The Pull of Gravity

by Brett Battles

  “I heard a noise.”

  “Bah. Go back to sleep. I’ll wake you later.”

  I allowed myself to take a tentative step into the kitchen. I wanted to ask her where she’d been, and if everything was okay between us. I wanted to make sure she was real. But I didn’t want to break the spell, so I said, “There’s chicken in the refrigerator, and I bought a new bag of rice. It’s in the pantry.”

  She turned to me, brandishing the knife. “Go, go, go.”

  So I went.

  • • •

  She woke me midafternoon.

  “You going to sleep all day?” she asked. “Take a shower and get dressed.” She almost turned away, but she stopped herself and looked at me for a moment. “You look thinner.”

  She’d set everything up on the patio table by the pool. There was even a cold Gordon Biersch Märzen waiting for me, which meant she must have had a stash somewhere in the house I didn’t know about. She’d made chicken adobo and pancit, but there was only one place setting.

  “Aren’t you going to eat?” I asked.

  “Already,” she said.

  She sat down across from where she’d put my empty plate, a full glass of red wine in her hand. I couldn’t help feeling a little disappointed she wouldn’t be eating with me, but at least she was there. I took my seat, then reached over and put some adobo on my plate. As I took my first bite, I suddenly realized I was starving.

  “Good?” she asked.

  I nodded and smiled, my mouth full of chicken.

  She didn’t force me into further conversation, and though all the same questions were still on my mind, I had no desire at the moment to voice any. We were together again, and I was happy, that’s all that mattered.

  It occurred to me somewhere in the middle of the meal that maybe I did love her—I mean, really love her. The relief and the happiness I felt had to mean that, didn’t it? Of course, I was ignoring all those other times with other women when similar feelings had surfaced in me. Each and every one of those relationships proved to be something other than love, and in the clarity of years removed, they’d all been cases of something more akin to misplaced desperation as I tried to hold on to something I never really had.

  But for that moment, that wrinkle in time, I loved Cathy.

  “You want some Halo-Halo?” she asked as I pushed my plate away.

  “As great as that sounds, I’m pretty full right now.”

  She raised an eyebrow, but said nothing.

  I glanced at my watch. It was getting close to four thirty, almost time for me to leave. I debated telling Cathy about my new stake in The Lounge, but decided I’d let her find out on her own. That way it wouldn’t seem I’d bought in only to please her, at least that’s what I thought. “I need to head in,” I said, still unable to engage in anything other than the most basic of conversations. “You gonna work tonight?”

  “If you need me,” she said.

  “We always need you,” I told her as I stood up.

  Her smile faltered, and I didn’t realize until later that the correct response was, “I always need you.”

  “Sure,” she said. “I’ll come in. Around eight, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  We stayed there for several seconds, me standing next to the table and Cathy sitting holding her untouched glass of wine, looking at each other, both with something to say and neither of us saying it.

  Finally I smiled and turned back for the house.

  • • •

  The girls welcomed Cathy back with shouts and cheers and kisses. Unlike me, several asked her where she’d been, but she would only answer, “Away,” or “Out of town.” Afraid that she might divulge more than I wanted to hear, I made my way to the back of the bar and left her to the hordes.

  Soon I found myself listening to stories from a group of Americans who’d decided they’d met me on a previous trip, though I was pretty sure it was the first time we’d ever seen each other. They’d been making the rounds in Manila and had only arrived in Angeles that morning. From the way they told it, they’d each had a girl in Manila fall in love with them and beg them to stay. Fell in love with your money is more like it, I thought, but didn’t say anything. The working girls in Manila, as a lot, were hardened professionals who seldom entertained the dream of finding the right foreign guy and “getting out.” Finding a rich local guy who’d put them up in an expensive apartment, bought them fancy clothes, took them out to exotic dinners before returning home to his wife and kids—that was the height of their hope pyramid.

  Ty, the unofficial group leader, talked like he’d been coming to the Philippines for over a dozen years. But I could tell he was all show. He’d been coming, at most, for the past year or two. It was obvious he didn’t want his friends to know because his experience made him “The Man.” Still, I couldn’t help dropping in a few names of fictitious bars that had “closed down” into the conversation.

  “Yeah, I miss that place,” he would say, or, “They had one of the most beautiful dancers I’ve ever seen,” or, “I nearly cried when I heard they went out of business.”

  I bounced from them to a couple of Japanese businessmen I knew, to three newbies from Australia, to Josh and Nicky, all the time politely declining the offer of a drink, but always buying a round for them.

  Sometime early on, I glanced up and saw that Cathy had taken her familiar place behind the bar. I tried to catch her eye and give her a little wink, but she apparently was too engrossed in filling orders to notice me. About half an hour later, when I looked over again, there was an old guy sitting at the bar talking to her. I knew she was just doing her job, but I couldn’t help feeling a little jealous that this complete stranger seemed to be having a relaxed, pleasant conversation with my girlfriend.

  After that, things got crazy as usual and the next thing I knew, it was time to close up. Cathy and Analyn shut down the bar while I released all the girls who were left.

