Reluctantly, I turned my attention from the family back to him. “Sure,” I said. “What do you need?”
“I need you to watch over Isabel.”
My eyes narrowed slightly, as I tried to read his face. “What do you mean? Keep tabs on her and let you know what she’s up to?”
He looked startled. “No. That’s not what I mean at all. I just want you to be her friend. Be there for her if she needs someone to talk to.”
I relaxed a little. “I do that already.”
“I realize that. But,” he paused, knowing the words he was about to say were trite, but not knowing any other way to say it, “she’s special.”
“I know.”
“It’s like she’s the only-”
“Larry,” I said, stopping him. “I know.”
He smiled sheepishly, and again silence descended on us. As the girls walked out of the water and began heading in our direction, Larry said, “I’m going to send her money every month.”
“That’s between you and her.”
He looked over at me. “If something happens and she needs more, if you think she needs more, that’s when I want you to contact me. You don’t have to tell me what it’s for. Is that okay?”
I smiled and nodded. “That’s okay.”
A lot had changed during that week away, the most important being Isabel and Larry’s love moving from potential to genuine. It was still too early to talk of marriage, but we all knew it was waiting on the road ahead. As for Cathy and me, we’d moved from coy teasing to secret lovers. I had told both her and Isabel that I didn’t want the rest of the girls to know what was going on. I couldn’t have it interfering with my job. Did I really believe it would remain secret forever? No. But I hoped it would for a while.
And it was also on that trip that Larry and I moved from acquaintances to friends-good friends, even. I was going to miss the son of a bitch when he left in a few days.
As we drove from the airport in Manila back to Angeles, Larry had the driver make a quick stop at a store. He darted inside and five minutes later returned with a bottle of cheap champagne and a stack of paper cups.
Once we were back on the road, he poured each of us a cupful of the wine.
“To a great vacation,” he said.
“To a great vacation,” we all echoed.
Soon we’d be back in Angeles, at the party that never stopped, but at that moment, we were just four friends having a little party of our own.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
We had been walking in silence on the beach for fifteen minutes. The clouds had actually begun to break up some, and I was beginning to think maybe we’d miss most of the storm. Others must have been thinking the same thing, as the regular noises of the beach-the fishermen preparing their boats, the tourists talking and laughing and playing on the sand, and the young kids walking up and down selling necklaces and sunglasses and candy bars-that had been missing earlier returned. For a while we stood down at the water’s edge, letting the warm sea wash over our feet.
Because it suddenly felt natural to do so, I began talking about Larry. And once I started, I found it hard to stop.
I told her about the first time I had met him. I talked about the jerk with the comb-over and Larry’s offer of tea. Her face grew pained as I went on, but she didn’t try to change the subject. Most of what I told her was stuff she already knew, but just hadn’t thought about since she locked it all up in that place she kept her most painful memories. I imagined that room was crammed full, mostly with memories of Larry, but not all. When I got to that trip the four of us took to Boracay, Isabel finally teared up. After I told her what Larry had said to me as we watched her and Cathy play in the water, a few tears escaped.
“You know you meant everything to him,” I said.
She nodded.
“Even then,” I said.
She nodded again.
“He wasn’t like the other guys I’ve met since he-” she stopped herself, then said, “after him. He was not like anyone I ever meet in Angeles, or here, or even at home, before.” Before she’d come to work at The Lounge, she meant. Before she started the job that had become her life.
We walked on for a bit, then she said, “Except maybe you.”
“No,” I said. “Not me. I was like everyone else.”
She shook her head, but said nothing.
I went back to our vacation on Boracay, talking about our trip home, and how, though I felt refreshed and able to handle work again, I was sad it was over.
“What I remember most,” she said, “was that monkey.”
It took me a second, then I laughed. “I’d forgotten all about that,” I said.
That damn monkey. It had to have been our third or fourth day there. We were on the beach, not far from Boat Station 1. This guy, a local who looked sixty but was probably not much more than forty-five, was offering tourists the chance to take a picture with his monkey. It was small, with reddish hair and a bored look on its face. The local guy had it tethered to a palm tree with a piece of dirty rope that was tied to a homemade leather collar around the monkey’s neck.
“For some reason, Larry really wanted to get us all to take a picture with it,” I said, remembering.
“He told me he’d never seen a monkey that close before.” Isabel was barely able to keep from laughing. “Even at the zoo, he never got that close.”
“That stupid, fucking monkey,” I said.
Larry had spotted the guy and his monkey first, and had sprinted ahead of us. By the time we caught up, he was leaning down, his hand outstretched, but not yet touching the animal.
“What’s his name?” Larry asked the owner.
“Julio,” the guy said.
“Hey there, Julio.” Larry was like a little kid. “Can I pet him?”
Julio’s owner shrugged. “You want to take a picture with him?”
Larry’s eyes lit up. “Hell, yeah.”
“Three hundred pesos.”
Cathy immediately jumped in, speaking in Tagalog so fast I couldn’t understand her. Two minutes later, with the price down to a hundred pesos, we were grouped with our backs to the ocean, the monkey sitting quietly on Larry’s shoulder.
Larry had given the owner his digital camera and had explained how it worked, but the guy seemed to be having problems getting the shot. Several times Larry had to walk over-the monkey still on his shoulder, grabbing Larry’s hair so as not to fall-to show the guy what he needed to do.
On the third trip, I guess the monkey had had enough. He shrieked in annoyance. Isabel jumped one way while Cathy jumped the other, each screaming in surprise and fear. This new complication didn’t sit well with Julio, who grabbed on harder to Larry’s hair, shrieking again.
Instinctively, Larry reached up to pull the monkey off his head, but Julio just slapped his hand away. This whole time the owner kept trying to get the camera to work, impervious to the noise and confusion.
Julio apparently decided he’d had enough of the entire event. He screeched once more, then leaped onto the sandy beach and ran back to his spot at the base of the palm tree.
“Are you all right?” I asked Larry.
“What?” he said. He was holding his head where Julio had been hanging on.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” he said after a moment’s hesitation. “I think so. Except I can’t hear a damn thing in this ear.” He massaged the outside of the ear Julio had been screaming into.
Julio’s owner walked up and held out the camera. Larry took it from him.
“I think you should give us our money back,” I said.
The guy stared at me, like he didn’t understand, when I knew he did. Cathy and Isabel had rejoined us by now, both of them keeping a wary eye on Julio. Cathy told the guy in Tagalog to give Larry his money back, but the guy basically told her no refunds, then started to walk away. Cathy reached out to stop him, but Larry put a hand on her arm.
“It’s okay,” Larry said. “Let him keep the money.”