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might have even called the police and God knows what she would have told them.
    I realized then that I had to get out of town. I’d only be miserable if I stayed.
    Back in my early Navy days, I’d spent some time at Subic Bay in the Philippines. What struck me most was how cheap everything was. Even back then, there was a thriving ex-pat community made up mainly of former American military men. In the States, their pensions would have let them lead a modest life at most, possibly even forcing them to take another job. But in the Philippines, there was no need for a second job. They could afford a large house in a secured development. They could even afford a full-time cook and maid, and there’d still be money left.
    A couple of my buddies had moved to Angeles City several years earlier. It was only a two-hour drive inland from Subic so it seemed like a good idea to join them. My only regret was Lily, but there was nothing I could do.
    After I moved to the Philippines, and even later, after I’d started my fourth life in Bangkok, I would send Lily cards and presents on special occasions, and sometimes for no reason at all. I still do. But I’ve been smart enough not to send them to Lily directly. Instead, I’ve always mailed them to Maureen’s sister in Temecula. We had always gotten along and I think she was sad to see me go, so I’ve hoped, when the appropriate time comes, she’ll give everything to Lily.
    I’ve often wondered how much Lily really remembers about me now. Perhaps I’ll never know.
    •    •    •
    I settled down in a three-bedroom house on a half-acre of land that had a built-in swimming pool out back. It was only a couple of blocks from where my friend Hal Dogan lived with his Filipina wife, Dolce.
    “I think the real reason people like us come here,” Hal once said to me, “is to disappear.”
    And he was right. Angeles City was great for that. Like a black hole, pulling you in and hiding you from the rest of the world.
    We spent a lot of time after I first got there barbecuing, drinking, playing cards, watching baseball games on satellite TV, and forgetting about pretty much everything else.
    For a time, things were fine, mellow and relaxed. But soon mellow and relaxed became stagnant and bored. And after three months, I began looking for something exciting to do.

CHAPTER FIVE

    It was back in the early days—my sailor days—when I’d been introduced to the go-go bars of Subic Bay and Angeles. Those days had been wild with sex shows and naked pool parties and beautiful Filipinas willing to do anything you wanted. And if they really liked you, they’d even do it for free. I was young then, and a lot of it was too much for a small-town boy from Arizona to take. But not all of it. 
    I couldn’t help it. No one could. If you were a heterosexual male with even a faint pulse, you couldn’t resist the FYBs, short for what Hal called fine young babes. All that flesh, right in your face, and offers coming at you from every direction.
    “You take me home, I keep you up all night.”
    “Look at my tits, they’re all yours, baby.”
    “I like you, baby. I make you really happy.”
    They’re smiling and rubbing against you and you’re young and far from home and they’re saying “you’re so cute” and you’re looking at them thinking the same thing and they’re telling you they want to come home with you and you’re wanting exactly that. You can only say no so many times. And once you say yes, it’s all over. You’re hooked. What you don’t realize at the time is your life will never be the same. If anyone asked you, “Have you ever paid for sex?” you might tell them no, but you’d know the truth. And in the eyes of my aunt Marla, and those who thought like her, you were now categorized and forever branded a “sexual deviate.”
    •    •    •
    When I expressed my newfound boredom to Hal, he told me that he sometimes filled in as a papasan at one of the bars