The Pull of Gravity

by Brett Battles

  Despite my larger-than-average size, I wasn’t a half-bad dancer. I did resort at times to the white-man overbite, but, for the most part, I comported myself well. Usually, Cathy was my partner, although on a couple of occasions Isabel would cut in. It seemed like after we got going, the only time I would actually leave the dance floor was when a slow song came on. That was more for the girls’ benefit than my own as my shirt was drenched in sweat.

  I don’t know exactly what it was, maybe being away from Angeles, maybe not having to worry about any of my girls, but I felt happier than I had in months.

  No, not months. Years.

  I’d been wrong. A vacation with friends was exactly what I needed, perhaps what we all needed, because it was impossible to ignore the fact that each of us was feeling exceptionally good.

  That night we were free. I wasn’t a papasan, Cathy wasn’t a bartender, Isabel wasn’t a bar dancer. We were just friends on a real vacation from our surreal lives.

  • • •

  I think we got back to the hotel around two in the morning. We stopped at Isabel and Larry’s room first and had a quick nightcap from their minibar. I was still sober enough not to stick around too long. To give the happy couple some privacy, I told them I was bushed, then put an arm around Cathy and headed out the door.

  It was a couple of minutes’ walk to our rooms, but that entire time neither of us said a word. I still had my arm around her waist, but, honestly, was only thinking of lying down and going to sleep. I really was exhausted. With the exception of a few hours of sleep the night before, I’d been up and on the go for nearly thirty-six hours.

  I can only guess what was going on in Cathy’s mind. She unlocked her door and lingered in the threshold for a few minutes, telling me what fun she’d had, what a great dancer I was, how she was too excited to go to sleep. I guess what she was trying to tell me should have been obvious, but the fatigued, inebriated mind only hears in fits and starts.

  I think I leaned over and kissed her on the forehead before saying goodnight. I do know I said goodnight. And when I unlocked my own door and opened it, it didn’t strike me as odd that she was still standing in her doorway, looking at me. I waved, went inside and was asleep five minutes later.

  • • •

  The next morning I woke up before ten, only slightly hung over and with the vague recollection that Cathy had all but tried to drag me into her room the night before. I glanced around to be sure I hadn’t later gone and invited her over, but I was alone.

  After a quick shower, I threw on a pair of blue shorts and my brown, vacation-only, Hawaiian-print shirt, slipped on my sandals, then went outside. It was sunny and hot and humid. Back home in Angeles, weather like this was one of those things that had begun to annoy me, but here it felt wonderful and right.

  I found Larry drinking a cup of coffee alone on the raised deck that overlooked the beach.

  I grunted a good morning as I took the seat across from him, then motioned to the waitress that I’d have a cup of what Larry was having. Service was quick and soon I was properly caffeinated.

  “Isabel still asleep?” I asked.

  “Don’t think she’s used to getting up before noon,” Larry said.

  I chuckled, my head hurting only slightly from the reverberation. “I know the feeling.”

  “Cathy asleep, too?” Larry asked.

  “I assume so.”

  Larry raised an eyebrow. “Assume?”

  “I slept by myself if that’s what you’re asking.”

  Larry took a sip of his coffee. “She really likes you. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Yeah. I know,” I admitted.

  “What about you?”

  I shrugged, but said nothing.

  “Not that I want to sell out my girlfriend or anything,” Larry said. “But just so you know, it was Isabel’s idea to bring Cathy along.”

  “It’s okay,” I said, reaching for my cup. “I don’t mind.” It was beginning to dawn on me that I really didn’t mind. That, in fact, I might be happy she was here.

  We sipped our coffee and watched waves for a while. There were already several people lounging on the white, sandy beach, and not far from shore two small boats sailed leisurely by. The water was clear and blue and near the beach you could see all the way to the bottom.

  “Some of my friends back home couldn’t understand why I wanted to come here again,” Larry told me. “They said, ‘If you want to go to an island, why don’t you go to Hawaii?’ Hawaii’s nice and all, but…” He trailed off, his eyes never leaving one of the sailboats as it made its way down the coast.

  “But Hawaii doesn’t have Isabel,” I said.

  He looked at me for a moment, surprised at what I said, then smiled. “Exactly right. Hawaii doesn’t have Isabel.”

  • • •

  This was the trip when Isabel fell in love with Boracay. Larry would take her two more times, but those trips would be just the two of them. And by what Isabel told me after each one, they had been as wonderful as this first time. Larry loved it there, too. Before two days had even passed, he was already talking about buying a place on the island.

  “You could use it whenever you want,” he told me.

  He talked about that dream house right up until one of the last times I saw him. I could understand why. There was something special about the island. It was one of those places you just didn’t want to leave. A small tropical paradise, where the beach was never more than a few minutes away. Angeles, on the other hand, was stuck in the middle of a much larger island, hours from any beach. It might as well have been located in Kansas.

  Isabel would talk about the house, too, but only when we were in Angeles and Larry was back in the States. She would go on about the different ways she would decorate it, about the type of maid she would be sure he hired, about what the view would be like from the bedroom balcony, for there would be a bedroom balcony.

