by Joan Didion
“Jessica Christian Victor?” Jack Lovett was squinting at his notes. “Born February 23, 1957?”
Harry did not look at Inez.
“Hair blond, eyes gray? Height five-four? Weight one-hundred-ten?” Jack Lovett folded the envelope and put it in his coat pocket. “The address was yours.”
“But you didn’t write it down.”
Jack Lovett looked at Harry. “Because I knew it, Harry. 135 Central Park West.”
There was a silence.
“Her weight was up when she got her license,” Inez said finally. “She only weighs a hundred and three.”
“The fact that somebody had Jessie’s license doesn’t necessarily mean it was Jessie,” Harry said.
“Not necessarily,” Jack Lovett said. “No.”
“I mean Jesus Christ,” Harry said. “Every kid in the country’s got a tennis visor.”
“What about a tennis visor?” Inez said.
“She was wearing one,” Adlai said. “At dinner. In Seattle.”
“Never mind the fucking tennis visor.” Harry picked up the telephone. “You got the Seattle number, Billy?”
Billy Dillon took a small flat leather notebook from his pocket and opened it.
“I have it,” Inez said.
“So does Billy.” Harry drummed his fingers on the table as Billy Dillon dialed. “This is Harry Victor,” he said after a moment. “I’d like to speak to Jessie.”
Inez looked at Jack Lovett.
Jack Lovett was studying his envelope again.
“I see,” Harry said. “Yes. Of course.”
“Shit,” Billy Dillon said.
“There’s a kid who flew in this morning from Tan Son Nhut,” Jack Lovett said. “A radar specialist who’s been working Air America Operations.”
“Her aunt, yes,” Harry said. “No, I have it. Thank you.” He replaced the receiver. He still did not look at Inez. “Your move,” he said after a while.
“This kid is supposed to have seen her,” Jack Lovett said.
“Did he or didn’t he?” Harry said.
“I don’t know, Harry.” Jack Lovett’s voice was even. “I haven’t talked to him yet.”
“Then it’s not relevant,” Harry said.
“She only weighs a hundred and three,” Inez repeated.
“That’s the second time you’ve said that,” Harry said. “It’s about as relevant as this radar specialist of Lovett’s. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“I’ll tell you what it means,” Dwight Christian said. “It means she’ll fit right in.”
Harry stared at Dwight Christian, then looked at Billy Dillon.
“Welcome to hard times, pal,” Billy Dillon said. “Try mentioning Sea Meadow.”
“In fact she’ll outweigh nine-tenths of them,” Dwight Christian said. “Nine-tenths of the citizenry of Saigon.”
“I knew you could dress that up.” Billy Dillon looked at Harry. “You want to make a pass through State? Usual channels?”
“Usual channels, Mickey Mouse,” Dwight Christian said. “Call the White House. Get them to light a fire under the embassy. Lay on some pressure. Demand her release.”
“Her release from what?” Harry said.
“From the citizenry of Saigon,” Billy Dillon said. “Follow the ball.”
There was a silence.
“I may not phrase things as elegantly as you two, but I do know what I want.” Dwight Christian’s voice had turned hard and measured. “I want her out of there. Harry?”
“It’s not quite that simple, Dwight.”
“Not if you’re from Washington,” Dwight Christian said. “I suppose not. Since I’m not from Washington, I don’t quite see what the problem is.”
“Dwight,” Inez said. “The problem–”
“I had a foreman taken hostage on the Iguassú Falls project, I didn’t phrase things so elegantly there, either, not being from Washington, but I goddamn well got him out.”
“—The problem, Dwight, is that nobody took Jessie hostage.”
Dwight Christian looked at Inez.
“She just went,” Inez said.
“I know that, sweetheart.” The hardness had gone out of Dwight Christian’s voice. “I just want somebody to tell me why.”
Which was when Adlai said maybe she heard she could score there.
Which was when Inez slapped Adlai.
Which was when Harry said keep your hands off my son.
