by Meris Lee
“Oh, I am just so happy to finally meet Kim,” said Lan, beaming toward Kim, who was sitting to her right.
“Vo,” said Lan toward her son sitting at the front passenger seat, “I will meet with Kim’s mother tonight after I wash up, and then tomorrow we will all visit Kim’s parents to talk more details. I can hardly wait.”
Lan’s enthusiasm was shared perhaps only by the taxi driver, who was eager to offer advice on matrimony as he successfully married his daughter to the son of a well-to-do hotel owner not long ago. Vo looked out the window at the passing buildings and motorcycles, and didn’t say a word for the entire ride.
Chapter 19
The Cardinal’s Choir was rehearsing before the nightclub opened in a half hour. The drummer that Tuan recommended to Zoe had started about a week ago. She had introduced herself as Billie Dinh, twenty-one years old, born and raised in Nha Trang. Billie spoke English with an accent, but she knew just about all the bestselling pop songs in English in the last fifty years. Zoe was concerned that Billie couldn’t adapt to their music style because gothic metal was new for Billie. However, Billie fell in love with the genre immediately, and her amazing ear allowed her to learn the drum parts fast. Zoe shared a few videos with her and soon Billie was dressing the part, too. Everyone dressed in black with red, purple, or white highlights. They all opted for the beautiful classic look using smudged eyeliners, smoky eye shadows, and dark lipsticks, staying away from the horror makeup. Their clothing was mostly simple and elegant, with occasional mischievous accents of tulle or lace, a revealing corset or a very short skirt. Zoe maintained her pixie haircut, but everyone else had long and flowing hair past her shoulders.
“Hey girls,” said Boris when he interrupted the band’s rehearsal. “You guys sound amazing, but I need to talk to Zoe.” He gestured for Zoe to follow him to his office.
Yurik was also in Boris’s office, watching a Russian variety show on television and eating pickled cucumber and salami, washing both down with vodka. Boris asked Zoe to sit down.
“So, Zoe,” said Boris, “I really appreciate your band. Not many clubs here could offer live music, and I am happy that we can.”
“Thanks,” said Zoe, who was glad to hear the compliment.
“However,” Boris’s expression turned serious, “the new club that just opened last month down the street from us is drawing away some of our customers. They have a DJ spinning what Americans call ‘top forty’ kind of music.”
Zoe looked down at her shoes, and said nothing.
“What I want to know is, can you girls play something more mainstream? Russians love American pop music, too. We can get American tourists and maybe more locals to come to our nightclub. The Vietnamese bands here play covers of American pop music all the time on TV.”
“That’s true,” said Yurik.
“So what do you think?” said Boris.
“Well,” Zoe said after some consideration, “I have to talk to the girls, but I don’t think we will be able to do it.”
“Zoe,” said Boris, “I have been very nice to you and your friends. You are not even of legal age to work here, and I should think that you are grateful for this job.”
“Why do you want to be the same as everyone else? That’s boring,” said Zoe.
“Zoe, watch your mouth,” said Yurik.
Boris waved at Yurik, and then said to Zoe, “If I lose customers to the other club and I can’t make any money, I won’t be able to pay for your band. I will have to let you girls go. After all, it is cheaper to hire a DJ.”
Zoe felt that this was almost an ultimatum, but she was not going to budge. She stood up and said, “Can I go now? I believe we are to start soon. I don’t want to be late. You might lose more customers.” She took a step toward the door.
Yurik stood up and grabbed Zoe’s wrist and twisted it in a way that made Zoe curse in pain. “The boss asked you a question. Are you going to do it or not?” said Yurik in a threatening tone.
“We don’t know any pop songs. We don’t care to play them anyway. We don’t want to be ordinary,” said Zoe, her voice loud and determined.
“You don’t want to be ordinary. If you get fired and have to live on the street, you might appreciate being ordinary,” said Yurik. He put his hand on Zoe’s head and forced her to face Boris. “Now answer the boss.”
Zoe was starting to tear up, but she still was not going to back down.
Boris stood up and said to Yurik, “That’s enough. Let her go.”
