“Well,” was all I managed.
“What is your expression? The air conditioners, they shall sell faster than cakes that are heated?”
“What’s your deal, Singh?”
He rubbed thumb against forefingers. “There is a waiting list for those air conditioners that can be circumvented for a supplemental consideration of one hundred dollars.”
“Impossible, man. Highway robbery.”
Mr. Singh literally kicked a tire.
“This cream puff has low miles and the USARV Motor Pool rebuilt the engine last week,” I said sincerely.
Mr. Singh squatted and looked underneath, then made the same sourpuss face he’d worn had when we’d brought him the Spam.
“There are fluids seeping and dripping.”
“Normal part of the break-in process on a rebuilt mill,” I said.
We haggled, and he wound up paying us less than I wanted and more than I thought we were going to get. He paid us in piasters, which the PX wouldn’t accept. So we had to change them back to him for greenbacks at a discounted rate, $90.25 net to us. Basically, Singh screwed us twice. He did give us a name of a “helpful” PX employee.
I’d been a business major for a quarter, a marketing major for two. In retrospect from The Great Beyond, I should have used the G.I. Bill upon my army discharge, gone back to college and actually graduated, then on to grad school like Baby Brother. But, yeah, I know, hindsight.
My real world experience in Saigon was invaluable. A potential master’s thesis title: Microeconomic Exploitation of First World Individuals by Subcontinent Individual in Macroeconomic Third World Environment. It would’ve been a breeze; the research was already done.
Mr. Singh asked, “When is it we shall become the fifty-first province in your great nation? The stories of such an impending occurrence are rampant.”
“Any day now,” I said.
“I shall then be an American citizen?”
“You and Patrick Henry and Sonny Liston, Mr. Singh, same same.”
I think of Mr. Singh now as I page through The Great Beyond’s useless telephone directory. Is he with us? Who can say? There are a zillion Singhs listed. Half the surnames in India are Singh and half the cabbies in the U.S.A. are likewise.
My directory is half an inch thick but it lists everybody. Though it should be ten miles high, I can thumb though all those Singhs while it stays a slender volume. How? You’ll have to ask our ringmasters to explain their hocus-pocus.
Ziggy grabbed an English-language Saigon Post from a newsstand, where we were on the lookout for a still-scarce taxi.
“What’s new on the coup?” I asked. “Didn’t their ace reporters know about it yesterday?”
Ziggy snorted, a noise like a sewage backup. “Who gives a diddly-shit about this rinky-dink coupe-de-tot when they’ll go and do it again next week?”
A valid point. I finally spotted a taxi, practically threw myself in front of it, and we piled in.
“Here’s another fuckin’ genius,” Ziggy said, reading on. “He claims Mars is cold and it got thin air. Yeah, maybe. He says Mars don’t have no water and nitrogen neither.”
When Ziggy got excited, his voice carried. In this little blue-and-cream Renault taxi, it had nowhere to carry. I expected glass to shatter. The cabby couldn’t keep his eyes out of his mirror.
“Easy, Zig. This guy in the article’s a scientist?”
“He’s the village idiot is what he is. Listen. He claims it’s according to this spectrographic analysis they done. Ain’t that a crock of shit?”
“If you say so, Zig.”
“Mariner 4 ain’t even there. He oughta hold his horses for the pitchers before he opens his trap. The Martians here now, they’ll rise up. He’s gotta be high up on their shit list. His ass’ll be the first one they fry.”
“Uh-huh,” I mumbled, hoping he’d change the subject.
Unfortunately, he did.
“There are not a few people who are irresponsible in their work, preferring the light to the heavy.”
Ziggy had spoken, but it was not his voice. One of his Martians? I looked at him.
He grinned and dug Mao’s Little Red Book from a back pocket. I’d gotten cold feet and had given it to Ziggy to carry until we put our plan in motion.
“This stuff in here, Joey, it ain’t too bad, like that quotation I quoted.”
“You’re amazing, man. You’re a speed-reader who absorbs like a sponge,” I said, yet again awed.
“It is man’s social being that determines his thinking. Once the correct ideas characteristic of the advanced class are―”
“Zig, please put it away before we’re arrested,” I said, plugging my ears until he did stop.
