The Pull of Gravity Read online

  Standing about three feet away was Isabel, smiling shyly.

  “Something wrong?” I asked.

  “No,” she said. “Nothing wrong.”

  I waited for a moment, but when she didn’t say anything else, I said, “Well, what is it?”

  I heard a sigh of disgust behind me, followed by Cathy muttering, “Stupid, stupid, stupid.”

  I ignored her and kept my attention on Isabel.

  It took her a couple tries to finally say what she wanted to say, but when she did, the words rushed out. “Larry wants to pay my bar fine.”

  My eyes widened. “Really?”

  “Really, really, really,” Cathy said from behind me. “Maybe I should be the one in charge here.”

  I continued to look at Isabel.

  “Really,” she said.

  “What do you want?” I asked.

  This time the words didn’t rush out. Instead they were spoken as if she’d put a lot of thought into them. “I want to go.”

  “You’re sure?”

  A wet towel hit me in the back of the head. “Of course she’s sure,” Cathy said. “Can’t you see it? Her eyes are smiling.”

  And indeed Isabel’s eyes were smiling. It was amazing, less than twenty-four hours earlier, those same eyes looked as if they could kill, and yet tonight all of that anger was gone. There was only happiness, innocence and hope.

  But despite this and Cathy’s insistence, this would be Isabel’s first EWR, so I asked again, “Are you one-hundred-percent sure?”

  “Yes, Papa Jay. He’s very nice. He says we only have to go out to dinner, then I can go home. No hotel. No sex.”

  How many times had I heard guys use that tack? A hundred? A thousand? And it was always with the idea that at dinner, or on a barhop afterward, he’d be able to convince the girl to go back to his room. But I was inclined to believe Larry meant it. After everything I’d learned about his trip so far, it actually seemed like a logical thing for him to do. Of course, he could have been lying to me about everything. He could have been a player who was playing even the papasan. But I didn’t think so. In fact, I was positive I hadn’t misjudged him.

  “So, can I go?” Isabel asked.

  When I didn’t answer right away, Cathy jumped in. “Of course you can.”

  But Isabel knew better than to go only on Cathy’s word. She looked at me, expectant.

  “Tell Larry to come over here,” I said. “Then go get changed.”

  A smile as wide as Luzon Island broke out on her face. Instead of immediately doing as I told her, she gave me a big hug.

  A few minutes later, Isabel was in the back changing into her street clothes, and Larry had joined me at the bar.

  I asked him the same thing I had asked Isabel. “You sure about this?”

  “Doc, why you always ask this question?” Cathy said.

  I looked back at her. “There’s got to be somebody somewhere who needs something to drink.”

  “Everybody’s good now. I’ll stay here,” she replied.

  Larry nodded. “I’m sure, Doc.” It was the first time he’d called me Doc. So I guessed I had Cathy to thank for that. “I’m just going to take her to dinner. That’s it.”

  “You know she’s a cherry girl,” I said.

  “She told me. As far as Angeles goes, I’m still a cherry boy,” he said. “So it’s the perfect match.”

  Cathy laughed. “That’s funny. You and Isabel a cherry couple,” she said.

  “Just be careful with her,” I told him. “She’s still inexperienced and could get hurt really easily.”

  “Doc, I told you. It’s just dinner. I’m not planning on breaking her heart.”

  I chuckled, conceding his point. “Then you owe me a thousand pesos.”

  “What?”

  “The bar fine,” I said. “It’s a thousand pesos.”

  “Right, sure. Here.” He dug into his pocket and pulled out a thousand-peso note and handed it to me. He glanced back at the table he had shared with Isabel. There were several empty glasses. “What about our drinks?”

  “Those are on me.”

  After they were gone, in what turned out to be a minor send-off party with almost all the girls rushing over to wish Isabel congratulations, it hit me that maybe the reason Larry hadn’t gone to Manila that afternoon was so that he could see Isabel again. Later, Larry told me there was no maybe about it. Something had happened between them the night he brought her the tea. Something that had made him stay in town one more day, and made Isabel hope he would return. He couldn’t tell me what that something was. I don’t think he knew.