Yurik released Zoe’s wrist, and sat down.
“Zoe,” said Boris, “I want you to think about it. Talk with your friends. I want an answer in a week or two. You can go now.”
Zoe left the office. She finally let her tears roll down her face. She needed this job. She couldn’t go back to her mother’s apartment and let her mother declare victory. Her heart was pounding and she was nauseated. She got her purse from her locker and went to the restroom to get cleaned up for the performance.
Billie was in the restroom as well when Zoe walked in. There was another Southeastern Asian woman there, petite but full-bodied, clad in a short backless dress with sequins and standing on a pair of three-inch stilettos. She was handing Billie a piece of paper when Zoe came in. She said something to Billie in a foreign language and hurried out of the restroom.
Zoe was trying to hide her sniffles. She grabbed some toilet paper and started to wipe down her face and reapply makeup. Billie looked at her and said, “What happened?”
“Yurik was being a jerk,” said Zoe.
“Yurik? I thought you were talking to Boris,” said Billie.
“Yeah, but Yurik was there too.”
“What does Boris want?”
“He wants us to play music the new American club down the street is playing, or else he was going to fire us and hire a DJ instead.”
“Oh no, I am just beginning to like this new job of mine,” said Billie.
“I don’t want to do it, but I need this job. We don’t have to answer Boris for a while. We will talk about it.”
“I don’t know why Boris is so worried. He offers more than just live music, dancing and drinking here than that American club. He shouldn’t have to worry about money.”
“What do you mean? More than music, dancing and drinking?”
“Well, you know,” said Billie, “this place is so Russian. There are no other Russian nightclubs that I know of in Nha Trang. It’s special that way.” Billie looked in the mirror and powdered her face.
Zoe cleaned up and felt almost back to her normal state. She said, “So, who was that woman you were talking to a minute ago?”
“I’m just helping her with something,” said Billie.
“Like what?”
“She wants to keep it a secret.”
“Fine, don’t tell me. But I heard her say something before she left. It didn’t sound like Vietnamese.”
“It was Khmer, the language of Cambodia,” said Billie.
“You speak Cambodian?”
“Sure, Cambodia is our neighbor,” said Billie. “I’m going to get a drink of water. I will see you on stage.” Billie left the restroom.
Zoe was still trying to put her thoughts together when another woman came in. It was the Russian woman Zoe had met many times before and spoken to once in the restroom.
“Hi. How are you?” Zoe said in Russian.
The woman had long blond hair in bouncy waves, hip-hugging burgundy dress with a plunging neckline and a pair of knee-high gladiator heels. Her face was as glamorous as always. She furrowed her brow and gave a look of puzzlement when she saw Zoe.
“I’m fine,” said Zoe, thinking that her own dejected look had caused the woman to be concerned. “I’m just having a bad day. If you have a boyfriend, you would understand.”
The woman’s face turned sad all of a sudden, and she looked down. Zoe sensed that she had touched on a sensitive subject. “I’m sorry,” said Zoe.
The woman’s eyes, which
were already somewhat bloodshot to begin with, were now red with tears. She wept quietly.
“I wish you would tell me what’s going on,” said Zoe. She could tell that the woman was burdened with something that she could not share.
Zoe didn’t expect the woman to answer, but she was surprised when the woman pulled out a lipstick from her purse and started to write on the mirror.
Don’t say it out loud, the woman wrote.
Zoe nodded. The woman erased the sentence and wrote, pen and paper and I will tell you more.
Zoe took over the lipstick and wrote, okay.
The woman nodded, and erased the writing. She took the lipstick from Zoe’s hand and put it back in her purse. She started to refresh her makeup as well. Zoe left the restroom; she was full of curiosity.
The Cardinal’s Choir started entertaining on time. Zoe looked more carefully at the crowd in an attempt to estimate whether the number had indeed dwindled. She really couldn’t tell a difference; there were still a lot of people, and the band still got a lot of applause after each song, more so now that their performance had been elevated with the addition of Billie’s drums.
