CHAPTER 5 | THE CITY OF GENTLE PEOPLE
Elena flew into Manila the third week of September. By then I was volunteering at the Center, concentrating on a review of their credit processes and reporting my findings back to Edwin. Since the bank’s sale was set to go through in October, I took the last chunk of liquid cash I had and turned it over to the Center as a term loan to fund their microfinance program. It felt strange having a few thousand left in my account, but I wasn’t worried since I’d just received the projected payout of my equity share from Don. By the following month I would have enough cash to buy my own MFI if I wanted to.
I was surprised when Elena capitulated to my regular appeals to come out for a week. I wasted no time buying her a first-class ticket from San Francisco before she had a chance to reconsider. Mark and Sarah were planning to peel away for a long weekend and join us, and I had my heart set on one of the lush islands I’d heard about from others I met at the Shangri-La. The top recommendations were Palawan for the natural beauty and Boracay for fun. When I mentioned this to Sarah she had another idea. Seems a friend of hers was down on the island of Negros studying cockfighting culture, and she discovered a place there to scuba dive with sea turtles. When I mentioned the turtles to Elena, she was hooked. I was pretty sure they sold her more than the thought of spending time with me, but it didn’t matter. I missed her warm touch.
It was strange to see Elena outside of her environment, and I sensed that stepping out of her world of yoga studios and offbeat friends, she struggled to gain her footing. Natural, I suppose, and something I could relate to. But everything went sideways from the moment she walked off the plane. Whenever she looked at me, her sunny face fell overcast. It was as if I had done her wrong, and nothing I said or did could make up for it. We shared a bed, but she only agreed to come on the trip if I promised to keep things cool between us. I figured I could keep my self-control for nine days, holding out the hope that a few glasses of wine might loosen her up enough to cause that agreement to be revisited ad-hoc. Either way, I was happy to see her and intent on not screwing things up too early on. Yet I knew the minute I saw her at the airport I was in for a rough time with her.
I took her around the Center, introducing her to Edwin, Sarah, Mark, and everyone else. I couldn’t take my eyes off her, watching as she connected with everyone else with a gracious smile. She looked like a magnanimous queen and the people I’d been working with treated her with a warmth I wished I got from them (and her). They were kind to me, of course, but she seemed to bring out a side in people that lay hidden from the rest of the world, especially other women. It was as if she were giving them permission to shout out, “I am lioness, hear me roar!” Of course, whenever heads were turned, or we were alone, she would cast a cool glance or a hurtful barb to try to knock me down a notch. I mentioned my observations to her a few times, but she acted like I was delusional and labeled me annoying. I stopped bringing it up after a couple days. My ex-wife pulled the same crap with me, so I assumed I just brought out the worst in women once they were caught up in my romantic orbit.
I was glad that Elena and Sarah hit it off well; I somehow knew they would. A day later the four of us, including Mark, were on a short flight out of Manila. We landed at Dumaguete airport on the tip of the boot-shaped island of Negros–one of the larger islands of the Philippine archipelago. The airport was a tiny strip with a single building and one lone gate, and much of the little city struck a similar vein. I was pleased that despite its diminutive size, it had a grand old hotel overlooking a beautiful beach promenade. We booked two rooms facing the water, and I wasted no time booking our scuba tour to a place called Apo Island out of a shop down the street. The shop promised us turtles.
A Catholic University town, Dumaguete offered a healthy blend of student liveliness and scant non-native tourists. Though, I didn’t expect to see so many lascivious old ex-pats with arms draped around tiny girls that should have been in school. It was a sad sight, especially in our hotel lobby, which we avoided most of the time. Sometimes, I would look at one of the girls and try to picture myself with her, but the brief thought sent a shudder down my spine. These men had given up on their own kind, both country and people, and taken refuge in a place where their pensions afforded them an affection absent in their previous life. A sorry sight and I considered myself lucky not to have devolved to that state.
