The Pull of Gravity (9 page)

What I do know was that instead of saying goodbye in the parking lot of the Las Palmas Hotel, Isabel went with Larry to Manila, saying goodbye on the sidewalk in front of the Philippine Airlines terminal at the airport.

Goodbye, but not farewell. Not yet.

CHAPTER TEN

I called Natt on my mobile phone before I returned to my room to check on Isabel. Being back in the Philippines was screwing with my head more than I thought it would. No, that wasn’t right. It was finding Isabel that was doing it. I could have suppressed everything, just forgotten it all, if I hadn’t been able to locate her. I could have left there with unanswered questions, but with the knowledge that I had tried. Done is done and what can’t be learned, can’t be learned. That’s what I would have told myself.

Only I wouldn’t have been able to forget. Maybe I could have dived into my Bangkok life and worked my ass off. Loved Natt as best I could. Gone to sleep each night dead tired, woken up each morning to start it all again. That would have worked, but only for a while. My brain had a funny way of waiting until I thought my life was going great, then reminding me of things I thought I’d put behind me.

Natt knew this. She knew why I’d come to the Philippines, encouraged it, even.  

“You found her, didn’t you?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I said.

“I can hear it in your voice. Will she tell you what you need to know?”

“She might, but…I’m not sure I should even ask her.”

She was silent for a moment. “You’ll do what you think best.”

After my disaster with Maureen, I wasn’t sure I ever wanted to be with anyone again. And later, in Angeles, after I’d messed up my relationship with Cathy, I wasn’t sure I even knew how. I guess you’d call that a low point. It wasn’t self-pity, more self-devaluation. I was still happy, friendly Papa Jay, and it wasn’t an act. But when it came to me and women, I thought maybe it wasn’t meant to be. Natt proved me wrong.

I went back to the room, opening the door slowly in case Isabel was still asleep. Her bed was empty, but no sooner had I started to think she was gone then I heard the shower in the bathroom turn on.

I clicked on the TV to one of the international news channels and watched with my eyes but not with my mind. In my head, an entirely different show was on. Scenes were playing out rapidly, one after another. Scenes of possible conversations between Isabel and me about Larry. They ended in tears, in anger, one even in denial of Larry’s very existence. It was just my imagination running wild, thinking only the worst, unable to see anything else.

In the bathroom, the shower shut off. I rubbed a hand across my face, trying, if only for a few minutes, to think of nothing. When the bathroom door opened, I turned. Isabel came out wearing only a white towel. She jumped when she saw me.

“You scare me,” she shrieked. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

It was a lie. Her reaction was just a little too calculated, too planned. But lying was second nature to her now. For all bar girls, it was a basic mode of survival, and Isabel had been a bar girl too long to turn it off without a lot of extra effort.

When I didn’t say anything, she walked over and sat on the bed next to me. “Are you okay?” she asked, putting a hand on the back of my shoulder. “You look sad.”

“Do I?”

Her hand moved lightly downward, tracing my spine and stopping in the small of my back. She leaned into me, her towel-covered breast resting against my arm.

“You do.” Her voice was low, almost a whisper.

I could feel her breath on my shoulder, then on my chest as she leaned closer. Her wet hair draped down my back, soaking my shirt where it lay. I could feel my hands begin to tremble, and in my mind, my thoughts tumbled randomly as I desperately looked for something to anchor on.

For me, one weakness, if it was big enough, begat others, and my desire to know the truth about Larry, to fill that hole inside me, was making me weak in all things. Alone with Isabel, so beautiful and willing, and me filled with all the memories that had been playing out in my mind the last two days, I was on the edge of becoming lost.

Her lips hovered just above the skin at the nape of my neck. I wanted to pull away. I screamed at myself to pull away, but my body wasn’t listening.

“Let me make you feel better,” she said.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw her hand move to where the towel was tucked into itself. As she pulled at it, it began to fall open.

I suddenly had a vision of Natt, happy, feeding me some of the
panang moo
she’d made, showing me the new dress she’d bought, holding me in the night when I had trouble sleeping. And it was enough.

I reached out and gently moved the towel back up over Isabel’s chest. I looked at her, her face still close to mine but now filled with confusion. I pulled her to me, hugging her tight.

“That’s not why I came,” I whispered in her ear.

