The Pull of Gravity

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 them. 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 Marzen.

“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.