House of Lola

Notwithstanding its idyllic ambiance, Dumaguete City in the early ’70s was a cheerful city overflowing with enigmas and desires. Amidst the brackish environs of Escaño Beach, a few kilometers from the city proper, an old house stood. In that rustic 18th-century house, there lived a furtive woman named Lola. Possessing a spellbinding charisma and an air of eroticism that fascinated anyone who crossed her way, she moved through jam-packed streets like a Shakespearian sonnet in gesticulation—her taffeta shawl flapping behind her, her cologne trailing like smoke from a forgotten reverie. Behind her enchanting look was a sketchy past that molded her into the woman she had become.

In her dimly lit apartment, above a forgotten nightclub along Calle Alfonso XIII, Lola struck a cigarette with quivering fingers. She ogled at her image in the splintered mirror, her eyes outlining the silhouette of a face that had smirked too often and smiled for the wrong reasons.

“You ever wonder what you could’ve been if you were born on the other side of the tracks?” she mumbled, half to herself, half to the man sitting on the edge of her bed.

He propped himself forward, elbows on his knees. “Maybe. But I think people like us—maybe we were meant to live in the shadows. Some of us got too much fire in us to be anything but trouble.”

Lola giggled matter-of-factly, wafting a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling. “Trouble was never the plan, darling. It just…showed up early and never left.”

She spent her early years crisscrossing the dark side of society as a prostitute. The city’s boulevards were her stage, and her beauty was her currency. In the stillness of every night, she traded transitory flashes of pleasure for mere survival, her visions of a different existence suppressed underneath a shroud of shadows.

“I was fifteen the first time,” she said one night to Maria, a fellow prostitute and occasionally a friend, as they clustered together under the flaming neon light of an all-night rundown cafe.

Maria didn’t wince. “Fourteen, for me,” she responded, stirring her coffee with a splintered fingernail. “You think it ever gets better?” Lola looked out the rain-dappled window, examining a man in a fedora who hailed a pedicab. “No. But you get smarter. You learn the rules.”

“What rules?” Maria giggled spitefully.

“That no one saves you. That softness gets you killed. And that love,” Lola hesitated, tapping ash into the flaked dish, “is the most expensive lie of all.” Still, underneath her toughened exterior, a tiny flicker of hope persisted, ablaze silently in the pits of her soul.

Some nights, after the city went quiet, she’d hum old love songs to herself and imagine another life, a clean one, with books on the shelves and laughter in the kitchen. A life where her name wasn’t whispered in alleyways or exchanged in cigarette-stained phone booths.

“Do you think I’m wicked?” she once asked a priest who’d stopped her outside the church steps, offering her a blanket and a pamphlet she never read. He looked into her eyes for a long moment, and then said softly, “I think you’re surviving. And sometimes, that’s the holiest thing of all.” Lola smiled faintly, folding the blanket over her arm. “Then maybe there’s hope for sinners like me, after all.”

And with that, she disappeared back into the night—her heels clicking against wet pavement, a ghost in red lipstick, chasing the echo of a life she could almost remember.

But deep inside Lola’s heart, a glimmer of hope remained. She craved for a life that goes beyond the muffled conversations and the lustful gazes of strangers. And while her days were tinted in shades of survival, her nights swathed in velvet desolation, there were moments—silent ones—where she allowed herself to visualize something different. A home. A garden. Waking up in the morning without shame. And Fate, with all its spirals and cracks, had something unexpected in store for her.

One momentous night, as the moon hung low in the sky like a vigilant eye, a man named Gabriel tripped upon Lola’s path. It was outside a shadowy espresso bar where the neon sign droned like a fragmented serenade, and the air was profuse with jazz and cigarette smoke. She was leaning against the brick wall, alone but never ignored.

Gabriel wasn’t like the others. He wasn’t there to give in to his desires, but neither was he pretending not to see her. He was just there, present. A gentle and empathetic soul, Gabriel had the eyes of someone who had known pain but had refused to succumb to it. He watched Lola, looked at her, not through her, not around her, but at her. And in that glance, he saw something even she had forgotten how to see.

