The Pull of Gravity

CHAPTER SIX

Life has the tendency to fall into cycles and rhythms that go on for indeterminate amounts of time before they gradually, or sometimes suddenly, move into a new phase. If you wait long enough, they often come right back to the beginning.

Life on Fields was no different. We had our high seasons and our low seasons. There were good weeks and bad. Sometimes the girls were grooving to the same happy beat, and other times they were so out of sync with each other that I was lucky Armageddon didn’t descend on all of us. But all in all, life at The Lounge was far from bad.

In fact, there were aspects of that life I loved-my relationships with most of the girls, getting to know more members of the ex-pat community, the interaction with the tourists who passed through, at least the non-idiotic ones, for tourists seemed to come to Angeles in all forms. There were also aspects of the life that I was never comfortable with, the foremost being the Early Work Release. The bar fine.

Though it wasn’t the first term that came to my mind when I thought about my time as a papasan, what I had really been was a pimp. I had my girls, I took care of them, watched over them, listened to their problems, and sold them again and again, night after night.

I wasn’t sure how the other papasans on Fields handled this aspect of things. Some, I had heard, didn’t care at all and pushed their girls to go on EWR whenever the opportunity presented itself, thinking only of the money the bar made from its share of the fine and how good that would make them look. Others might have been as conflicted about it as I was, but I don’t really know. I never talked about it with anyone.

When I was on duty, every time a girl was asked to go out on an EWR, I’d take her aside and ask if she really wanted to go. Not surprisingly, they almost always said yes. The guy could have been a serial killer, and nearly half the girls would have still said, “Sure. No problem. I can handle myself.” It was all about the money. Money was everything. Since the moment they were born, money had been what was missing in their lives, and the lives of their families. And now, in a single night, they could make more than their family back in whatever province they came from could make in a month. A thousand pesos a night was not uncommon. So for what amounted to about eighteen dollars in the States, these girls were willing to risk their lives.

It wasn’t that they were stupid. You wouldn’t last long on Fields if you were stupid. It was a case of the here and now. A thousand pesos in their pockets tonight was better than the chance of two thousand pesos tomorrow. It was a grab-as-you-can attitude. But who could blame them? They were all supporting families back home, and probably an unemployed Filipino boyfriend somewhere in the city, and perhaps even a baby. Maybe two.

The real sad part was they seldom had any plans. Dreams, sure. The girls had tons of dreams. Going to college, working in an office in Manila, owning their own bar. Meeting a foreign guy, and getting the hell off this islands. But most of the time, dreams were all they were. Money earned was as good as money spent, if not by the girls themselves, then by their families on things they didn’t need, or by the boyfriend who took her cash to buy cigarettes or beer or a part for his motorcycle that never seemed to run right.

As much as I could, I encouraged them to save their money. I didn’t know if I got through to anyone. They always gave me a big smile, their eyes wide as if they were learning something truly important, but then the next day they’d be just as poor as ever.

About the only thing I could do was try to minimize as much as possible the chance they might get hurt. After a girl told me she wanted to go out on a bar fine, I’d go with her over to the guy and start up a little small talk. If he seemed like an asshole, I’d make some excuse, fill him up with free drinks and send him on his way alone. The girls would be disappointed, but they trusted my judgment. If the guy seemed okay, I’d let the girl go.

It wasn’t a perfect system. To truly gauge a person, you needed more than a few minutes and gut instinct. It worked more than I had hoped, but it didn’t work all the time. Some sons of bitches hid their asshole tendencies well.

Unfortunately, when something bad happened, I didn’t usually learn about it right away, when it might have been possible for me to do something. Something like having another little chat with the guy, only this time there’d be nothing friendly about it. It wouldn’t reverse what he had done, but it might stop him from doing it again, at least at The Lounge.

But the way it worked, news would filter back to me through the girls days or even weeks later. Something like “so-and-so had been roughed up by some guy” or “stiffed on the tip” or “forced to do things she didn’t want to do.” When I did find out, I’d take the news hard. Then I’d tell all the girls again that they didn’t have to put up with any crap, and they had to tell me when they had problems so the same thing wouldn’t happen to any of the other girls. My biggest fear was that one day someone would come to tell me one of my girls was dead.

