“When?” she asked.
“Two or three months. We’ve lasted that long before.”
She wanted to tell him that was before, not now. Now, she wanted to be with him all the time. But she said, “Okay.”
At the airport, they said their goodbyes on the sidewalk.
“I’ll call you when I get home,” he told her.
“I know.”
He kissed her.
“Let me know if there are any problems with the apartment,” he said.
“I will.”
“I love you,” he whispered in her ear.
“I love you, too,” she said.
During the entire two-and-a-half-hour trip home, she stared out the window of the hired car and tried to keep from thinking about anything. At some point she fell asleep, waking only as they exited the highway at Angeles and stopped to pay their toll.
Two or three months, he had said. She knew logically it wasn’t that long, but it seemed like forever. For Larry, though, she could do it. He was her world and whatever he wanted, she wanted. They would talk on the phone, and she would work, and before she knew it, he would be back again. That’s what she told herself anyway.
In reality, she was on edge, her emotions shifting wildly. And while talking on the phone might have allowed Larry to tell her how much he loved her, she really needed him there beside her. Holding her, being with her, loving her. There was nothing like personal contact.
And in that area, Mariella had the edge.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
As for me, when Larry left The Lounge that night after our disagreement, I got drunk for the first time in months. It wasn’t a typical papasan drunkenness that had been almost a perpetual state for me since I started working on Fields, the kind that made me feel really good but still able to keep my business head about me. That’s when I drank because it was expected, an unwritten part of the job description.
No, it wasn’t like that this time. I didn’t care about the party anymore. I just wanted to silence the thoughts and voices and images that were besieging me. My subconsciousness was starting to wake up again, but all I wanted to do was stay numb. So I drank until I all but collapsed on the bar.
Analyn had a couple of the other girls help her close up. When they were done, she waited until Manny arrived to take me home. Between the two of them, they maneuvered me into the sidecar. I’m sure it wasn’t easy; I was still pretty big then. I barely remember any of it. What I do recall was that Manny had to stop at least twice on the way to my place so I could lean out into the night and vomit on the road.
I woke around noon, head pounding and throat feeling like every ounce of moisture had been sucked out of it. I was lying on top of my bed, still wearing the clothes I’d gone to work in the previous night. I didn’t want to move, and yet I had to. My bladder was screaming at me, and I needed aspirin. And water, about an ocean’s worth.
As I climbed out of the bed and stumbled toward the bathroom, I had to reach out several times to steady myself on whatever was nearby. I was still a little drunk, and that pissed me off. There were few things worse than having a raging hangover
I managed to miss the toilet only once as I relieved myself. Pretty good, I thought, considering. I stripped off everything, then turned the shower on as hot as I could stand it. Before I stepped in, I grabbed the bottle of aspirin and poured five tablets into my hand. I shoved them in my mouth two at a time and dry swallowed them.
After that, I stood in the shower, the hot water massaging the nape of my neck, trying not to think about why I was in this state but not doing a very good job at it. At first, I blamed my condition on Larry. If he hadn’t been such an asshole, it would have been just another of my increasingly sober nights.
It didn’t take long for me to figure out that
I turned to face the water, closing my eyes and letting it run over my head. I could feel the alcohol finally receding from my body. My headache, while still very much there, had also lost some of its strength.
I remember when I was young, we had these next-door neighbors who used to fight all the time. Actually it was the wife who did most of the yelling. The husband-their last name was Russell, I think-was always this really nice guy. He talked to me when he saw me, and seemed to have a smile on his face whenever he walked down the street. His wife was the best-looking woman on the block, who barely noticed any of us kids as we stopped what we were doing and stared every time we saw her. Anyway, I guess she wanted more out of life than Mr. Russell could give her, so one day she left. I remember asking my dad why Mr. Russell didn’t try to find her, and ask her to come back. Dad took a long time before he answered, and when he did, there was a kind of resignation to it. “He didn’t have the energy anymore.”
I knew everything Larry said to me the night before had been right. What I didn’t know was if I had the energy to do anything about it anymore.
One of the things I knew I had to do was apologize to Larry, but when I called his room at the Las Palmas, no one answered. I called back and left a message with the receptionist, then headed off for The Lounge.
At first the girls seemed surprised that I had come in, but soon they were laughing and teasing me about my little binge the previous night. When Analyn set a San Miguel on the bar for me, I shook my head and told her to give me a water instead.
As the night went on, it was almost like I was seeing the place for the first time. There was a general lack of discipline I hadn’t noticed before. Girls were carrying their cell phones tucked in the back of their bikini bottoms. More than once, I saw one of the dancers on stage stop in the middle of a song, pull out her phone, and read a message she’d just received. Even those sitting with customers were sending and receiving texts. And that wasn’t all. Dancers were blowing off their turns on the stage, fighting over customers in ways I’d never allowed before, and generally acting like prima donnas.
There was a part of me that was appalled I had been letting this go on, but another part of me wondered if I should really care.
“Analyn,” I said, waving her over. “I want someone to collect the cell phones from any girl who has one and put them in my office.”
She looked at me for a moment like she hadn’t understood what I said.
“They know the rules,” I told her. “Do it now, please.”
I never heard from Larry before he left. Of course now I know why. I thought perhaps he was pissed off at me, but as he was dealing with finding Isabel a new place to live, he probably didn’t even give me a second thought.
It was better that way. If I’d seen him, I would have apologized and told him he was right, and in effect given myself a pass to slack off again because at least I admitted my problem. But since I didn’t get that opportunity, I was forced to look inside and really examine what the hell was going on with me.
Within two weeks, The Lounge was back to the shape it should have been. I’d also hired two new papasans, two Brit ex-pats named Andrew and Mark. Now, including Dandy Doug and me, there were four of us, more than enough for me to cut down on my hours.
I found myself spending more and more time alone at my house by my pool. And for the first time since I’d moved to Angeles, I began to wonder if this was really the place I wanted to spend the rest of my life.
When Isabel returned to work, she told me about her new apartment. When I asked her what Mariella thought about it, she got kind of quiet, shrugged, then suddenly noticed a customer who needed a drink.
