by P. F. Kluge
The airport people gave us priority. Filipinos to the back of the line. Filipinos took checking—papers, passport, contracts. That was a lesson I’d learned in other places. Never get in line behind a bunch of Filipinos, or you’d be waiting for hours. They were still there when I followed the fishermen into a hotel van parked outside of the airport terminal. My pals were raring to get started. I sat among them. The air here was hot and green. They said the island was like Guam and Saipan used to be, and Hawaii, once upon a time, see it now, my friend, get it while it’s good, before the Japanese take it over and price it out of reach, golf condos and sashimi, they’ve got plans for this place, megabucks, and the locals will be nigger-rich before you know it. I listened and laughed. The bullshit was comforting. Then I glanced out the window, toward the terminal, and what I saw scared me.
Jimmy Fiddler. Jimmy the Rat, the man of Malou’s nightmares, and mine, was leaning against the door of a red pickup truck while a group of Filipino Oversees Contract Workers climbed in back. Wrinkled khaki pants, rubber sandals, aloha shirt. Cigarette in one hand, Styrofoam coffee in the other, saying something like snap it up, come on, let’s move it. When they were all aboard he moved to the front of the pickup and talked through a rolled-down window to someone who was sitting inside. I might be wrong, I thought. Whitney’s letter made me jumpy. But it seemed to me he looked my way, nodding toward the van where I was sitting, shaking his head as if to say, guess what came walking off the plane?
Something was wrong at the hotel. I noticed it as soon as we arrived, something they were trying to cover, the way stewardesses patter to passengers when a plane that’s in trouble turns back to the airport. It took twenty minutes for me to check in and—though I didn’t have any luggage—some of my buddies waited another twenty minutes before their gear got to their rooms. Leaves floated in the swimming pool. On patio tables, cats foraged off plates of sashimi that had been left out the night before.
I asked the waitress what was happing, when she brought a lunch menu. A Filipina. She seemed nervous. “Problems,” she said, taking off. Most of the staff were from the Philippines and what was happening looked like what you might expect would happen if most of the slaves got sick. No disaster, no dead stoppage, just a slow fraying around the edges, cosmetic details going first, more serious things later. Decay, from the outside in. Not many people were around. And the ones who were all seemed to be doing someone else’s job. That was odd, because if you ran a place with Filipinos, you ran it with lots of Filipinos, two of them for every job. “Cheap and worth it.” Even back in the PI, overstaffing was chronic, provision of employment being the whole point: standing around and looking busy. Here, no one was standing around. And the people who were working were under strain. “Some kind of strike,” one of my buddies said. “Skeleton crew. Buffet dinner tonight. Apologies all around.”
Sure, no problem, a rental car was available, but I’d have to pick it up myself. So, that afternoon, after the worst heat had passed, I walked into the village to a gas station where I rented a Nissan that had chicken bones in the backseat. The manager, a local, looked like he was filling out his first rental agreement.
“Bad people is the problem,” he told me. “They come here and complain and they lie. They should thank us. They are lucky to be here.”
“Is it about money?” I asked.
“It is about Filipinos,” he said. “You know those people?” I shook my head. “Let me tell you about Filipinos. A Filipino is a problem. The more you hire, the more you need. You solve one problem, you make two. They get sick at home and homesick when they are here. They don’t belong. Was better here before they come.”
“Okay. If they go, who washes your rental car?”
He tossed the keys on the counter. “Tank is full going out, full coming back.”
I drove slowly through the village, weaving in and out of side roads, around the church and hospital. On islands, you drive cars the way you wear clothes. They identify you. Park your car outside a bar, the island knows that you’re drinking. Leave it on a beach, they know you’re fishing. Drive a rental car, you announce that you’re a tourist. They watch you pass, they know you’ll pass again, what goes around comes around on an island. They’ll see the car again. They won’t see you.
