by P. F. Kluge
I marched Whitney up to the front desk, said this was my guest, she’d be staying here with me, they should give her a key to the room and anything else she wanted. The clerk was surprised at the fuss I was making, bringing a takeout girl up to my room, but he obliged.
As soon as we got to my room, Whitney disappeared in the bathroom. From the sound of it, she filled the tub all the way to the top. It would take more than a bath to wash off what had happened to her here. But it was a start. After a while, I heard her singing. “We Are the World.” Taking all the parts, hitting some, missing others.
I was on the phone and for the first time in a while, I had some luck. I got through to Chester, who was out on the Graceland II, north of Guam, and Dude was with him, a TV celebrity, just in from LA. I told them to come, and soon. Something had to be done but it wasn’t a solo act. I needed them here. When Whitney came out of the bathroom, a towel wrapped around her, I said I was going out to the construction site.
“Some friends of ours are in trouble,” I said, “and if I’m there it might not happen.” I did not mention Malou’s name. Whitney already knew what Malou meant to me and it seemed cruel to remind her, after what she’d gone through. She was so relaxed and easy around me. I couldn’t bring myself to ask about Malou. She seemed so happy but the chances were she’d be on her own again, alone. “If there’s someone around who cares … an outsider … the worst things might not happen,” I said.
“Okay,” she said. But when I said she should stay here, rest, order from room service, maybe buy a pair of sunglasses at the gift shop, she shook her head. She didn’t want me walking off, leaving her by herself. “I’m going with you,” she said. She looked around and shuddered. “Not stay here.”
“Are you sure?”
“I go with you,” she said.
I parked at the airport, well away from the other cars and trucks. We walked toward the construction site, lit up like a carnival or county fair, where there might be fireworks later on. I could hear music, from a gaggle of ghetto blasters and car radios. Closer to the compound I saw that things had gotten worse. The police were still there and I saw a priest circulating through what looked like a collection of tailgate parties, but that didn’t stop the crowd from cheering when someone dashed out, ran toward the fence, and lobbed a rock into the compound. The Filipinos didn’t return fire. They stayed back from the fence, in buildings and in the shadows, though a couple of them were hunkered down right by the gate, inside a shed. When we got closer, Whitney put her hand in mine.
“You want to go back?” I asked. “Sit in the car at least?”
“No …” I realized there wasn’t a place on this island where she’d feel safe alone, not the inside of a u-drive or the lobby of the police station or my hotel room. Every beach, every dirt road into the boondocks had bad memories.
“I come with you,” she said. She hesitated, her voice got even quieter. “Maybe you need me.”
I wondered what she meant by that, but by then we were among the cars and trucks, the beer cans and barbecue. At first no one paid much attention to us. They were concentrating on the compound. Waiting for the right moment. Working up to it. How often did this happen, I wondered, uneven contests in out-of-the-way places? Mismatches, unreported, no referees, no rules, no reporters, all the advantage on the side of the home team. I didn’t kid myself that the people on the outside were villains and there was only virtue inside the fence. Or that, if the sides were reversed, if the Marianas Islanders were poor and away from home, if the Filipinos got suddenly rich, things would be any different. Still, I knew what side I was on tonight.
We stopped where the last row of cars pointed in toward the compound, headlights on. Now it felt like we were in a drive-in, waiting for the movie to start. Standing here, we were among spectators; in a few steps we’d be actors. Here, I was still the man who walked around Hong Kong Sunday afternoons. Whitney was the girl in the VIP lounge, looking at the action down below, the show just starting. But now I knew where I was headed. Biggest Elvis’ last show. The Original had been booked into Portland, Maine, the first concert after he died. If it came to that, to dying, this was going to be better than Portland. Better than Graceland.
“Well,” I said to Whitney.
“We go inside,” she said.
Two hundred feet separated us from the gate, a red-clay field, rutted by heavy equipment, half-baked by heat. We were halfway there before the people behind us reacted.