As Zoe was scanning the audience, she was surprised to see a man at the bar sitting next to the Russian woman from the restroom. After a few seconds she recognized him to be the man that was chatting with her mother the night she left the apartment. It was McKenzie Clark. She had thought that he was her mother’s new boyfriend.
McKenzie’s hand was stroking up and down the woman’s back and occasionally her thighs. Zoe could tell that the woman was forcing a smile. Before long both McKenzie and the woman left the bar, and Zoe could see that they were heading toward the back exit. Zoe wondered whether McKenzie was that woman’s boyfriend, the one who was making her sad.
When the club was closed for the night, Zoe again stood outside with her guitar to wait for Yurik. She didn’t really want to go home with Yurik, especially after what happened in Boris’s office earlier. It wasn’t the first time that Yurik had acted violently either. Just recently he had slapped her in the face when they were having a fight. Zoe tried to hit him back, but her thin frame was no match against Yurik’s enormous muscles. She knew that she had to leave him, but the prospect of being homeless in a foreign country was much more frightening.
The sound of a motorcycle approached. Zoe looked up, and Tuan had stopped in front of her again. He was in his green uniform, straddling a police motorcycle.
“I thought I’d come and check on my neighbor, Billie,” said Tuan.
Zoe smiled and said, “Thanks so much for getting her to play drums for us. She is excellent. She has gone home, though.”
“That’s fine. How are you?”
Zoe didn’t answer right away; she didn’t know whether to tell the truth.
“What’s troubling you?” said Tuan.
Zoe didn’t want to talk about her problems with Yurik, so instead she told Tuan about the Russian woman and McKenzie Clark.
“So, are you going to tell your mother about it?” said Tuan.
“My mother and I don’t get along,” said Zoe. “She’s always dating losers anyway. Well, except for my father, and the husband that divorced her last year.”
“I’m confused. Your father divorced your mother?”
“No. Long story short, my father, Leo, died when I was four. My mother, Ana, ran around dating random people and had my brother, Ivan, who is eleven now. My great grandmother raised me, because my mother was incompetent. Poor Ivan had to live with my mother because my great grandmother was too old to take care of both of us. Then my mother married this man, Eduard, about three years ago, just before my great grandmother died. Eduard was a good man, but my mother did something stupid and he divorced her.”
“Okay, that sounded complicated,” said Tuan. He had a look of amazement on his face.
“Anyway,” said Zoe, “back to the woman we were talking about earlier. I feel sorry for her. She looks so beautiful, but she is so sad all the time. And she says she works here at the club. She doesn’t seem like a waitress to me. She could be a maître d’, but she doesn’t dress like one. I wonder why Boris never introduced her to me.”
“Zoe, you can be so naïve sometimes,” said Tuan with a smile. “When you hand her the paper and pen, could you ask her to write down her full name, date of birth, and her hometown in Russia? Also ask her who got her this job, who her boss is, and where she stays.”
“Those are strange questions,” said Zoe. “She and I are not exactly friends. One thing I can tell you. Her boss is Boris. He’s the only boss in the club. Everyone else is just a peon.”
Tuan didn’t say anything back, so Zoe continued to say, “And why can’t she just talk to me? Why does she have to write things down?”
“Has it ever occurred to you that perhaps she could not talk for a reason?”
Before Zoe could answer, Tuan said, “What’s that?”
Zoe saw that Tuan was looking at her wrist where a bruise was visible. It must have been from Yurik grabbing her earlier. She didn’t want to talk about it, and so she said, “I hit it on something.”
Just now Yurik came out of the nightclub. He immediately wrapped his arm around Zoe’s shoulders and said to Tuan, “You again. Are you bothering my girl?”
“No, not at all,” said Tuan. “I was just making sure that she was fine until you could get here. It’s past midnight and it’s not safe for a girl to loiter about a nightclub alone. I am going now. You two take care.” Tuan rode away on his motorcycle, with a sharp rumble that quickly dissipated as he fell out of sight.
“I don’t want you talking to that cop again, you understand?” Yurik said to Zoe harshly.
Zoe struggled out of Yurik’s grasp and said, “Who makes you the boss of me?”