At first there was nothing, and I thought maybe she hadn’t heard me. But then her body heaved as she began to sob. She hugged me, her fingers digging into my back. I continued to hold her, letting her know that I wasn’t going anywhere.

Finally, as her sobs grew quieter and farther apart, she said in a voice barely audible, “I’m sorry.”

“No,” I said. “No sorrys. If anything, it’s my fault. I shouldn’t have visited you at the bar.”

“You wish you didn’t come see me?”

“No. Not at all.”

She frowned. “But that’s not the only reason you are here.” This wasn’t a question. If it had been, I’m not sure how I would have responded.

We sat silently beside each other for several moments, then she whispered, “I know why you came.”

Of course she did. That’s why she’d tried to do whatever she could to distract me from it.

“It’s not important. I’m just happy to see you.”

“Larry,” she said. “You came because of him.”

“At first,” I admitted. “But now I just want to buy you breakfast, and not talk about anything.”

She took a deep breath. “No one ever loved me like he did.”

A tear ran down her cheek as she leaned against my shoulder, and began crying once more.

Maybe I wasn’t the only one who wanted to talk about Larry. Isabel
could
have left after she found I wasn’t in the room when she woke. But she hadn’t.

At that moment I realized, without her having to tell me, that she had never talked to anyone about what had happened, that she had bottled it up inside and tried to forget. But there was no forgetting. I was testament to that. She had stayed because deep down she wanted to talk,
needed
to talk.

Undoubtedly, she had demons much larger than mine that needed to be put to rest.

•    •    •

After she got dressed, we went for a long walk down the beach. The rain had stopped, though the sky was still gray and threatening. I asked her if she wanted anything to eat, but she said she wasn’t hungry. She held my hand, and occasionally leaned against me, but it was different now. We were Papa Jay and Isabel again, Big Bro and Little Sis. What had happened to us in the room, that moment of weakness—for both of us—was forgotten.

“Did I ever tell you he sent me flowers on the twenty-fourth of every month?” she asked after we’d been walking in silence for a while.

She had, but I told her no. There were things she needed to say, not for me, but
to
me.

“That was when we met. When we went on our first date.”

Though the two events had happened on different nights, I realized they had indeed happened on the same date—the incident with Mr. Comb-over after midnight, and the EWR with Larry less than twenty-four hours later.

“Every month he would send those flowers,” she said. “Every month. He never missed even one.”

She fell silent again. She had drifted closer to the wound than she wanted to, and wasn’t yet ready to rip it wide open. But the inevitable had to come, and when it did, just like when we worked at The Lounge, I would be there for her.

•    •    •

Back in Angeles in those crazy days, those of endless parties—manufactured though they were by the very nature of the business—I somehow got the reputation of being a voice of sanity. How the hell that happened, I don’t really know. But soon, if someone had a problem, more times than not, I was the one they came to.

That’s where this Doc business came from. I’m not sure who was the first to call me that, but soon people I didn’t even know were calling me by this new nickname. Larry learned it from Cathy, Cathy from Manfred, and God knows where Manfred picked it up. Tommy? Nicky? Dieter?

But Isabel never called me Doc, which was funny, because probably more than anybody, she was my biggest “client.”

When she came back from Manila after that first time she took Larry to the airport, it was three nights before she returned to work. Alona, a Lounge girl who lived with Isabel, would come to me each night and tell me, “She sick.”

When I asked what was wrong, Alona said, “Stomach, I think,” then “headache,” and finally, “I don’t know.”

It was Thursday night before Isabel showed up again.

“Everything all right?” I asked.

“Sorry, Papa,” she said. “I didn’t feel very well.” She tried to walk past, but I reached out and touched her shoulder, stopping her.

“Stomach flu?” I asked, pretty sure it wasn’t that.

She shook her head.

“A cold, then?”

“No. Nothing like that.”

I put my hand under her chin, and tilted her head up until our eyes met. “Did something happen with Larry?” At that point, the last I knew was they were going out to dinner on Sunday night, and then she was going home.

She said nothing.

Suddenly I was concerned my assessment of Larry had been wrong. “Did he hurt you? Make you do something you didn’t want to do?”

“He would never hurt me,” she said quickly.

And then I could see it. The spark in her eye, the set of her jaw as she defended her man. Something
had
happened, but nothing bad, at least in Isabel’s opinion. In fact, just the opposite.

