“Do you know where they went?” she asked. “I thought maybe I’d join them for a while. Say hello.”
“Sorry. They didn’t say.”
“That’s okay, that’s okay.” The beauty queen smile again. “I’m sure I’ll find them.” She leaned over and kissed me on the cheek again. “Papa, it was great to see you.”
“It was good to see you, too.” It wasn’t exactly a lie. It was good to see Mariella every once in a while. It reminded me why I was so happy she was gone.
She headed for the door to a chorus of “Bye, Mariella,” “Come back soon,” and “We miss you.”
I noticed Cathy peeking around the corner of the storeroom door behind the bar. She watched silently, her expression blank, as Mariella left.
CHAPTER TWELVE
When I arrived at work on Sunday night, the day after Larry’s return to Angeles, I found Larry and Isabel already there. They were sitting at the bar, having what appeared to be deep discussions with Cathy. When Cathy noticed me, she said something to them, then all three turned to me, grinning.
My altered, anti-Angeles mood had only increased since the previous evening, exacerbated by the fact I had overslept and was running about forty minutes late. So instead of walking up and seeing what was going on, I went directly to my little office in back where I stayed for fifteen minutes before reappearing.
Once in the bar, there were things to do. A couple of the girls wanted to take a few weeks off to go back to their provinces. Even when I was in a bad mood, I never denied the girls their wish to go home.
Then Nelly came to me with a guy already lined up who wanted to pay her bar fine. She was quickly becoming our new superstar-a spinner superstar. Some guys would say those were the best kind. I went through my routine of making sure she really wanted to go, but knew before I even said anything what her answer would be.
Wilma was still pissed off at Rochelle for ruining things with a guy she’d had lined up a couple nights before. Jocelyn and Helen were having their period-“mens,” they called it-but didn’t want me to tell any guy and hurt their chances at being bar fined. That way, they would at least earn their share of the bar fine, then wait until they got to the guy’s hotel to reveal their condition.
Most of the time, if this happened, the guy would send the girl home. For the girls, that meant money, no sex and early to bed, unless, of course, the guy came back to The Lounge and complained. If that happened, we always gave a refund, and that meant no cash for the girl or the bar. I probably should have insisted the girls be honest upfront, but where do you draw the line between lying to someone so they’d pay for a service they wouldn’t receive, and denying the girls a chance to make some pesos without having to spread their legs?
It was things like this, the stuff you faced only in Angeles, that would always push me to the edge. It was being surrounded by hundreds of beautiful, sexy, young, bitchy, catty, innocent, manipulative, desperate, greedy, hopeless and hopeful women every single day. It was hanging out with tired, fat, old men like Dieter and Dandy Doug, or young uber-studs like Josh and Scotty P who thought they were living out a porn star’s dream. It was dealing with the visitors, the customers, the goddamn sex tourists, and all the bullshit they brought with them. But without them, without their dollars, euros, pounds and yen, there would be no Angeles. And if you took a vote-of the girls, the guys, the nearby businesses-no one would want that. Because sex was easy. It was money that was hard to come by in the Philippines.
Sometimes, even now, it’s hard to believe I ever let myself get sucked into that whole world. Yet, when I’m in one of those lost moments, the ones that happen while I’m riding in a taxi alone or waiting quietly at a restaurant for a friend or staring at the screen of my computer, fingers paused between keystrokes, I find myself wishing I was back there, if only for a night. It doesn’t last long, but the thought does come. Even when we turn a page, find that new path, temptation never completely goes away.
So as I moved through the bar, dealing with the girls’ problems, avoiding my friends-not because I was mad at them, but because I didn’t want to subject them to my foul mood-I wondered, not for the first time, how long I would be able to do this. The problem was, if I did stop, I didn’t know what I would do next. I was still too much in the clutches, too much in Angeles. I was Doc. I was Papa Jay. All the girls knew me. I guess in my own way I was a superstar.
Finally, I made my way over to the bar where Isabel and Larry were sitting on stools on the customer side, and Cathy was standing behind the bar in her usual place.
“Busy night,” Larry said.
I grunted my agreement. I knew he’d been watching me make my rounds.
Cathy set a beer on the counter. A San Miguel, I noticed. I guess my mood didn’t rate any of the stash Larry had brought me. I picked up the bottle and drained half of it before stopping.
“Better?” Larry asked.
“Slightly.”
“You get like this often?”
“Not too often,” Cathy answered for me. “But often enough.”
I tilted my bottle toward Cathy in a mock salute, then finished the rest of the liquid inside. “Another,” I said as I set the bottle back down.
“Me, too,” Larry said, pointing to his own empty bottle. “Isabel?”
“I’m fine, thanks.”
“How about you, Cathy?” Larry asked.
She shrugged. “Why not?”
Before she could retrieve our drinks, Larry put a hand out to stop her. “You have any champagne?”
“Of course,” Cathy said.
“Grab a bottle.” He glanced at Isabel. “And four glasses.”
The first thing that went through my mind was that Larry had asked Isabel to marry him. They’d only actually been in each other’s physical presence less than seventy-two hours, but I’d seen it before, even after just one night together, and it had never ended pretty. The guy always lost interest, and the girl, after bragging to her friends that she would soon be moving away from the Philippines, would then be forced to make up some lie to cover the fact her departure date never arrived.
I liked Larry. I thought he was pretty smart. I even liked Isabel and Larry together. It seemed, I don’t know, right. But I was going to have to force myself to reassess if he did an idiotic thing like proposing.
Larry took the bottle from Cathy as soon as she brought it over. He worked the cork loose, then aimed the barrel of the bottle at the ceiling above the dance floor. He pushed the cork until it shot out of the end, arcing through the air and striking inches away from where one of the poles was attached.
The attention of the room immediately turned toward us as champagne spewed out of the neck of the bottle and onto the floor. The other three members of my party laughed excitedly, while the only thing I could think about was that someone was going to have to clean up the mess.
Soon our glasses were filled, and Larry, careful not to spill any more of the liquid, handed one to each of us. Once we were all taken care of, he picked up his own glass and raised it in preparation of a toast.
“To seeing friends again,” he said.
We clinked our glasses and took a drink. I even managed a smile. After all, no matter what mood I was in, the perpetual party had to go on.
Larry raised his glass again, so we all did the same. “And to vacations,” he said. “For all of us.”
Again we clinked glasses, but as I started to take a drink, I realized the rest of them were looking at me, with those same large grins they had plastered on their faces when I’d arrived at work.
“What?” I asked, setting my glass down.
“You said you needed to get away,” Larry said.
I looked at him, not quite following.
He took an envelope out of his pocket and handed it to me. Inside was an airplane ticket. I took a look at the destination.