When we arrived at The Lounge, we stopped near the front door and shook hands. Larry then handed me the bag of Gordon Biersch Marzan he’d brought.
“Thanks,” I said. “Have fun in Manila.”
“We will. Hey, let’s you and me have a boys’ night out when we get back.”
“Okay, “ I said, then turned for the door.
“Doc,” Larry called out.
I looked back at him.
“If you ever do want to talk, I mean about anything, I’m here for you.”
“Thanks,” I said. I didn’t know what else to say.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Because of my lunch with Larry, I ended up getting to The Lounge sooner than I was expected. For a weekday afternoon, the bar was crowded, almost two dozen guys enjoying the show and a beer. I assumed Tommy must have sent out the call for reinforcement, because I noticed several girls from the night shift had come in early.
Tommy, never one to take his job as part-time papasan too seriously, was enjoying the special attention of one of the dancers, a girl named Charlene, and hadn’t noticed me come in. As I walked up, Charlene had just finished unbuttoning his shirt to his waist and was running her hands over his bare, hairy, flabby chest. He had a big grin on his face, and was urging her on with his eyes.
“Get you something to drink?” I asked him.
If I hadn’t been looking at him when he turned to me, I wouldn’t have noticed the flash of fear and surprise in his eyes. A fraction of a second later, it was gone.
“Hey, Doc,” he said.
“Comfortable?”
“Couldn’t be more so.”
Charlene’s hand moved down over his ample stomach toward his pants, then slipped under his waistband.
“I’ll take that drink now,” he said.
I laughed and signaled the waitress to bring Tommy a beer. The occasional fooling around on the job was not unusual. Papasans weren’t paid that much, so if a girl was willing to flirt with them, I long ago decided it wasn’t any of my business.
“I need to do a little work in back,” I said. “Come get me if you need me.”
I don’t know what Tommy was thinking. I guess he wasn’t. There had been a moment, right after I first arrived, when he could have taken action. The impulse had been there, it was what I’d seen in his eyes. But I suppose once Charlene’s hands started wandering around near his dick, his neural pathways had clogged up and his mind had gone blank.
In the end, he did get his act together. Only by then it was too late. I was already sitting at the desk in the office staring down at the remnants of two lines of white powder on the desk blotter. As if that wasn’t enough, there was the small plastic bag sitting nearby containing more of the stuff.
I didn’t even have to taste it to know it was cocaine. In my early Navy days I had tried it once. You never forget.
“What the hell?” Tommy said. He was standing in the doorway, his shirt not completely buttoned. “Is that what I think it is?”
I looked at him, my face blank. “You tell me.”
“That’s not mine, if that’s what you’re thinking. Probably one of the girls’,” he said. “I’ll bring them back here a couple at a time and we’ll find out.”
He started to leave, but I stopped him with a forceful “Wait.” Once he was looking at me, I said, “Come in and shut the door.”
I don’t know why he didn’t just run. That’s probably what he was planning to do when he said he was going to round up the girls. But instead, he did as I told him, then took the seat across from me.
“You have a better plan?” he asked. There was still a hope that I hadn’t guessed the truth in his voice.
“Yeah.” I stared at him silently for several seconds. “This is what’s going to happen,” I said, keeping my voice level and unemotional. “You’re going to give me your key to The Lounge, then you are going to get up and walk out. You’re not going to talk to anyone. You’re not going to even look at anyone. And, most importantly, you’re never going to come back here. Understand?”
“But it’s not my-”
“Bullshit! Don’t even fuck with me, Tommy. It’s yours and we both know it. I told you the rules when I took over as bar manager. Rule number one: no drugs.” I waited a moment to see if he would continue to protest, but he said nothing. “Give me your key.”
He hesitated a moment, then pulled a set of keys from his pocket, removed one and handed it to me. There was a moment of awkward silence, then he stood up.
“I’m sorry, Jay. You’re right. I fucked up.” He paused, then said, “But I’m not the only one fucking up around here.”
He started to put his hand out so we could shake, thought better of it, and left. I followed him out, making sure he didn’t talk to anyone on his way to the front door.
As soon as he was gone, a few of the girls came over to ask if something was up. I told them everything was fine. They seemed dubious, but once they returned to the fold there were no obvious signs of problems.
Over the next few days, I began to wonder if I had done the right thing. Maybe it had been an isolated event, and I’d been too harsh on him. It was the life, after all. Things happened, people made mistakes. In our fantasy existence, mistakes were often overlooked, and bad habits encouraged.
Then I found out it had been more than just the drugs. Tommy had been skimming from the receipts. I couldn’t tell how much was missing, and I would never be able to prove it, but there was no mistaking that money was missing. I knew I should have noticed it earlier, but I hadn’t. It made me wonder what else I had overlooked.
Tommy was right-he wasn’t the only one fucking up around there.
Larry and Isabel spent Christmas in Manila. He had reserved a room in the one of the best hotels in town, the Makati Shangri-La Hotel. They never left the building the entire time they were there.
Isabel said it reminded her in many ways of that first trip to Boracay. They were like two people in love for the first time. They ate breakfast in bed, went for a swim every day, and made love every afternoon before the sun went down. Dinner was in the Shang Palace, a four-star restaurant on the second level. Then it was back to the room where they’d watch a movie on TV, hold each other, make love again and eventually fall asleep in each other’s arms. There was no Angeles, no go-go bars, no obnoxious customers.
“And no Mariella,” I said.
Isabel was silent for a moment. It was late, well after midnight. We were sitting by the pool at my hotel. No one else was around, just two old friends remembering other times. In some ways, better times, in other ways, not.
“Right,” she said eventually. “No Mariella.”
“Why did you stay with her?” I asked.
“It was better than going back to where I was living before,” she said, though without much enthusiasm.
“Why didn’t you leave Angeles after Cathy left you?” she asked
I looked away, toward the ocean. “I don’t know.”
“Same for me,” she said.
When I looked back at her, she was holding her empty wine glass in both hands, staring at it absently, a
