The Pull of Gravity

by Brett Battles

  As he told it, he was sitting at a poolside table reading a book when all of a sudden this big fat guy did a cannonball dive into the water. The splash apparently reached record proportions, soaking not only Larry and his book, but the remains of his lunch as well.

  The fat guy was me, of course.

  My memory had me splashing only a little water on his book, but I guess I was chastened enough to buy him a beer. I barely remember the incident at all so it was really Larry’s version and the way he told it that stuck with me. Whether it was true or not, that’s how it happened.

  Whenever we were in a group with three or more people who hadn’t heard the story, he’d tell it. He would impersonate the wave as it grew in the air, then came crashing down on him. And when he played the part of me, I suddenly became this aw-shucks oaf who had no idea what had just happened. As far as I could tell, Larry never had a mean bone in his body. So when everyone laughed, I would, too. Even though I’m sure I heard the story a hundred times, it was always funny.

  The first time I remember meeting Larry was about three days later at The Lounge. It could have been ten p.m., it could have been eleven. I do know it was before midnight because every night at that time we’d play “Love Shack” by the B-52s, and the girls did a special dance Bell had choreographed for them. It was the only organized dancing that we ever had, and I remember that night I watched it with Larry.

  I didn’t see him come in. I was in the back dealing with a problem with one of the girls, a dancer named Tessa. She’d received a text message earlier from her boyfriend in England telling her that he’d found out she was still working in the bar, so he was dumping her and not sending any more cash. Something like that happened on Fields several times a week.

  Tessa had spent the next two hours furiously texting back and forth trying to convince him he was wrong.

  “Either go home or put it away,” I told her.

  I’d found her in the changing room, sitting on the floor, her back against the wall and her knees pulled up in front of her. “I’m almost done,” she said.

  “You’re done now,” I said.

  I started walking toward her, intending to confiscate the phone for the rest of the evening. But she was quick and whipped it behind her back before I could make my grab. Mobile phones were a disease among the girls, and texting each other was so common that some girls could type a message on a phone keypad faster than most people could type it on a computer. But we had a rule at The Lounge: No mobiles while on duty.

  “Papa Jay, please,” she pleaded.

  “I’m sorry, but I’ve told you before,” I said.

  On cue, water began gathering in the corners of her eyes. “He want to break up with me.”

  “Tessa, enough.” This wasn’t the first phone violation she’d had. “Either give it to me or go home and start thinking about finding a new job.”

  She was silent for a moment. “You wouldn’t do that to me.”

  I stared down at her, my face blank. I put a hand out so she could put her phone in it. “Do you really want to find out?”

  “Papa, please.”

  I learned a long time ago from a buddy in the Navy that sometimes you got more out of someone when you said nothing, so I continued to stare. After a moment, she pulled her phone out from behind her back and put it in my hand.

  “You’re so mean,” she said.

  I put the phone in my pocket, then put my hand out to help her up. Once she was on her feet, she pushed up on her toes and kissed me on the cheek.

  “Just joking,” she said, the tears magically gone and a smile returning to her face.

  “I’m sorry your boyfriend’s breaking up with you,” I said. No matter what, I still cared about the girls.

  “Oh, he don’t break up with me,” she said. “I tell him, no one love him like me. He finally say he’s sorry and everything okay.”

  “Then why didn’t you just stop when I came in?” I asked.

  “I was telling Natalie what happened.” Natalie, I knew, was a friend of hers who worked down the street at Torpedoes.

  We walked back out to the main room, and that’s when I spotted Larry. He was sitting at the bar talking with Cathy, but he didn’t look familiar. I said hi to a couple of the regular customers as I made my way back to my normal spot at the end of the bar. Once I was sitting again, I motioned for Cathy to bring me a bottle of water.