“You cold?” he gently asked, giving her the jacket wrapped around his arm.

She cast him a skeptical glance; her voice was edged with characteristic defense. “What are you, some kind of good Samaritan?” He gave a crooked smile. “No. Just a man who’s tired of watching people pretend they don’t care.”

Lola studied him. “You shouldn’t talk to me. I ruin people.” Gabriel just smiled, unaffected. “Maybe I don’t mind a little ruin. Some things only grow in broken soil.”

She was motionless. She looked away, uncertain whether to laugh or cry.

“I don’t need saving,” she mumbled, trying to persuade herself more than him. “I know,” he said. “And I’m not here to save you. Just…to sit with you awhile. If that’s okay.” Stillness dawdled between them like a suspended breath. Eventually, Lola sighed, pushing a twist from her face. “You don’t know what I’ve done.”

Gabriel propped himself against the wall beside her, eyes fixed on the stars directly above the city miasma. “Maybe not. But I know who you are right now. And that’s enough for me.”

She looked at him then. For the first time in what felt like decades, she saw no judgment in a man’s eyes. Only gentleness. Interest. And maybe, even wonder.

“Nobody has talked to me like that,” she said inaudibly. “Well,” Gabriel responded, “maybe it’s time someone did.” Lola breathed out, a sound midway between a giggle and a snuffle. She took his coat, pulling it tight around her. “I don’t know who you are,” she said, “but something tells me you’re either a fool or a miracle.” “Maybe a little of both,” he said, and grinned. And in that moment—underneath the fluorescent, below a worn-out sky—something changed in Lola. Not a redemption, not yet. But a beginning. A snap in the shield. A place where light could enter.

Their connection was instantaneous and forceful, like a spark kindling a flicker of fire.  From the first caress of his hand on hers, something changed. Gabriel’s love wasn’t brash or demanding; it was noiseless, yet obstinate—just like rain. It enveloped Lola, gradually melting the frosty clasp of her past, warming the places she thought had gone incessantly dazed.

One time, at dusk, as they sat on the fire escape outside Gabriel’s tiny flat, overlooking the corroded roofs of the city, Lola gaped at the skyline, her voice just above a murmur. “I used to think love was a transaction. You give a piece of yourself; you get something in return. That’s how it was on the street.” Gabriel looked at her with tenderness, a mild seriousness in his eyes. “That’s not love. That’s survival.”

“I didn’t know the difference.” She looked at him, her voice quivering with a blend of humiliation and insolence. “Until you.” He took her hand and pressed it to his rib cage. “You don’t have to give anything to be worthy of love, Lola. Just be. That’s all I’ve ever wanted from you.”

Tears brimmed in her eyes, but she winked them away. “It’s hard to have confidence in something you’ve never witnessed or understood.” “Then let me show you,” Gabriel said tenderly. “Every day, for as long as you’ll let me.”

With Gabriel’s unfaltering support, Lola found the courage to abandon her life on the streets. It wasn’t easy nor abrupt. There were nights when flashes of the “ghosts” returned, murmuring enticements and uncertainties. But every time these came, Gabriel was there. Not to salvage her, but to tread beside her as she liberated herself.

One morning, sipping coffee and munching toast in their little kitchen, Lola looked up from a tattered notebook where she’d been scribbling ideas. “You ever think about how pleasure doesn’t have to be dirty?” she asked. Gabriel raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

She smiled thoughtfully. “I spent so long giving people what they thought they wanted—touch, fantasy, escape. But there’s this kind of pleasure that’s healing. Like when you taste something that makes you forget where you are. That’s real. That’s pure.”

He nodded. “So, what are you saying?” “I’m saying,” she said, her voice gaining strength, “I want to cook. I want to create something exquisite out of everything horrible I’ve lived through. I want to put up a place where people can come and feel whole. Even if it’s just for one meal.”

