So on the night of the party, I hadn’t even noticed that it was almost midnight and Mariella had yet to arrive. Instead, I was busy telling Rochelle why it would be a bad idea to go with the guy who wanted to bar fine her. He was already drunk and had a reputation of having a bad temper. But my attempt was only halfhearted and she wasn’t listening to me anyway.
After she left to get changed, I scanned the room, still nursing the same bottle of beer Analyn had given me an hour earlier. I was about to go over and join Larry and Isabel when the front door opened. Hopeful that a group of guys was about to enter, I stopped.
But instead of more potential customers, it was Mariella. I laughed to myself. She was wearing a sexy red dress that ended halfway down her thighs, and a Santa hat. Her smile was about as wide as it ever got. It was as if she was saying, “I’m here. The party can start now.”
She probably thought she was going to get a rock-star greeting, but she had walked in just as “Love Shack” came over the sound system. The dancers, no matter if they were on stage or not, and the waitresses and the bartenders all began doing the dance. The guys began whooping in support, a few of them even trying to join in. So no one saw Mariella step into The Lounge. Only me.
Her smile slipped a fraction of an inch, and I thought for a second that she was going to step back outside and try her entrance again once the song was over. But as she was turning to leave, she saw something that made her smile disappear. At the other end of her line of sight were Isabel and Larry.
Mariella walked out, but she didn’t come back in.
I got to Larry’s hotel around two thirty the next afternoon. He was staying at the Las Palmas, so we ate at one of the tables surrounding the pool. As had become my habit, I only picked at my food, eating no more than half of what I’d ordered. I had lost almost twenty pounds since Cathy had left, but on a guy my size it was probably hard to tell. It wasn’t any conscious effort to lose weight, not then. It was more an unintended byproduct of my mental state.
We’d been talking about his business in San Francisco, his expansion plans and his hopes for the coming years. So when he asked me how I liked things at The Lounge, I thought at first he was going to offer me a job.
“Things are good,” I said, my voice noncommittal.
“Really?” he asked.
“Sure.” I paused. “Well, things could always be better, but for the most part, it’s fine.”
He took a bite of his steak. “This is really good,” he said. He looked at my plate. “Don’t you like yours?”
There was barely a quarter of my steak gone. “It’s fine,” I said. “I’m just not that hungry.”
He cut off another piece of his and put it in his mouth. Once he’d swallowed it, he looked me in the eyes and said, “What’s going on, Doc?”
“I’m sorry?”
He set his fork and knife down. “Is it Cathy?”
“Cathy?”
“I know she’s been gone for a few months now. Is that what’s bothering you?”
“I’m still not sure what you’re talking about.”
He didn’t say anything for several seconds, then, “If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s okay.” He picked up his Coke and took a drink.
Until that moment I had thought my internal turmoil was just that-internal. I, Psychologist of Fields Avenue, King of Self-Analysis, had been thinking I was projecting an image of normality to the rest of the world. Apparently I was wrong.
Larry continued eating and I continued pushing my food around my plate. He talked about football and how he wondered if the 49ers would ever get their act together again. I thought about Cathy. He mentioned how cold it was in San Francisco when he left. I wondered how much longer I would actually be able to keep doing this. He said he was going to take Isabel to Manila for a few days and asked if I wanted to come along. I told him I’d love to but didn’t think I could get anyone to cover my shifts for me, when in truth it was because I was afraid I’d start looking for Cathy again. At that point, as far as I knew, she hadn’t left for Sweden yet.
After we finished eating, Larry signed the bill, and told me he’d walk with me back to The Lounge. I almost told him it wasn’t necessary, afraid he’d want to prod me more. But I said okay and we headed out.
“Didn’t that used to be Jammers?” he asked as we passed a boarded-up building a block south of Fields.
“Yeah. Closed up about four months ago,” I said.
“There never seemed to be many people inside whenever I stopped by.”
“Exactly why they closed.”
A little further on, he said, “Isabel wants me to take her to a place called Clowns tonight. You ever been there?”
“Yeah,” I said, smiling. “It’s a comedy club.”
“In English or Tagalog?”
“Both.” He had a worried look on his face, so I said, “Don’t worry, you’ll have a good time. But don’t let them know you’re a foreigner.”
He laughed. “It’s going to be pretty obvious, don’t you think?”
“Just don’t arrive too early, and whatever you do, when they ask if there are any visitors in the audience, don’t raise your hand.”
“Thanks for the tip.”
When we arrived at The Lounge, we stopped near the front door and shook hands. Larry then handed me the bag of Gordon Biersch Marzan he’d brought.
“Thanks,” I said. “Have fun in Manila.”
“We will. Hey, let’s you and me have a boys’ night out when we get back.”
“Okay, “ I said, then turned for the door.
“Doc,” Larry called out.
I looked back at him.
“If you ever do want to talk, I mean about anything, I’m here for you.”
“Thanks,” I said. I didn’t know what else to say.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Because of my lunch with Larry, I ended up getting to The Lounge sooner than I was expected. For a weekday afternoon, the bar was crowded, almost two dozen guys enjoying the show and a beer. I assumed Tommy must have sent out the call for reinforcement, because I noticed several girls from the night shift had come in early.
Tommy, never one to take his job as part-time papasan too seriously, was enjoying the special attention of one of the dancers, a girl named Charlene, and hadn’t noticed me come in. As I walked up, Charlene had just finished unbuttoning his shirt to his waist and was running her hands over his bare, hairy, flabby chest. He had a big grin on his face, and was urging her on with his eyes.
“Get you something to drink?” I asked him.
If I hadn’t been looking at him when he turned to me, I wouldn’t have noticed the flash of fear and surprise in his eyes. A fraction of a second later, it was gone.
“Hey, Doc,” he said.
“Comfortable?”
“Couldn’t be more so.”
Charlene’s hand moved down over his ample stomach toward his pants, then slipped under his waistband.
“I’ll take that drink now,” he said.
I laughed and signaled the waitress to bring Tommy a beer. The occasional fooling around on the job was not unusual. Papasans weren’t paid that much, so if a girl was willing to flirt with them, I long ago decided it wasn’t any of my business.
“I need to do a little work in back,” I said. “Come get me if you need me.”
I don’t know what Tommy was thinking. I guess he wasn’t. There had been a moment, right after I first arrived, when he could have taken action. The impulse had been there, it was what I’d seen in his eyes. But I suppose once Charlene’s hands started wandering around near his dick, his neural pathways had clogged up and his mind had gone blank.
In the end, he did get his act together. Only by then it was too late. I was already sitting at the desk in the office staring down at the remnants of two lines of white powder on the desk blotter. As if that wasn’t enough, there was the small plastic bag sitting nearby containing more of the stuff.
I didn’t even have to taste it to know it was cocaine. In my early Navy days I had tried it once. You never forget.