The Pull of Gravity

by Brett Battles

  “That stupid, fucking monkey,” I said.

  Larry had spotted the guy and his monkey first, and had sprinted ahead of us. By the time we caught up, he was leaning down, his hand outstretched, but not yet touching the animal.

  “What’s his name?” Larry asked the owner.

  “Julio,” the guy said.

  “Hey there, Julio.” Larry was like a little kid. “Can I pet him?”

  Julio’s owner shrugged. “You want to take a picture with him?”

  Larry’s eyes lit up. “Hell, yeah.”

  “Three hundred pesos.”

  Cathy immediately jumped in, speaking in Tagalog so fast I couldn’t understand her. Two minutes later, with the price down to a hundred pesos, we were grouped with our backs to the ocean, the monkey sitting quietly on Larry’s shoulder.

  Larry had given the owner his digital camera and had explained how it worked, but the guy seemed to be having problems getting the shot. Several times Larry had to walk over—the monkey still on his shoulder, grabbing Larry’s hair so as not to fall—to show the guy what he needed to do.

  On the third trip, I guess the monkey had had enough. He shrieked in annoyance. Isabel jumped one way while Cathy jumped the other, each screaming in surprise and fear. This new complication didn’t sit well with Julio, who grabbed on harder to Larry’s hair, shrieking again.

  Instinctively, Larry reached up to pull the monkey off his head, but Julio just slapped his hand away. This whole time the owner kept trying to get the camera to work, impervious to the noise and confusion.

  Julio apparently decided he’d had enough of the entire event. He screeched once more, then leaped onto the sandy beach and ran back to his spot at the base of the palm tree.

  “Are you all right?” I asked Larry.

  “What?” he said. He was holding his head where Julio had been hanging on.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah,” he said after a moment’s hesitation. “I think so. Except I can’t hear a damn thing in this ear.” He massaged the outside of the ear Julio had been screaming into.

  Julio’s owner walked up and held out the camera. Larry took it from him.

  “I think you should give us our money back,” I said.

  The guy stared at me, like he didn’t understand, when I knew he did. Cathy and Isabel had rejoined us by now, both of them keeping a wary eye on Julio. Cathy told the guy in Tagalog to give Larry his money back, but the guy basically told her no refunds, then started to walk away. Cathy reached out to stop him, but Larry put a hand on her arm.

  “It’s okay,” Larry said. “Let him keep the money.”

  He held up the camera. “Who knows? Maybe we got the shot.” He smiled broadly. “Besides, I can’t say I’ve ever had a monkey angry at me before.”

  We all started laughing. And several times over the next few hours, Cathy or Isabel would impulsively reach over and tug on Larry’s hair.

  Later, when we had a chance to look at the results, we found that the guy with the monkey had been able to get only one picture taken, a close-up of his own feet. Larry printed out copies and gave one to each of us. Mine was pinned to the wall behind the bar in The Lounge. For all I know, it could still be there.

  • • •

  The memory brought a welcome change to Isabel’s mood. No doubt, for the last three years, only one memory of Larry had dominated her thoughts—that he was gone. That he’d been killed on a dark street only a few blocks away from The Lounge. It certainly was the image I couldn’t get out of my mind.

  Now she seemed willing to talk. More than that, she sounded as if she had come in search of me to make me remember.

  “I hated going back to Angeles after that,” she said. The sun had begun to dominate the sky again so we stopped under the shade of a couple of palm trees, sitting down on warm, white sand. “I was scared of that first night after he leave for America, when I have to be back at work talking to some other guy. I was afraid they’d touch me, like that other customer did. Or whisper something stupid in my ear. You know what I mean?”

  “Yeah,” I said, nodding.

  “I thought, what do I do when one of them ask me to go bar fine? But I could not make enough money anywhere else. My family, they rely on me, di ba?” She paused, not expecting an answer from me, but momentarily lost in thought. “But Larry seemed to know anyway. He told me the last night before he go home from that trip what he and you agree on.”