I told her to go in back and get changed. I knew I wasn’t going to get the whole story that night. It was something that would only come with time, and eventually it did.

After Larry left, Isabel had gone into a funk. First it was the sadness of saying goodbye to him. Then, despite the fact he promised her he’d come back as soon as he could, came the fear she would never see him again.

Finally, Mariella, her own cousin, the experienced, all-knowing one, and—though Isabel didn’t suspect it then—the manipulation queen of Angeles, found out and came to talk to her.

“Do you think he’s coming back?” Isabel asked her.

“Of course he’s coming back,” Mariella said. “Once you hook them, they always come back. What kind of job does he have?”

“He owns some sort of company. I can’t remember exactly. Why?”

Mariella smiled. “Good for you. But you have to be careful.”

“I don’t understand,” Isabel said.

“Don’t ask for anything yet.” Mariella gave her cousin a very serious look. “He has your cell phone number?”

Isabel nodded. “He also asked if I have an email address.”

“You don’t have one yet?”

Isabel moved her head from side to side.

“
Sirang ulo ka ba?
” Mariella said. “It’s so easy. We’ll go get one for you today.” Mariella took a deep breath. “When you talk to him, you tell him you love him. You tell him he’s the only man for you. You tell him you can’t wait until he comes back.”

Though all of that was true, Isabel remained quiet. Mariella, after all, had been here a lot longer than she had.

“If he asks you if you need money,” Mariella continued, “you tell him you okay right now. Some other girls might tell you different, but don’t listen to them. You got to think about the future. Like I did with David. Look at me now. He send me money every month. I only have to work when I want to. He going to buy me a house, too, when he comes in January. If you do things right, you could be like me.”

Before Isabel could even say she didn’t want to be like Mariella, that her life was not the life Isabel wished for, her cousin stood up. “Come on,” Mariella said. “We go get you an email address now.”

Several hours later, Isabel was alone again and as depressed as ever. She was even considering just going back home to her parents. Angeles was not the place for her, and she didn’t want to be there anymore.

But on Thursday morning, Larry called and life had meaning again.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Months passed after Larry’s first visit to Angeles, and Fields was the same as it always was. Except for Isabel, of course.

Three times a week she’d get a call from Larry. I always knew which days those were, because she would fly into The Lounge, the smile on her face large and genuine. On other days, he would send her text messages, and while she reread them over and over, she said there was nothing like actually talking to him.

Almost every night, someone would ask her if she wanted to go out on a bar fine. She would smile, then tell them she was a cherry girl. This usually turned any would-be suitors away. The last thing most guys who came to Angeles wanted to do was waste money on someone who wasn’t a sure thing. And for those few who still persisted, she would pretend to feel ill, and disappear into the back until the man either found another girl or left.

The only money she made came from the small salary she received every night, and her share of the lady drinks bought for her. Occasionally I overheard some of the other girls saying things like “what a waste,” or “think of all the money she could have.”

About the money, they were right. She had an innocent and beautiful face that most guys would not soon forget. Her body was not one guys would forget, either. She was what Manfred would call, and did several times, the total package. Only a few of us—myself, Larry, some of the girls—knew that the total package extended far beyond just the physical.

Isabel could easily have risen beyond just being a stunner to the rank of Angeles Superstar. She could have had dates every night, raking in the pesos. Like all superstars, stories of her would reach the Internet. Guys would come to town with her on their list of must-sees. I’d seen it happen all the time. When a superstar walked down the street, no matter who a guy was with, his head would turn. She was the shit, the girl everyone wanted. Don’t think she didn’t know it, either. And don’t think the other girls didn’t know it also.

The superstar was the queen at whichever bar she worked. All the best customers were hers even if another girl got there first. Superstars had the most expensive clothes, the nicest jewelry, the highest number of foreign boyfriends sending money back to them. Then one day they’d disappear, swept off to Australia or England or Sweden or Canada or the U.S. to marry— and most likely later divorce—a man who had become more her
money ko
than her
honey ko
.

Or if they didn’t find the right guy in Angeles, they went to Manila, where there was more money to be made, and the chance to become the mistress of someone important was greater. Or they went home, where they thought their cash would make them a hero, or to the morgue, where all the cash in the world couldn’t undo the consequences of their addiction to alcohol or
shabu-shabu
or a jealous Filipino boyfriend’s fit of rage.

