neither of them had ever heard of. Larry threw some clothes into the suitcase from one of the dresser drawers, and was going back for more when he heard Isabel get off the bed. She came over quickly to where he was.

“Let me,” she said.

He laughed. “It’s okay. I can do this.”

“No, you can’t. Look.”

She pointed at his open suitcase. Inside was the pile of half-folded, disorganized clothing he had just packed. Isabel dumped the whole pile out on the bed and began to refold everything. Larry, unsure what to do next, stood silently watching for a few seconds.

When he said, “At least let me help,” Isabel shooed him off.

He felt guilty, but Isabel seemed happy. After a moment, he said, “I guess I could go take a shower and get ready.”

“Okay,” she said.

When he came back out twenty minutes later, dressed in jeans and a loose-fitting T-shirt, feeling vaguely refreshed from the hot shower, his suitcase was sitting open on the end of the bed with all his things inside. His clothes were all folded as if they were ready to go on the display shelves at Nordstrom’s. Isabel was standing nearby.

“Thank you,” he said.

“You’re welcome,” she replied.

There was still another hour and a half until his car came for him, so Larry called down to the front desk and asked for a wake-up call in an hour. The suitcase closed and ready to go next to the door, Larry and Isabel, fully clothed and on top of the covers, lay down on the bed.

I don’t know what happened after that, not for that hour, anyway. Neither of them told me and, again, I didn’t ask.