Gabriel propped himself back in his chair, smiling with admiration. “That’s the most profound thing I’ve ever heard.” She laughed. “You think it’s crazy?” “No,” he said, reaching across the table to take her hand. “I think it’s the beginning of something extraordinary.”

And so, guided by Gabriel’s trust in her—a trust so steadfast it began to echo in her own heart—Lola immersed herself in the culinary arts. Her past became her zing, her wounds her signature. She cooked with a kind of passion that made the line between recovery and conception blurry. Each dish was a murmur of her life story, each flavor a step toward healing.

At night, she and Gabriel would sit in silence after the burners had cooled, the smell of basil and garlic still lingering in the air. “You ever think,” she asked one night, “that maybe we were meant to find each other? Not to fix anything but to build something new?” Gabriel wrapped his arms around her from behind, pressing a kiss to her shoulder. “I don’t believe in fate,” he murmured, “but I believe in us.”

And Lola, once a woman defined by survival, now lived to create, to nourish, to feel joy. In the rhythm of the kitchen, in the warmth of Gabriel’s arms, she had found something she’d never thought possible—a life she chose, and a love that asked for nothing in return.

Lola’s dream emerged as a bistro snuggled on a noiseless, tree-lined boulevard that once felt too unsoiled for someone like her. But now, it was hers. The paint on the sign had barely dried when she stood in front of it for the first time, wiping her hands on her apron and blinking up at the golden script that read: “House of Lola.”

Inside, the walls were warm shades of amber and plum, like a sunset you could walk into. Jazz played softly in the background, and the air smelled of roasted garlic, fresh thyme, and the memory of something safe. Every corner, every table, every carefully folded napkin was a declaration: You are welcome here.

As she stood in the open kitchen plating the evening’s first orders, Gabriel appeared beside her, wiping a counter. “You nervous?” he asked, watching her swirl a reduction over a plate of lamb. Lola didn’t look up. “Terrified.” He chuckled. “You’ve faced worse than picky food critics and overcooked risotto.”

“This is different,” she said, pausing for a moment. “Out there, I knew the game. The rules were written in shadows. But this?” She gestured around the kitchen. “This is me—out in the light.” Gabriel leaned towards her, his voice low and certain. “And it’s beautiful.”

Word of Lola’s culinary prowess quickly spread throughout the city, drawing in patrons from all walks of life. From curious foodies to quiet loners and late-night poets, House of Lola became more than a restaurant. It became a refuge—a place where people weren’t just fed, but felt. A place where the walls held stories and every plate carried a whisper of healing.

One night, after the dinner rush had died down, a woman in her fifties lingered at a corner table, stirring her coffee slowly. Lola brought over a slice of her signature fig tart and placed it gently in front of her. “On the house,” Lola said with a soft smile. The woman looked up, her eyes glassy. “You don’t know what this place means to me.” Lola pulled out the chair across from her. “Tell me.”

“I come here after chemo,” the woman said. “I don’t tell anyone. My husband doesn’t even know I sneak away. But when I walk through that door, I don’t feel sick. I feel like myself again.” Lola’s throat tightened. She reached across the table and squeezed the woman’s hand.

“You know,” Lola said, her voice quiet but sure, “there was a time I didn’t believe a place like this could exist. Let alone that I could be the one to build it.” The woman smiled, tears slipping down her cheek. “But you did. And it matters.”

Later that night, as Lola wiped the kitchen counters and turned off the lights, Gabriel came to her side and handed her a glass of red wine. “You’re doing it,” he said. “You’re giving people what they need.” She stared at the empty dining room—the flicker of candles, the clink of cooling glasses, the ghost of laughter still lingering in the air.

“I spent so many years thinking my worth ended when the night did,” she said softly. “Now, I get to feed people, really feed them. Body and soul.” Gabriel raised his glass. “To the House of Lola. Built from shadows. Lit by fire.”

They clinked glasses, and Lola smiled—not the practiced smile she used to wear, but one born from somewhere deep, somewhere honest. “I used to serve escape,” she said. “Now I serve truth. And it tastes a hell of a lot better.”