At the PX, we saw the gentleman Singh had told us to see, a Vietnamese backroom employee named Vo, who refused eye contact or conversation. We paid him the $90.25, which, remarkably, was his exact price. Into the taxi beside the driver, we loaded our purchase, a brand-spanking-new GE air conditioner, and had him head to Tan Son Nhat so we could poach a replacement Jeep.
I waited in the taxi at the gate, soothing the cabby’s nerves with piasters. Ziggy was back in ten minutes at the wheel of said Jeep. It was a rat, but we had no time to be picky, and Captain Papersmith wouldn’t know the diff. It had an engine knock, ripped seat covers, and a shimmy. We released the relieved cabby, then went to the Esso to have new markings sprayed on.
Back at the 803rd Liaison Detachment by 11:30, I felt like we’d put in a full day. We removed the rattletrap from the colonel’s window and stuck it in the new a.c. It was so powerful that the lights flickered when we switched it on.
Colonel Lanyard sat at his desk doing his work, completely ignoring us. I guess if we weren’t there, none of what was going on was going on. Despite pretending we didn’t exist, he angled the TOP SECRET CRYPTO cover sheet of the pile he was working on so we couldn’t see what was beneath.
His packed duffel bag was in a corner. When he was gone on one of his trips (all classified, naturally), the 803rd’s testosterone level plummeted.
A bus pulled up to take the oddballs to “noon chow.” We went outside, my screwball plan to say we had a telegram for Warrant Officer Ralph Buffet. That usually meant that somebody on the home front was dead or dying. We’d be able to cut Buffet from the herd without anybody questioning us too severely. It was a cruel thing to do, but, hey, we were in a war.
Then I saw Mai. She stood alone at the next corner, unmoving. Enchantingly demure in her áo-dài, she was the most delicate of statues, delicate as translucent Renaissance marble.
Captain Papersmith wasn’t with her, and I knew she wasn’t here to see him.
I knew because she was looking at me, holding a single white lily.
10.
EYES LOCKED on Mai, whose eyes were locked on mine, I told Ziggy to play out the phony telegram hustle. I told him to look sad and to snag Ralph Buffet however he had to. If anybody raised an objection, call them heartless bastards who couldn’t possibly have loved ones of their own on the home front or they’d understand.
Like a Ziggy sci-fi character, I teleported or levitated or dream-walked to my Dragon Lady. Face to face in full daylight, she was even more breathtaking. She was simultaneously as fragile as that lily and as tough as titanium.
“Why you give me flower?” she asked, expressionless.
I was gaga, on the ragged edge of drooling and swooning and peeing my knickers. I tried to dredge up a semblance of cool, of savior faire. In a pathetic stab at a mix of David Niven and Rock Hudson, but probably coming off as Larry, Moe and Curly, I said, “Flowers are the only gift that comes close to matching your beauty.”
With no visible reaction to my treacle, she said, “I am Mai. I saw you when you bring Dean to house. I saw you looking at me. Who are you?”
“Joe. I’m Joe. Joe.”
Puzzled, she said, “Joe, American GI soldier give me Crisco and Pall Mall and Anacin. American give me dollar and piaster. Am
erican give me dental floss and Schlitz beer. They give me Ritz cracker, Louisiana hot sauce, Clorox, Campbell Chicken Noodle and Cream of Tomato. They give me transistor radio and Canon camera and Akai tape recorder. They give me anything the PX and commissary have I tell them to give me. Did you buy flower for me at PX?”
“No. On Le Loi. Street of Flowers.”
“Why you do?”
“It’s lovely. You’re lovely.”
That was the unvarnished truth coming from a guy whose long suit was not candor with women. Not so many months later, barely discharged from the service, after a three-day, brawling bender, battered and filthy, brimming with self-loathing, I underwent a crude precursor of the vasectomy when few people had heard of the procedure. I likened it to being gelded in a barn. I empathized with any woman who endured a backroom abortionist and his coat hanger.
I had not wanted the responsibility of bringing a creature such as myself into the world. The physician had accepted my logic and the remainder of my mustering-out pay.
