Brett Battles - The Pull of Gravity

I don’t know exactly what it was, maybe being away from Angeles, maybe not having to worry about any of my girls, but I felt happier than I had in months.

No, not months. Years.

I’d been wrong. A vacation with friends was exactly what I needed, perhaps what we all needed, because it was impossible to ignore the fact that each of us was feeling exceptionally good.

That night we were free. I wasn’t a papasan, Cathy wasn’t a bartender, Isabel wasn’t a bar dancer. We were just friends on a real vacation from our surreal lives.

I think we got back to the hotel around two in the morning. We stopped at Isabel and Larry’s room first and had a quick nightcap from their minibar. I was still sober enough not to stick around too long. To give the happy couple some privacy, I told them I was bushed, then put an arm around Cathy and headed out the door.

It was a couple of minutes’ walk to our rooms, but that entire time neither of us said a word. I still had my arm around her waist, but, honestly, was only thinking of lying down and going to sleep. I really was exhausted. With the exception of a few hours of sleep the night before, I’d been up and on the go for nearly thirty-six hours.

I can only guess what was going on in Cathy’s mind. She unlocked her door and lingered in the threshold for a few minutes, telling me what fun she’d had, what a great dancer I was, how she was too excited to go to sleep. I guess what she was trying to tell me should have been obvious, but the fatigued, inebriated mind only hears in fits and starts.

I think I leaned over and kissed her on the forehead before saying goodnight. I do know I said goodnight. And when I unlocked my own door and opened it, it didn’t strike me as odd that she was still standing in her doorway, looking at me. I waved, went inside and was asleep five minutes later.

The next morning I woke up before ten, only slightly hung over and with the vague recollection that Cathy had all but tried to drag me into her room the night before. I glanced around to be sure I hadn’t later gone and invited her over, but I was alone.

After a quick shower, I threw on a pair of blue shorts and my brown, vacation-only, Hawaiian-print shirt, slipped on my sandals, then went outside. It was sunny and hot and humid. Back home in Angeles, weather like this was one of those things that had begun to annoy me, but here it felt wonderful and right.

I found Larry drinking a cup of coffee alone on the raised deck that overlooked the beach.

I grunted a good morning as I took the seat across from him, then motioned to the waitress that I’d have a cup of what Larry was having. Service was quick and soon I was properly caffeinated.

“Isabel still asleep?” I asked.

“Don’t think she’s used to getting up before noon,” Larry said.

I chuckled, my head hurting only slightly from the reverberation. “I know the feeling.”

“Cathy asleep, too?” Larry asked.

“I assume so.”

Larry raised an eyebrow. “Assume?”

“I slept by myself if that’s what you’re asking.”

Larry took a sip of his coffee. “She really likes you. You know that, don’t you?”

“Yeah. I know,” I admitted.

“What about you?”

I shrugged, but said nothing.

“Not that I want to sell out my girlfriend or anything,” Larry said. “But just so you know, it was Isabel’s idea to bring Cathy along.”

“It’s okay,” I said, reaching for my cup. “I don’t mind.” It was beginning to dawn on me that I really didn’t mind. That, in fact, I might be happy she was here.

We sipped our coffee and watched waves for a while. There were already several people lounging on the white, sandy beach, and not far from shore two small boats sailed leisurely by. The water was clear and blue and near the beach you could see all the way to the bottom.

“Some of my friends back home couldn’t understand why I wanted to come here again,” Larry told me. “They said, ‘If you want to go to an island, why don’t you go to Hawaii?’ Hawaii’s nice and all, but…” He trailed off, his eyes never leaving one of the sailboats as it made its way down the coast.

“But Hawaii doesn’t have Isabel,” I said.

He looked at me for a moment, surprised at what I said, then smiled. “Exactly right. Hawaii doesn’t have Isabel.”

This was the trip when Isabel fell in love with Boracay. Larry would take her two more times, but those trips would be just the two of them. And by what Isabel told me after each one, they had been as wonderful as this first time. Larry loved it there, too. Before two days had even passed, he was already talking about buying a place on the island.

“You could use it whenever you want,” he told me.

He talked about that dream house right up until one of the last times I saw him. I could understand why. There was something special about the island. It was one of those places you just didn’t want to leave. A small tropical paradise, where the beach was never more than a few minutes away. Angeles, on the other hand, was stuck in the middle of a much larger island, hours from any beach. It might as well have been located in Kansas.

Isabel would talk about the house, too, but only when we were in Angeles and Larry was back in the States. She would go on about the different ways she would decorate it, about the type of maid she would be sure he hired, about what the view would be like from the bedroom balcony, for there would be a bedroom balcony.

On that second night of our shared vacation, we hooked up with a group of Aussies on one of those package-tour vacations. It was at the bar of another hotel. These weren’t the male-only sex tourists who came to Angeles. Instead they were a group of about a dozen married couples ranging in age from late thirties to early fifties. A hard-drinking, loud-laughing crew from Perth enjoying their last night on Boracay. They were just beginning a barhop of the hotels that lined White Beach, and since we had no set plans of our own, they invited us to join them. After a brief round of introductions, we were off.

Larry had told them Isabel was his fiancee and that Cathy and I were married. Despite the fact that the only ring Cathy wore was on the pinky of her right hand, they all bought it. Or at least pretended they did. As for Isabel and Cathy, they embraced these roles without missing a beat.

“How long have you been married?” one of the women, Noreen Simons, asked Cathy.

“Three years,” Cathy said, glancing at me to make sure I heard.

“Still the honeymoon stage,” Noreen said.

“Sometimes,” Cathy replied, a wry grin on her face.

“Where did you meet?” a woman, who had told us her name was Sherry, asked Isabel. She was one of the older members of the group, her graying hair cut short, and looked like she could drink most anyone under the table.

“Larry was on business in Manila,” she said as if she’d told the story a million times. “A cousin of mine introduced us.”

“What kind of business are you in?” Sherry’s husband, Curtis, asked Larry.

“International shipping,” Larry told him.

“How ’bout you, Jay?” Curtis said. “What do you do?”

“Not much. I’m kind of retired.”

“Kind of?” another man said. I think his name was Taylor.

“Occasionally, I have to do something to keep myself busy.”

They all laughed, and it was enough to change the subject to something new.

It was an evening of talk, drinking, laughing, dancing, a couple of horrible games of pool, and a final toast of champagne on the beach from several bottles appropriated from the last bar we’d been in.

“I’m going to hate getting on that plane tomorrow,” Curtis said to me. We were standing a few feet away from the others. “Perth’s nice, but it’s home, know what I mean? This place…it gets under your skin. Makes it hard to leave.”