It never happened to me, but that didn’t mean it never happened.

It was my fourth year on the job. It wasn’t summer yet, but there were still plenty of tourists around. Isabel had been working for me for a few months, but hadn’t met Larry yet.

By then I had settled into a pretty regular routine: up by one in the afternoon, breakfast and a beer at The Pit Stop at three, “office” at six, last call at three in the morning, doors locked by four, in bed by four thirty, sometimes alone, sometimes not. Then repeat.

I lost months that way.

I didn’t drag myself out of bed until almost two p.m. that day. It was March 14^th, three days before our big St. Paddy’s Day blowout. We were going all out that year: green beer, body-painting contest, a pot of gold chocolate coins. I was looking forward to it. I had moved from de facto to official head papasan, or, if you prefer the more common term, bar manager. Good or bad, when something happened at The Lounge, I was the one who gave Robbie the news. So as boss, I decided Dandy Doug was going to help me that night. That way I wouldn’t have to work too hard and could actually enjoy myself.

Even though the event was three days away, there was still a lot to do so getting a late start didn’t put me in the greatest of moods. It was thanks to a few too many San Migs, courtesy of a regular customer who hadn’t been in town for several months. I hoped he didn’t plan on showing up again that evening. By the time I was sitting at my regular table at The Pit Stop, it was closer to four than three.

Dieter Russ, a German ex-pat who’d been working as a papasan almost as long as I had, was already there. His shift at Sinsations didn’t start until the same time mine did. We sometimes called Dieter “Wild Man” behind his back. He had this head of hair that just refused to stay combed. Within an hour of leaving home, he’d always look like he was wearing an unruly brown bush on his head. I bought him a can of gel once, the foamy kind. If he ever used it, I couldn’t tell.

I waved him over, and he joined me. The waitress brought over two San Miguels without even asking. Sometimes it paid to be a regular. I ordered a ham and cheese omelet, while Dieter got a plate of spaghetti. We tapped our bottles together, then took a drink. It was his second of the day, so his perpetual hangover had already subsided to manageable white noise, while mine was still restricting my ability to speak.

Until I was about three-quarters of the way through that first bottle, Dieter did all the talking. About what, I don’t remember. The girls, probably. It was the default subject.

The food arrived just as I was beginning to feel like this wasn’t going to be my last day on earth after all. Fifteen minutes later, my belly full of beer and grease, I was Angeles’ normal: internal temperature approximately ninety-nine degrees, vision slightly blurry, judgment questionable.

“When I have my own place,” Dieter said, “I think I’ll put the stage along one wall and the bar along the other.”

It was a common dream among the papasans to one day own a bar. At that point, I never gave it much thought. After all, I was only doing this on a temporary basis. At least that’s what I told everyone.

To hear Dieter or some of the other papasans talk about it, their places would be the best on Fields. They’d never make the mistakes their bosses did. They’d have better lineups, cheaper drink prices, nicer layouts. And something special, a hook that would keep people coming back. Like the almost nightly contests at Torpedoes, or the fireman pole through the ceiling they put in at Blenders so the girls could slide down onto the stage. I have to admit that last one was clever.

But few papasans ever actually took the step and bought a bar. And those who did soon found that their lineups weren’t any different than those at the other bars, that they couldn’t afford to offer cheaper drink prices, that most layouts were just a variation on a theme, and every gimmick they came up with had been done before.

“And I’m thinking of maybe a Hawaiian theme,” Dieter continued. “Maybe call it The Luau, something like that. What do you think?”

“How about The Stuffed Pig?” I said.

“Hey, that’s not bad.”

He started riffing on a list of possible special contests he could offer, but I barely heard him. My attention had been drawn to the entrance, where Tom Hill had just walked in looking very serious. Tom was a short, wiry man in his sixties with the reputation of never being happy about anything. He owned a small Internet cafe just up the road. After a disagreement with Carter, The Pit Stop’s owner, over something so stupid I couldn’t even remember it, Tom seldom set foot in the place anymore.