During normal child-bearing age, I’d been married to Lea, Charlotte and Janelle, One through Three respectively. They had not questioned the purported causes of my sterility, despite how absurd. My reasons had ranged from Agent Orange to Vietcong torture to Pentagon radiation experiments to a parachute opening improperly. That I hadn’t always kept my tall tales straight was irrelevant. They weren’t as naïve as they were relieved.
My elasticity with facts when I wanted something made truth-telling a vivid memory.
Mai paused. I knew she was attempting to absorb what I’d said. It was so abstract. It did not mesh with her knowledge of interaction between Vietnamese women and American GIs. The latter paid to fuck the former, renting their bodies in the short-term (as in “short time” or “boom boom,” both slang for a quickie) or in the long-term, paying directly with piasters or indirectly with gifts, a charade of love, or a “relationship” in exchange for cash and/or goods.
“No man ever give me beautiful flower. I can not eat or drink or sell flower. Why you give me flower?” she pressed, disoriented and suspicious.
“Uh, romance,” I said. “The flowers say I care for you.”
“You no know me, Joe.”
“I do know you, I know you better than you think,” I said, then shutting up before I stupidly blabbed my cartoon Dragon Lady hang-up.
“I no know romance. What does romance mean?”
“Romance is an English word, an American word. It means emotion and love of a guy to a girl and a girl to a guy, something along those lines. You know, like boy-girl in the movies.”
“Romance?” she asked, looking at the lily, still suspicious. “Is this romance?”
Romance. Yeah, the perfect word. Romance conjured Hollywood and its love affairs that, outside of the movies, usually went up in smoke. Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher. Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh. Liz Taylor and whomever.
With Judy and I, in retrospect, it had not been romance beyond empty words and groping and heavy breathing and dry-humping and, at long last, “going all the way” at the drive-in theater. Judy and I went all the way while The Longest Day had played. It had taken me nearly to the end, when beachheads were secured, to score.
Until that occurred, every drive-in movie with her had been the longest day. The romance of entry inside her pantyhose meant entry into the kingdom of commitment and marriage and living happily ever after. Romance was conformity, meeting the expectations of others.
“Romance,” I said, bobbing my head as if addled, deciding what the hell. I dug the Dragon Lady cartoon panel out of my wallet so clumsily the rubber came too, landing at my feet. The rubber was a “gold dollar,” so named for its gold foil wrapper. It was not inconspicuous.
“Shit.” I did a goofy fandango to get a shoe over it, stomping on it as if an insect, though much too late.
In reaction to my awkwardness, Mai covered what I knew was a gorgeous smile. I handed her Terry Lee’s nemesis. “You, her. Her, you. Romance was her who is you. Romance is you. Biểt?”
Her nose twitched, as if whiffing raw sewage. She wadded and dropped it. “Ugly old lady. You say me ugly old lady, Joe?”
Well, the cartoon version did pale in comparison. “No. Oh no. No way.”
“Joe, you know Dean Papersmith, huh?”
Dean and his two inches of manhood. “Sure do.”
“Dean say he lead men into jungle fighting communists.”
I managed a nod and a straight face. “Absolutely. A special assignment if there ever was one.”
“Dean says he marry me and take me to America. He have no love with wife Mildred. No romance as you say. He say he divorce her, marry me. I do not think he have romance for me. If he marry me, romance, if there is, will be all gone. People marry, fini romance. Here.”
She gave me the lily. “You buy flower for me, I buy for you.”
Before I fainted and/or said something else dumb, Ziggy came to us, jerking along a pear-shaped guy with a cowlick and smudged glasses. I presumed that Ziggy’s disobedient mutt was Warrant Officer Ralph Buffet.
“His buddies, they gave me a ration of shit, Joey. I told them I was with the Red Cross.”
“Nice work, Zig,” I said as Mai looked Ziggy up and down, as if he was one of his own Martians.
“Is it my Aunt Peg?” Ralph Buffet whined. “Is it? She has diabetes. She’s had a leg amputated.”
I waited till the oddballs’ bus turned the corner, then flashed Buffet his little red book. “Aunt Peg is in finer shape than you are, pal. We’re not Red Cross. We’re with a hush-hush agency that’s CID and CIA, with the FBI sprinkled in. We don’t have much patience with fifth columnists.”
Buffet’s whining rose an octave and fifty decibels. “I can explain.”
Mai watched me, hopefully impressed.
