The Pull of Gravity

“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.”

“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