Isabel could have been one of those girls, but she chose not to be, and that made the other girls, the ones who had no chance of reaching those heights, envious. Isabel never seemed to notice, though. The girls would tell her she was crazy to wait for Larry, but she didn’t hear them. They would tell her he wasn’t coming back, but she wouldn’t believe them. And soon, instead of turning Isabel into what they wanted her to be, they began to believe that maybe she
was
different. That maybe she would be able to break the rules the rest of them lived by every day. They stopped telling her she was crazy and started asking her, “When is he coming back?” Every time she would answer, “Soon.” That was, until one night when she said, “Tomorrow.”

•    •    •

I was going through one of those periods when everything Angeles made me crazy—the drinking, the parties, the guys, and even the girls, everything pulling at me from opposite directions, setting my nerves on edge. It was at times like this I wondered if Robbie had actually done me any favors when he gave me my job. 

I knew from experience it meant that I needed to get away for a while. A vacation anywhere else, even if only for a few days, would make things better. Dandy Doug used to call it his system cleanse. Every six months he’d take a week and go to Shanghai. He had a girl there, a “good girl,” he called her. He said he slept on the couch in her tiny living room. I don’t know if I believed him, but whatever happened there, it made him a new man when he came back.

I had no Shanghai girl, so instead I pushed myself to the limit, not taking any time off until my body screamed it had to get away
now
. Then I’d be forced into a situation of planning something at the last minute, and trying to find someone to cover my shifts. When I’d call Robbie in Australia to let him know, he was always cool about it. He knew what it was like in Angeles. Heaven and Hell, he’d call it. “Why do you think I don’t spend more time there?”

Cathy was always one of the first ones to know what was going on with me. The way she could read me sometimes was almost scary.

“It’s time, isn’t it?” she asked me the night Isabel made her announcement about Larry’s imminent arrival.

“Okay, you lost me,” I said.

Instead of my normal place, I was standing at the end of the bar nearest the front door. It was the mood I was in—antsy, I guess you’d call it. I just couldn’t sit still.

Cathy, like a shadow I couldn’t shake or really wanted to, stood on her side of the counter nearby.

“No,” she said. “I don’t think so.”

“If we’re playing some sort of word game, I’m not interested.”

“It’s definitely time.”

“Time for what?” My voice came out harsher than I had intended. About ten feet away, a couple of the girls who had been talking stopped and looked over to see what was wrong.

But Cathy looked at me, unaffected by my tone. “Have you called Robbie yet?”

That silenced me for a moment. I’d called Robbie just before I came to work. “How did you know?”

“I told you before, you can’t hide anything from me.”

She
had
told me that, on numerous occasions. And, as always, I chose to believe it was just lucky intuition. But truthfully, until I found Natt in Bangkok, no one ever knew me as well as Cathy did. Blessed twice, fucked up once. God, don’t let me fuck up again.

“Yeah. I called him.”

She smiled. “When you leaving?”

“I don’t know. In a couple days I guess.”

“Alone?”

“Alone.”

She nodded to herself. Apparently it was the answer she expected. “You want a beer?”

“Please.”

•    •    •

The next morning, Isabel went to Manila to meet Larry. By both accounts, their reunion was everything they both had hoped for. Victor, the guy Larry hired to bring Isabel down to Manila and both of them back to Angeles, apparently told several people that Isabel and Larry spent the entire trip whispering, then kissing, then whispering some more.

That evening at around eight thirty p.m., Isabel brought Larry into The Lounge. She was a half-hour late for her shift, but we all knew what was going on, so there was no reason to call her on it.

The minute Larry saw me, he extended his hand. “Doc,” he said. He looked much the same as the last time I’d seen him, except the smile. It was larger. “How are you?”

We shook warmly, like old friends. “Good to see you, Larry,” I said. “How was the trip?”

“Long.”

I laughed. “It is that. When did you get in?”

“We got to Angeles about noon. Isabel met me at the airport.”

“I heard.”

His smile grew a little more, not the knowing leer a newly arrived whoremonger would give me, but a shy, almost embarrassed, grin. “I pretty much slept most of the afternoon.” I saw his eyes flick past me. “Hi, Cathy.”

“Welcome back, Larry,” Cathy said. “San Miguel?”

“Sure.”

She put a bottle on the counter, opened it and then wrapped a napkin around the top. Larry started to reach for the bottle, then stopped.