But Dad, Adlai kept saying in the silence that followed. But Dad. Mom.
Aloha oe.
Billy Dillon once asked me if I thought Inez would have left that night had Jack Lovett not been there. Since human behavior seems to me essentially circumstantial I have not much feeling for this kind of question. The answer of course is no, but the answer is irrelevant, because Jack Lovett was there.
Jack Lovett was one of the circumstances that night.
Jack Lovett was there and Jessie was in Saigon, another of the circumstances that night.
Jessie was in Saigon and the radar specialist who was said to have seen her was to meet Jack Lovett at the Playboy Arcade in Waianae. This radar specialist who had or had not seen Jessie was meeting Jack Lovett in Waianae and an electrician who had worked on the installation of the research reactor at Dalat was meeting Jack Lovett in Wahiawa.
The research reactor at Dalat was a circumstance that night only in that it happened to be a card Jack Lovett was dealing that spring.
Jack Lovett did not see any immediate way to get the fuel out but he wanted to know, for future calculation, how much of this fuel was being left, in what condition, and for whom.
The research reactor at Dalat was a thread Jack Lovett had not yet tied in his attempt to transfer the phantom business predicated on the perpetuation of the assistance effort, which was why, on that Easter Sunday night in 1975, he took Inez first to meet the radar specialist at the Playboy Arcade in Waianae and then across Kolekole Pass to meet the electrician at the Happy Talk Lounge in Wahiawa.
The off-limits Happy Talk in Wahiawa.
The Happy Talk in Wahiawa across the bridge from Schofield Barracks.
Where Inez stood with her back against the jukebox and her arms around Jack Lovett.
Where The Mamas and the Papas sang “Dream a Little Dream of Me.”
The radar specialist had been on the nod.
“I don’t need the hassle,” the radar specialist had said.
The electrician had already left the Happy Talk but had left a note with the bartender.
Da Nang going, that dude at Dalat definitely a wipe-out, the note read.
On the screen above the bar there were the helicopters. There were the helicopters lifting off the roof of the American mission and there were the helicopters vanishing into the fireball above the ammo dump and there were the helicopters ditching in the oil slick off the Pioneer Contender.
“Fucking Arvin finally shooting each other,” the bartender said.
“Oh shit, Inez,” Jack Lovett said. “Harry Victor’s wife.”
“Listen,” Inez said. “It’s too late for the correct thing. Forget the correct thing.”
Which is how Jack Lovett and Inez Victor happened that Easter Sunday night in 1975 to take the Singapore Airlines flight that leaves Honolulu at 3:45 A.M. and at 9:40 A.M. one day later lands at Kai Tak, Hong Kong.
Recently when I took this flight I thought of Inez, who described it as an eleven-hour dawn.
Inez said she never closed her eyes.
Inez said she could still feel the cold of the window against her cheek.
Inez said the 3:45 A.M. flight from Honolulu to Hong Kong was exactly the way she hoped dying would be.
Dawn all the way.
Something to see, as Jack Lovett had said at the Happy Talk about another dawn in another year. Something to behold.
It occurs to me that Inez Victor’s behavior the night she flew to Hong Kong may not have been so circumstantial after all.
She had t
o have a passport with her, didn’t she?
What does that suggest?
You tell me.
Three
1
THE day Jack Lovett flew down to Saigon the rain began in Hong Kong. The rain muddied the streets, stiffened the one pair of shoes Inez had with her, broke the blossoms from the bauhinia tree on the balcony of the apartment in which Jack Lovett had told her to wait and obscured the view of the Happy Valley track from the bedroom window. The rain reminded her of Honolulu. The rain and the obscured horizon and the breaking of the blossoms and the persistent smell of mildew in the small apartment all reminded her of Honolulu but it was colder in Hong Kong. She was always cold. Every morning after Jack Lovett left Inez would wake early in the slight chill and put on the galoshes and macintosh she had found in the otherwise empty closet and set out to walk. She developed a route. She would walk down Queen’s Road and over behind the Anglican cathedral and up Garden Road to the American consulate, where she would sit in the reception room and read newspapers.