The next morning the four of us went diving, though Elena and Sarah decided to snorkel instead of opting for the certification needed for diving with tanks. The dive shop owner was a crusty-looking man in his sixties from Northern California. Nate had sold the family winery and decided to make a go of it in the tropics, buying up the shop and purchasing a motorized wooden trimaran for ferrying people over to Apo Island, just a few miles off the main island. His grisly white beard, shark’s tooth necklace and sour looks belied an affable person who welcomed his new environment. He treated his crew and guests with courtesy and expressed an obvious joy for island life. While Sarah and Elena found plenty of things to talk about, Elena’s insatiable curiosity about life in the Philippines for Sarah took up most of the weekend’s conversations. I spent a majority of the time talking with Nate. Mark, as usual, remained in the background, taking photographs of most everything.
For a man who’d risked most of his savings on this new venture, Nate’s insecurity at keeping it afloat was natural. Although, with each minute I spent with him, I sensed the decision still vexed him, and he remained mired in anxiety. It came out not just in the many references to the stock market back home, but also for his disdain of the expat culture. While he claimed they were a bunch of lecherous old men preying on young girls, later, I couldn’t help noticing that his girlfriend was local and quite young herself. At dinner, Sarah mentioned that this seedy side of expat culture ran rife throughout Southeast Asia–lonely old men buying their way into families. On the flip side, they were also signing up to contribute to the household income of the immediate family, and sometimes the extended family of their girlfriends. Seemed like a high price to pay for what I overheard mentioned as a “good piece of ass.”
We saw more turtles than I expected at Apo Island. They glided by in such shallow water we didn’t really need air tanks to see them. At one point, I caught Elena’s arm and pulled her down from the surface, feeding her my second regulator mouthpiece so we could hover and watch them together. I couldn’t help noticing her red hair swirling through the brine and remembering the wall dive dream months earlier. At one point she gazed over at me and I could see her eyes smiling as she slowly moved close enough that I could wrap my arms around her while we watched turtles the size of manhole covers drift past us. It was one of the few times she let me get close to her on that trip, and I reveled in it. In fact, I made a mistake in thinking she was no longer peeved with me for whatever mysterious slight I’d caused. But once we were on the surface I saw her gaze warp back to angry reproach. I shrugged it off and swam away from her.
The island itself was a bit of a rocky crag with villagers coming over to sell us t-shirts with turtles emblazoned on them. We all bought one, posing for a few silly pictures. Sarah made a kind remark about the Irish accent of the young man who’d taken the pictures. This was not uncommon for her, and I’m sure Mark never took it as flirting. If he did, he never let on.
The Irishman struck me as very approachable and I recall a welcoming grin from the back of the jeep when we were leaving the dive shop. He was stout, with large biceps, short reddish hair and fun-loving mischief in his eyes. He was so stereotypically Irish and like many of his countrymen I couldn’t tell if his smile and gestures were leading up to a brawl or friendly repartee. It didn’t surprise me when Sarah asked him to join us for dinner later that evening. She wanted to try the new pizza place in town and that sounded pretty good after a day of sun and wind and swimming with sea turtles.
After bidding farewell to Nate and his tribe of locals, we all showered up and met back at the pizza place later.
Patrick made a fun addition to our little group and sitting there at a table overlooking the beach, swilling cold beer and waiting for our pizza, I felt the magic in our conversation light up as we shared stories of Nate and the turtles. Elena wore a see-through long white sun dress, and she caught me staring at her too long and winked at me. She liked knowing that I desired her. All I wanted to do was to be alone with her, though I was glad to have the additional company. I hadn’t been listening to the conversation, but it wasn’t surprising that the main participants were Sarah and Patrick.
“Well, yeah… I’m on an around-the-world trip, so it adds up after a while,” I heard Patrick say as I faded back in.
“That sounds like fun,” she responded with her usual gusto.