After a couple of years, Lola transformed into a capable sous-chef and a noteworthy entrepreneur, and her reputation grew exponentially. House of Lola became more than just a bistro, a lot more than just a go-to restaurant for any occasion—it was a hideaway, a montage of zest and sensation where every dish narrated a story of reinvention. Journalists wrote compelling features about her, and gastronomy and entrepreneurship awards occupied the once bare brick walls. But for Lola, none of it could be likened to the quiet moments—the delight of strangers connecting over a shared meal, the refined puff of someone savoring joy for the first time in years.

Her restaurant thrived, but more than that, she flourished. And in doing so, she became a beacon of inspiration for others who, like her, had once wandered the alleys of despair. Women came to her, not for food, but for a flicker of hope. Former sex workers, single mothers, people who had been written off. She hired them, trained them, listened to their stories without flinching.

One evening, after closing, Lola was sitting at the bar polishing glasses when a young woman hesitantly stepped through the door. Her makeup was smeared, her heels worn, and her eyes were heavy with something too familiar. Lola looked up and smiled gently. “You hungry?” The girl nodded. “I heard this place helps people.” Lola stood and walked around the counter. She placed a hand on the girl’s arm.

“This place doesn’t help people,” she said. “People help people. Sit down, sweetheart. We’ll start with a bowl of soup. Warm, simple. Just like beginnings.”

Later that night, Gabriel found Lola seated alone in the kitchen, her apron still on, fingers dusted with flour. “She reminds you of yourself?” he asked. Lola gave a small smile, weary but full. “She was me. All edges and fear. You remember what I used to say? That no one saves you?” Gabriel nodded, leaning on the doorframe. “I was wrong,” she said. “Sometimes they do. Sometimes they just stand beside you long enough until you remember how to save yourself.”

He walked over, kissed her temple, and held her for a moment, surrounded by the smells of roasted tomatoes, thyme, and dreams realized.

Lola’s journey from a sensuous woman of the night to a thriving restaurant owner became the stuff of legends—not because of the drama, but because of the depth. Her story became living proof of the power of love, redemption, and the resolute spirit within each of us.

One day, a local reporter came in for a final interview for a piece titled “The Woman who Fed a City’s Soul.” They asked the usual questions: What kept her going? What advice did she have? What was her proudest moment?

She smiled at the last question, eyes dancing with memory. “It wasn’t the awards,” she said. “It wasn’t the write-ups or the line out the door. It was the first time someone told me, ‘You made me feel human again.’ That was it. That’s when I knew I’d done something that mattered.”

As the sun dipped below the skyline and the golden hour bathed House of Lola in honeyed light, she stood at the helm of her bustling restaurant, her eyes shimmering with a quiet, hard-earned contentment. The sound of clinking glasses, warm conversation, and the sizzle of garlic in the pan surrounded her like music.

She turned to Gabriel, who stood in the doorway with two glasses of wine. “You know,” she said, taking one and gazing across the room, “for years I thought my life had burned down.” He raised his glass to hers. “And instead?” Lola smiled. “Turns out, I was just becoming the fire.” They clinked glasses.

Although she would forever carry the memories of her past—the scars, the whispers, the late-night ghosts—she no longer wore them like a chain. Instead, they were part of a fabric she had stitched with her own hands. She had forged a new path, a path lined with the scent of rosemary and forgiveness, of laughter and second chances, of stories rewritten over shared meals and quiet resilience.

And as she watched another evening unfold within the walls she had built from ashes and grace, Lola knew her journey wasn’t over.

But this chapter?

This one had been hers.

Entirely, unapologetically, and beautifully hers.

___________________

Gemma Minda Iso, 60, currently writes for The Independent Singapore as a freelance news/features writer. Residing in Dumaguete City, Negros Oriental, she is also a functional art creator who dabbles with driftwood and acrylic paint. She has co-managed an organization dedicated to preserving and celebrating culture and the arts.