This was the trip when Isabel fell in love with Boracay. Larry would take her two more times, but those trips would be just the two of them. And by what Isabel told me after each one, they had been as wonderful as this first time. Larry loved it there, too. Before two days had even passed, he was already talking about buying a place on the island.
“You could use it whenever you want,” he told me.
He talked about that dream house right up until one of the last times I saw him. I could understand why. There was something special about the island. It was one of those places you just didn’t want to leave. A small tropical paradise, where the beach was never more than a few minutes away. Angeles, on the other hand, was stuck in the middle of a much larger island, hours from any beach. It might as well have been located in Kansas.
Isabel would talk about the house, too, but only when we were in Angeles and Larry was back in the States. She would go on about the different ways she would decorate it, about the type of maid she would be sure he hired, about what the view would be like from the bedroom balcony, for there would be a bedroom balcony.
On that second night of our shared vacation, we hooked up with a group of Aussies on one of those package-tour vacations. It was at the bar of another hotel. These weren’t the male-only sex tourists who came to Angeles. Instead they were a group of about a dozen married couples ranging in age from late thirties to early fifties. A hard-drinking, loud-laughing crew from Perth enjoying their last night on Boracay. They were just beginning a barhop of the hotels that lined White Beach, and since we had no set plans of our own, they invited us to join them. After a brief round of introductions, we were off.
Larry had told them Isabel was his fiancee and that Cathy and I were married. Despite the fact that the only ring Cathy wore was on the pinky of her right hand, they all bought it. Or at least pretended they did. As for Isabel and Cathy, they embraced these roles without missing a beat.
“How long have you been married?” one of the women, Noreen Simons, asked Cathy.
“Three years,” Cathy said, glancing at me to make sure I heard.
“Still the honeymoon stage,” Noreen said.
“Sometimes,” Cathy replied, a wry grin on her face.
“Where did you meet?” a woman, who had told us her name was Sherry, asked Isabel. She was one of the older members of the group, her graying hair cut short, and looked like she could drink most anyone under the table.
“Larry was on business in Manila,” she said as if she’d told the story a million times. “A cousin of mine introduced us.”
“What kind of business are you in?” Sherry’s husband, Curtis, asked Larry.
“International shipping,” Larry told him.
“How ’bout you, Jay?” Curtis said. “What do you do?”
“Not much. I’m kind of retired.”
“Kind of?” another man said. I think his name was Taylor.
“Occasionally, I have to do something to keep myself busy.”
They all laughed, and it was enough to change the subject to something new.
It was an evening of talk, drinking, laughing, dancing, a couple of horrible games of pool, and a final toast of champagne on the beach from several bottles appropriated from the last bar we’d been in.
“I’m going to hate getting on that plane tomorrow,” Curtis said to me. We were standing a few feet away from the others. “Perth’s nice, but it’s home, know what I mean? This place…it gets under your skin. Makes it hard to leave.”
I raised the bottle I was holding and took a drink. I couldn’t have said it better myself.
There was no question of Cathy sleeping in her room that night. We had spent an entire night acting like a recently married couple, so after a while it seemed like we were. Once we were back at the hotel, we didn’t even pause at her door.
In my room, in the darkness just before dawn, I held on to her sleeping form, her soft, brown skin pressed up against me. She’d been asleep for over an hour, but I had yet to close my eyes.
I’d been fighting this. I’d been fighting this for so long I almost forgot how not to. This longing, this need, this yearning for someone. I’d been fighting it since Maureen, keeping all of it always at arms’ length. And I’d been fighting with Cathy, the idea of her. Because in her I knew was an answer. Maybe not the answer, but enough of one to drop my guard again. And as I lay there, the scent of her filling me with more contentment than I could have imagined, I was still afraid. I was afraid of tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after that. Because I knew at some point the inevitable disaster would come to signal the end of our relationship.
There was no way I could know what form it would take, but that didn’t matter. It was out there somewhere, waiting.
There were times, as we explored the island or sat on the beach or ate a meal, when I found myself looking at Cathy while her attention was elsewhere. I wish I could say it was because I was enthralled by her, or was trying to memorize every line of her. But it wasn’t that.
I could see the concern she had for me-the care, I guess you’d call it. I could see the bond of our friendship, which had grown so much stronger, and yet so much more fragile, during our time on the island. I could see thousands of possibilities. But what I was really looking for was unlimited potential. And no matter how much I looked, that was the one thing I was unable to find.
“Do you want some mango?” she would ask. But what I heard was, “This is good for you. You should eat it.”
“Let’s go for a walk on the beach,” she’d say. What I heard was, “You need exercise, not another nap.”
And when she said, “It took you long enough to finally notice me,” my mind translated it as, “You’re mine now. You don’t need anyone else.”
Every day, I would have to stop and remind myself that this was Cathy, the best friend I had at The Lounge, probably in all of Angeles. Whatever twists my mind put into what she was saying were faulty interpretations that had been skewed by emotions I hadn’t expected to feel, and didn’t know how to control.
As each day passed, I got better.
On the last night there, as we lay in bed, her head pressed against my chest, she said, “I wish we could stay here forever.” What I heard was, “I wish we could stay here forever.”
In a voice so low I wasn’t sure she actually heard me, I said, “Me, too.”
Finally it was time for our small, tropical island vacation to end, and for us to return to our large tropical island home. We didn’t have to be in Kalibo until late afternoon, so we spent the morning on the beach.
“Thanks, Larry,” I said. We were sitting on our towels watching Isabel and Cathy wade into the water.
He only smiled at first. “You’re welcome,” he said a moment later.
“This was exactly what I needed.”
“So you’re ready to return to your nine-to-five grind, then?”
I laughed. “Yeah. I think so.”
There was a family playing at the edge of the water. A little boy who couldn’t have been more than five ran in and out of the waves, laughing uncontrollably. His sister, who looked to be around eight, splashed him every time he ran past. The parents were in on the fun, too. Each of them pretending to chase their son, but never being able to catch him. But it was the daughter who caught my attention the most. Even though she was Asian-maybe from Japan or Singapore or even Manila-she reminded me of Lily. It was in the way she took complete joy in her brother’s fun. It was like he was the most important thing in the world to her. And while I was sure there were times when he pissed the hell out of her, right then and there, she was everything a sister should be. She was everything a person should be. Lily didn’t have any siblings, but I had seen that same look in her face countless times.
“I need you to do me a favor,” Larry said.