A cyclo deposited an unsteady Captain Dean Papersmith at the 803rd. Mai’s back was to him. The eyeballs of Dean, groom of Mildred, looked as if they needed tourniquets. Had he seen us? I didn’t think so, but if he hadn’t he might unless we scrammed.
Multitasking was a buzzword of decades hence. Buzzword was also a buzzword of the future. Regardless, I was multitasking within spitting distance of far too many people. We had to scram before Papersmith saw us.
“Hey,” I said. “My stomach’s growling. Who’s ready for lunch?”
***
The Continental Palace Hotel was a downtown Saigon institution. Open air, ceiling fans, white-jacketed waiters older than Ho Chi Minh. They claim the atmosphere hadn’t changed since the 1920s. A zillion deals had been cut on the Conti terrasse, lies told in twenty languages. This joint was a blast. It was a zoo. You ate and drank while you gawked at the two-legged wildlife.
I thought it was as safe as a popular American hangout could be. VC sappers were flinging satchels of plastique into Saigon bars at an increasing rate. My theory on them avoiding the Conti was the open walls on three sides. A satchel charge wasn’t powerful enough to blow out the pillars that held up the four stories of hotel above us and without walls to hold in the explosion. The concussion wouldn’t kill enough folks to be worth the risk. Besides, half the antique waiters were probably Vietcong sympathizers and spies, listening in and taking notes.
We ordered Nha Trang shrimp and sautéed chicken and stir-fried vegetables and a heaping bowl of sticky rice. Eating family-style was my idea, to eliminate tension, especially my own. To wash down the food, I ordered Biere 33 all around. It was the premier Vietnamese suds. Known as “ba-mi-ba,” a mild corruption of ba-muoi-ba, the Vietnamese number 33.
They say it’s brewed with formaldehyde. I was a believer. Drink a dozen or so, and you’ll wake up in the morning feeling like you were dead and embalmed, and wishing you were.
Mai demurely asked for a cup of tea.
“So, Comrade Buffet,” I asked. “How long have you been a fellow traveler? Or are you a card-carrying Red feeding the enemy classified info? Which is a quick ticket to a firing squad.”
The chopsticks that he hadn’t mastered fell out of his hand. “You have me all wrong. My brother found it at a Toronto bookstore. All manner of subversive literature is available in Canada. Titles like U.S. Imperialism Will Be Defeated and Revolutionary Armed Struggle of the Indo-Chinese Peoples Will Certainly Triumph. He sent it to me as a gag. A lark. I’ve been reading it. I’m curious how those people think. That’s all.”
“You, who is working on a top secret project vital to our nation’s defense. A likely story. What’s going on in there?”
“I can’t tell you. As you said, it’s top secret.”
I nodded to Ziggy, who quoted from Quotations from Mao Tse-tung, “People of the world, unite and defeat the U.S. aggressors and all their running dogs.”
“Ouch,” I said. “Some lark.”
A nervous Mai touched her lips with a manicured and lacquered fingernail.
“I want a lawyer,” Ralph Buffet said, absently digging at earwax.
“A military or civilian lawyer? Which are your druthers? Neither one can save your sorry ass. You can have Clarence Darrow for all the good it’ll do you, Comrade Buffet.”
“Please don’t call me that. How do I know you guys are who say you are? You look familiar. Haven’t I seen you across the street?”
“’The army in the Liberated Areas must support the government and cherish the people,’” Ziggy recited.
“What did he say?”
I said, “I’m asking the questions. Whip some ID on me, soldier.”
He did not comply. He stared at me. I stared at him. It was Dodge City, Marshal Matt Dillon (me), in front of Miss Kitty’s Long Branch, faced off with the villain. I won the bluff. Buffet finally slapped leather, drawing his wallet.
Ralph Buffet was Chief Warrant Officer CWO-2 Ralph J. Buffet. Warrant officers were in a twilight zone between commissioned officers and enlisted personnel. Warrants had many privileges of commissioned officers, but technically a twenty-five-year man, a CWO-4, the highest warrant grade, was outranked by a fuzzy-cheeked second lieutenant. In practice, that was not the case. If the second louie knew what was good for him, he wouldn’t try to pull rank.
Dragon Lady Page 9