Inside the game

SITTING inside one of the tower suites of the posh and elegant Wynn Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas is a thrill in itself.
 But sitting here, on a soft red sofa stretched out lazily in the middle of a living room while waiting for your turn to finally get to talk to Manny Pacquiao heightens the sensation. It’s like a scene straight out of a well-funded mafia B-movie.
 For someone who has the EQ equivalent of a two-year-old, I am surprised that there is no wave of impatience coursing through my body, which would have had me convulsing and frothing at the mouth by this time, as I watch the endless stream of people taking their turns beside the Philippine boxing hero.

 There is a marked difference, though, between a real mafia movie and the scene unfolding before me now.
 In mafia movies, members of the family, sworn to many vows, including that which they call omerta, or the vow of honorable silence, line up before the Godfather to kiss the ring on his finger.
 The people here, in Suite 501 of the Wynn Hotel and Casino’s Tower Suites, line up before Manny Pacquiao to kiss his ass.
 Had Pacquiao not plied the route that took him to the pinnacle of prizefighting success, these very same people would have lived normal lives, albeit financially blessed ones. So you wonder, what on earth does Pacquiao have that would make these successful businessmen, politicians, career people and others line up before him just to plant a pucker on a boxer’s butt?
 “It’s like they have traded their souls for a chance to be beside Manny,” a reporter remarked.
 There’s really no harm to it except that sometimes, those who manage to cuddle up to him and become cozy dinnermates with him tend to slip pieces of advice that sometimes do more harm than good (like the one that has him considering a political career?).
 Shelly Finkel, Pacquiao’s manager, can only hope that somebody kicks some sense into Pacquiao and tell him to listen to the people who know what they are doing. Not to ass-sucking hangers-on who are after their own interests.
 People have tried to tell Pacquiao that, Finkel says. But the scene never changes.
 The routine is relentless as it is automatic and redundant. Line up. Sit beside Pacquiao. Kiss his butt. Then go back to step No. 1. These people trade the comforts of a soft bed, warm pillows and thick blankets to thwart the cold Las Vegas night for a… tah-dah! Grand chance to sleep on the marbled floor of Suite 501!
 Not only that.
 While in Hollywood, in a Thai restaurant that sits in the same compound as the Wild Card gym where Pacquiao trains, the boxer and his entourage are having a late afternoon lunch. After polishing off the usual post workout fare, Pacquiao whips out a guitar and starts an impromptu mini concert.
 He is later joined by songwriter Lito Camo, he of the novelty songs fame. Later, the two trade jokes that would have registered a hairline above zero in the humor scale. Amazingly, the entire entourage bursts into a round of canned laughter. Complete with the thigh-slapping.
 “If Manny jokes, you laugh. If he says something, you nod,” explained the reporter, who knows Pacquiao all too well, having covered him when he was knocking sparring partners cold in an obscure corner at the L&M gym in Sampaloc, Manila.
 Meanwhile, back in the suite, Pacquiao dismisses his latest guest with a wave of his hand. The boxer, having just battered Mexican Erik Morales into a retirement that El Terrible will be stupid not to go into, then glances at the reporters waiting for their turn and reels them to his side with a nod. He then heads for the master’s bedroom.
 Because I was to leave for New York that day, the other reporters gave me my time with Pacquiao alone in the bedroom, where wife Jinkee is busy packing.
 So this is how it must’ve been in Sicily, in the heart of the lair of a mafia boss.
 “How was your night?” Pacquiao asked.
 “Okay. I’m leaving for New York today to see my mom, who I haven’t seen in 14 years,” I tell him, wondering later where that piece of inconsequential information will be tucked inside a brain that has been battered by several boxing wars and bothered by the many concerns he has to deal with outside the ring.
 For a moment, he spaces out. He looks far off at nothing in particular and says nothing. No expression at all. I want to tap him out of his reverie, which, people who watch him closely worriedly notice has become a regular episode, but I am at his left side. In direct line of his left hand. His pet weapon.
 He snaps out of it and smiles: “That’s good. That’s good.”
 “So, how were the tables last night?” I ask him.
 “Well, you lose some, you win some,” he said.
 I never noticed the win part. The night before, Pacquiao was in the high stakes area of the Wynn Casino at the hotel lobby, throwing away $3,000-hands in baccarat with as much ease and as little conscience as he dishes out left straights (people still mistakenly label it a left hook. Manny Pacquiao, a southpaw, has no left hook) and right hooks.
 In the 10 minutes we managed to stay beside him that night, before casino officials managed to politely ask us to leave, I saw him drain an envelope of $20,000. The win part probably came after we had left his side.
 “I hear you’re going back to Los Angeles today,” I tell him and he nods. “When’re you going back to the Philippines?”
 “Wednesday. I hear they named an arena after me in San Andres,” he said. “Is it true?”
 I shrugged. I heard about it but then, where’s the surprise? They—whoever they are—could have renamed the entire country after him and still have gotten away with it. I whip out five caps and have him sign it. “For my grandmother,” I tell him.
 He signs them and spaces out again.
 “Happy trip,” he says when he jolts back into the moment. “Say hi to your mother.”
 “I will,” I say and leave the room.
 Almost instantly, all eyes are on me. The stares of the hangers-on is hot enough to brand cowhide a hundred times over. It’s as if I have taken something from them, something that they have an inalienable right to lay claim to. I give them the smug look of someone who, indeed, had done just that.
 They deserve it.
 In one candid conversation with Pacquiao one after noon after a training session, he noticed that he had more hangers-on than he really needed and that there was a need to trim the entourage.
 “Some of them are hanging by a thread,” he says.
 So there is hope.
 In the meantime, I cut through the crowd at Suite 501 and make my way to the door, still wearing a smug smile on my face and feeling the hot stares of people who think I may have gotten away with murder.
 I do not mind the stares.
 I walk with the dignity of a mob member who had done his job. In my mind, the following Sicilian proverb rings in my head: “Cu e surdu, orbu e taci, campa cent’anni ‘mpaci” (He who is deaf, blind and silent will live a hundred years in peace”).
 Omerta.