she’ll forget everything.”
I’d been trying to make light of the moment, but it wasn’t the right thing to say. The second I alluded to her profession, I could see her pulling back into her shell.
“Hey, don’t worry about it. I’m your ‘big bro,’ remember?” I said, using one of the names she used to call me.
She smiled a little at that. “What was it they used to say back in Angeles?” she asked. “‘You can take the girl out of the bar…’ Something like that?”
“‘You can take the girl out of the bar, but you can’t take the bar out of the girl.’”
“I guess I’m proof you can’t even take the girl out of the bar.”
She flashed me another smile, but I could see tears gathering at the corners of her eyes again. I could have lied to her, and told her she wasn’t like that, but she would have known I wasn’t telling the truth.
“So then why are you working again?”
She snorted. “Why does any girl work at a bar?”
“Because the dancing outfits are so cute?”
She picked up her napkin and threw it at me, laughing a little as she did so. “You’re crazy.”
“A little bit,” I said, falling into a scripted banter we’d played out many times years ago.
“More than a little bit,” she replied, following suit.
“Then someone better come take me away, because I’m not going to change.”
We both laughed loudly, causing several customers to look over.
“See how you are?” she said. It was a playful phrase bar girls used all the time, only I’d never heard it come out of Isabel’s mouth before.
I reached over and placed my hand on top of hers. “It’s really good to see you, Isabel.”
She looked at me, her face suddenly serious again. “It’s really good to see you, too, big bro.”
“No wonder you’re so skinny,” she said when we finished eating. In the same amount of time she managed to put away half a basket of bread and a large plate of spaghetti and meatballs, I only finished half of my penne arrabbiata.
I smiled, “You were pretty hungry.”
“No lunch today,” she explained.
I put some money on the table, and we left.
“What now?” she asked as we stepped into the warm Philippine evening.
“Thought maybe we’d go over to my hotel.”
She looked at me with a mixture of surprise and confusion.
“Just to talk, baby sis.” I held up my left hand. “I’m a married man now.”
“What?” she asked as she hit me on the shoulder as hard as she could. “I thought that was just something to keep the girls from falling in love with you.”
“Nope. The real thing.”
“Let me see.”
She grabbed at my hand before I even had a chance to hold it out again, then she bent down to take a close look at the band that circled my finger.
“White gold?” she asked, looking up at me.
I nodded.
She turned her attention back to the ring. “The design looks Asian.”
“Thai,” I said.
“Thai?” She sounded like she didn’t understand me.
“My wife is Thai.”
“Ah,” she said knowingly. “A bar girl.”
“No. A businesswoman.” Natt had never been a bar girl.
We walked in silence, Isabel seemingly lost in thought. After a while, she said, “Why you married a Thai girl? Why not Filipina?”
I shrugged. “She was the one I fell in love with.”
True enough, but there was more to it than that. Like my desire when I moved away from the islands to get everything Filipino out of my system, so that maybe I’d live past my sixtieth birthday. The Philippines had been like a drug that sucked me in and numbed my senses. I didn’t trust myself to break the habit any other way than cold turkey.
My answer seemed to satisfy her, though, and we walked on quietly for a few more blocks.
As we approached my hotel, a playful smile creased her face. “So where is she?”
“Who?”
“Your wife.”
“At home,” I said. “In Bangkok.”
“Bangkok?” she said surprised. “How long you been there?”
“A few years.”
She considered this for a moment. “This wife, does she know you are here?”
“Of course she does.”
“But does she know why?”
I laughed, and said yes.
She stopped and looked at me, eyes wide. “Your wife let you come here to have sex with Filipinas?”
I gently pushed on her shoulder to get us moving again. “I’m not here to have sex with Filipinas.”
It was her turn to laugh. And why not? She’d seen thousands of men come through Angeles and now Boracay, all of them, to one extent or another, arriving with the common goal of getting laid.
“If not boom-boom, then why did you come here?” she asked.
Boom-boom was bar girl slang for sex. I hadn’t heard it in over two years, and it made me pause a second before answering. “Business,” I told her.
She looked at me, raising her eyebrows. I explained how I had tried to sell my share in The Lounge before I’d moved away, but with no luck. It wasn’t until recently that I’d finally received a decent enough offer.
At the hotel, I took her over to the bar that overlooked the beach, and bought a bottle of wine. We situated ourselves at a table as far away from everyone else as possible. I could feel memories and feelings and habits from the years I had spent in Angeles straining to reassert themselves. But I had boxed them up pretty tight, so even if there was a slip here and there, I knew I could keep them in check.
We talked for a while about life on Boracay, how it was different than living in her province, and definitely different than her life in Angeles. We didn’t touch on her job except in the most general terms.
When we were halfway through the bottle, she said, “You said you were here on business. That explains Angeles, but…are you in Boracay on business, too?”
Just beyond the bar, the waves crashed rhythmically on the beach. Out on the sea, I could see the lights of a ship heading back to the main island. I watched for several seconds as they dipped and rose through the swells before I turned back to Isabel.
“No,” I told her. “I came here to find you.”
CHAPTER FOUR
I poured the remainder of the wine into Isabel’s glass, filling it nearly to the brim.
“Are you trying to get me drunk?” she asked.
I smiled and set the bottle back down. I didn’t have to get her drunk; she was doing a fine job of it on her own. I, on the other hand, was still nursing my second glass.
There were nights back on Fields Avenue when it seemed like the only way to forget everything was to drink as much as you could. Everyone did it-the tourists, the ex-pats. The girls, too.
Everyone had their reasons, the girls maybe more than anyone. Sometimes it was a boyfriend who’d stopped
