The Pull of Gravity by Brett Battles Page B

this would be Isabel’s first EWR, so I asked again, “Are you one-hundred-percent sure?”
    “Yes, Papa Jay. He’s very nice. He says we only have to go out to dinner, then I can go home. No hotel. No sex.”
    How many times had I heard guys use that tack? A hundred? A thousand? And it was always with the idea that at dinner, or on a barhop afterward, he’d be able to convince the girl to go back to his room. But I was inclined to believe Larry meant it. After everything I’d learned about his trip so far, it actually seemed like a logical thing for him to do. Of course, he could have been lying to me about everything. He could have been a player who was playing even the papasan. But I didn’t think so. In fact, I was positive I hadn’t misjudged him.
    “So, can I go?” Isabel asked.
    When I didn’t answer right away, Cathy jumped in. “Of course you can.”
    But Isabel knew better than to go only on Cathy’s word. She looked at me, expectant.
    “Tell Larry to come over here,” I said. “Then go get changed.”
    A smile as wide as Luzon Island broke out on her face. Instead of immediately doing as I told her, she gave me a big hug.
    A few minutes later, Isabel was in the back changing into her street clothes, and Larry had joined me at the bar.
    I asked him the same thing I had asked Isabel. “You sure about this?”
    “Doc, why you always ask this question?” Cathy said.
    I looked back at her. “There’s got to be somebody somewhere who needs something to drink.”
    “Everybody’s good now. I’ll stay here,” she replied.
    Larry nodded. “I’m sure, Doc.” It was the first time he’d called me Doc. So I guessed I had Cathy to thank for that. “I’m just going to take her to dinner. That’s it.”
    “You know she’s a cherry girl,” I said.
    “She told me. As far as Angeles goes, I’m still a cherry boy,” he said. “So it’s the perfect match.”
    Cathy laughed. “That’s funny. You and Isabel a cherry couple,” she said.
    “Just be careful with her,” I told him. “She’s still inexperienced and could get hurt really easily.”
    “Doc, I told you. It’s just dinner. I’m not planning on breaking her heart.”
    I chuckled, conceding his point. “Then you owe me a thousand pesos.”
    “What?”
    “The bar fine,” I said. “It’s a thousand pesos.”
    “Right, sure. Here.” He dug into his pocket and pulled out a thousand-peso note and handed it to me. He glanced back at the table he had shared with Isabel. There were several empty glasses. “What about our drinks?”
    “Those are on me.”
    After they were gone, in what turned out to be a minor send-off party with almost all the girls rushing over to wish Isabel congratulations, it hit me that maybe the reason Larry hadn’t gone to Manila that afternoon was so that he could see Isabel again. Later, Larry told me there was no maybe about it. Something had happened between them the night he brought her the tea. Something that had made him stay in town one more day, and made Isabel hope he would return. He couldn’t tell me what that something was. I don’t think he knew. 
    •    •    •
    Most of what happened after that I pieced together from things Isabel and Larry told me in separate conversations over the next year or so.
    Dinner had been a two-hour affair at a place outside the district, an Italian restaurant Larry had come across in his wanderings. I don’t know what they ate; I never asked. I got the feeling there was a lot of small talk, a lot of gazing into each other’s eyes, and a lot of tuning out everything around them.
    After dinner, instead of Isabel going home per the plan she had told me, they ended up going to The Pit Stop, where they found a quiet spot and talked for hours. Isabel learned that Larry was a thirty-seven-year-old only child who had never been married, and had a fondness for chocolate-covered strawberries. Larry learned that Isabel was twenty-one, the third of seven