“Sir,” a cop called out, “you don’t go in there.” He didn’t move to stop me, though. “Fuck you, man!” the owner of the Darling Bar called out. “Fuck her too!” Then someone said something in Chamorro—surely to the effect that Whitney had been amply fucked already—and they settled for laughing at us, heaving a few Budweisers our way. Garbage after garbage. What difference, one used hostess, more or less. If some dumb American allowed himself to be conned into escorting a takeout girl into the cage, so what? He’d paid in advance. Still, I hoped that my being there would worry them. The outside witness, the inconvenient American. Clueless. Hapless. Annoying.
The gate was chained and shut. Whitney said something in Tagalog and one of the guys behind the fence hustled off to the main building. When he came back, someone else was with him. She nodded at Whitney.
“Hello, Biggest Elvis,” Elvira said, as if we were back at her apartment.
“Hi, Elvira. Are you in charge here?”
“I’m help. You want to see the big boss?”
“I think you know the answer.”
“Okay,” she said. She nodded and they unlocked the gate, opening just wide enough for Whitney to slip through. The people behind us expected that. What surprised them was that I followed. That brought another volley of rocks and bottles. They didn’t want an American around. Pain in the ass. Nothing they threw hit us, but some rocks clanged off the roof of the construction shack where we were headed.
“We call her the commander,” Elvira said. “Just like in the movies.” We followed across a sidewalk of wooden planks, left over from when it rained. I saw Filipinos huddled next to tool sheds and trailers. “Biggest Elvis!” someone called, and I waved to Priscilla. Then she started explaining who I was to the others. Biggest Elvis again. It was as if I’d gained thirty pounds, as if my sideburns were growing, like the hair on a werewolf’s hands, as if I were covered with sweat and sequins, with Dude and Chester offstage. Could I be blamed, then, when Elvira led me to the trailer and held open the door for me and when Whitney slipped her arm out of mine, as if to say that this was where she’d leave me—could I be blamed for thinking I’d step inside and see Malou running things?
“Biggest Elvis.” She looked up from her desk. “They cut our telephone. I’m wonder what took them so long.”
“Lucy Number Three,” I said. And that was all I could say. She was the last one I expected to see in control. Less talk—more action. I was surprised she’d gone inside the fence at all. She was the gamest—and gamiest—of the Graceland girls. The others were forced into the business, or drifted in. But Lucy had been born for it. Or so I used to think.
“You are surprised, Biggest Elvis,” she said.
“He’s surprised,” Elvira answered for me.
“He expects someone else,” Whitney said with a look that was like nothing I’d seen from her before, a look that was pitying and knowing and—would you believe it, on Whitney’s bruised child-beautiful face?—wise. “He expects Malou.”
“Someone should tell him,” Lucy Number Three said.
“Maybe,” Elvira suggested, “he knows already.”
They were watching me, the three of them, waiting to see if I could catch on, catch up. Or would one of them have to come back and get me? I’d gotten to know them well, all those nights at Graceland. I liked them and—what wasn’t quite the same thing—I liked knowing them, their style, their quirks and humors. And maybe I’d congratulated myself on discovering they were likable and human, as if that discovery
were to my credit as much as to theirs. But if I was watching them, they were watching me, night after night, watching me fall for Malou. They’d kept quiet about what they were thinking, from then till now.
“Okay,” I said. “She worked for Baby Ronquillo back then. And now. She still works for her. Is that it?”
Lucy Number Three nodded. Whitney looked like she might break into tears, as if she were deep into a story with a sad ending, the tale of Biggest Elvis and Malou.
“So,” I said, “she’s on the other side of the fence more or less.”
“She makes us borrow money for tickets,” Elvira said. “Illegal. She collects recruitment fee. Illegal. Employer here is supposed to pay. Did pay. Reduction in salary, change in job, all illegal. Taking passport. We complain. Nothing happen. She work for them. She does not work for us. She works for Baby Ronquillo.”
“She works,” said Lucy Number Three, “for Malou.”