“So?” Dieter asked. There was a moment of silence, then, “Doc, you’re not even listening to me.”

“Sorry,” I said, then nodded my head in Tom’s direction.

Dieter turned to take a look. “Shit,” he said. “What’s this all about?”

“Don’t know.”

We both watched as Tom walked quickly past a waitress as she tried to offer him a table, then past the pool tables and over to the door of Carter’s office. He went in without knocking.

“Do you think we should check to make sure everything’s okay?” Dieter asked.

“Carter can handle himself,” I replied.

But when Dieter started to speak again, I held my hand up to silence him. I wanted to be able to hear if things got out of hand, just in case we did need to break it up. But moments later the door to the office opened again, and both Tom and Carter stepped out, not a smile between them. Only it didn’t appear they were mad at each other. When Carter spotted Dieter and me sitting there, he put a hand on Tom’s arm and said something, motioning in our direction. The two conferred for a few seconds, then Carter waved at us.

“You guys have a minute?” he called.

“Sure,” I said.

Dieter and I got up and walked over.

“What’s up?” Dieter asked.

“Not here,” Tom said.

Carter led us back into his office. It was a small room with a desk crammed into the corner, stacks of paper and files everywhere, and a couple of chairs for guests. Nobody sat.

“So?” I asked.

Tom looked at Carter before speaking. “There’s a dead girl at Las Palmas.” The Las Palmas Hotel was a favorite place to stay for the average Fields Avenue tourist, and only a couple blocks from The Pit Stop.

For a moment none of us moved or spoke. “Do they know who she is?” I asked.

“The only thing I heard was that she worked at The Lynx,” Tom said. “But I got that from one of the maids, so who knows.”

“What happened?” Dieter asked.

“Apparently the guest left her in his room and went out to party for a few hours. When he came back, she was dead. Couldn’t get much more. Anthony’s trying to keep a lid on it.” Anthony Staley was the owner and manager of the hotel.

“That won’t last long,” Carter said.

“Thanks for the tip,” I told Tom, meaning it.

There really wasn’t anything else to say, so Dieter and I headed back into the restaurant. We were barely through the door when Dieter stopped in his tracks.

“Aw, fuck,” he said.

I followed his gaze. Near the entrance several of the waitresses were gathered around another girl who looked like she’d just arrived. They all looked serious, and a couple were even beginning to cry. Out on the street, another girl ran by, headed for Jolly Jack’s. No one ever ran here. Not unless they had a really good reason.

The news was out, and within an hour, all of Fields would know. I don’t know how the girls did it, but they always had a way of finding out things they were better off not knowing. It was like a wildfire. We even had a name for it: The Bamboo Network.

That afternoon, it was in full swing.

While the network was great at spreading news quickly, it was lousy at reporting anything accurately. I heard all sorts of rumors and wild stories. At The Lounge that night, it was everything I could do to keep the girls calm. It got so bad I had the bartenders pass out two rounds of undiluted tequila shots just to take the edge off everyone.

One girl told me she heard that the dead girl had been murdered. “He hack her up, di ba? Blood all over. My friend’s cousin is a receptionist there, so she knows. This guy crazy.”

Another said she heard it was two girls fighting over a guy. I also heard drug overdose, suicide, jealous Filipino boyfriend, slip in the shower and heart attack. One girl even said it was from too much boom-boom.

The same informal survey revealed it had happened in room 66, 68, 72, 45, 59, 17 and 23. The only thing that was common was that a girl was dead and it happened at the Las Palmas Hotel.

“I’ll never go there again,” Bell, one of my dancers, told me. “If a guy want to bar fine me and he staying at Las Palmas, I say no way.”

She wasn’t the only one to express this same thought. A few hours later, though, after several drinks, she said that maybe the Las Palmas was okay, but she’d never go to the room the girl died in. “Ghost, di ba? Her spirit in there.”

This wasn’t the first time a bar girl had died in one of the hotels, and God knew it wouldn’t be the last. But every time the girls reacted as if it had never happened before, with panic, fear, vows to never set foot in such-and-such hotel again, vows to quit working the bars all together. Then a week later, maybe two, it was like nothing had happened. And within a month no one could even remember which hotel it had occurred in, let alone the room number.

