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