“That reminds me,” he said.

He lifted up his left hand, and for the first time I noticed he was carrying a duffel bag. There was a thud as he set it on the bar.

“Should I be worried?” I asked.

“You tell me.”

He unzipped the bag. It was stuffed full with those white Styrofoam pellets used to pack things that were fragile. He shoved a hand in, and when he pulled it back out he was holding a bottle of Gordon Biersch Märzen.

“There’s ten in there,” he said. “It’s all I could fit in the bag. There’re two more in my suitcase back at the hotel to make an even dozen.”

“You son of a bitch,” I said, grinning broadly. “Thanks.”

Cathy began pulling the rest out of the bag.

“They’re all warm, so you can’t drink them right away,” Larry told me.

“Bullshit.” I turned to Cathy. “Can you get me a cold glass and a bottle opener?”

“Sure, Doc.”

“Have one with me,” I said to Larry.

“No, thanks. This will do me just fine,” he said, raising his San Miguel.

He and Isabel stayed for an hour, maybe two. After a few bottles of Märzen and a lot of laughs, I mentioned my upcoming vacation. When he asked me where I was going, I said, “Boracay Island, I think. Haven’t been there in over a year.”

“I heard of that place,” Larry said. “Nice?”

“One of the prettiest spots in the world.”

He asked me when I was leaving, and I told him I didn’t know yet, that I hadn’t bought my tickets. Not long after that, it was time for them to leave. And for the second time since she began working in Angeles, Isabel allowed herself to be bar fined. Only it wasn’t just a one-night EWR. Larry paid enough so that she could be with him his entire ten-day stay in the Philippines.

About an hour after they left, Mariella showed up. Whereas Isabel could have been a superstar but refused, her cousin, who’d been granted the same opportunity, grabbed onto it with both hands, nails dug in deep. She strode into The Lounge, a beauty-queen smile planted firmly on her face, instantly drawing the attention of everyone. Several of the girls screamed in delight at seeing her, while I noticed a few others moving quietly toward the back of the room, having no desire to talk to the woman who now commanded center stage.

Mariella had never been one of my favorites. Everything was drama around her—everything. And while she brought in more than her share of cash when she worked at The Lounge, there were days when I couldn’t help wishing she was someone else’s problem. When she finally
did
leave, the reason for which is still not clear to me, Cathy and I toasted quietly at the bar with champagne. She probably had more reason than anyone at that time to hate Mariella.

“Papa Jay, how are you?” Mariella had finally found her way to me, her voice dripping with all the false concern it had the last time I’d seen her.

“I’m fine,” I said, more subdued than I’d been just prior to her arrival. “How are you?”

“Good, thank you.” She leaned in and kissed me on each cheek, European style.

“Night off?” I asked.

“I make my own schedule.” Which, at The Lotus Club where she then worked, was entirely possible. “How about you buy me a drink?”

I considered saying no, but what the hell. “Sure. What do you want?”

“White wine.”

I turned to the bar, expecting to find Cathy standing there, but she was nowhere to be seen. I called over Analyn, one of the other bartenders, and had her get Mariella the wine.

There were a few moments of awkward silence. I had no desire to continue in conversation with Mariella, yet she seemed to be waiting for me to ask her something. When she finally realized I wasn’t going to, she said, “I hear Isabel was here with her new boyfriend.”

“For a while,” I said.

“That’s good, that’s good,” she said.

More silence.

“What’s his name?” she asked. “I can’t remember.”

“Who?”

“Isabel’s boyfriend.”

“I can’t remember, either.” I don’t know why Mariella was so interested in her cousin’s business, but it just didn’t feel right and I was in no mood to help her.

“Do you know where they went?” she asked. “I thought maybe I’d join them for a while. Say hello.”

“Sorry. They didn’t say.”

“That’s okay, that’s okay.” The beauty queen smile again. “I’m sure I’ll find them.” She leaned over and kissed me on the cheek again. “Papa, it was great to see you.”

“It was good to see you, too.” It wasn’t exactly a lie. It was good to see Mariella every once in a while. It reminded me why I was so happy she was gone.

She headed for the door to a chorus of “Bye, Mariella,” “Come back soon,” and “We miss you.”

I noticed Cathy peeking around the corner of the storeroom door behind the bar. She watched silently, her expression blank, as Mariella left.