Quite often in the reception room of the American consulate on Garden Road Inez read about Harry Victor’s relatives. In the South China Morning Post she read that Harry Victor’s wife had not been present at the funeral of Harry Victor’s sister-in-law, a private service in Honolulu after which Senator Victor declined to speak to reporters. In the Asian edition of the International Herald-Tribune she read that Harry Victor’s father-in-law had required treatment at the Honolulu City and County Jail for superficial wounds inflicted during an apparent suicide attempt with a Bic razor. In the international editions of both Time and Newsweek she read that Harry Victor’s daughter was ironically or mysteriously missing in Vietnam.
“Ironically” was the word used by Time, and “mysteriously” by Newsweek. Both Time and Newsweek used “missing,” as did the South China Morning Post, the Asian editions of both the Wall Street Journal and the International Herald-Tribune, the Straits Times, and the pouched copies of the New York Times and the Washington Post that arrived at the consulate three days after publication. “Missing” did not seem to Inez to quite cover it. The pilots of downed fighters were said to be “missing,” and correspondents last seen in ambush situations. “Missing” suggested some line of duty that did not quite encompass getting on a C-5A transport in Seattle and flying to Saigon to look for a job. Possibly that was the ironic part, or even the mysterious.
By the time Inez finished reading the papers it would be close to noon, and she would walk from the consulate on up Garden Road to what seemed to be a Chinese nursery school, with a terrace roofed in corrugated plastic under which the children played. She would stand in the rain and watch the children until, at the ping of a little bell, they formed a line and marched inside, and then she would take a taxi back to the apartment and hang the macintosh on the shower door to dry and set the galoshes behind the door. She had no idea to whom the galoshes and macintosh belonged. She had no idea to whom the apartment belonged.
“Somebody in Vientiane,” Jack Lovett had said when she asked.
She presumed it was a woman because the galoshes and macintosh were small. She presumed the woman was an American because the only object in the medicine cabinet, a plastic bottle of aspirin tablets, was the house brand of a drugstore she knew to be in New York. She presumed that the American woman was a reporter because there was a standard Smith-Corona typewriter and a copy of Modern English Usage on the kitchen table, and a paperback copy of Homage to Catalonia in the drawer of the bed table. In Inez’s experience all reporters had paperback copies of Homage to Catalonia, and kept them in the same place where they kept the matches and the candle and the notebook, for when the hotel was bombed. When she asked Jack Lovett if the person in Vientiane to whom the apartment belonged was in fact an American woman reporter he had shrugged.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “It’s fine.”
After that when Inez read the newspapers in the reception room of the American consulate she made a point of noticing the byline on any story originating in Vientiane, looking for a woman’s name, but never found one.
The telephone in this apartment never rang. Jack Lovett got his messages in Hong Kong at a small hotel off Connaught Road, and it was this number that Inez had given Adlai when she reached him in Honolulu the day she arrived. Because Harry had hung up mid-sentence when she called him from Wahiawa to say she was going to Hong Kong she made this call person-to-person to Adlai, but Harry had come on the line first.
“I happen to know you’re in Hong Kong,” Harry had said.
“Of course you happen to know I’m in Hong Kong,” Inez had said. “I told you I was going.”
“Will you speak to this party,” the operator had kept saying. “Is this your party?”
“You hung up,” Inez had said.
“No,” Harry had said. “This is not her party.”
“This doesn’t have anything to do with you,” Inez had said when Adlai finally picked up. “I just wanted to make sure you knew that.”
“Dad told me.” Adlai had made this sound slightly prosecutorial. “What does it have to do with?”
“Just not with you.”
“What am I supposed to tell Dad?”
Inez had considered this. “Tell him hello,” she said finally.
That had been Tuesday in Hong Kong and Monday in Honolulu.
It had been Wednesday the second of April in Hong Kong when Jack Lovett flew down to Saigon to look for Jessie.