I was watching for the red pickup truck I’d seen in the airport. I didn’t know what I’d do when I found it. Park outside? Wait for Jimmy? Look for Malou? Park down the road, sit inside until dark, and then what? Creep up to windows? Whitney’s letter was four months old. I wondered what would be left of Malou and the others. It might be too late for Biggest Elvis to the rescue. Too little and too late. The ending I’d missed might not be ahead of me. It might be in the back someplace, on an unmarked night or day that I’d passed through, not knowing.
Jimmy the Rat and Malou. Could it be? I’d been wrong about him, I guessed. I’d written him off as a hot-weather mutant, a local character, a misfit who couldn’t make it in his own country and set himself up someplace else, never at the heart of things, always working the edges, like a scavenger bird along the waterline, feeding on what the tide washed in. A truly marginal guy, a con man who mostly conned himself, believing that wherever he went was the inside track. He wouldn’t get past the airport in Singapore, Hong Kong, or Japan, but the Philippines was perfect, for a career minor leaguer.
That was right, as far as it went. But I’d missed a lot. The way he focused on Malou. I guessed we had that in common and it made me uncomfortable. He’d fallen for her too. He’d cared enough to burn the house we slept in. And—if I had it right—he had followed her here, faster than I had followed her. Maybe he’d induced Baby Ronquillo to send him, so he could look after business, and have Malou as well. Maybe he hated her that much. Or wanted her that badly.
I drove for hours, I looped and circled through the afternoon, through a gaudy Marianas sunset, a full hour from orange and gold to deep, final purple. But I didn’t see the truck. And I didn’t want to ask. If he knew that I was looking for him, he’d come looking for me. Then, when darkness fell and stars came out and color TV screens bloomed in houses along the road, I saw the Darling Bar, right along the beach. I saw the fence, the main building, the long low structure in back, everything that Whitney had described. A car and truck were parked in front, the place was open. I saw the banner, tattered now, SEXY DYNAMITE DANCERS FROM MANILA. So this was what it all had come to.
One table of drinkers sat inside and they looked like they’d been there for a while. They stopped talking when I walked in, gave me a good looking-over, resumed talking when I sat at a bar and ordered a beer from a Filipino who’d been working one of those newspaper puzzles, how many words can you make out of these letters. You’re supposed to finish in twenty minutes. He was making a night of it.
The stage where Elvira and Lucy Number Three and Dolly had stood naked was empty now, cardboard boxes piled high. They were three beautiful women, I remembered, and they must have been something to see. I hated to think of them standing there like that. I hated knowing that this was what it had come to. At Graceland, the sex had happened offstage, after hours. It happened before I got there, it would have happened anyway, whether or not I was there. That’s what I had told myself. I was taking things as they were. And I made them better, I honestly did, for a while. Now it had all turned bad. Or—I had to ask myself—had it been that way, that bad, all along?
There’s nothing deader than a dead bar. I ordered another beer and sensed a ripple of curiosity behind me. Two beers in a place like this didn’t make sense. It was like sitting in someone’s empty cellar and calling it a night on the town. I walked over to the men’s room door. It was locked. Quarantined, maybe. I could smell fermenting piss through the door. The last man to leave hadn’t flushed.
“Sir,” the Filipino said. “Outside.” I stepped out back. Just one light was on in the building. I thought of walking over for a look but the drinkers were watching me. I went around the corner, pissed, a
nd returned. One of the local guys was waiting at the bar.
“Over from Guam?” he asked.
“R and R,” I said. I gave him my name, first name, and he gave me his: Gregorio. He wasn’t unfriendly, he wasn’t evil. He was beery, fat, and wasted. “I heard this was the place to go. If I wanted a takeout girl.”
“All finished.” Like a bakery that had run out of bread. “New bunch coming soon. Next week, maybe.”
“That’s good for you,” I said. “What about tonight? Are there any other places around?”
“This is bad time,” he confided. “The Filipinos make trouble. What you call strike.”
“Takeout girls on strike? Are you kidding me?”