“Well, last I checked, you were sleeping in my bed and eating out of my kitchen. That makes me the boss of you. Now get in the car,” said Yurik as he pushed Zoe into a small sedan parked outside the nightclub. Zoe knew that she had made a mistake moving in with Yurik, but she was not about to crawl back to her mother’s apartment and apologize. Not yet, anyway.
Chapter 20
It was a gorgeous sunny day in mid-July. There were a few slivers of clouds in the azure sky. The water was the color of jade. The breeze was soft and warm. The only waves came from the movement of Vo’s fishing boat, which was heading toward a remote island. Ana was sitting at the bow, just outside the pilothouse. This was the first time she had gone out to sea since she arrived in Nha Trang, and she was full of anticipation.
The surface of the water in the distance was shimmering in the sunlight, juxtaposed with small, glittering white crests created by the gentle wind. Ana looked down in the water, which was so clear that she could see tropical fish hurrying to make way for the boat as it glided through the ocean. Ana was a little tense before she stepped on the boat, as she could not recall ever being on one. She tried to think of her past trips to various lakes in her landlocked hometown, but could not associate any with a vehicle off from dry land. She had learned to swim in school, and had enjoyed splashing in the shallow parts of the beach in Nha Trang, where she could stand if she felt fatigued. She had never dipped in the open ocean, however, where there was no land in sight. She was anxious. Nevertheless, as soon as Vo took the boat out of port, and she was able to bask in the warm sun with nothing to see but blue and green, she relaxed. Being cocooned by the monotonous sounds of boat engine, waves, and wind was also very calming. The effect was almost similar to having had a glass of wine, she thought to herself, feeling thirsty.
The deep green water gradually became a bright aquamarine as the boat came closer and closer to its destination. Ana looked ahead and could see a small island with a double-peaked mountain in the middle. She didn’t see any other boat around. Vo stopped the engine and put the anchor down a short distance away from the beach. He lowered a ladder down one side of the boat.
“We have to get off here and wade in. Do y
ou think you can manage?” said Vo.
The water didn’t seem too deep, so Ana said, “Sure.”
Vo gently lowered a kayak into the water; the kayak, barely fitting the length of the boat, had been secured with ropes inside the hull. Vo then put a waterproof bag on his shoulder and went down the ladder first. Ana could see that he was able to stand with the water coming up to his waist. He signaled for Ana to follow, and spotted her from below as she came down the ladder. The water came up to about her chest.
Vo untied the kayak from the boat and pushed it toward the shore. Ana followed him. The water was clean and warm. She could see the white sand underneath. They made it to the beach without any problems, and Ana was relieved.
Vo took out a mat from his bag and unrolled it, spreading it out over the sand in the shade of a coconut tree. He then removed his wet shirt and set it down on a rock nearby. Ana was a little bashful to see Vo’s bare chest, but she decided that it was too cold to stay in the wet clothes even under the hot sun. She removed her thigh length linen cover and set it down on the rock next to Vo’s shirt. She wore a one-piece swimsuit, solid blue.
They both sat down on the mat to take in their surroundings for a few minutes without talking to each other. The mountain behind them was silent and green with bushes and trees, but Ana could hear the call of the white birds flying around the top of the mountain. The medley of the waves, breeze, and coconut tree branches knocking one another was so soothing that Ana felt almost tipsy. Vo had provided her with a large towel to wrap herself in, and even though they were in the shade, Ana felt comfortably warm. She lay down to observe the sky, peering through the leaves of the coconut tree. The sun was off to one side, as it was not yet noon. Ana turned toward Vo to admire the golden circles that the sunlight, filtered through the coconut leaves, imprinted on Vo’s face and chest.
“Thank you for taking me out here,” said Ana, “even if we are to do nothing but turn around and go right back. I have never been to a place as beautiful as this.”
“You’re welcome,” said Vo. “I discovered this island one day when I was just out exploring the sea off the coast of Nha Trang. I can’t find it on the map. Just as well, I have it all to myself when I come here.” He also lay down to look at the sky with Ana.