I stepped over to the window, resting my head against the screen. When my marriage fell apart, I’d had months to sort it out. Long walks, hours in bed, books to read or music, and sometimes I stepped into a car and drove around Guam all night. I wasn’t going to have that long, for Malou.
Malou. When I’d thought about her, it had been things I wanted to remember. Now the other things came rolling in. From the first night—at the Scrabble board—when she’d said “I’m surprised you know that word”—to all those nights of talk and slow dancing and flaring argument—“Why me, when there are so many women from which to choose?”—to the day I’d stood on the empty beach where our house was supposed to be, what had happened had happened because of me, out of my longing, my need. Not hers. Not especially. She was the most skeptical—factual—numerical person I’d ever met. She’d never believed in the Elvis magic. Not really. The others crossed themselves when I sang “American Trilogy,” when death and resurrection blew through Graceland, two shows a night. She kept counting. And when the show kept happening and Graceland prospered, it wasn’t magic, only clever business. Down deep, Biggest Elvis was kind of a joke, just as Elvis—the Original—had been another joke. An interesting act, but was it the only one I had? Was that it? Was that all? And when the magic compounded, all around me—and who could miss it?—and when neighbors named children after me and farms filled with scarecrows in my image and bar girls crossed themselves and priests denounced me, when miracle followed miracle, she stayed cool. She nodded, she smiled, but she didn’t believe. And I wanted her all the more, just because she didn’t believe. My skeptical, doubting Malou. I had some moments with her, some wins. There were times when I surprised her, or she surprised herself. That girlish yelp when the ice-cold water came out of my shower or, oh God, that night she stood at the window at Elvira’s place, looking out at the street, slipping off that T-shirt and walking toward me with love on her mind. She lost it, once or twice with me. But now I could see how things must have looked, after I’d consented to that absurd tour, after Graceland burned and the base-closing was announced and our dream house was just a pile of boards on the beach. Was this where she wanted to be? She’d hooked up with the wrong Elvis. She should have gone for Dude, the way Dude used to be. Wipe ass and walk away. That was my guess anyway. So Malou had gone to America, this island version of it. She’d done what was necessary and she’d done it on her own, not waiting for a man to rescue her. “And the result is what you see.”
Lucy Number Three was in it for the money. She didn’t want to move to San Diego. She didn’t want to make a better world. She never thought about falling in love. But she did want to get paid for the work that she did. She was the wrong woman to cross. When Darling started withholding pay, shorting her, taking the money up front, Lucy Number Three didn’t think, didn’t feel, didn’t consult. She acted.
“Less talk—more action.” They would take over the construction compound, the Nineteenth Hole Corporation, and stop work on the island’s biggest project. The New Pebble Beach Golf Course had corporate investors—airlines and hotels, in Japan and the United States. It had deadlines to meet, budgets committed, opening tournaments scheduled. Once work stopped, important people would notice. When they came to investigate, they’d have Lucy Number Three and all the rest to reckon with. They didn’t want the world, either. They wanted back pay and illegal payments refunded and passports back and tickets out.
It had to happen fast, if it happened at all. A week’s advance notice, or a day’s, was asking to be sold out. She talked to the men at the site, she stored water and rice, while a half dozen construction trucks drove around the island, collecting maids and farmers, bar girls, cooks, janitors. They’d all gone inside the gates, locking up behind them, before the locals knew what had happened. Then, from inside, they started with phone calls. That was Priscilla’s job, and Elvira’s, because their English was better.
They hadn’t liked what they heard. The Japanese project manager on Saipan threatened them with criminal trespass, court proceedings, deportation. A Filipino consul reminded them they were guests on the island. A priest pleaded that they avoid violence. They felt lonelier than ever, after that. No one wanted to hear it, no one particularly cared. Overseas workers were plentiful, expendable, replaceable. They complained all the time—that was common knowledge—and even if what they said was often true, it got old. Loser talk. What they’d accomplished so far was amazing. But now they didn’t have anything else planned. Already a sense of defeat, of gallant effort about to be punished, hung in the air. Fatalism and martyrdom were just around the corner.