  The music was right at the level I liked it, loud enough to create the illusion of a potential party, while low enough that conversations were possible. At The Lounge, we played a mix of contemporary and retro pop: Hoobastank, Shaggy, Duran Duran, the Gorillaz—stuff the girls could really dance to. Thankfully, by then, “Livin’ la Vida Loca” had long since left our playlist.

  The music was grooving and the girls seemed to be having a good time. Laughter broke out occasionally from where some girls were doing a little one-on-one entertaining with the customers. No sex, not in the club. If you wanted sex at a bar, you needed to go to one of the twenty-four-hour places on Santos Street where the girls would offer a blow job before you even sat down. The bars on Fields weren’t like that. We considered ourselves to be on a higher level and the girls felt the same way. There was a definite social structure. If a customer did visit a bar on Blow Row, he would do well not to mention it to any girl on Fields. The entertaining in our place took the form of tickling, joking, talking and possibly, if things were going well, a little kissing.

  It was an average night—my favorite kind. And I was doing my favorite activities: sitting on my stool, drinking a beer or the occasional bottle of water, and scanning the room to make sure everyone was having fun. I didn’t notice Larry approaching until he was already starting to sit in the chair next to me.

  I smiled and nodded at him. “Evening.” I was, after all, the consummate host.

  “So this is where the Cannonball King hangs out,” he replied.

  “I’m sorry?” I said.

  He stared at me for a moment, a funny little smile on his face. “You don’t remember me, do you?”

  My immediate thought was that he was one of the many Angeles regulars who came at least once a year. I considered faking it and saying, sure, I remembered him. But I’d been burnt doing that once so, instead, I shook my head. “Nope. I don’t.”

  He let out a hearty laugh. “Monday, I think,” he said. “In the afternoon. The Pit Stop pool?”

  I still wasn’t following him, so I shook my head again.

  “Me reading a book, you deciding to displace as much water as you could in my direction.”

  That, I did remember. Vaguely, anyway. It had happened several days earlier, and by this point in my Angeles adventure I had become an expert at the short-term memory purge. “Oh, yeah. Sorry about that. I guess I owe you a beer.”

  He laughed again. “You already bought me a beer. But I guess another one wouldn’t hurt.”

  Cathy, who had wandered in our direction, took the cue and got him a San Miguel.

  “Larry,” he said, holding his hand out to me. “Larry Adams.”

  We shook. “I’m Jay,” I said.

  “This your place?” he asked.

  “What? The Lounge?” It was my turn to laugh. “No. I just work here.”

  “Not a bad place to work.”

  “It has its upside.” I finished off the last of my water. “Hey, Cathy.” When she looked up, I said, “I’ll take a beer now.”

  “Here you go, Doc,” she said as she set the bottle in front of me.

  “Doc?” Larry asked.

  “Not officially,” I said. “This your first trip to Angeles?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “First time.”

  “So, what do you think?”

  He watched the dancers for a moment before answering. When he did, the tone of his voice had gone all serious. “It’s kind of hard to explain.”

  “No shit,” I said, then started laughing louder than I had in weeks.

  • • • />
  The rest of the evening we spent talking about things like deep-sea fishing, laptop computers, and the exchange rate of the peso to the dollar. I found out he was from San Francisco, California. I’m not sure if we got into what he did for a living, but later I knew. He owned, in his words, a modest same-day delivery service based in the Bay Area. He was thirty-seven and had never been married.

  It wasn’t until well after midnight, when we were both a little drunk, that the subject of the girls finally came up. Sure, that was surprising, but Larry wasn’t your typical tourist. For that matter, I wasn’t your average papasan.

  I had just returned from a run to the CR—comfort room, what they called the toilet in the Philippines—and found him eyeing one of the dancers. She was a tiny girl, not even five feet tall, with long black hair that reached the top of her ass, and breasts only slightly larger than expected on her thin frame. There was a whole set of categories—the spinner, the stunner, the runner, just to name a few—and she was a spinner, a small, light girl you could just pick up and spin around anyway you wanted.

