“I thought you were going to take a nap,” he said as he sat down next to her.
“I did for a while,” she said.
Isabel had the TV tuned to the music video channel. Most were Filipino bands singing in a mixture of Tagalog and English. But occasionally, a band from the States or the U.K. would show up.
Larry kicked off his shoes and stretched out, his eyes half closed.
“I thought we were going out,” Isabel said.
“Sure. Whenever you’re ready.”
“I’m ready now.”
Larry opened one eye and looked at her, smiling. “Just let me rest here for a few minutes first, okay?”
He closed his eye again, and soon his breathing became steady and deep.
“Where did you go?” Isabel asked.
When he didn’t answer, she nudged him and asked the question again.
Without opening his eyes, he said in a sleepy voice, “I went to The Lounge.”
“Why you go there?” she asked. “I’m not working tonight.”
“Doc is.”
“You talk to Papa?”
“Sort of,” he said.
“You not go out and meet another girl for short time?”
That got him to open his eyes. “What?”
“Maybe you want to have a little fun so you leave me here in the room.”
He pushed himself up on his elbows. “I went to see Jay. I had a beer, then I came back here. Why do you think I was with another girl?”
“All guys do it.” It was her biggest fear, one that gave her nightmares several times a week.
“We’ve been through this before,” he said, lying back down and closing his eyes.
“So you agree with me all guys do it?”
“When did I say that?” he asked. “And just so we’re clear, no, I don’t think all guys do it. I don’t do it.”
“How do I know you’re not lying?”
He exhaled, then sat all the way up, swinging his feet around and putting them on the floor. After a moment, he stood, and then turned and looked down at Isabel. “Because I’m not,” he said.
“You really went and visited Papa Jay?”
“Why don’t you go over there and ask him, if you want? He’s not likely to forget that I was there.”
His words confused her, so she asked him what he meant. He told her about his conversation with me.
“What?” she asked, horrified.
“What’s the problem?” he asked.
“You told him all that?”
He nodded. “You’re the one who said things weren’t the same anymore.”
“You didn’t tell him I said that, did you?”
“Your name didn’t even come up.”
She pulled her knees to her chest and began rubbing the sides of her head with her hands. “Why did you have to say anything?”
“Because that’s what friends do.”
Her head was pounding. How was she ever going to go back to work? She didn’t know how she would be able to face me again. She thought I would tell her to leave the moment she walked in, that I would blame her for everything Larry had said. Even if I wasn’t the same person I’d been a few months earlier, I was still her boss, still the one who watched out for her when Larry was thousands of miles away.
She jumped off the bed and raced to the bathroom, but the tears came before she was able to get inside, and by the time she had the door shut behind her, she was sobbing. Within seconds, Larry was on the other side.
“Isabel, it’s not that bad,” he said, his voice muffled by the door. “You said you wanted to help him, so I tried to help him.”
She had said that, but this wasn’t what she meant.
She reached up to make sure the door was locked. For ten minutes, Larry continued trying to talk to her, but she refused to answer him. And when he left the room, she didn’t even hear the door open, her sobs deafening her to anything else.
I have no way of knowing what Larry was thinking when he left the room. Maybe that if he gave her a little time alone she would calm down and see he had only been trying to do the right thing. Or maybe his intentions had been to find help right from the start. Whatever it was, at some point he found himself on Fields Avenue, ducking in and out of the different bars looking for someone he thought could make Isabel come to her senses. Looking for Mariella.
We are all fools at one time or another in our lives. Most of us are fools on more than one occasion. Larry was a fool that night. I knew for a fact he was not fond of Mariella, and he had to know that Isabel, even if she hadn’t said anything to him, had issues with her, too. But for some reason, he put that aside. If Cathy had still been in town, she would have undoubtedly been the one he asked to help him, and if we hadn’t just had our own fight, he would have come to me next. Who else did he know here? No one, really. No one but Mariella.
He found her playing pool at The Eight Ball. I don’t know what he said to her, but soon they were on their way back to his room.
Isabel had no idea how long she had been in the bathroom when she heard the front door open. Until that moment, she thought Larry was still in the room, but realized he must have left sometime earlier.
“Isabel,” Larry said. “Are you all right?”
Her sobbing had stopped, and most of her tears had dried up, but she didn’t trust her own voice, so she said nothing.
“Isabel, It’s Mariella.”
Isabel tensed at the sound of her cousin’s voice.
“Why are you acting so crazy? Come out now,” Mariella said.
This probably wasn’t the kind of help Larry wanted. Isabel heard Larry whisper something to Mariella, but she couldn’t make out the words.
“Isabel,” Mariella said a moment later. “It’s okay. We’re your friends,
“I’m sorry,” Larry said. “I didn’t mean to do anything to hurt you. Please come out.”
Slowly Isabel stood up. Her hand rested on the doorknob for nearly a minute before she finally turned it. The pained look on Larry’s face was enough for her to know he truly had meant her no harm. He seemed to hang there, a few feet beyond the doorway, unsure of what he should do.
Mariella, on the other hand, stepped forward immediately and put an arm around Isabel’s shoulders, guiding her out of the bathroom.
“Are you okay now?” Mariella said. “Everything all right?”
Isabel sniffed a couple of times, and nodded.
When she reached Larry, she stopped. He tentatively put a hand out and moved a strand of hair that had fallen across her face.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Tears welled anew in her eyes, but this time she reached out and pulled herself into his chest. Larry led her to the bed, where they sat on the edge. He stroked her hair and kissed her on the forehead. At some point, Mariella handed her a glass of water and a pill.
“Take it,” Mariella said. “It will help you relax.”
Isabel wanted to protest, but the look in Mariella’s eyes told her she’d better just do as her cousin ordered. It didn’t take long before she was feeling sleepy. The last thing she remembered was Mariella looking down at her, smiling peacefully. But it wasn’t the smile that made the biggest impression. It was her cousin’s eyes, filled with hatred and jealousy.