At ten o’clock we heard there were some people outside the gate who wanted to talk. Lucy Number Three asked if I wanted to accompany her. I nodded. Two other members of the party were Nonoy, who worked for Nineteenth Hole, and Felix, who’d been working on a farm. Nonoy had spent a year in Saudi. Felix was younger but he’d seen me in Olongapo, he said, “with her.” And he nodded toward the ones who were waiting outside, standing by a police car screening us from the crowd, roof lights stroking us with beams of red and blue. Three people waited for us. A man I didn’t know. And Jimmy Fiddler. And Malou.
Our eyes met. I nodded. She looked at me a moment, taking me in, and nodded back at me. That was all. Our reunion. And then, before I could say a word—and I’m not sure what it would have been—the third visitor took over, an island politician I half listened to while already replaying the fraction of time that had just passed: the red and blue light, like at an accident, Malou and I on different sides of a fence. She was heading where she wanted to go and I had landed where I was meant to be. Olongapo had been a crossing of paths, an intersection, fun and fine while it lasted. But the act wouldn’t travel. Another thing: I hadn’t stopped loving her. And it didn’t make any difference, now.
“We have hundreds of good Filipinos on this island,” the politician was saying. “They say they are ashamed of what you do. This is a friendly island. You make trouble here. My people are good people and you provoke them. You come out now, I guarantee your safety. I personally guarantee. But if you stay …” Now he leaned forward, as if to confide. “I cannot control them.”
“I can control my people,” Lucy Number Three said. “You cannot control yours?”
“My people have guns. Also bombs they use for dynamiting fish. I’m just telling you.”
“You have police, no?”
“A few. Very tired. …” The way he looked at her, I sensed a note of personal appeal. “You used to be such a fun girl, Lucy.”
“I have complaints.”
“No one made you come here.”
“We want settlement.”
“If you have a problem, you should talk to Shipshape representative.” He nodded at Malou. “She comes here with you. She is a liaison officer.”
“No,” Lucy said. She stared straight at Malou. “With this woman, I do not talk.”
“You have proof of your complaints?” Malou asked. Calm, nonplussed, the way I remembered. “Or only talk?”
�
��Maybe, we have proof.”
“What sort of proof?”
“I’m waiting for the boss, Malou. Not you.”
“I’m getting so tired of this,” the politician said. “Watch me now.” He stretched theatrically. He yawned and yawned again, turning around as he did so, so the world could testify how he’d tried, in vain, to settle things. He raised his hands, he shrugged. “Pretty soon I go home, Lucy.”
“Straight home?” she asked back. “Or stopping off?”
The man muttered something under his breath and walked away. Malou followed. No lingering behind for a chat. We’d had our moment. Lucy and the two Filipino guys left for the inside of the compound. Oddly, Jimmy Fiddler stayed behind.
“Saw you at the airport,” he said. “I said to myself, there’s a guy who doesn’t know where show business ends and real life begins.”
“I’m figuring it out. In real life, the bad guy gets the girl.”
“You still don’t have it right, Biggest Elvis,” he said. “I could make a career out of watching you get things wrong.”
“But only if the arson business slows down.”
“Oh yeah,” he said. “Sorry about that. The nightclub was business. Your house was different. What I did for love. I didn’t like the idea of you two together. I’m a sore loser. So? Sue me. Where are your buddies, the Lane brothers?”
“Headed this way, Jimmy. Coming to entertain the troops.”
“Here?” he asked. “I love it.” He stood there for a moment, as if there were something else he wanted to say. In a few seconds more, he’d have come out with it. But a horn sounded inside the red pickup truck. Places to go, people to see. Jimmy rolled his eyes and limped away. Now I saw that he wasn’t her boss—or lover. He was her gofer. And I felt a little sorry for him.
Whitney came over to me as soon as I entered the construction trailer.