  On that second night of our shared vacation, we hooked up with a group of Aussies on one of those package-tour vacations. It was at the bar of another hotel. These weren’t the male-only sex tourists who came to Angeles. Instead they were a group of about a dozen married couples ranging in age from late thirties to early fifties. A hard-drinking, loud-laughing crew from Perth enjoying their last night on Boracay. They were just beginning a barhop of the hotels that lined White Beach, and since we had no set plans of our own, they invited us to join them. After a brief round of introductions, we were off.

  Larry had told them Isabel was his fiancée and that Cathy and I were married. Despite the fact that the only ring Cathy wore was on the pinky of her right hand, they all bought it. Or at least pretended they did. As for Isabel and Cathy, they embraced these roles without missing a beat.

  “How long have you been married?” one of the women, Noreen Simons, asked Cathy.

  “Three years,” Cathy said, glancing at me to make sure I heard.

  “Still the honeymoon stage,” Noreen said.

  “Sometimes,” Cathy replied, a wry grin on her face.

  “Where did you meet?” a woman, who had told us her name was Sherry, asked Isabel. She was one of the older members of the group, her graying hair cut short, and looked like she could drink most anyone under the table.

  “Larry was on business in Manila,” she said as if she’d told the story a million times. “A cousin of mine introduced us.”

  “What kind of business are you in?” Sherry’s husband, Curtis, asked Larry.

  “International shipping,” Larry told him.

  “How ’bout you, Jay?” Curtis said. “What do you do?”

  “Not much. I’m kind of retired.”

  “Kind of?” another man said. I think his name was Taylor.

  “Occasionally, I have to do something to keep myself busy.”

  They all laughed, and it was enough to change the subject to something new.

  It was an evening of talk, drinking, laughing, dancing, a couple of horrible games
of pool, and a final toast of champagne on the beach from several bottles appropriated from the last bar we’d been in.

  “I’m going to hate getting on that plane tomorrow,” Curtis said to me. We were standing a few feet away from the others. “Perth’s nice, but it’s home, know what I mean? This place…it gets under your skin. Makes it hard to leave.”

  I raised the bottle I was holding and took a drink. I couldn’t have said it better myself.

  • • •

  There was no question of Cathy sleeping in her room that night. We had spent an entire night acting like a recently married couple, so after a while it seemed like we were. Once we were back at the hotel, we didn’t even pause at her door.

  In my room, in the darkness just before dawn, I held on to her sleeping form, her soft, brown skin pressed up against me. She’d been asleep for over an hour, but I had yet to close my eyes.

  I’d been fighting this. I’d been fighting this for so long I almost forgot how not to. This longing, this need, this yearning for someone. I’d been fighting it since Maureen, keeping all of it always at arms’ length. And I’d been fighting with Cathy, the idea of her. Because in her I knew was an answer. Maybe not the answer, but enough of one to drop my guard again. And as I lay there, the scent of her filling me with more contentment than I could have imagined, I was still afraid. I was afraid of tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after that. Because I knew at some point the inevitable disaster would come to signal the end of our relationship.

  There was no way I could know what form it would take, but that didn’t matter. It was out there somewhere, waiting.

  • • •

  There were times, as we explored the island or sat on the beach or ate a meal, when I found myself looking at Cathy while her attention was elsewhere. I wish I could say it was because I was enthralled by her, or was trying to memorize every line of her. But it wasn’t that.

  I could see the concern she had for me—the care, I guess you’d call it. I could see the bond of our friendship, which had grown so much stronger, and yet so much more fragile, during our time on the island. I could see thousands of possibilities. But what I was really looking for was unlimited potential. And no matter how much I looked, that was the one thing I was unable to find.

  “Do you want some mango?” she would ask. But what I heard was, “This is good for you. You should eat it.”

  “Let’s go for a walk on the beach,” she’d say. What I heard was, “You need exercise, not another nap.”

  And when she said, “It took you long enough to finally notice me,” my mind translated it as, “You’re mine now. You don’t need anyone else.”

  Every day, I would have to stop and remind myself that this was Cathy, the best friend I had at The Lounge, probably in all of Angeles. Whatever twists my mind put into what she was saying were faulty interpretations that had been skewed by emotions I hadn’t expected to feel, and didn’t know how to control.

  As each day passed, I got better.

  On the last night there, as we lay in bed, her head pressed against my chest, she said, “I wish we could stay here forever.” What I heard was, “I wish we could stay here forever.”

  In a voice so low I wasn’t sure she actually heard me, I said, “Me, too.”

  • • •

  Finally it was time for our small, tropical island vacation to end, and for us to return to our large tropical island home. We didn’t have to be in Kalibo until late afternoon, so we spent the morning on the beach.

  “Thanks, Larry,” I said. We were sitting on our towels watching Isabel and Cathy wade into the water.

  He only smiled at first. “You’re welcome,” he said a moment later.

  “This was exactly what I needed.”

  “So you’re ready to return to your nine-to-five grind, then?”

  I laughed. “Yeah. I think so.”