For one night anyway, money had taken second place to something bigger, and none of the girls put much effort into getting bar fined. That was okay by me.

Near midnight, I noticed Isabel sitting alone in a booth near the back. I had Cathy make me two glasses of rum and Coke, then carried them across to where Isabel sat. I stood in front of the booth for several seconds before she looked up and noticed me.

“You okay?” I asked.

She smiled, but there wasn’t a lot behind it. I held up one of the glasses, and shook it a little so the ice jingled against the sides, then sat down beside her.

“For you,” I said as I handed the glass to her. “Cheers.” We clinked glasses, and took sips. Well, I took a sip. I don’t think Isabel did more than brush the rim with her lips.

“Back home, I don’t think I could ever afford a drink like this,” she said as she set the full glass on the small table in front of us.

“You miss home?” I asked. I guess I was trying to get her to replace one kind of grief with another. So much for my reputation as the psychiatrist of Fields Avenue.

“Sure,” she said. “Of course.”

“Tell me about it. Your home, I mean.”

She scoffed. “Too boring.”

“I want to know.”

She stared at me for several seconds, trying to determine if I was being serious. “Okay,” she finally said. “My parents have a little snack shop. It’s along a pretty busy highway. Some days we do okay, some days not.”

“What about your house?”

She laughed and gave me a look like I was not as smart as she thought I was. “We lived in the two rooms behind the shop.”

“Just you and your parents?”

Another laugh. “And my four brothers and two sisters and grandmother.”

“It sounds kind of crowded.”

“It is.”

“Did Mariella live near you?”

“No,” she said. “Her family moved closer to Manila when I was still a baby, I think.”

“You don’t know?”

She shook her head. “I didn’t meet her until I came here.”

“You’re kidding me.”

She shook her head, and we fell into silence. After several moments, Isabel said, “Do they know who she was yet?”

“I’m sorry?”

“The girl who died today. Do they know who she was?”

I unconsciously ran my hand across the stubble on my chin. “I haven’t heard anything yet. Do you think it might be someone you know?”

“No.” She looked around the room. “These are the only girls I know, and everyone’s here tonight.” She paused, then added, “Well, there’s Mariella. But I’m sure it’s not her.”

Mariella had moved on from The Lounge months earlier, but I didn’t think it was her, either.

“Do you think he killed her? The man she was with?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”

“How can she go home with someone who would kill her?”

“We don’t know he killed her. It could have been almost anything.”

“I know, but if he did?”

“Okay. If he did, maybe he doesn’t look like a killer.”

“I think I could tell.” She wasn’t really telling me so much as making a statement.

“Really?” I asked.

“Sure,” she said. “In his eyes.”

“What if he loved her? A crime of passion.”

“If someone really loved me, they would never kill me.”

I was about to tell her there were many other ways to die from love that had nothing to do with breathing, but that wasn’t what she was really looking for. Once more our conversation ebbed, and we contented ourselves with sipping our drinks.

“Are you going to be okay?” I asked once my glass was empty. There were other girls who needed attention, and I had already spent more time with Isabel than I should have. Of course, I always spent more time with Isabel than I should. I guess like with a favorite child, sometimes you couldn’t help yourself.

“I can’t help thinking how that girl has a family like mine somewhere,” she said. “And this week, instead of getting money from her, they’ll get her body.”

I thought she would start crying then. I know I wanted to. But her eyes remained dry. Even with just a handful of months in Angeles, she’d learned how to control her emotions, a fact that in the long run probably disturbed me more than the news of the dead girl.

The girls weren’t the only ones affected that night. About an hour before I closed, Dominick Valenti and Josh Harris stopped in for a drink. Both were ex-pats who lived in Angeles.

“No dates tonight?” I asked.

Neither had come in with a girl on his arm. I couldn’t remember the last time that happened.

“Shit, man, everyone’s freaked out over the thing at Las Palmas,” Josh said. He had been an aircraft machinist at Boeing in Seattle who’d retired early at fifty-five. “Last thing I want is some chick whining all night about some dead girl she never knew.”