  When we were done, Cathy and I found Manny waiting for us outside. He grinned broadly when he saw her, and immediately called out a greeting in Tagalog. As Cathy and I jammed ourselves into the sidecar of Manny’s trike, I noticed Cathy was a little stiff.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “Tired,” she said.

  I put a hand on her back at the base of her neck and began to giver her a gentle massage. She smiled, then leaned back into me. I kissed her cheek lightly, realizing as I did that it was the first time I’d kissed her since she’d come back. She turned her head toward me, letting me kiss her on the lips before turning away again and closing her eyes as if she wanted to rest.

  Manny dropped us off in front of our house ten minutes later. Before he left, Cathy said something to him in Tagalog, but I was too far away to catch any of it. When she was done, Manny’s ever-present smile was gone. With a single nod, he gunned his engine and left.

  After we’d gone inside and turned on the lights, I went into the kitchen like I always did, and got us each a glass of water.

  “Are you hungry?” I called out, but she didn’t answer, so I assumed she was already in the bedroom out of earshot.

  The way the house was laid out, there was a large living room to the right of the front door as you came in, and the kitchen and dining room to the left. From the kitchen you could either exit into the backyard, or go down the hallway that led back to the bedrooms. I went into the hallway, but when I got to the master bedroom, she wasn’t there. I checked the bathroom and that was empty, too.

  I was still carrying the two glasses of water when I reentered the living room and found her sitting on the couch. Beside the couch were two large suitcases. Hers. I wanted to think she just hadn’t unpacked from her trip, but I had seen those two suitcases sitting empty in our closet a couple days earlier. She hadn’t taken them on her trip.

  I held out one of the glasses to her. “Thirsty?”

  She took it, and said in a voice I could barely hear, “Thank you.”

  I sat
down on the couch, not too close to her, but not too far away either. The illusion of reconciliation I’d created since her return was all but gone. Even if I didn’t completely know why, I knew what the suitcases meant. I just didn’t want to believe it.

  “Another trip?” I asked. I tried sounding lighthearted and unaffected, but it came out snippy and hurt.

  “Jay,” she said, her eyes closing in pain.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, and meant it. “Why don’t we get some sleep and talk about this when we’re both more awake?”

  She sighed. “Sleep will change nothing.”

  “You can have the bedroom. I’ll sleep here on the couch.”

  “No,” she said. She stood up. “It’s time for me to leave.”

  “Hold on,” I said, jumping up and reaching for her hand. She let me hold it for a moment before pulling away. “Are you going to tell me why?”

  “You know why.” She walked over and picked up her suitcases. “I’ve left you plenty of food. And Analyn’s sister will cover for me at the bar until you hire someone else.”

  “You’re leaving the bar, too?”

  I could see she wanted to say something, but she finally gave up and turned for the front door.

  I had already said, “Let me carry those,” before I realized I’d just volunteered to help her move out. As we reached the door, I asked, “Where are you going?”

  “Away.”

  Outside, Manny was once again parked in front of my house. So now I knew what Cathy had said to him. I set her bags on the ground, unable to actually put them into the trike.

  “This can’t be everything,” I said, as we watched Manny set the suitcases in the sidecar.

  “It’s everything I want,” she said.

  “What if I need to send you something?” I asked, knowing none of the words coming out of my mouth were the words I wanted to say.

  “You won’t.”

  There was no room in the sidecar, so Cathy climbed onto the motorcycle behind Manny.

  “Wait,” I said, finally getting ahold of myself. “Cathy, wait. Please. I don’t understand. You’ve got to at least give me a chance. Cathy, please.”

  She turned to me, her eyes full of tears. “I already give you your chance.” To Manny, she said, “Go.”

  I suddenly realized I hadn’t told her about my partnership in The Lounge, so I called out, “Wait! Wait!”

  But by then, I was standing in front of my house alone.

  • • •

  It was Analyn who gave me the whole story.

  “She loved you very much,” Analyn told me.

  We were in the back office at The Lounge. It was Monday night. I hadn’t even bothered going in on Sunday, instead I had Tommy pay me back for the double I’d worked for him only a couple days earlier. I spent the day sitting by my pool, thinking about nothing and everything.

  “She wanted to marry you, you know?” Analyn said. “If you had asked her, she would have said yes.”

  But I never asked. And even as she was sitting on the back of Manny’s motorcycle, I wasn’t ready to say those words. It’s hard for someone who has little faith in himself to ask someone else to have it in him. And when it came to relationships, faith in myself seldom rose above empty. Deep down I knew I didn’t deserve her, so I could never bring myself to ask that most important question.

  But it turned out someone else could.

  A few days before she disappeared for those two weeks, Manus had come back to town. Manus, the old Swede who Mariella had chased away. He told Cathy when he saw her again that he’d never stopped thinking about her.

  He was even older now—sixty-one is what Analyn told me—but still young enough, I guess. When he came back to Angeles, instead of going into The Lounge and surprising Cathy, he had sent her a note, inviting her to lunch the next day. She was to meet him in the lobby of his hotel if she wanted to see him. If she didn’t show up, he wouldn’t bother her again.