  She looked at me, eyes moist but not tearing, then smiled and leaned into my shoulder.

  • • •

  “I wish she didn’t have to work here,” Larry said. “No offense, but I worry about her all the time. I know you try to take care of her, but you don’t work every night. And she’s not the only girl you have to watch over.”

  We were sitting at the counter in The Pit Stop overlooking Fields Avenue. It was three in the afternoon on the day before Larry was to return to California, and two days after our return from Boracay. As usual, it was hot, and the electric fans Carter had mounted near the ceiling were doing little to relieve the discomfort. I could already feel my shirt sticking to my back. My only relief was from the large iced tea sitting on the counter in front of me.

  There wasn’t really anything I could say, so I took a sip of my drink.

  Larry was right; I couldn’t be Isabel’s keeper. Nor would I want to be. That wasn’t what he was asking. I’d known him long enough at this point to be fairly certain he wasn’t one of those guys who wanted to control their honey ko’s every move. Those were the guys who figured out how to pinpoint their girls’ cell-phone location after a call. They were the ones who had their friends go into the bars to see if their girlfriend was still working after she said she’d stopped, or had them try to bar fine her after she swore she only worked for lady drinks and didn’t go out on EWR, or follow her to see if she had a Filipino boyfriend on the side, never realizing that if she did have someone else, the man on the side was the foreign guy, not the Filipino boyfriend.

  Larry’s concern didn’t seem to be rooted in a sense of control and jealousy. His concern seemed more genuine, more obvious. There was nothing beyond the desire for Isabel to have the best life she could have.

  On the street in front of us, there was a steady trickle of girls in their street clothes, walking past on their way toward the bars where they worked. Some were dressed in a simple shirt and jeans, while others looked like they were ready for a night on the town. There were the stunners and spinners and cherry girls and all the other types that populated the bars of the district. They were in pairs and groups and occasionally alone. Some walked down the street talking and laughing with each other, while some walked purposefully, eyes straight ahead as if unaware of anyone around them. Then there were those who were fully aware of everything. These were the ones who would glance over at the guys they passed, smiling and waving and joking with them before turning their attention elsewhere. Always working, always on.

  Because I was on the inside, part of the Angeles inner circle, I knew a lot of the girls, maybe not all by name, but at least by face. And they knew me, too. So when they saw me I would get the smile and the wave, but I would also get “Hi, Papa,” “You haven’t come to see me in a long time, Papa,” and “I miss you, Papa.”

  It was a parade of sorts. Unofficial and unorganized, yet so memorable and eye-pleasing that many guys who visited Fields considered it one of the highlights of the day. Some guys would follow the ones they found particularly intriguing back to the girl’s bar, or sometimes they’d even try to get a girl to skip work altogether and go with them on the spot.

  Larry, though, didn’t seem to notice any of it. His eyes were focused on the roof of Jolly Jack’s, directly across the street. “I have a question for you.”

  “Okay.”

  “How do I make her understand that I’m just trying to help?” he asked.

  “I’m not quite following you.”

  He looked over at me and smi
led. “Sorry,” he said. “Here’s my problem. I told you I was going to send money every month, right?”

  I nodded.

  “I’m planning on it being enough so that she doesn’t have to work anymore,” he said. “But she says she doesn’t want me to send her anything at all.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  He took a deep breath, shrugging slightly. “I told her she could go back home to her family, but she doesn’t want to do that. She said she’s not after my money. She said she’s not one of those girls, and that she has a job and makes her own living.”

  It’s funny—if someone like Mariella had said that to a guy, I would have known she was just playing him, making it so that he thought she cared about him, before she would finally give in and say yes. The guy would probably offer her even more money in the end. But with Isabel, it was different. I’d seen with my own eyes what Larry meant to her. And if she had told him she didn’t want his money, she meant it.