“Yeah, I left my job back in Ireland eight months ago and I have about three months before I go back. My boss said I could come back, but after what I’ve seen and done I just don’t know if I’ll go back to doing what I was doing. Just a bunch of spreadsheets.”
“I know what you mean,” Mark piped in. “By the way, where all have you been so far?”
“Oh, well. I spent some time in Africa, the Middle East, then India. I was planning to do more of Southeast Asia, but I got stuck down in Indonesia.”
“Oh yeah? What happened there?” Sarah asked.
“It was like this. I was on my way to Bali for a little scuba diving and sightseeing, but then a friend of mine who works for the BBC was finishing up a documentary on an Irish priest down on the island of Java. So, I stopped there first to visit and to check things out and wound up spending two months volunteering.”
“What kept you there?”
“Father Jack. The man’s amazing. He’s been down there forty years and has completely transformed a forgotten little slice of the jungle.”
“Really?” Elena raised an eyebrow and shot me a curious look.
“Yeah. He’s built roads, schools, buildings, and loads of other stuff. He’s helping the poor in ways I’ve never seen before.”
“Fascinating!” Sarah said.
“Yeah, if you all have time I can show you some footage from the documentary. It’s not coming out for another few months, but my friend sent me a rough cut. Most entrepreneurial priest I’ve ever seen and all of it devoted to helping the poor. Very inspirational.”
So, after pizza and more beers, I found myself hunched over a laptop on the couch in the lobby of our hotel with everyone else, watching the documentary of Father Jack. The lechers were there, but they merely glanced at us with passing interest in between unsavory kisses.
At first, I was only interested in getting through the documentary so that I could be rid of everyone else and get Elena alone and take advantage of the good mood she was in. Although, every time I was alone with her I felt like someone else had wrestled control over her being and my Elena was inside there somewhere, locked away in a dungeon. Of course, I kept all these thoughts a secret and feigned enthusiasm on the outside. Within minutes I couldn’t help getting sucked into the story of an old man with a thick brogue doing amazing things deep in the tropics. I was enthralled by the priest’s singsong Irish voice, wit and charm and the moving scenes of his determination and work to accomplish great things in what seemed like a far-flung patch of jungle long forgotten by everyone else, including its own government. He seemed like a normal guy in many ways, and I felt the force of his charm through the screen like a cobra swaying to his master’s rhythms.
During one of the pauses between clips, I tilted my head to Elena and her eyes narrowed at mine, a slight twinkle in them. I couldn’t say for sure then that she knew what I was thinking, but later after everyone left and we were together in the room, she gave me a searching look as we both gazed out from the veranda onto the beach. The old men selling fish were packing things up, leaving small groups of young people walking up and down the promenade. Many of them were laughing with a giddiness that reminded me of the early fall in Annapolis–young women coming down from Baltimore dressed in their best in hopes of snagging a naval officer husband.
“You know, that was some documentary,” Elena said finally, turning to me. I kept my eyes out over the water, trying to make out whether the single white light out there came from a ship.
“Yeah,” I muttered, slapping a mosquito on my leg. “Damn these mosquitoes!”
“Father Jack seems like an inspirational guy. I bet he’ll inspire others to put their entrepreneurial talents to work helping the poor.” I knew what she was doing, but I didn’t want to let on. “Might be fun to check him out in person.”
“I guess so. I hear Indonesia is hotter than here. I pity the man that has to live there.”
“People can get used to just about anything–especially if it’s integral to their path.”
“Well, speaking for myself, I’d say I’m still not getting used to us not having sex.”
She paused for a moment, and I felt my stomach drop. I’d crossed the line with her, realizing all those dirty looks and attempts to avoid me held simmering rage. She shook her head and took a deep breath. “I knew this was going to happen. I knew it I knew I knew it!” She lifted her face up and I saw the devil in them. “I told you I wasn’t ready for that, and now all this pressure. I’m sick of it, Harry!”
“I’m sick of it, too!” I felt the lid come off my own pot. “Next week marks a year since we first met. Most people in loving relationships are having sex by now.”
