“This your place?” he asked.
“What? The Lounge?” It was my turn to laugh. “No. I just work here.”
“Not a bad place to work.”
“It has its upside.” I finished off the last of my water. “Hey, Cathy.” When she looked up, I said, “I’ll take a beer now.”
“Here you go, Doc,” she said as she set the bottle in front of me.
“Doc?” Larry asked.
“Not officially,” I said. “This your first trip to Angeles?”
“Yeah,” he said. “First time.”
“So, what do you think?”
He watched the dancers for a moment before answering. When he did, the tone of his voice had gone all serious. “It’s kind of hard to explain.”
“No shit,” I said, then started laughing louder than I had in weeks.
The rest of the evening we spent talking about things like deep-sea fishing, laptop computers, and the exchange rate of the peso to the dollar. I found out he was from San Francisco, California. I’m not sure if we got into what he did for a living, but later I knew. He owned, in his words, a modest same-day delivery service based in the Bay Area. He was thirty-seven and had never been married.
It wasn’t until well after midnight, when we were both a little drunk, that the subject of the girls finally came up. Sure, that was surprising, but Larry wasn’t your typical tourist. For that matter, I wasn’t your average papasan.
I had just returned from a run to the CR-comfort room, what they called the toilet in the Philippines-and found him eyeing one of the dancers. She was a tiny girl, not even five feet tall, with long black hair that reached the top of her ass, and breasts only slightly larger than expected on her thin frame. There was a whole set of categories-the spinner, the stunner, the runner, just to name a few-and she was a spinner, a small, light girl you could just pick up and spin around anyway you wanted.
“That’s Nelly,” I said.
Nelly had noticed Larry looking at her, and had moved into full-on flirt mode.
“What?”
I nodded toward her. “Your new friend.”
“She is cute,” he said as if he hadn’t expected to find anyone like her.
“You want me to call her over?”
I could see him struggling with it for a moment, then he shook his head. “That’s okay. I was just enjoying the moment.”
I took a sip from my sixth (or was it seventh?) beer of the evening. “You got a girlfriend already?”
“You mean here?” he asked.
I nodded.
“No.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“No problem. I’m just…” he paused. “Not ready, I guess.”
I could almost hear the click in my beer-dulled mind telling me I’d just heard an important piece of information. But it was a few more seconds before I realized what it was.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Didn’t you tell me you’ve been here something like four days already?”
“Five,” he corrected me.
“Okay, five. Maybe I’m just hearing things, but I think you just said you haven’t been with anyone yet.”
Larry glanced away for a moment. When he looked back, he had a small, sheepish grin on his face. “That’s about right.”
I stared at him. “Is there something wrong with you?”
He shook his head. “And before you ask, I’m not gay, either.”
“What am I missing? Are you scared?” There’d been guys, first-timers like Larry, who got petrified once they were faced with the abundance Angeles had to offer, but they usually got over it after a night or two.
“Not scared. It just hasn’t seemed right yet.”
Over my time working at The Lounge, I’d seen all sorts of guys, all of them, at the very least, looking for that one-night girlfriend. The later it got, the less choosy they became. But here, sitting next to me at the bar, was a first.
“What the hell are we doing drinking beer? Cathy,” I called, “bring the Cuervo over. The 1800. Double shots for both of us. Hell, one for you, too. And when we’re done, another round.”
By the time I closed the place, Larry was all but passed out on the bar. I still had some of my senses with me-a product of drinking every night, I guess-so I made sure I got him back to his hotel room without incident.
I also made him promise that if he hadn’t hooked up with anyone before his last night in Angeles, he’d come back by The Lounge and I’d set him up with Nelly.
So I guess you could say it was all my fault.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Boracay again. In that later time, when Larry was dead and Isabel-a harder Isabel, but not hardened all the way through just yet-was asleep on the spare bed in my hotel room. My own sleep had been uneven, and I’d woken early and hungry.
The day before, I’d been informed by the concierge that a tropical storm was going to be passing nearby, and when I pulled back the curtain for a quick peek outside, I wasn’t surprised to find the sky covered in a blanket of gray clouds. The ground was still dry, but it didn’t look like it would stay that way for long. I’d seen the sky like that before. We could be in for a steady soak.
I pulled on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, slipped on my sneakers and grabbed my cell phone. Isabel was still breathing deeply and wasn’t likely to wake up anytime soon, so I quietly let myself out.
The morning air was already warm, and before I’d even taken ten steps from the door, I could feel sweat beginning to bead on my brow. In the Philippines, there was a hot season and a rainy season, and most times it was both.
I made my way down to the poolside restaurant, and sat at a table under the awning. My hotel wasn’t quite as nice as the White Sands where Isabel had spent the previous night. There were more rooms crammed into about the same amount of space, the pool was smaller, and the restaurant wasn’t quite as good. But I hadn’t been trying to impress anyone, so it was fine for me.
There was only one other customer for breakfast, another early bird, or perhaps a night owl who was getting a little something to eat before finally heading off to bed. Otherwise the place was deserted.
I ordered some eggs, sausage and a cup of coffee. I had a fleeting thought that I should have waited for Isabel, but I was just too damn hungry. I’d buy her breakfast when she got up.
The eggs ended up being cooked a little more than I liked, but not enough to send them back. So I dug in and ate without pause. By the time I finished, the first drops of rain had begun to fall. I got the waitress to refill my coffee, then pushed my chair out a little and leaned back so I could watch the coming storm in comfort.
If you didn’t like rain, the Philippines-or pretty much anywhere in the tropics-wasn’t the place for you. From about mid-June until October or November, the rain seemed to be a constant thing. Typhoons, tropical storms, the frequent afternoon shower all did what they could to keep everything in a perpetual state of either wet or damp. And even when it wasn’t the rainy season, the rain didn’t stop. That’s why things stay green in the tropics. There were times, even after I moved to Bangkok, when I wished for a few dry, Arizona-type months. Of course if that had ever happened, I’d have probably hated it.
The initial smattering of droplets quickly turned into an onslaught. The surface of the pool danced like it was a pot of boiling water. When I looked across toward the palm trees that signified the end of the hotel property and the beginning of the beach, it seemed like everything had gone slightly blurry. It was as if the air itself had suddenly become liquid, and if we all didn’t grow gills in a hurry, we’d be in trouble. The humidity, probably hovering around seventy-five or eighty percent when I’d sat down, had shot up to one hundred in an instant. For a while, it was coming down so hard the sound of the rain drumming against the awning and the ground made it almost impossible to hold any kind of meaningful conversation. Kind of like being in one of the bars, now that I think about it.
I hadn’t actually seen a storm come on this strong this fast in a long time. So I stayed where I was and enjoyed the show. There was something refreshing, and, on occasion, unsettling about rain. I’m not talking about the “cleansing powers” of water, the “flushing” of the skies, the “renewal” of the earth. All those were fine and very poetic, but for me, it was a lot simpler than that.