Two nights later, Larry stopped by The Lounge alone.
“I was wondering when we could have that boys’ night out,” he said as we sat at the bar.
“Kind of tough for me to get away right now,” I said. “I’m down a papasan, so Doug and I are working every day.”
When he asked what happened, I looked around to make sure no one else was nearby, then told him the Tommy story.
After I finished, he said, “That sucks,” then took a sip of his beer.
“You don’t seem surprised,” I said.
“Were you?”
“Of course I was,” I said.
He nodded. He took another drink of his beer, then set it down on the counter and turned on his barstool so he was facing the dance stage. “Have you looked at this place lately?”
“I look at it every day.”
“On my last trip, The Lounge was the place to be. Every night was like a party. All the girls were having fun, they all felt cared for and watched over. By you. That was about the same time you bought a share of this place, right?”
“Yeah. I think so.”
“Cathy left you not long after that, didn’t she?”
“What the hell does that have to do with anything?” I asked.
He chuckled as if I’d said something funny. “I know you’ve been thrown into the shit, but you’ve got to pull yourself out.”
“Maybe you need to mind your own business a little more,” I told him.
“Maybe,” he replied.
One of the dancers walked by and tried to catch Larry’s eye, going so far as to run her hand across Larry’s knee as she passed. He gave her a quick smile, but shook his head so she walked on.
“That wouldn’t have happened before,” Larry said.
“What?” I asked.
“Everyone here knows I’m Isabel’s boyfriend. In the past, that meant none of the girls tried to make a move on me. But the atmosphere’s changed. It’s like no one cares about anyone else here anymore. Every girl for herself.”
“That’s crap,” I said.
“No,” he said, “it’s not.” He looked me in the eyes. “You used to have control of this place. I used to watch you work. You were gentle, but firm. Now? It’s like you just don’t care. If I can see it, you know the girls can see it. They take their cues from you so now they don’t care, either.”
I pushed up off my stool, my eyes narrowing with anger. “You come here two or three times a year,” I said, keeping my voice low so no one else could hear what I was saying. “You barely spend any time in my bar at all, and yet you’re telling me I’ve lost control of my business? Who the hell are you to do that?”
“A friend,” he said calmly.
“Well, fuck you, friend.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Isabel told me our little discussion caused more friction when Larry got back to the hotel. She was on the bed, propped up against the headboard watching TV, when he returned.
“I thought you were going to take a nap,” he said as he sat down next to her.
“I did for a while,” she said.
Isabel had the TV tuned to the music video channel. Most were Filipino bands singing in a mixture of Tagalog and English. But occasionally, a band from the States or the U.K. would show up.
Larry kicked off his shoes and stretched out, his eyes half closed.
“I thought we were going out,” Isabel said.
“Sure. Whenever you’re ready.”
“I’m ready now.”
Larry opened one eye and looked at her, smiling. “Just let me rest here for a few minutes first, okay?”
He closed his eye again, and soon his breathing became steady and deep.
“Where did you go?” Isabel asked.
When he didn’t answer, she nudged him and asked the question again.
Without opening his eyes, he said in a sleepy voice, “I went to The Lounge.”
“Why you go there?” she asked. “I’m not working tonight.”
“Doc is.”
“You talk to Papa?”
“Sort of,” he said.
“You not go out and meet another girl for short time?”
That got him to open his eyes. “What?”
“Maybe you want to have a little fun so you leave me here in the room.”
He pushed himself up on his elbows. “I went to see Jay. I had a beer, then I came back here. Why do you think I was with another girl?”
“All guys do it.” It was her biggest fear, one that gave her nightmares several times a week.
“We’ve been through this before,” he said, lying back down and closing his eyes.
“So you agree with me all guys do it?”
“When did I say that?” he asked. “And just so we’re clear, no, I don’t think all guys do it. I don’t do it.”
“How do I know you’re not lying?”
He exhaled, then sat all the way up, swinging his feet around and putting them on the floor. After a moment, he stood, and then turned and looked down at Isabel. “Because I’m not,” he said.
“You really went and visited Papa Jay?”
“Why don’t you go over there and ask him, if you want? He’s not likely to forget that I was there.”
His words confused her, so she asked him what he meant. He told her about his conversation with me.
“What?” she asked, horrified.
“What’s the problem?” he asked.
“You told him all that?”
He nodded. “You’re the one who said things weren’t the same anymore.”
“You didn’t tell him I said that, did you?”
“Your name didn’t even come up.”
She pulled her knees to her chest and began rubbing the sides of her head with her hands. “Why did you have to say anything?”
“Because that’s what friends do.”
Her head was pounding. How was she ever going to go back to work? She didn’t know how she would be able to face me again. She thought I would tell her to leave the moment she walked in, that I would blame her for everything Larry had said. Even if I wasn’t the same person I’d been a few months earlier, I was still her boss, still the one who watched out for her when Larry was thousands of miles away.
She jumped off the bed and raced to the bathroom, but the tears came before she was able to get inside, and by the time she had the door shut behind her, she was sobbing. Within seconds, Larry was on the other side.
“Isabel, it’s not that bad,” he said, his voice muffled by the door. “You said you wanted to help him, so I tried to help him.”
She had said that, but this wasn’t what she meant.
She reached up to make sure the door was locked. For ten minutes, Larry continued trying to talk to her, but she refused to answer him. And when he left the room, she didn’t even hear the door open, her sobs deafening her to anything else.
I have no way of knowing what Larry was thinking when he left the room. Maybe that if he gave her a little time alone she would calm down and see he had only been trying to do the right thing. Or maybe his intentions had been to find help right from the start. Whatever it was, at some point he found himself on Fields Avenue, ducking in and out of the different bars looking for someone he thought could make Isabel come to her senses. Looking for Mariella.
We are all fools at one time or another in our lives. Most of us are fools on more than one occasion. Larry was a fool that night. I knew for a fact he was not fond of Mariella, and he had to know that Isabel, even if she hadn’t said anything to him, had issues with her, too. But for some reason, he put that aside. If Cathy had still been in town, she would have undoubtedly been the one he asked to help him, and if we hadn’t just had our own fight, he would have come to me next. Who else did he know here? No one, really. No one but Mariella.
He found her playing pool at The Eight Ball. I don’t know what he said to her, but soon they were on their way back to his room.
Isabel had no idea how long she had been in the bathroom when she heard the front door open. Until that moment, she thought Larry was still in the room, but realized he must have left sometime earlier.