“Stupid,” he said. “Not only girls. Construction, farmer, waiter, fishing. Complain about everything. Contract. Mistreat. Bullshit. They are so lucky to be here.”
“Where are they all?”
“In construction compound. Nineteenth Hole Corporation. Out by airport.”
It was the one part of the island I hadn’t driven to that afternoon. And the first time, when I’d arrived, I hadn’t noticed much, other than the Rat. A sense of fences, sheds, heavy equipment. Talk in the van about golf and megabucks. Heat and dust and spilled oil and laundry flapping in the wind.
“They went yesterday. Take over inside. Lock gate,” Gregorio said. “I think, we lock gate for good. And throw key. Police are there.”
“Well, shit,” I said. I didn’t want to take him any further. “High and dry on Saturday night.”
He nodded. My tough luck. I could see him preparing to change it, though, when he looked toward the building in back, the motel, the barracks, the coop.
“We got one girl, still,” he said.
“Bottom of the barrel?”
“No, no, she is very beautiful. Only little bit …” He searched for the right word. “Used.” At least, that’s what I thought he said. He invited me to take a look and decide for myself. The takeout charge was $100 only, payable to him. In advance. Then I walked across the yard, climbed un-painted wooden steps, knocked on the door.
“Coming soon, sir.” I heard her straightening up inside, the way kids clean up when parents knock. Then the door opened. She was wearing white shorts and blouse. Eyes downcast. I was a figure in the doorway and it didn’t matter about the expression on my face. She had great legs, I noticed, to my shame. I guess I’d never seen her in shorts, back in Olongapo. Then I saw her face. She’d been used, all right. Maybe the word that Gregorio had mumbled wasn’t used. Maybe it was abused. Or bruised. Whitney had a sunset of a shiner, all around her left eye.
“Come in, sir, if you wish.” I stepped inside and she closed the door behind me. Then she moved over to the window and closed the curtain: lavatory occupied, room in use, fall in line, first come, first served; first served, first come. I approached her from behind while she was still at the window. I put my hands on her shoulders. I could feel her flinch, a reflex she couldn’t disguise, involuntary protest at whatever was coming. Then I turned her toward me, put a hand under her chin, slowly raised her face. Her eyes were closed, the swollen one and the other, the good one, that reminded me of how she’d looked, back at Graceland. “Open your eyes,” I said. “Whitney, it’s …” I couldn’t make myself say the name. It stuck in my throat. Biggest Elvis: a couple words to choke on. She looked up, half-expecting another in a line of frauds, like this mini-America she’d landed on. She wouldn’t finish the sentence for me until she was sure.
“Biggest Elvis?”
“Yes … used to be. Got your letter.”
After that, she was in my arms, close. I guessed she didn’t want me to see her face. She held tight and there was no way of knowing how long she’d have kept on holding me like that. She had a lot of crying in her. It took a shout from outside to interrupt us.
“Hey buddy,” Gregorio shouted. “Sale or no sale?”
I stepped outside, down the steps to where he was waiting for me. Even then, I guessed that if we drank together or went fishing, I could like Gregorio. Gregorio wasn’t evil. He was a fat, beery, bullying small-time guy who’d become American without knowing what it meant and gotten rich before he knew how to handle it. His fat, happy time would be short. Once that golf course got going he’d be on the sidelines, complaining how big outside money had ruined his island.
“Somebody treated her rough,” I said. “That eye of hers …”
“So?” he asked. His buddies were outside, standing around a pickup truck. “You going to fuck her or paint her picture?”
That was the moment in the movie where Elvis slugs the guy. I’d always wondered what it was like to hit a deserving, unsuspecting fat man as hard as I could. But I reached for my wallet and handed over a $100 bill.
“I’m taking her out of here.”
“Sure, no problem,” he said. “Drop her off when you finish.” A horn sounded outside. “You’re missing the real action. That girl, she’s nothing.”
“What’s that?”
“Out at the labor camp. We’re going to take our island back.”
“You said police were there.”
“Local police, I said.” He winked at me. “No problem. They work for us.”
