The Pull of Gravity

by Brett Battles

  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 the
m. 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, a
t 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.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  When I arrived at work on Sunday night, the day after Larry’s return to Angeles, I found Larry and Isabel already there. They were sitting at the bar, having what appeared to be deep discussions with Cathy. When Cathy noticed me, she said something to them, then all three turned to me, grinning.