  “Every time I bring up the subject, she cuts me off,” he said. “She doesn’t even want to talk about it. I don’t know if it’s pride or what, but, Doc, I’ve got to do something.”

  “Some of it’s pride,” I said. I took another sip of my iced tea. “She wants you to know that she’s not like the other girls here.”

  “I know she’s not. I tell her that all the time.”

  “That doesn’t matter. Look around,” I said, gesturing to the street where the parade of girls was at full force. For the first time, he seemed to notice. “See those guys over there?” I pointed toward a group of men gathered near the entrance of The Eight Ball, talking to the door girls while keeping an eye on the parade. “This is Isabel’s life, day after day. These are the only people she knows right now. This is her reality. When she says she’s not like the other girls, that’s not completely true.”

  I could see Larry’s eyes narrowing.

  “Let me finish,” I said. “When she says that, what she really means is that she’s not like those girls who are here only to take the guys for as much money as they can. She’s telling you she’s not one of the ones who’ll have multiple guys around the world who think of her as their girlfriend and send her money every month. The fact that she is just the opposite, and not the only girl on Fields who is, doesn’t really matter. Because of this place, what it is, she’s afraid that your first inclination will be to think she’s just another money-hungry bar girl.”

  “But I never believed she was one of them,” he said.

  I looked at him silently for a moment. “Before you go judging them,” I said, my tone dead serious, “remember they’re only doing what they’ve learned to do to survive. And they wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for all of us.” I glanced across the street at the guys still camped out in front of The Eight Ball, then looked at Larry. “All of you.”

  “No, no. You’re right,” he said. “I didn’t mean anything by it. I’m just worried about Isabel.”

  “I know you are,” I said.

  As the girls continued to walk by, I noticed another familiar face. It was Jade. She used to be one of the dancers at The Lounge when I first started, but she was getting old for the job. I think she was about twenty-seven then. She’d been offered a position as a mamasan at one of the smaller bars, and had jumped at the opportunity. She always had a good head for business, and had moved on from that small bar to become a mamasan at a much larger place called The Rack.

  I waved to her when she got close, and she stopped on the street just below us, hands on her hips, looking up. “Hey, Papa. What’s going on?”

  “Hi, Jade. Where you off to?”

  “Work. Starting early tonight. Who your friend?”

  “This is Larry,” I said. “Larry, this is Jade.”

  “Hi,” he said.

  “Ah. Is this the famous Isabel’s Larry?” she asked.

  Larry’s eyes opened wide.

  “One and the same,” I said.

  “He’s cute. You tell Isabel I say so, okay?” she said.

  “I’ll try to remember,” I said.

  “Hey, Papa. We have anniversary party for bar on Thursday night. You off that night?”

  “Not this week.”

  She gave me a faux pout. “Too bad. We having body-painting contests and I know how much you like that.”

  I laughed.

  “Okay. Gotta go. Good to meet you, Isabel’s Larry. Bye, Papa.”

  We said goodbye and watched her walk off.

  “How did she know about me?” Larry asked.

  “Nothing’s ever private in Angeles,” I said. “Besides, Jade is one of Mariella’s friends.”

  The smile on Larry’s face slipped a little. “I don’t like her,” he said.

  “Jade’s all right,” I told him.

  “That’s not who I meant.”

  I took a sip of my iced tea. “I know who you meant,” I said.

  Silence overtook us again for a few minutes.

  “I have an idea,” I said. There was only a little bit left in my cup, so I drank it all down in one gulp.

  “What?” Larry said.

  “What if I make Isabel a waitress instead of a dancer?” I asked. “I’ll bump her pay just a bit. It doesn’t mean guys are going to stop asking to bar fine her, but it’ll happen less and it’ll also be easier for her to say no.”

  “Really?” I could see actual hope in his eyes.

  “Sure.”

  “But what about the money I want to send her?” he asked.

