She looked over her shoulder at me and smiled, then returned to her work.
“I’m Jay.”
“Hi, Jay.”
Letting her work in silence for a bit, I sipped my beer and took in the room. The walls looked as though they hadn’t been painted in years. Whatever the original color was, I had no idea, but now they were an unappealing water-stain brown.
“Is it always this quiet?” I asked.
“Don’t worry. More people be here soon.”
True to her prediction, two girls appeared in the doorway at the back of the bar. They looked at me and smiled, but after a second they disappeared the way they’d come.
I took another drink, finishing off my beer, then put the bottle on the bar. Empties had a very distinctive sound when they knocked against something solid. As I’d hoped, Daisy turned toward me almost immediately.
“You want another?” she asked.
“That would be great.”
She brought me a new bottle.
“My friend told me about a girl he met here,” I said. “What was her name? Christine, Christa, something like that.”
“Crystal?” Daisy asked.
“That could have been it.”
She smiled. “She’s here. Come out in a little bit.”
Ten minutes passed, and I was joined at the bar by two Brits who looked paler than I thought humans could get. We exchanged hellos and they started talking to each other about their plans for the evening. A moment later, the girls finally started coming out.
There were ten of them, all but two dressed in short, Hawaiian-print wrap skirts and red bikini tops. The other two wore white shirts unbuttoned to mid-chest and short black skirts. From experience, I knew these last were the waitresses and the other girls the dancers.
I picked out Isabel almost immediately. She was a dancer, and by far the best-looking of the bunch. I wasn’t the only one who noticed. The two Brits gestured in her direction and whispered to each other.
I called the bartender over. “Which one is Crystal?” I asked.
Daisy looked past me until she spotted Isabel. “That’s her,” she said, pointing. “You want me to call her over?”
“Please.”
“Crystal,” Daisy called out. Because of the loud music, she had to do it twice before Isabel looked over. When she did, Daisy pointed at me.
Isabel gave me a quick look, then affixed what I guessed was a working smile on her face and headed over. When she was only a couple of feet way, she hesitated for a split second before continuing toward me. I could feel the two Brits looking in our direction, undoubtedly cursing themselves for not moving more quickly.
Isabel didn’t stop until her leg rubbed against mine.
“Hello,” she said. She held her hand out to me, and we shook. “I’m Crystal.”
Her voice was almost exactly as I remembered it. Soft and kind. But there was also an edge to it now that hadn’t been there when I knew her before, a phoniness. She’d become hardened, and I was just another potential money source, a random guy in a long line of faceless, nameless men who represented nothing more than cash and the passage of time.
“Hi, Isabel,” I said. “It’s Jay.”
I could feel her stiffen as I said her real name, then she stepped away from me. Her eyes searched my face, looking for something recognizable.
“Jay,” she finally said, her voice so low I could barely hear her.
As she took another step backward, tears began welling in her eyes and she subconsciously raised an arm to cover her bikini top. She tried to say something, but nothing passed her lips. Not quite the greeting I expected.
“You look good,” I said, keeping my tone light.
I could see the woman she’d become struggling to reassert herself, the hardened bar girl immune to almost anything. But I knew her before, when she was just Isabel Reyes straight from the provinces. There was no immunity to what I represented. After a moment, she realized this, too. She let out a sudden, violent sob as tears streaked down her cheeks, then she turned and ran for the back door.
CHAPTER TWO
My memory of when I first met Larry was more his than mine. It was a story he liked to tell when he visited and others were around. It had happened at The Pit Stop, out by the pool.
Meeting Isabel, though, I remembered with complete clarity.
It was a Thursday night, Luau night at The Lounge, when all the girls were dressed in Hawaiian-print bikinis, Mai Tais were half off, and between five and seven p.m. we served a free buffet of pork, pineapple and papaya. Mariella was the one who brought Isabel into the bar. She was Isabel’s cousin. Two months later, Mariella left to work at a different bar, but at that time she was still one of ours.
The Lounge wasn’t the largest bar on Fields Avenue, but it wasn’t the smallest, either. We had a five-foot- wide stage running down the center of the room, bar-style seating on all four sides, and cushioned booths along the right wall. The left side was dominated by the bar itself, manned on any given night by three to five female bartenders. The only male employees visible were Alphonso the busboy and me. It wasn’t men the customers came in to see, after all.
The owner of The Lounge was an Aussie named Robbie Bainbridge, who only came to the Philippines about four times a year. The day-to-day operations were left to me, Tommy Wesson and Dandy Doug, The Lounge’s three papasans. At least, that was the plan. In reality, I was the de facto bar manager, the other two guys more than happy to leave all the important decisions to me.
When Robbie bought the place, he decided to do a complete redesign, and had the interior done up in bright pinks and silvers. “Like lipstick in metal containers,” he’d explained to me. “Sexy.” The booths, the stool tops, and the padded rim around the bar were all covered in pink vinyl, while the stool legs, the poles on the stage, and the trim that ran along the top of the walls were all chrome.
As was the custom in bars along Fields, there was one other prominent chrome item in the room. A bell one foot in diameter hung from the ceiling in the front corner. The walls of the bar were mostly covered with mirrors, and the names of customers who’d rung the bell were painted on the surface-in our case-in fluorescent pink.
9/3/06 Harlan “Scooter” Stevens
9/5/06 The Twig Gang from Melbourne
9/5/06 John S. for Nelly
9/6/06 Mark and Susie, last night in Paradise
On and on the names went, taking up nearly two-thirds of the allotted wall space. For fifteen minutes or so, these bell ringers were the bar’s most popular customers, because to ring it meant you were buying drinks for all the girls. Depending on the bar, the tab could run between 3500 and 5500 pesos, which at the time was about 60 or 70 U.S. dollars. It was a little pricey, but for that moment the ringer was king. The only one who probably felt better was the papasan because the profit margin was huge. That bell ringing was always music to my ears.
On that particular night, just after Mariella introduced me to Isabel, a guy from Wisconsin got up and gave the bell a whack. As usual, all hell broke loose. The girls stopped what they were doing and turned their attention to their new best friend. Screams of delight, a lot of pointing and excited chatter ensued. Even the music blasting from the state-of-the-art speakers seemed louder.
I nodded to the bartenders to set up the rounds. At The Lounge we went with watered-down shots of tequila for the girls and a straight shot for the ringer. Once they started pouring, I went over and shook the hand of our