  There was a family playing at the edge of the water. A little boy who couldn’t have been more than five ran in and out of the waves, laughing uncontrollably. His sister, who looked to be around eight, splashed him every time he ran past. The parents were in on the fun, too. Each of them pretending to chase their son, but never being able to catch him. But it was the daughter who caught my attention the most. Even though she was Asian—maybe from Japan or Singapore or even Manila—she reminded me of Lily. It was in the way she took complete joy in her brother’s fun. It was like he was the most important thing in the world to her. And while I was sure there were times when he pissed the hell out of her, right then and there, she was everything a sister should be. She was everything a person should be. Lily didn’t have any siblings, but I had seen that same look in her face countless times.

  “I need you to do me a favor,” Larry said.

  Reluctantly, I turned my attention from the family back to him. “Sure,” I said. “What do you need?”

  “I need you to watch over Isabel.”

  My eyes narrowed slightly, as I tried to read his face. “What do you mean? Keep tabs on her and let you know what she’s up to?”

  He looked startled. “No. That’s not what I mean at all. I just want you to be her friend. Be there for her if she needs someone to talk to.”

  I relaxed a little. “I do that already.”

  “I realize that. But,” he paused, knowing the words he was about to say were trite, but not knowing any other way to say it, “she’s special.”

  “I know.”

  “It’s like she’s the only—”

  “Larry,” I said, stopping him. “I know.”

  He smiled sheepishly, and again silence descended on us. As the girls walked out of the water and began heading in our direction, Larry said, “I’m going to send her money every month.”

  “That’s between you and her.”

  He looked over at me. “If something happens and she needs more, if you think she needs more, that’s when I want you to contact me. You don’t have to tell me what it’s for. Is that okay?”

  I smiled and nodded. “That’s okay.”

  • • •

  A lot had changed during that week away, the most important being Isabel and Larry’s love moving from potential to genuine. It was still too early to talk of marriage, but we all knew it was waiting on the road ahead. As for Cathy and me, we’d moved from coy teasing to secret lovers. I had told both her and Isabel that I didn’t want the rest of the girls to know what was going on. I couldn’t have it interfering with my job. Did I really believe it would remain secret forever? No. But I hoped it would for a while.

  And it was also on that trip that Larry and I moved from acquaintances to friends—good friends, even. I was going to miss the son of a bitch when he left in a few days.

  As we drove from the airport in Manila back to Angeles, Larry had the driver make a quick stop at a store. He darted inside and five minutes later returned with a bottle of cheap champagne and a stack of paper cups.

  Once we were back on the road, he poured each of us a cupful of the wine.

  “To a great vacation,” he said.

  “To a great vacation,” we all echoed.

  Soon we’d be back in Angeles, at the party that never stopped, but at that moment, we were just four friends having a little party of our own.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  We had been walking in silence on the beach for fifteen minutes. The clouds had actually begun to break up some, and I was beginning to think maybe we’d miss most of the storm. Others must have been thinking the same thing, as the regular noises of the beach—the fishermen preparing their boats, the tourists talking and laughing and playing on the sand, and the young kids walking up and down selling necklaces and sunglasses and candy bars—that had been missing earlier returned. For a while we stood down at the water’s edge, letting the warm sea wash over our feet.

  Because it suddenly felt natural to do so, I began talking about Larry. And once I started, I found it hard to stop.

  I told her about the first time I had
met him. I talked about the jerk with the comb-over and Larry’s offer of tea. Her face grew pained as I went on, but she didn’t try to change the subject. Most of what I told her was stuff she already knew, but just hadn’t thought about since she locked it all up in that place she kept her most painful memories. I imagined that room was crammed full, mostly with memories of Larry, but not all. When I got to that trip the four of us took to Boracay, Isabel finally teared up. After I told her what Larry had said to me as we watched her and Cathy play in the water, a few tears escaped.

  “You know you meant everything to him,” I said.

  She nodded.

  “Even then,” I said.

  She nodded again.

  “He wasn’t like the other guys I’ve met since he—” she stopped herself, then said, “after him. He was not like anyone I ever meet in Angeles, or here, or even at home, before.” Before she’d come to work at The Lounge, she meant. Before she started the job that had become her life.

  We walked on for a bit, then she said, “Except maybe you.”

  “No,” I said. “Not me. I was like everyone else.”

  She shook her head, but said nothing.

  I went back to our vacation on Boracay, talking about our trip home, and how, though I felt refreshed and able to handle work again, I was sad it was over.

  “What I remember most,” she said, “was that monkey.”

  It took me a second, then I laughed. “I’d forgotten all about that,” I said.

  That damn monkey. It had to have been our third or fourth day there. We were on the beach, not far from Boat Station 1. This guy, a local who looked sixty but was probably not much more than forty-five, was offering tourists the chance to take a picture with his monkey. It was small, with reddish hair and a bored look on its face. The local guy had it tethered to a palm tree with a piece of dirty rope that was tied to a homemade leather collar around the monkey’s neck.

  “For some reason, Larry really wanted to get us all to take a picture with it,” I said, remembering.

  “He told me he’d never seen a monkey that close before.” Isabel was barely able to keep from laughing. “Even at the zoo, he never got that close.”