pretty much the same thing: pre-recorded music and liquor and women.
“So how does ours rank?”
“About average.” He nodded toward Ellie. “Except for her. She brings your score way up.”
I couldn’t help but smile. The fish was circling the bait. Now all I had to do was hook him.
While Perdue took another drink, I caught the attention of Kat, the bartender. With a quick, almost undetectable motion, I indicated our new customer’s interest in our superstar. Less than a minute later, Ellie made her way off the stage and walked across the room to where we were sitting.
“Hey, Ellie,” I said. “How you doing?”
“I was getting hot,” she said. She pulled at her bikini top, like she needed to get air between the flimsy fabric and her C-cup breasts. She looked at Perdue and smiled. “Who’s this?”
“Another Yank,” I said. “Joseph Perdue.”
She held out her hand and gave him a look even the most disinterested man would be hard pressed to resist. “Nice to meet you. I’m Ellie.”
“Hi, Ellie,” Perdue said. Instead of shaking her hand, he kissed it, the whole time his eyes never leaving her face.
I knew the deal was done then, and twenty minutes later I was proved correct.
“He wants to pay bar fine, Papa. What do you think?” Ellie asked me. She and Perdue had moved to the booth he’d occupied when he’d first arrived. Now she had walked back over to me alone while her potential boyfriend for the night waited.
“He seems all right,” I said. “What do you think?”
“I think he has money,” she said.
“Then, by all means, have a great night.”
It didn’t surprise me when Perdue came in the next night and bar-fined her again. And I wasn’t particularly shocked that he’d decided to bar-fine her not just for that evening but for the rest of the week. The fish had not just swallowed the hook, but the hook and the line and the rod. Ellie was a hard one to resist.
Of course, the deal was good for everyone. I was happy to collect the cash. Ellie was happy to be out of the bar for more than just a few hours, and was definitely happy about her cut of the bar fine. And Perdue, presumably, was happy to be spending time with a beautiful girl at least twenty years younger than he was.
Honestly, after that night, I thought I wouldn’t see the guy again. I figured he’d probably bar-fine her for the remainder of his trip and when she came back to work, it would mean he was on the long flight home to the U.S. But two days later, he showed up in the middle of the afternoon.
It was Friday, but we wouldn’t get really busy until after dark. At the time, we only had two customers so the day-shift girls-about half as many as I’d have on that night-were huddled together in clicks talking or sitting alone texting their boyfriends, both foreign and Filipino, on their mobiles.
I had only been there thirty minutes, but as usual, my ass was glued to my favorite stool at the bar. If anyone else ever tried to sit there, Kat or one of the other bartenders made them move. “Papa Wade’s chair,” they’d say.
When Perdue came in, he took a few seconds for his eyes to adjust from the bright sunshine outside to the dim interior, then spotted me and walked over.
“Alone?” I asked.
“Ellie said she had to run home to take care of something. I’m meeting her at Mac’s in an hour.”
Mac’s was the main restaurant in the district, and where most everyone ended up at one time or another. But Perdue didn’t sound happy about it. In fact, I’d say he was pretty annoyed. But I didn’t push. My job was to make the customer feel as good as possible about his time in Angeles. Getting into the middle of a relationship between one of my girls and her
Whether you believe it or not, we’re a family. And a hell of a lot better one than those most of my girls had grown up in back in the provinces. We watch out for each other. We’re there when times are good or times are bad. We know enough to give each other room when we need it, when to let hope simmer and not discourage it, and when to snap each other back into reality-albeit our reality-when we have to.
But what we really have to do is be careful not to crush the dream. In this make-believe world of faux love and real sex, it’s the dream that keeps a lot of the girls going. It’s the chance that maybe, just maybe, the guy they’ve got temporarily wrapped around their finger might fall for them hard. Maybe they can get him to spend his entire vacation with them. Maybe they can get him to call them, and email them, and send them money after he’s returned home. Maybe-and this is the big one-maybe he’ll even marry them and take them away from the islands.
It happens all the time. Only with thousands of girls working the business, a few a month leaving for better lives is a small percentage. Still, the dream is there. And I have always been careful not to get in the way of even that narrow chance.
“So you having a good time?” I asked.
I figured the only answer could be yes. He would have sent Ellie back by now if he wasn’t.
“Took her down to Manila yesterday. Had a little business to deal with. Thought she might like to do some shopping.” Perdue cracked a smile. “I guess I was right.”
I laughed. Take one of the girls shopping and she’d stay with you for free. It was their religion, but one they seldom indulged in unless it was on someone else’s dime. “So I’ll take that as a yes.”
The smile slipped again. “For the most part.”
We drank in relative silence as the perpetual soundtrack of Justin Timberlake and Robbie Williams and even vintage Spice Girls played on, only at slightly reduced, afternoon levels.
“Can I trust you?” Perdue asked.
I looked over at him, a knowing grin on my face. “Of course.”
It was my standard answer. Truth was, I already knew what he was going to tell me. It was going to be some variation of “Ellie’s not like the other girls,” or “I haven’t slept more than an hour at a time since I took her home,” or “Do you think you can meet someone special at a place like this?” They were all a prelude, a set-up to talking oneself into believing he’d fallen in love. Perhaps Ellie had actually found her ticket out of town.
But even as the thought came to me, I questioned whether it would really pan out. After you’ve worked here as many years as I have, you get a sense of the guys. And my sense of Perdue was that he wasn’t looking for a wife.
“I’m serious,” he said. “Can I trust you?”
I lifted up my beer. “You can tell me whatever you want. It’ll just be between us.”
For a few seconds, I thought he wasn’t going to say anything. He leaned toward me. “I’m Homeland Security,” he finally said, his voice barely audible above the music. In fact, it was so low, I wasn’t sure I’d heard him right.
“What?” I asked.
“Homeland Security. You know what that is, right?”
I’d been living in the Philippines since the late nineties and hadn’t actually set foot Stateside since before 9/11. But with CNN International and the large American ex-pat community-most of whom were former military- you couldn’t help knowing a little bit about what was happening back home.
“That’s, like, anti-terrorism, right?”
“That’s just part of it. But, yeah, that’s our main focus.”
I wasn’t sure what to say. I mean, we get all types in the bar. Maybe he was trying to impress me. Homeland Security-it did sound important. Maybe I should have been impressed. But I wasn’t.
“I’m here looking into a few potential rumors. We want to neutralize any problems before they develop.”
“Neutralize?” I repeated. I think it might have been the first time I’d ever heard it used like that in conversation. “That’s why you’re in Angeles? Or why you’re at my bar?”
“The Philippines,” he said. “Mainly in the south. Two months now. I came up here for a little relaxation.”
Now we were back on familiar territory. “Glad we could help you with that.”
The corners of his mouth went up and down in what I could only describe as a quick smile. “When I was in