“Well, I’m not most people!”
“I don’t even know who you are!” I shot back. “I feel like I’ve been watching Jekyll and Hyde in action this past week. One minute you’re Mother Theresa to a bunch of villagers and then you turn around and call me a loser for liking my eggs boiled instead of fried. Do you not like me or something?”
“Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. I don’t know why. And I never called you a loser.”
“I was there, Elena. You saying I don’t hear with my ears?”
“I’m saying you’re delusional. You hear what you want to hear and see what you want to see.”
“Well, right now I’m not sure who I’m seeing.”
“That’s what I’m talking about. You see me on some pedestal. You tell me how beautiful I am. I am beautiful. I’m also ugly. I’m kind. But I’m also a real bitch. You don’t see me. You don’t see anyone for who they are. A real man would see me and know how to handle me. You’re just too sensitive. Fucking baby!”
“Fuck you, cunt!”
I’m not sure I’d ever said those words to woman. But she found a way to get to me on a level not even my ex-wife could manage. The rest of the conversation spun down into dark tumult, and I wound up sleeping on the hardwood floor–self banishment. Usually calm and cool, I let my anger get the best of me and so did she. It was bound to happen, anyway, and in retrospect probably a good thing. The next morning, she crawled down on the floor next to me and lay against my back. I was dead tired after a fitful night of tossing around on what felt like sleeping on stainless steel. She took a deep breath and began whispering into my ear that she was still recovering from her last relationship and that he had done things to her that she wasn’t ready to talk about, but that hurt her in a way that made it difficult to take that step with me or anyone else. I listened without turning to her, taking it all in. The fog of exhaustion cast the whole situation into a surreal field and I felt like I was in a dream. She never talked in that tone before–like a scared little girl. I said nothing, just listened to her. When she was done, she collapsed onto me and I rolled over and took her in my arms. I held her in that way for what seemed like hours.
We didn’t talk about it again the rest of her visit, but she had introduced something new into our relationship. It felt like starting over but with a different version of someone I already knew–someone vulnerable in a way that scared me too. I understood in my heart that I had to decide on whether I could live with this new person–and for once didn’t have a quick answer for myself. A year earlier an
d I would have given her the boot right then without a second thought. Something had already shifted in me. Not just about her, but about the whole world. It made me hesitate and catch that sharp mind and tongue before they charged the battlefield.
We made the most of our time together, though. Patrick stuck around for one more day and then he was gone to dive with thresher sharks off Cebu. I envied his freedom to float around wherever he wanted whenever it suited him. Mark and Sarah stayed until Monday afternoon, and we managed to squeeze as much fun as we could from their company before they headed back to Manila. It didn’t matter if we went to the beach, explored the local college, or just sat around chatting about the Center, I felt something special in the dynamic of the four of us all together. I can’t explain it beyond recognizing a form of individuation achieved through the company of just the right mix of people. Perhaps like when the sails are trimmed just right, and the sailboat is hitting its sweet spot. Like sailing, it didn’t last long without careful maintenance.
Once everyone had left and I had Elena to myself, I wasn’t sure what to do. I knew the door to sex was shut tight and the sudden slamming of it had undermined the sensuality in our relationship. We still slept in the same bed–after that night on the floor I don’t think my body could have handled another like it. I thought we were doing our best to repair whatever was broken by not addressing anything head on, tenderness still rubbed raw. Internally, part of me kept shouting out to pull the plug as a big waste of energy. Too much work! While another part would catch a glimpse of the way her shoulder gleamed in the morning sun as she stabbed little potatoes with her fork at the breakfast table, feeling a deep love well inside me, or was it lust? All relationships have their issues to navigate. She had a scary monster living in her closet, that’s for sure. Maybe I also had one just as scary. I guess the fate of our relationship came down to whether we could accept one another and all despite the baggage we each brought to the table.
Crossing Allenby Bridge Page 13