When I asked what was wrong, Alona said, “Stomach, I think,” then “headache,” and finally, “I don’t know.”
It was Thursday night before Isabel showed up again.
“Everything all right?” I asked.
“Sorry, Papa,” she said. “I didn’t feel very well.” She tried to walk past, but I reached out and touched her shoulder, stopping her.
“Stomach flu?” I asked, pretty sure it wasn’t that.
She shook her head.
“A cold, then?”
“No. Nothing like that.”
I put my hand under her chin, and tilted her head up until our eyes met. “Did something happen with Larry?” At that point, the last I knew was they were going out to dinner on Sunday night, and then she was going home.
She said nothing.
Suddenly I was concerned my assessment of Larry had been wrong. “Did he hurt you? Make you do something you didn’t want to do?”
“He would never hurt me,” she said quickly.
And then I could see it. The spark in her eye, the set of her jaw as she defended her man. Something had happened, but nothing bad, at least in Isabel’s opinion. In fact, just the opposite.
I told her to go in back and get changed. I knew I wasn’t going to get the whole story that night. It was something that would only come with time, and eventually it did.
After Larry left, Isabel had gone into a funk. First it was the sadness of saying goodbye to him. Then, despite the fact he promised her he’d come back as soon as he could, came the fear she would never see him again.
Finally, Mariella, her own cousin, the experienced, all-knowing one, and-though Isabel didn’t suspect it then-the manipulation queen of Angeles, found out and came to talk to her.
“Do you think he’s coming back?” Isabel asked her.
“Of course he’s coming back,” Mariella said. “Once you hook them, they always come back. What kind of job does he have?”
“He owns some sort of company. I can’t remember exactly. Why?”
Mariella smiled. “Good for you. But you have to be careful.”
“I don’t understand,” Isabel said.
“Don’t ask for anything yet.” Mariella gave her cousin a very serious look. “He has your cell phone number?”
Isabel nodded. “He also asked if I have an email address.”
“You don’t have one yet?”
Isabel moved her head from side to side.
“Sirang ulo ka ba?” Mariella said. “It’s so easy. We’ll go get one for you today.” Mariella took a deep breath. “When you talk to him, you tell him you love him. You tell him he’s the only man for you. You tell him you can’t wait until he comes back.”
Though all of that was true, Isabel remained quiet. Mariella, after all, had been here a lot longer than she had.
“If he asks you if you need money,” Mariella continued, “you tell him you okay right now. Some other girls might tell you different, but don’t listen to them. You got to think about the future. Like I did with David. Look at me now. He send me money every month. I only have to work when I want to. He going to buy me a house, too, when he comes in January. If you do things right, you could be like me.”
Before Isabel could even say she didn’t want to be like Mariella, that her life was not the life Isabel wished for, her cousin stood up. “Come on,” Mariella said. “We go get you an email address now.”
Several hours later, Isabel was alone again and as depressed as ever. She was even considering just going back home to her parents. Angeles was not the place for her, and she didn’t want to be there anymore.
But on Thursday morning, Larry called and life had meaning again.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Months passed after Larry’s first visit to Angeles, and Fields was the same as it always was. Except for Isabel, of course.
Three times a week she’d get a call from Larry. I always knew which days those were, because she would fly into The Lounge, the smile on her face large and genuine. On other days, he would send her text messages, and while she reread them over and over, she said there was nothing like actually talking to him.
Almost every night, someone would ask her if she wanted to go out on a bar fine. She would smile, then tell them she was a cherry girl. This usually turned any would-be suitors away. The last thing most guys who came to Angeles wanted to do was waste money on someone who wasn’t a sure thing. And for those few who still persisted, she would pretend to feel ill, and disappear into the back until the man either found another girl or left.
The only money she made came from the small salary she received every night, and her share of the lady drinks bought for her. Occasionally I overheard some of the other girls saying things like “what a waste,” or “think of all the money she could have.”
About the money, they were right. She had an innocent and beautiful face that most guys would not soon forget. Her body was not one guys would forget, either. She was what Manfred would call, and did several times, the total package. Only a few of us-myself, Larry, some of the girls-knew that the total package extended far beyond just the physical.
Isabel could easily have risen beyond just being a stunner to the rank of Angeles Superstar. She could have had dates every night, raking in the pesos. Like all superstars, stories of her would reach the Internet. Guys would come to town with her on their list of must-sees. I’d seen it happen all the time. When a superstar walked down the street, no matter who a guy was with, his head would turn. She was the shit, the girl everyone wanted. Don’t think she didn’t know it, either. And don’t think the other girls didn’t know it also.
The superstar was the queen at whichever bar she worked. All the best customers were hers even if another girl got there first. Superstars had the most expensive clothes, the nicest jewelry, the highest number of foreign boyfriends sending money back to them. Then one day they’d disappear, swept off to Australia or England or Sweden or Canada or the U.S. to marry- and most likely later divorce-a man who had become more her money ko than her honey ko.
Or if they didn’t find the right guy in Angeles, they went to Manila, where there was more money to be made, and the chance to become the mistress of someone important was greater. Or they went home, where they thought their cash would make them a hero, or to the morgue, where all the cash in the world couldn’t undo the consequences of their addiction to alcohol or shabu-shabu or a jealous Filipino boyfriend’s fit of rage.
Isabel could have been one of those girls, but she chose not to be, and that made the other girls, the ones who had no chance of reaching those heights, envious. Isabel never seemed to notice, though. The girls would tell her she was crazy to wait for Larry, but she didn’t hear them. They would tell her he wasn’t coming back, but she wouldn’t believe them. And soon, instead of turning Isabel into what they wanted her to be, they began to believe that maybe she was different. That maybe she would be able to break the rules the rest of them lived by every day. They stopped telling her she was crazy and started asking her, “When is he coming back?” Every time she would answer, “Soon.” That was, until one night when she said, “Tomorrow.”
I was going through one of those periods when everything Angeles made me crazy-the drinking, the parties, the guys, and even the girls, everything pulling at me from opposite directions, setting my nerves on edge. It was at times like this I wondered if Robbie had actually done me any favors when he gave me my job.
I knew from experience it meant that I needed to get away for a while. A vacation anywhere else, even if only for a few days, would make things better. Dandy Doug used to call it his system cleanse. Every six months he’d take a week and go to Shanghai. He had a girl there, a “good girl,” he called her. He said he slept on the couch in her tiny living room. I don’t know if I believed him, but whatever happened there, it made him a new man when he came back.