  “That’s Nelly,” I said.

  Nelly had noticed Larry looking at her, and had moved into full-on flirt mode.

  “What?”

  I nodded toward her. “Your new friend.”

  “She is cute,” he said as if he hadn’t expected to find anyone like her.

  “You want me to call her over?”

  I could see him struggling with it for a moment, then he shook his head. “That’s okay. I was just enjoying the moment.”

  I took a sip from my sixth (or was it seventh?) beer of the evening. “You got a girlfriend already?”

  “You mean here?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  “No.”

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  “No problem. I’m just…” he paused. “Not ready, I guess.”

  I could almost hear the click in my beer-dulled mind telling me I’d just heard an important piece of information. But it was a few more seconds before I realized what it was.

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “Didn’t you tell me you’ve been here something like four days already?”

  “Five,” he corrected me.

  “Okay, five. Maybe I’m just hearing things, but I think you just said you haven’t been with anyone yet.”

  Larry glanced away for a moment. When he looked back, he had a small, sheepish grin on his face. “That’s about right.”

  I stared at him. “Is there something wrong with you?”

  He shook his head. “And before you ask, I’m not gay, either.”

  “What am I missing? Are you scared?” There’d been guys, first-timers like Larry, who got petrified once they were faced with the abundance Angeles had to offer, but they usually got over it after a night or two.

  “Not scared. It just hasn’t seemed right yet.”

  Over my time working at The Lounge, I’d seen all sorts of guys, all of them, at the very least, looking for that one-night girlfriend. The later it got, the less choosy they became. But here, sitting next to me at the bar, was a first.

  “What the hell are we doing drinking beer? Cathy,” I called, “bring the Cuervo over. The 1800. Double shots for both of us. Hell, one for you, too. And when we’re done, another round.”

  By the time I closed the place, Larry was all but passed out on the bar. I still had some of my senses with me—a product of drinking every night, I guess—so I made sure I got him back to his hotel room without incident.

  I also made him promise that if he hadn’t hooked up with anyone before his last night in Angeles, he’d come back by The Lounge and I’d set him up with Nelly.

  So I guess you could say it was all my fault.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Boracay again. In that later time, when Larry was dead and Isabel—a harder Isabel, but not hardened all the way through just yet—was asleep on the spare bed in my hotel room. My own sleep had been uneven, and I’d woken early and hungry.

  The day before, I’d been informed by the concierge that a tropical storm was going to be passing nearby, and when I pulled back the curtain for a quick peek outside, I wasn’t surprised to find the sky covered in a blanket of gray clouds. The ground was still dry, but it didn’t look like it would stay that way for long. I’d seen the sky like that before. We could be in for a steady soak.

  I pulled on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, slipped on my sneakers and grabbed my cell phone. Isabel was still breathing deeply and wasn’t likely to wake up anytime soon, so I quietly let myself out.

  The morning air was already warm, and before I’d even taken ten steps from the door, I could feel sweat beginning to bead on my brow. In the Philippines, there was a hot season and a rainy season, and most times it was both.

  I made my way down to the poolside restaurant, and sat at a table under the awning. My hotel wasn’t quite as nice as the White Sands where Isabel had spent the previous night. There were more rooms crammed into about the same amount of space, the pool was smaller, and the restaurant wasn’t quite as good. But I hadn’t been trying to impress anyone, so it was fine for me.

  There was only one other customer for breakfast, another early bird, or perhaps a night owl who was getting a little something to eat before finally heading off to bed. Otherwise the place was deserted.

  I ordered some eggs, sausage and a cup of coffee. I had a fleeting thought that I should have waited for Isabel, but I was just too damn hungry. I’d buy her breakfast when she got up.

  The eggs ended up being cooked a little more than I liked, but not enough to send them back. So I dug in and ate without pause. By the time I finished, the first drops of rain had begun to fall. I got the waitress to refill my coffee, then pushed my chair out a little and leaned back so I could watch the coming storm in comfort.