Twice during that first week, the week of the rain, he had come back up to Hong Kong unexpectedly, once on an Air America transport with eighty-three third-country nationals who had been identified with American interests and once on a chartered Pan American 707 with the officers and cash reserves of the Saigon branches of the Bank of America, the First National City Bank, and the Chase Manhattan. The first time he came up it had been for only a few hours, which he spent placing calls from the telephone in the apartment, but the second time he had spent the night, and they had driven out to the Repulse Bay and taken a room overlooking the sea. They had ordered dinner in the room and slept and woke and slept again and whenever they were awake Jack Lovett had talked. He had seemed to regard the room at the Repulse Bay as neutral ground on which he could talk as he had not talked in the apartment that belonged to somebody in Vientiane. He talked all night. He talked to Inez but as if to himself. Certain words and phrases kept recurring.
Fixed-wing phase.
Tiger Ops.
Black flights.
Extraction.
Assets.
AID was without assets.
USIA was without assets.
By assets Jack Lovett had seemed to mean aircraft, aircraft and money. The Defense Attaché Office had assets. It was increasingly imperative to develop your own assets because without private assets no one could guarantee extraction. No one could guarantee extraction because they were living in a dream world down there. Amateur hour down there. Pencil pushers down there.
Each time Jack Lovett said “down there” he would glance toward the windows that opened on the water, as if “down there” were visible, nine hundred miles of South China Sea telescoped by the pressure of his obsession. Toward dawn he was talking about the lists they were making down there. They had finally decided to make a count of priority evacuees in case extraction was necessary.
In case.
Inez should note “in case.”
“In case” was proof the inmates were running the bin.
Because the various agencies had been unable to agree on the count each agency was drawing up its own list. Some people said the lists would add up to a hundred-fifty-thousand priority evacuees, others said ten times that number. Nobody seemed in any rush to make it definite. They were talking about evacuating twenty years of American contacts, not to mention their own fat American asses, but they were still talking as if they had another twenty years to do it. Twenty years and the applause of the local population. An inter-agency
task force had been appointed. To shake this down. The task force had met for dinner at the residence, met for goddamn dinner at the goddamn residence, add a little more lard to those asses, and by the time the cigars were passed they did not yet know whether they had a hundred-fifty-thousand priority evacuees or ten times that number but they did know what they needed.
They needed a wall map.
They needed a wall map of what they kept calling Metro Saigon.
This wall map had been requisitioned.
Through General Services.
They were getting their wall map any day now, and what they would do when they got it was this: they would make a population density plot. In other words they would plot, with little colored pins, the locations of a few types of people they might want to invite to the final extraction.
In case.
Strictly in case.
“Types” of people, right.
A little green pin for every holder of an embassy ration card.
A little yellow pin for every holder of a DAO liquor ration card.
A little red pin for every current member of the Cercle Sportif. Note “current.” Behind on the dues, forget it.
The little white pins were the real stroke. Follow this. There was going to be an analysis of all taxi dispatch records for the period between the first of January and the first of April. Then there would be a little white pin placed on the map showing every location in Metro Saigon to which a taxi had been dispatched. Too bad for the guys who drove their own cars. Around Metro Saigon. Taken a cab, they’d be on the map. This map was going to be a genuine work of art. Anybody down there had any feeling for posterity, they’d get this map out and put it under glass at the State Department.
Pins intact.
Memento mori Metro Saigon.
By the time he stopped talking the room was light.
Inez sat on the edge of the bed and began brushing her hair.
“So what do you think,” Jack Lovett said.
“I don’t know.”
Through the half-closed shutters Inez could see the early light on the water. It occurred to her for the first time that this was the same sea she had looked on with Jessie, the day there had been no baby cobras in the borrowed garden and Harry had been at the situation briefing in Saigon. Now there was about to be no more situation and Jessie was in Saigon and Jack Lovett was going back down to Saigon but Jack Lovett might not find her before it happened.