  Analyn told me Cathy wasn’t sure what to do. She didn’t want to hurt me, but she thought it would be nice to see Manus again. Though she may have never loved the Swede, she had been fond of him. And she was getting tired of the limbo our relationship seemed to be stuck in.

  So she showed up, and Manus took her to lunch at a nice restaurant outside the district. She saw right away that Manus was still in love with her, and it softened her so that the next day when he asked if she would like to go with him to Cebu for a few days, she had said yes.

  Analyn said Cathy had gone so she could do some thinking about us. Apparently she had told Manus all about me. He was understanding and didn’t push anything. “We’ll just be friends on vacation,” he’d apparently told her.

  At some point, things changed. Either Cathy had realized there was no future with me beyond what we already had, or was refreshed by being with someone who was not afraid to show how much he loved her, or both, but before they returned to Angeles, they had renewed their affair.

  It was on their last night away that he’d asked her to marry him.

  “He surprised her,” Analyn said. “She didn’t expect him to ask that so she told him no. But he told her to think about it.”

  Apparently, she had. I guess that’s what she was doing when I found her in the kitchen on that Saturday morning. And I guess whatever she found at home had helped convince her to say yes.

  That night at The Lounge, Manus came in and Cathy told him she would marry him. As Analyn was telling me this, I realized I had seen him talking to Cathy. He was the old guy who had been at the bar.

  “While the paperwork’s going through so he can take her home, he’s renting an apartment in Manila for them to live in,” Analyn said. “I’m sorry, Papa Jay. I wish I didn’t have to tell you this.”

  “It’s okay,” I said.

  Analyn went back out into the bar, leaving me alone.

  I couldn’t blame Cathy for making the choice she did. Manus was offering her a way out to a better life. Me, I was just offering more of the same. I guess what hurt most was that she had left me, a guy who she thought never truly loved her, for a guy she had never truly loved.

  The party beckoned to me from the bar. Music, squealing, laughter filtering down the hallway back to my little nook. But what desire I had left to join in was gone.

  Forever.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  I’d be lying if I said I didn’t try to find Cathy in Manila. Unfortunately, wherever the Swede had stowed her, he had chosen well. I could never find even a hint of where they were. After a week, it seemed like I was searching the same places over and over again. That’s when I decided to give it up.

  Several months later I heard that she’d received her visa and had left the country. I hoped it was true for her sake, but I never knew for sure. That moment in front of my house while she sat on the back of Manny’s trike was the last time we ever talked to each other, the last time I ever saw her.

  In the weeks following her departure, life at The Lounge was the same as it had ever been and yet completely different. The perpetual party rolled on, old Angeles veterans cycled through, and new Angeles “cherry boys” walked wide-eyed through the streets. The beer was just as cold, the girls just as available, and the drama just as insidious. But it all seemed out of tune now, an ill-conceived rock opera played on ancient instruments.

  I didn’t know what to do about it. I now was not only bar manager, but part owner of The Lounge. I couldn’t just get up and leave.

  I told myself I had to make the best of it. Things would get better. I just needed a little time. I guess, after a while, things did get better, if you consider becoming numb to almost everything better.

  • • •

  In those first months after Cathy left, Mariella started showing up at The Lounge more and more. I wasn’t in a mood to care, so she seemed to annoy me less than usual. Since she normally came in early before the crowds arrived, I never asked her to leave.

  Sometime she was alone, othe
r times she was with one or two of her friends, but she never came in with a guy. I knew it didn’t mean she’d stopped working, not Mariella. It was too much of a way of life for her. She would spend most of her time when she stopped by talking to the Mariella Fan Club, which consisted of anywhere from six to a dozen girls. Occasionally she would talk with Isabel, but it wasn’t as much as I would have expected. And always, she would make it a point to stop and say a few words to me.

  At first I thought it was because she was hoping I’d buy her a few drinks, but slowly over time, as our little chats grew longer, I began to realize, with subdued amusement, that she was taking a more active interest in me. I wasn’t flattered—in fact, if I wasn’t so numb I probably would have been disgusted—but I was curious to see how far she would take it.

  “It was so hot today, wasn’t it?” she asked once.

  “A little,” I replied.

  “Did you do anything fun?”

  I shrugged and told her I went for a swim.

  Suddenly she got that Mariella ear-to-ear grin and said, “That’s right, that’s right. You have a swimming pool. I’m so jealous.” She slapped me playfully on the arm.

  I nodded.

  “A private pool,” she said. “You don’t even have to wear a swimming suit.” She laughed, but the look in her eye was inquiring. “You should have a swim party someday.”

  “Maybe I will,” I said.

  Her head tilted downward, chin resting on her chest. She looked at me through upturned eyes, in that look of helplessness so many of the girls had mastered. “You’ll invite me, won’t you?”

  “If I do, you’ll have to bring your own swimsuit,” I said. “I don’t have anything that’ll fit you.”

  She smiled. “That’s okay.”

  There were dozens of conversations like this. I suppose any sane man would have pushed things to the next level. I knew Mariella was expecting me to, all her previous experience with men on Fields undoubtedly telling her I would. But I wasn’t buying in.

  It was a game to me, nothing more.

  • • •