  If you didn’t like rain, the Philippines—or pretty much anywhere in the tropics—wasn’t the place for you. From about mid-June until October or November, the rain seemed to be a constant thing. Typhoons, tropical storms, the frequent afternoon shower all did what they could to keep everything in a perpetual state of either wet or damp. And even when it wasn’t the rainy season, the rain didn’t stop. That’s why things stay green in the tropics. There were times, even after I moved to Bangkok, when I wished for a few dry, Arizona-type months. Of course if that had ever happened, I’d have probably hated it.

  The initial smattering of droplets quickly turned into an onslaught. The surface of the pool danced like it was a pot of boiling water. When I looked across toward the palm trees that signified the end of the hotel property and the beginning of the beach, it seemed like everything had gone slightly blurry. It was as if the air itself had suddenly become liquid, and if we all didn’t grow gills in a hurry, we’d be in trouble. The humidity, probably hovering around seventy-five or eighty percent when I’d sat down, had shot up to one hundred in an instant. For a while, it was coming down so hard the sound of the rain drumming against the awning and the ground made it almost impossible to hold any kind of meaningful conversation. Kind of like being in one of the bars, now that I think about it.

  I hadn’t actually seen a storm come on this strong this fast in a long time. So I stayed where I was and enjoyed the show. There was something refreshing, and, on occasion, unsettling about rain. I’m not talking about the “cleansing powers” of water, the “flushing” of the skies, the “renewal” of the earth. All those were fine and very poetic, but for me, it was a lot simpler than that.

  You see, most of the important points in my life began with rain. At least that’s what I had come to believe. It rained on the day I enlisted in the Navy, it rained on the day Maureen asked me to move out, it rained on the day I boarded the plane for the Philippines, and I think it rained on the day I arrived in Bangkok. I wouldn’t be surprised if it had rained on the day I was born, but my mother had never told me and it was too late to ask.

  It even rained on the night Larry and Isabel met.

&nbs
p; • • •

  After our night of talking and drinking, I didn’t think I’d see Larry again. I thought he, like most tourists, had probably met up with some girl who had caught his eye at another bar and finally lost his Angeles cherry.

  So when he walked in on that Saturday night, it caught me a little off guard. I had to take a moment to recall his name, remembering it just as he walked up to say hi.

  “Is it raining?” I asked.

  His head and the shoulders of his avocado green golf shirt were drenched.

  “Pouring,” he said. Then as if to explain his condition, he added, “I left my umbrella in my room.”

  “Cathy,” I said, glancing at my number one bartender. “A towel and a beer for my friend, Mr. Adams, please.”

  “Here.” She tossed one of the largest bar towels we had in my direction.

  I caught it more with my shoulder than anything else, then handed it to Larry. It wasn’t exactly something you’d want to use after a hot shower, but he put it to good use removing the excess water from his hair.

  “Two beers,” Cathy said. She set a bottle on the bar. “A San Miguel for Mr. Adams, and something special for you, Doc.” She set a Gordon Biersch Märzen next to the San Miguel.

  My eyes widened. “You’ve been holding out on me.”

  She smiled coyly. “I can be nice. Sometimes.” She walked off like she had something else to do.

  I had thought I drank the last bottle in my supply months ago. In fact, I was sure of it. The ever-resourceful Cathy had apparently used one of her own connections to smuggle some in for me.

  Larry motioned to my bottle. “You like that stuff?”

  “Best beer ever made.”

  I picked up my bottle and drank just enough to get the taste again. I let it roll over my tongue like it was a hundred-year-old scotch that had been opened for the first time. Stupid, really, but damn, did it taste good.

  When I set the bottle back down, I noticed Larry looking at me. “It’s just a beer,” he said.

  “I know,” I told him. “But I can’t get it here. I have to rely on friends to bring some when they come for a visit.”