  I thought about it for a moment, then said, “Send it to me. I’ll open an account for her and put it all in there. When she’s ready, she can start using it. In the meantime, if there’s an emergency, the money’s there.”

  He thought about it for a few moments, running the idea through his mind. “Okay. Yeah. That’ll work. But I’m not going to hide anything from her. I’m going to tell her what we’re doing.”

  “That’s your choice.”

  And so it was settled. Larry would be happy that he was doing something to make Isabel’s life a little easier, and Isabel would be happy she could prove she wanted him for something other than his money. And in the end, Isabel hadn’t been lying. The first time she ever touched that money was two weeks after Larry died. And on that day, she withdrew it all and left Angeles for good.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  For those of us whose life was Angeles, the party rolled on. Hangovers and catfights and bell rings and beer and dancing and half-worn bikinis and bar fines and pool and everything and anything that was Angeles—it was all part of the cycle that never ended. Get on or get off, because there was no in between.

  Isabel adapted quickly to her new role as waitress, making as much as, if not more than, she had when she’d been a dancer. And every month, money would come in from Larry, more than enough so Isabel could live comfortably, send some home, and quit work if she wanted. But even though I told her every time the money arrived, she would just nod and say she didn’t need it then.

  In that, I think, she probably was unique among the girls on Fields. Even if they had really believed they weren’t going to touch it, most of the girls would have ended up taking it out anyway. The temptation was too great, and the pressure from the other girls for them to use it would have been tremendous. The majority of girls on Fields had a bad case of spend-what-you-got-and-don’t-worry-about-next-week. But for the longest time, Isabel and I were the only people who knew about her situation so I guess that helped.

  Larry fell into the habit of visiting every two or three months. Sometimes he’d spend the whole time in Angeles, other times he’d take Isabel away for a while. To Manila, to Puerta Galera, back to Boracay. He also became one of my steady suppliers of Märzen.

  As far as Cathy and I were concerned, I was able to keep that secret from the girls at The Lounge for a good week and a half. And once the news was out, the incessant teasing began. The one thing I noticed was that the girls became a bit more respectful of Ca
thy. It wasn’t that they didn’t treat her well before, it was just that they had collectively decided she had more power now. And instead of trying to downplay this, I decided to use it to my advantage, leaving Cathy in charge for hours on end while I went to “run an errand,” which usually involved having a beer with Dieter at Sinsations or with Hal at Tricks. Cathy seemed to enjoy the new responsibility and even talked about maybe being a mamasan one day.

  Just a little less than a year after that group trip to Boracay, I was sitting in the back office at The Lounge, ostensibly going over the books but in reality doing the crossword puzzle in a two-week-old copy of the New York Times someone had left behind that afternoon, when I heard a scream from the bar.

  This, in itself, was a bit surprising, as usually I couldn’t hear anything over the music. But it was just after six p.m. and the place had been pretty empty so the music was turned down low.

  I was out of my office in a shot, and heard another scream just before I entered the main room. In the bar, I found the girls grouped together near the front door, but no one seemed to be in distress. In fact, most of them were smiling or laughing.

  Their attention was focused on a guy who had just entered. He was a big guy, not tall, but not fat either. He had the look of one of those guys who spent their entire day in the gym lifting weights. Muscles bulged everywhere, and while he could have probably lifted fat ol’ me off the ground without effort, I wasn’t going to test him.

  It was Rudy, of course, he whose last name I never got because I never asked. He acted the part of the gentle giant, but in reality, he was more of a giant asshole. Wavy blond hair, Nordic chiseled face, and a temper lying just below the surface that could erupt without warning. He was one of the Angeles regulars, a Dane, I believe, who’d immigrated to the U.S. as a teenager, and now lived in the Midwest somewhere. He’d planned his trips around holidays in the U.S. He was always coming to the island at Thanksgiving, and this time, since it was nearing the end of May, he was obviously taking advantage of the upcoming Memorial Day three-day weekend.