As soon as I got back to the room, I saw that Whitney’s bruised eye was just the beginning of her hurt. Some other things might never heal. The other Graceland girls were tougher or shrewder. Whitney had been miscast in Olongapo but the others had protected her. Here, it was like throwing a ramp model into a mud wrestling pit. While I’d been talking to Gregorio, Whitney had pulled a cardboard box from under her bed. She’d spread out a pile of paperbacks on top, like the squares of a quilt she’d been working on. The books were used, some with missing covers, the kind of random assortment that people leave behind in hotels: The Eiger Sanction, The Way West, A Bridge Too Far, Dead Cert, The Final Days, a dozen others.
“Biggest Elvis, I read them all,” Whitney reported to me. “Some of them I read more than one time.”
“That’s good,” I said. Right then, when she’d pulled herself together, I fell apart. Deep inside, I started weeping for us. For all the books I hadn’t brought. For all the letters that the girls wrote, to guys who went away and never answered. For all the time she’d been in pain, while I’d been gone.
“You test me,” she said. “You ask me anything, Biggest Elvis. I know all the story.”
I turned away and covered my face. Behind me, she continued.
“This one,” she said. “Bridge of San Luis Rey. It is happening long time ago in Peru. There is old bridge across very deep canyon in the mountain. One day, they have accident. Bridge breaks and some people die. Accident, no? But we learn the life of those people and we see, maybe this bad accident make sense.”
“We’re leaving here now, Whitney,” I said. “I’m taking you out.”
“Okay.”
“Is there anything you want to take? You won’t be coming back.”
“My clothings,” she said. “And can I take my books?”
Before we went to the hotel, I wanted to drive out to the airport, to the construction site the Filipinos had taken over. It looked nasty out there. There were pickup trucks along the road, some police cars and a fire engine, red and blue lights flashing, and dozens of people looking into the fenced compound where maids and waitresses and hostesses, domestics and farmworkers had gone, turning the place into a fort and interrupting construction of a Japanese-financed golf course–vacation home community that was supposed to be the equal of anything in Hawaii. We kept our distance but the locals were drinking. Some of them had guns. So far, the cops had kept them out of the compound. But they were local cops.
“The other girls go,” Whitney said quietly. “I’m afraid. I do not want to be hurt some more. And someone will be hurt here, I am thinking.”
I agreed. The Filipinos had locked the gate and blocked the entrance with graders and forklifts. Smudge pots and scrapwood fires burned around the insid
e of the fence and there were lights inside. They had a generator.
“How many are in there?” I asked. Surely not all, I thought. There’d always be some who hacked off. It would be wrong to assume they were all in on it. Every Filipino on the island wasn’t mistreated. Some were all right, others were almost like family. Others took mistreatment for granted, part of what you put up with for the money you sent home. No matter how bad it got, they would keep coming. Keep trying. Keep making the same mistake. They knew it. Everybody knew it.
“Maybe half,” Whitney said. As we drove away, I saw more cars and trucks coming up the road. And somewhere between the airport and the hotel, I decided what I was going to do. Or try to do. A plan formed while we drove through the night, Whitney sitting next to me as if we’d been on the road forever, quiet and relaxed, on an interstate that went on forever, miles and exits precisely marked. Maybe I’d been right when I guessed she’d been damaged for life. But now I wondered if I might not be in for a surprise.
“How old are you, Whitney?”
“Nineteen,” she said. “Teenager still. Just a kid, no?”
“Yes.”
“And you, Biggest Elvis? How old, you are?”
“More than forty.” I heard her laugh. “What’s so funny?”
“Double, my age.”
We came into the village, which seemed emptier than before, though it was only eight o’clock. The action was going to be at the airport in the wee hours, after they were drunk and before they fell asleep. There was no need even asking Whitney. Malou was inside the fence, I knew. She’d organized it. The generator, the fires, the forklifts behind the gate: that was Malou’s kind of thinking. Calculated. Organized. “The result is what you see.”