  • • •

  Most of what happened after that I pieced together from things Isabel and Larry told me in separate conversations over the next year or so.

  Dinner had been a two-hour affair at a place outside the district, an Italian restaurant Larry had come across in his wanderings. I don’t know what they ate; I never asked. I got the feeling there was a lot of small talk, a lot of gazing into each other’s eyes, and a lot of tuning out everything around them.

  After dinner, instead of Isabel going home per the plan she had told me, they ended up going to The Pit Stop, where they found a quiet spot and talked for hours. Isabel learned that Larry was a thirty-seven-year-old only child who had never been married, and had a fondness for chocolate-covered strawberries. Larry learned that Isabel was twenty-one, the third of seven children, sent most of her money home to her family, had a cousin who also worked in the bars, and lived in a small room with over a dozen other girls.

  Larry told her about the time he was seventeen and his girlfriend broke up with him at a football game during halftime. Isabel told him how the only boyfriend she’d ever had left for Manila when she was fifteen, saying he’d come back for her but never did.

  Around them, couples of the evening came and went. Some played pool, some ate late dinners. Some were just continuing the drinking they’d started God knows how many hours earlier. A typical night on Fields, but Isabel and Larry saw none of it.

  Despite several hours of drinking only coffee, Isabel found herself unable to hold back a yawn around five in the morning.

  Larry glanced at his watch. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I’ve kept you up.”

  “No, no. It’s okay,” she told him. “I’m fine.”

  “You’re tired and need to go to bed.” He looked at his watch again. “And I have to pack. There’s a car driving me to Manila in three hours.”

  “Oh. Of course.” Isabel picked up her purse, and began to stand up. “I’ve had a great time.”

  Larry slipped out of the booth and took her hands in his. “Me, too,” he said. He hesitated before he spoke again, not sure if it was the right thing to say or not, but then decided to go ahead anyway. “Isabel, if you want, you can come back with me to my room and get some sleep before I leave. I’m sure it’s not as crowded as your place. I just, well, don’t want this to end yet.”

  Isabel’s face lit up. The way she described it, it was like the breath had suddenly gone out of her, because she didn’t want it to end, either. If Cathy had been there, she probably would have said Isabel’s eyes were smiling again.

  “Okay,” Isabel said. “I’d like that.”

  They walked back to the Las Palmas Hotel. Larry’s room was in the Mabuhay Building, back beyond the pool and across a small side street that ran behind the hotel. Most of the girls knew their way through the Las Palmas, but this was Isabel’s first time there, so she let Larry show her the way. He took her through the front bar, past reception, past several rooms in the main building, past the swimming pool and up a metal staircase that led to a short bridge which spanned the side street and connected with the second floor of the Mabuhay Building.

  Isabel tried to walk as lightly as possible across the bridge, but no matter what she did, her wooden-heeled platform shoes—the only shoes she owned—sounded to her like the loudest things on earth every time she took a step. But if Larry notic
ed, he didn’t say anything.

  His room was on the third floor, number 35, next to the stairs. He told her there were drinks and food in the minibar and she could help herself. She said thank you but she didn’t need anything. He asked her if she wanted to watch TV. She asked him if he did. He said no, not really, but he sometimes liked to turn it on for the background noise. Then turn it on, she told him. So he did.

  “Don’t you want to sleep?” Larry asked as he opened his suitcase, preparing to put all his things back inside.

  “Not yet.” She was sitting on the bed, her back against the wall.

  On the TV was a music video from a Japanese band neither of them had ever heard of. Larry threw some clothes into the suitcase from one of the dresser drawers, and was going back for more when he heard Isabel get off the bed. She came over quickly to where he was.

  “Let me,” she said.

  He laughed. “It’s okay. I can do this.”

