BOOMTOWN Restaurant is a relic from the Sixties, a souvenir from an era when Manila had been pretty. The beer joint on Recto and Rizal Avenue was without doors, the only place in the area that never closed. The dive was known for its food and the cats that patrolled under the tables late at night. Its customers were mostly men, and they dropped in either to order food to go or to drink themselves into a stupor. If you were a regular you could count on bumping into a friend or a nodding acquaintance on any visit. You could even see someone you hadn’t seen for years.
It happened to me one night long ago when I went there. I’d been drinking with colleagues, and after we broke up and hit the road I decided I was good for a few more beers and dropped by.
I sat near the entrance and surveyed the scene. On the table to my left a tubercular man sat studying the paper napkins while drinking. Eight or nine cats patrolled under the tables, and two tables ahead of me a bald man in a tank top sat facing the jukebox farther inside, where eight men on two tables sat drinking near the machine.
Eddie Peregrina’s What Am I Living For was playing, and after it Two Lovely Flowers and Together Again followed. The mush didn’t seem to bother the eight men”•though they had to raise their voices to talk to avoid being drowned out. It grew quieter after the last song ended, but then the bald man stood up, approached the jukebox, pumped coins into it and the three songs repeated.
I approached the jukebox to check on the songs; I found that most of those were as mushy as Peregrina’s, and many were first recorded at least 20 years ago. I checked to see if Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven was there, but it wasn’t. I would have played it over and over to liven up the place.
More cats patrolled under the tables as the night wore on. The napkin man kept studying the paper napkins, drinking steadily and not moving except when going to the men’s room to pee. The bald man kept pumping coins into the jukebox for the same three songs.
When I stood up to take a leak I counted eight bottles of beer on the napkin man’s table. I passed the eight men on my way to the washroom, and on my way back I noticed they’d finished 48 bottles of beer based on the two cases holding empties under their tables, while a third case was beginning to fill up. I counted only two bottles of beer on the bald man’s table, and I decided he was getting stewed on Peregrina and not on beer.
Around midnight I stood up and sat on the other side of the table to face the sidewalk. No more people had come in to drink since I came in”•leaving the place to me, the napkin man, the bald man and the eight men near the jukebox—but more customers kept dropping in to order food to go. Most of them just sat down to wait for their orders, but some downed a bottle or two of beer while waiting.
SHE showed up around half-past midnight. She eyed the napkin man first, and when she saw me she flashed her old toothy smile.
“I know you,” she said.
“Likewise,” I said and asked her to sit down. I asked her if beer was fine with her, and when she nodded I ordered a couple of bottles. I also ordered some food, and when it came she wolfed down the portion she put on her plate and helped herself to some more.
“You know, it’s just strange that we’d known each each other for over a year before you disappeared, but we never got to know each other’s name. We just kept nodding at each other,” she said. “My name’s Joy. What do they call you?”
I told her, and what she said was true, too. I first knew her as this doe-eyed girl with the toothy smile who helped pull in customers in this beer joint on Rizal Avenue, where I’d been tending my mother’s magazine stand for over a year after finishing college but failing to land a job. We simply nodded at each other and never had the chance to know each other’s name. She was pretty then, but now she was just old and exhausted.
She asked me how I was, and I told her a little about myself and my family. She told me her husband left her for another woman about five years ago, forcing her to entrust her two sons aged five and three to a brother who had a pig farm south of Manila. She returned to the city and roomed in with three younger friends who worked as salesgirls in a department store. She made a living washing clothes and running errands, and in desperate times she leaned on her friends. She sent whatever money she could to her brother for her children’s upkeep.
It had been quiet for a bit when she came in, but then the bald man stood up after giving the machine some sort of rest and pumped coins into it. The three songs repeated.
“Beautiful,” she said when she heard the first few bars of Together Again. I squirmed secretly.
“Want to sleep with me? I don’t charge much,” she then said suddenly, jolting me.
“Yes, but not now. Do you come here often?”
“Yes.”
“We’ll do it next time.”
She flashed her toothy smile, and quickly I knew that she knew that I was lying. She later fell asleep without finishing her third bottle, resting her head on her left arm.
The bald man stood up to leave finally after the first few bars of Two Lovely Flowers played, and when I stood up to pee I counted only four empties on his table. The eight men were well into their fourth case, and when I checked on the napkin man I counted 14 bottles on his table.
I took out two hundred-peso bills from my wallet. Then I took her right hand and clamped her fingers on the money. That woke her up but I told her to go back to sleep, whereupon she flashed her toothy smile and closed her eyes.
I signaled the waitress for my bill, and when I stood up to leave I noticed that the cats were still patrolling under the tables”•though they didn’t seem to be looking for food. I wondered what time they hit the sack.
It was light when I emerged outside, and when I crossed the street to hail a cab for home I felt truly depressed at what she’d told me. I wondered about the time in her life when joy started oozing out of her. When I first saw her smile long ago I thought it was the most sanguine I’d seen, but now it looked pained and shorn of the truthfulness it had when she was young.
I took a last look at the restaurant once I was on the other side of the street, and instantly the past came back to me: the time when Rizal Avenue from Claro M. Recto”•it was then called Azcarraga”•to Carriedo had been my turf, and the dive had been the only place to go when everything else was closed: the time when nothing could be more pleasant than going there at an ungodly hour and bumping into a friend or an acquaintance and having a few drinks together. But that was long ago, and as I stood there thinking about her I decided it was the last time I visited the place”•and it was.
Cesar Barrioquinto is a newspaper editor.