I tried to smile sympathetically, but I wasn’t sure I pulled it off.

“Heard she was from Slo Joe’s,” Dominick-Nicky to most of us-said. He was a career Navy man who’d gotten a taste of the beautiful brown girls when he’d been a young sailor like me, only ten years earlier in the seventies. Now all that was left of his service days was a blurry blue tattoo on his left bicep and a perpetual crew cut. He was one of Angeles’ truly big boys, his gut taking up more than half his lap.

“I’d heard The Lynx,” I told him.

“God, I hope not,” Josh said. “I’ve got friends at The Lynx.”

“You got friends everywhere,” Nicky said.

We all laughed, but there was an undercurrent of tension. I could tell what they were thinking. They wanted to know if they knew the girl, and if they did, they wanted to know how well.

“Let me buy you both a drink,” I said.

When the beers arrived, San Migs for Nicky and me and a Heineken for Josh, Nicky held up his bottle and offered a toast. “To the dead girl,” he said. “May she find peace.”

Like most things on Fields, the truth was slow in emerging. It was over two months later before I had the full story.

The girl’s name had been Rosella Ramos. At the bars, she went by the name Vivian. She had been working at Jammers, not The Lynx, and had only been on the job for about four months. Somebody showed me a picture of her, but I didn’t recognize her.

Her papers said she was eighteen. Apparently the guy whose room she was in, an American from North Carolina named Steve or Stan-that was one thing I could never get cleared up-had met her on a previous trip. They’d kept in contact when he went home, and he even sent her money every month. She was new to the scene so to her this meant he loved her. And, who knows, maybe he did. But not enough, apparently.

When he came back, she latched on to him right away. Unfortunately, he probably hadn’t planned on spending his whole vacation with just one girl. Why he didn’t spend a few days in Manila first, sampling the offerings there before coming up to Angeles, I could never figure out. He had to know she was waiting for him.

Anyway, about halfway through the trip, he got the itch to try someone new. Only he couldn’t shake his honey ko-his girlfriend. He started going out in the afternoons, saying he wanted to spend a few hours with his buddies drinking and playing pool. He’d leave her in the room with the TV and tell her he’d be back in the afternoon.

Of course he was lying.

There were two levels of bar fines: long time and short time. Long time meant an overnight stay sometimes lasting until the next evening. Short time was exactly what it sounded like: a few hours of fun then everyone back to the bars. What this guy did was rent a room at another hotel, then take a girl at one of the early-opening bars out for short time so he could get in his extra-curricular activities that way. What he didn’t count on was his honey ko following him the third day he used this scheme. Once she realized what he was doing, she played it cool, and returned to the room without him knowing.

The next day, when he went to leave for his afternoon “with the boys,” she had a fit. She said she knew he was cheating on her. She said she didn’t want him to go. He told her she was crazy, that this was his vacation and he was going out. Before he reached the door, she told him she would kill herself if he left. Apparently he laughed, and walked out the door without saying anything. The truth is, any veteran of Fields would have done the same thing. Several girls threatened to kill themselves on a regular basis. It was drama designed to let them sink their nails a little deeper into their targets. They thought if they could get a strong enough hold, they might be able to shake a little more cash loose, or, better yet, bewitch the men to the point they’d marry them and take them away.

So the guy left Rosella alone in his room while he went out for a little stress relief. From this point, I could only guess at what happened next. As I saw it, there were really only two possibilities. One: Rosella was truly crushed to the point she didn’t want to live anymore and decided to end it all, then and there. But given the fact she’d been in the business for only a few months, I couldn’t believe she could have sunk so low so fast.

Option two seemed more likely. She knew from the previous days that her boyfriend returned around two p.m. each day. She planned it so that when he came back she wouldn’t be dead yet, but close. The signs of her faux suicide attempt would be on the nightstand, giving him little chance to misunderstand what was happening. He’d then call a doctor and save her life. This was her way of showing him how much she loved him, and how she would rather be dead if she couldn’t have him.

What she didn’t count on was that after their fight that afternoon, he decided to enjoy his new friend for an extra hour, and didn’t return until almost three p.m., a good half hour after Rosella took her last breath.