  “No, you can’t. Look.”

  She pointed at his open suitcase. Inside was the pile of half-folded, disorganized clothing he had just packed. Isabel dumped the whole pile out on the bed and began to refold everything. Larry, unsure what to do next, stood silently watching for a few seconds.

  When he said, “At least let me help,” Isabel shooed him off.

  He felt guilty, but Isabel seemed happy. After a moment, he said, “I guess I could go take a shower and get ready.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  When he came back out twenty minutes later, dressed in jeans and a loose-fitting T-shirt, feeling vaguely refreshed from the hot shower, his suitcase was sitting open on the end of the bed with all his things inside. His clothes were all folded as if they were ready to go on the display shelves at Nordstrom’s. Isabel was standing nearby.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “You’re welcome,” she replied.

  There was still another hour and a half until his car came for him, so Larry called down to the front desk and asked for a wake-up call in an hour. The suitcase closed and ready to go next to the door, Larry and Isabel, fully clothed and on top of the covers, lay down on the bed.

  I don’t know what happened after that, not for that hour, anyway. Neither of them told me and, again, I didn’t ask.

  What I do know was that instead of saying goodbye in the parking lot of the Las Palmas Hotel, Isabel went with Larry to Manila, saying goodbye on the sidewalk in front of the Philippine Airlines terminal at the airport.

  Goodbye, but not farewell. Not yet.

  CHAPTER TEN

  I called Natt on my mobile phone before I returned to my room to check on Isabel. Being back in the Philippines was screwing with my head more than I thought it would. No, that wasn’t right. It was finding Isabel that was doing it. I could have suppressed everything, just forgotten it all, if I hadn’t been able to locate her. I could have left there with unanswered questions, but with the knowledge that I had tried. Done is done and what can’t be learned, can’t be learned. That’s what I would have told myself.

  Only I wouldn’t have been able to forget. Maybe I could have dived into my Bangkok life and worked my ass off. Loved Natt as best I could. Gone to sleep each night dead tired, woken up each morning to start it all again. That would have worked, but only for a while. My brain had a funny way of waiting until I thought my life was going great, then reminding me of things I thought I’d put behind me.

  Natt knew this. She knew why I’d come to the Philippines, encouraged it, even.

  “You found her, didn’t you?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “I can hear it in your voice. Will she tell you what you need to know?”

  “She might, but…I’m not sure I should even ask her.”

  She was silent for a moment. “You’ll do what you think best.”

  After my disaster with Maureen, I wasn’t sure I ever wanted to be with anyone again. And later, in Angeles, after I’d messed up my relationship with Cathy, I wasn’t sure I even knew how. I guess you’d call that a low point. It wasn’t self-pity, more self-devaluation. I was still happy, friendly Papa Jay, and it wasn’t an act. But when it came to me and women, I thought maybe it wasn’t meant to be. Natt proved me wrong.

  I went back to the room, opening the door slowly in case Isabel was still asleep. Her bed was empty, but no sooner had I started to think she was gone then I heard the shower in the bathroom turn on.

  I clicked on the TV to one of the international news channels and watched with my eyes but not with my mind. In my head, an entirely different show was on. Scenes were playing out rapidly, one after another. Scenes of possible conversations between Isabel and me about Larry. They ended in tears, in anger, one even in denial of Larry’s very existence. It was just my imagination running wild, thinking only the worst, unable to see anything else.

  In the bathroom, the shower shut off. I rubbed a hand across my face, trying, if only for a few minutes, to think of nothing. When the bathroom door opened, I turned. Isabel came out wearing only a white towel. She jumped when she saw me.

  “You scare me,” she shrieked. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

  It was a lie. Her reaction was just a little too calculated, too planned. But lying was second nature to her now. For all bar girls, it was a basic mode of survival, and Isabel had been a bar girl too long to turn it off without a lot of extra effort.

