“No, no. You’re right,” he said. “I didn’t mean anything by it. I’m just worried about Isabel.”
“I know you are,” I said.
As the girls continued to walk by, I noticed another familiar face. It was Jade. She used to be one of the dancers at The Lounge when I first started, but she was getting old for the job. I think she was about twenty-seven then. She’d been offered a position as a mamasan at one of the smaller bars, and had jumped at the opportunity. She always had a good head for business, and had moved on from that small bar to become a mamasan at a much larger place called The Rack.
I waved to her when she got close, and she stopped on the street just below us, hands on her hips, looking up. “Hey, Papa. What’s going on?”
“Hi, Jade. Where you off to?”
“Work. Starting early tonight. Who your friend?”
“This is Larry,” I said. “Larry, this is Jade.”
“Hi,” he said.
“Ah. Is this the famous Isabel’s Larry?” she asked.
Larry’s eyes opened wide.
“One and the same,” I said.
“He’s cute. You tell Isabel I say so, okay?” she said.
“I’ll try to remember,” I said.
“Hey, Papa. We have anniversary party for bar on Thursday night. You off that night?”
“Not this week.”
She gave me a faux pout. “Too bad. We having body-painting contests and I know how much you like that.”
I laughed.
“Okay. Gotta go. Good to meet you, Isabel’s Larry. Bye, Papa.”
We said goodbye and watched her walk off.
“How did she know about me?” Larry asked.
“Nothing’s ever private in Angeles,” I said. “Besides, Jade is one of Mariella’s friends.”
The smile on Larry’s face slipped a little. “I don’t like her,” he said.
“Jade’s all right,” I told him.
“That’s not who I meant.”
I took a sip of my iced tea. “I know who you meant,” I said.
Silence overtook us again for a few minutes.
“I have an idea,” I said. There was only a little bit left in my cup, so I drank it all down in one gulp.
“What?” Larry said.
“What if I make Isabel a waitress instead of a dancer?” I asked. “I’ll bump her pay just a bit. It doesn’t mean guys are going to stop asking to bar fine her, but it’ll happen less and it’ll also be easier for her to say no.”
“Really?” I could see actual hope in his eyes.
“Sure.”
“But what about the money I want to send her?” he asked.
I thought about it for a moment, then said, “Send it to me. I’ll open an account for her and put it all in there. When she’s ready, she can start using it. In the meantime, if there’s an emergency, the money’s there.”
He thought about it for a few moments, running the idea through his mind. “Okay. Yeah. That’ll work. But I’m not going to hide anything from her. I’m going to tell her what we’re doing.”
“That’s your choice.”
And so it was settled. Larry would be happy that he was doing something to make Isabel’s life a little easier, and Isabel would be happy she could prove she wanted him for something other than his money. And in the end, Isabel hadn’t been lying. The first time she ever touched that money was two weeks after Larry died. And on that day, she withdrew it all and left Angeles for good.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
For those of us whose life was Angeles, the party rolled on. Hangovers and catfights and bell rings and beer and dancing and half-worn bikinis and bar fines and pool and everything and anything that was Angeles-it was all part of the cycle that never ended. Get on or get off, because there was no in between.
Isabel adapted quickly to her new role as waitress, making as much as, if not more than, she had when she’d been a dancer. And every month, money would come in from Larry, more than enough so Isabel could live comfortably, send some home, and quit work if she wanted. But even though I told her every time the money arrived, she would just nod and say she didn’t need it then.
In that, I think, she probably was unique among the girls on Fields. Even if they had really believed they weren’t going to touch it, most of the girls would have ended up taking it out anyway. The temptation was too great, and the pressure from the other girls for them to use it would have been tremendous. The majority of girls on Fields had a bad case of spend-what-you-got-and-don’t-worry-about-next-week. But for the longest time, Isabel and I were the only people who knew about her situation so I guess that helped.
Larry fell into the habit of visiting every two or three months. Sometimes he’d spend the whole time in Angeles, other times he’d take Isabel away for a while. To Manila, to Puerta Galera, back to Boracay. He also became one of my steady suppliers of Marzen.
As far as Cathy and I were concerned, I was able to keep that secret from the girls at The Lounge for a good week and a half. And once the news was out, the incessant teasing began. The one thing I noticed was that the girls became a bit more respectful of Cathy. It wasn’t that they didn’t treat her well before, it was just that they had collectively decided she had more power now. And instead of trying to downplay this, I decided to use it to my advantage, leaving Cathy in charge for hours on end while I went to “run an errand,” which usually involved having a beer with Dieter at Sinsations or with Hal at Tricks. Cathy seemed to enjoy the new responsibility and even talked about maybe being a mamasan one day.
Just a little less than a year after that group trip to Boracay, I was sitting in the back office at The Lounge, ostensibly going over the books but in reality doing the crossword puzzle in a two-week-old copy of the New York Times someone had left behind that afternoon, when I heard a scream from the bar.
This, in itself, was a bit surprising, as usually I couldn’t hear anything over the music. But it was just after six p.m. and the place had been pretty empty so the music was turned down low.
I was out of my office in a shot, and heard another scream just before I entered the main room. In the bar, I found the girls grouped together near the front door, but no one seemed to be in distress. In fact, most of them were smiling or laughing.
Their attention was focused on a guy who had just entered. He was a big guy, not tall, but not fat either. He had the look of one of those guys who spent their entire day in the gym lifting weights. Muscles bulged everywhere, and while he could have probably lifted fat ol’ me off the ground without effort, I wasn’t going to test him.
It was Rudy, of course, he whose last name I never got because I never asked. He acted the part of the gentle giant, but in reality, he was more of a giant asshole. Wavy blond hair, Nordic chiseled face, and a temper lying just below the surface that could erupt without warning. He was one of the Angeles regulars, a Dane, I believe, who’d immigrated to the U.S. as a teenager, and now lived in the Midwest somewhere. He’d planned his trips around holidays in the U.S. He was always coming to the island at Thanksgiving, and this time, since it was nearing the end of May, he was obviously taking advantage of the upcoming Memorial Day three-day weekend.
Rudy had a way with the girls that was all his own. He had been coming regularly for over ten years, and Jade had told me once that he used to be a lot different than how he was by the time I met him. “Respectful and kind,” she’d told me. “Just a nice guy.” But now he had taken to using sarcasm as charm, and treated the girls as toys who were there for his pleasure. And if that weren’t enough, he was the king of breaking one of the Cardinal Angeles Sins. He was a butterfly, someone who’d bar fine different girls from the same bar on different nights, something he took great pleasure in.