  When I didn’t say anything, she walked over and sat on the bed next to me. “Are you okay?” she asked, putting a hand on the back of my shoulder. “You look sad.”

  “Do I?”

  Her hand moved lightly downward, tracing my spine and stopping in the small of my back. She leaned into me, her towel-covered breast resting against my arm.

  “You do.” Her voice was low, almost a whisper.

  I could feel her breath on my shoulder, then on my chest as she leaned closer. Her wet hair draped down my back, soaking my shirt where it lay. I could feel my hands begin to tremble, and in my mind, my thoughts tumbled randomly as I desperately looked for something to anchor on.

  For me, one weakness, if it was big enough, begat others, and my desire to know the truth about Larry, to fill that hole inside me, was making me weak in all things. Alone with Isabel, so beautiful and willing, and me filled with all the memories that had been playing out in my mind the last two days, I was on the edge of becoming lost.

  Her lips hovered just above the skin at the nape of my neck. I wanted to pull away. I screamed at myself to pull away, but my body wasn’t listening.

  “Let me make you feel better,” she said.

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw her hand move to where the towel was tucked into itself. As she pulled at it, it began to fall open.

  I suddenly had a vision of Natt, happy, feeding me some of the panang moo she’d made, showing me the new dress she’d bought, holding me in the night when I had trouble sleeping. And it was enough.

  I reached out and gently moved the towel back up over Isabel’s chest. I looked at her, her face still close to mine but now filled with confusion. I pulled her to me, hugging her tight.

  “That’s not why I came,” I whispered in her ear.

  At first there was nothing, and I thought maybe she hadn’t heard me. But then her body heaved as she began to sob. She hugged me, her fingers digging into my back. I continued to hold her, letting her know that I wasn’t going anywhere.

  Finally, as her sobs grew quieter and farther apart, she said in a voice barely audible, “I’m sorry.”

  “No,” I said. “No sorrys. If anything, it’s my fault. I shouldn’t have visited you at the bar.”

  “You wish you didn’t come see me?”

  “No. Not at all.”

  She frowned. “But that’s not the only reason you are here.” This wasn’t a question. If it had been, I’m not sure how I would have responded.

  We sat silently beside each other for several moments, then she whispered, “I know why you came.”

/>   Of course she did. That’s why she’d tried to do whatever she could to distract me from it.

  “It’s not important. I’m just happy to see you.”

  “Larry,” she said. “You came because of him.”

  “At first,” I admitted. “But now I just want to buy you breakfast, and not talk about anything.”

  She took a deep breath. “No one ever loved me like he did.”

  A tear ran down her cheek as she leaned against my shoulder, and began crying once more.

  Maybe I wasn’t the only one who wanted to talk about Larry. Isabel could have left after she found I wasn’t in the room when she woke. But she hadn’t.

  At that moment I realized, without her having to tell me, that she had never talked to anyone about what had happened, that she had bottled it up inside and tried to forget. But there was no forgetting. I was testament to that. She had stayed because deep down she wanted to talk, needed to talk.

  Undoubtedly, she had demons much larger than mine that needed to be put to rest.

  • • •

  After she got dressed, we went for a long walk down the beach. The rain had stopped, though the sky was still gray and threatening. I asked her if she wanted anything to eat, but she said she wasn’t hungry. She held my hand, and occasionally leaned against me, but it was different now. We were Papa Jay and Isabel again, Big Bro and Little Sis. What had happened to us in the room, that moment of weakness—for both of us—was forgotten.

  “Did I ever tell you he sent me flowers on the twenty-fourth of every month?” she asked after we’d been walking in silence for a while.

  She had, but I told her no. There were things she needed to say, not for me, but to me.

  “That was when we met. When we went on our first date.”

  Though the two events had happened on different nights, I realized they had indeed happened on the same date—the incident with Mr. Comb-over after midnight, and the EWR with Larry less than twenty-four hours later.

  “Every month he would send those flowers,” she said. “Every month. He never missed even one.”