Since Madge vanished, I’m hanging out more and more at that strip mall, listening. I’ve developed and discarded theories on what happened to her, most centered on Smitty. To my knowledge, they did not meet during her brief stay. I cannot verify this, however. Maybe he went to her place one evening after seeing her outside having a puff. Maybe they got into a beef. An adolescent boasting match, one-upping each other on the savageness of their life-taking, got out of hand.
The teriyaki joint is the richest rumor mill at the mall. And to tell you the truth, I’m in there at a corner table twiddling my thumbs more than is healthy. By that I mean the little Asian gal behind the counter ready to take orders that are never given from nonexistent strip mall patrons while the cook (her husband?) stands by to prepare the food.
Other mall merchants visit the teriyaki at meal times, but do not order and eat either. What the point of an eatery is, I yet again haven’t the foggiest. There are zero calories in teriyaki holograms. No cholesterol, no trans fats.
They come in to gossip with each other and her. They all do. Vietnamese who run the noodle shop and nail salon. The dry cleaner couple; Koreans, I think. The payday loan owner, a small white man of middling age whose small dark eyes do not make contact. A new tenant, proprietor of a tanning parlor; a pert thirtyish blonde whose bronzed skin is sixtyish. The lady with her hair in a gray bun and horn-rimmed glasses held on a chain, the tax preparation professional who prepares no taxes. She, like me, only listens. Perhaps her vocal cords have atrophied from lack of use.
Ms. Teriyaki is the clearinghouse for every story, absurd or not. She’s no Dragon Lady, but I am so tempted to move in close, reach out and cop a feel. Not that I’m gonna cop anything but air, not that I am capable of arousal. But you know what I mean.
The rumormongers have no knowledge of anybody re-succumbing, but given our honchos’ wit, who can say? That’s their argument, a tough one to refute in this structured, irrational chaos. Call it trepidation or apprehension or whatever, but these rumors have created an increasing anxiety in me whether there is an after-afterlife.
Convince me that Madge’s disappearance was not in that vein and I’ll relax.
Earthly fears of death, circa 1965, yeah, I had a few. You know of my snake hang-up. The prospect of a communist guerrilla around the next corner, sure.
I did not fear being off-limits. I was not fearful of being AWOL, of violating Colonel Lanyard’s martial law proclamation. Thanks to the blackout the 803rd had caused, nocturnal Saigon was off-limits to U.S. military personnel.
I cared not.
I was comfortable straying off-limits. In Basic Training and AIT, to discourage us from doing so, they’d marched us into auditoriums and showed films of horrific VD routinely contracted while off limits, of dicks pustulating and putrefying and outright rotting off.
Each unit had nearby off-limits establishments listed on orderly room bulletin boards, with caveats on physical danger and unclean women. They threatened punishment if the MPs apprehended us. Names and addresses of the dens of iniquity were given. Incredibly, some phone numbers, too. We’d regarded the postings as a convenient locater service.
Waiting as a yawning Ziggy picked the front door lock for me to depart the 803rd, I believed I heard more jungle sounds in the general’s offices. Vines rustling, coatimundis frolicking in the treetops.
I entered the blackness, a London blitz milieu, with bogeymen on the ground rather than in the skies. I touched an Annex window pane and felt a steady vibration from the uninjured organs of their computational monster. The only visible light in the 803rd Liaison Detachment emanated from vanes of the colonel’s window shutters.
I couldn’t hike to Cholon, so I made my way to 421 Hai Ba Trung Street. I passed the occasional hibachi burning inside a dwelling for light. I climbed Mai’s stairway, fully prepared to curl in the fetal position at her door and await her return, however long it took.
I was not fearful of the consequences of consorting with my Dragon Lady who, if not hardcore Vietcong, was an almost-certain enemy of Truth, Justice, and the American Way. If I was too by association, I took consolation that my immediate superiors were also culpable.
What I did fear, what I was scared shitless of, was Mai’s ulterior motives. For the kazillionth time, I analyzed them and drew no conclusion. She fed me and she bred me. I gave little in return but the dubious currencies of passion and devotion.
I feared her eventual demands. I feared they would break our magical spell. She was what she was, and I was too stupidly smitten to care. She had lived up to my Dragon Lady fantasy in every respect.
Mai answered on the first knock.
I damn near jumped out of my sneakers.
“Joe.”
Saying my name casually, as if I’d gone out for a quart of milk and a loaf of bread.
“Where the hell have you been, Mai?”
Her face and voice neutral, she said, “You not my boss. You not Quyen.”
“I was worried. I didn’t know where you were earlier.”
Her reply was a step to the rear, allowing me in as she appraised me. “Worry why?”
“I care for you.”
“Because it dark out?”
“That too.”
“Friend me say Vietcong blow up Saigon power plant.”
“Yes, they did,” I said, in a Bogart grimace. “The dirty rats.”
“No safe for you to come see me in dark, Joe, but you here.”
I shrugged in aw-shucks modesty.
“You speak romance? You take chance to come see me. This is romance?”
“Romance is me loving you, Mai. That is romance.”
Mai didn’t reciprocate verbally, but she hugged me long and hard as I caressed the world’s foremost, firmest, most fantastic buttocks. Then instead of going into the bathroom for her customary personal hygiene, she took a handful of shirt and pulled me to her bed. She unzipped me, then herself.
Taken by surprise by her aggressiveness, I flopped on the bed and made an impulsive decision that we’d henceforth have protection against pregnancy and venereal disease. I know, the horse was long gone from the stable, but that’s what I decided.
In a clumsy hurry, I fished the gold dollar out of my wallet and the rubber out of its foil wrapper. I dropped it on the floor and fumbled for it on my hands and knees. By then, my naked Dragon Lady was under the covers, wondering what sort of klutz she’d gotten mixed up with.
They sold gold dollar rubbers everywhere. Cheap. At street stalls, in shops, pharmacies. Singh sold them. If you didn’t have army-issue on you, you bought gold dollars when you needed them. If you had half a brain you did.
With all the nasty strains circulating in this country and more to come proportional to the buildup, you could have a penicillin-resistant bug and not know. Any fool knew that syphilis could hibernate in your brain for twenty or thirty years until the critters made wormwood out of your gray matter as they’d done to Al Capone’s. So safety first it would be.
I’d known GIs who put on two rubbers at once. Patronizing Mama-san’s exclusively (prior to Mai), I hadn’t worried, as she was a quality-oriented madam.
As far as birth control went, Mai had not confided her precautions with me, if any, and I hadn’t inquired. Nevertheless, riding her bareback was no fairer to her than it was prudent for me. If I was carrying some disgusting crud such as blue balls, I’d cut off mine before passing it on to Mai.
My Dragon Lady helped me. She was not clumsy. After gently kissing my organ, she deftly completed the task, rolling on our protection. It was so worldly on her, such a turn-on, yet so affectionate, that I finished nearly as rapidly as our first time.
We lay on our backs, holding hands, in pure paradise. Electricity and the ceiling fan came on.
“You think me not clean, Joe.”
“No, no, no. I just thought we shouldn’t take any chances. No baby-sans.”
“What you want out of life, Joe?”
Normally I ha
ted this line of pillow talk. I’d invariably be pinned in a corner. Judy had been a pro at it. I didn’t mind the question from Mai, though.
“I have a buddy who got out of the army. Larry Sibelius. He’s gonna be a beatnik. That might be my future too.”
“What is beatnik?”
“What my mother thinks I am. A beatnik is a guy who doesn’t want to be anything when he grows up except lazy and opinionated. A beatnik is interested only in fulfilling his basic desires and smoking any kind of vegetation that’s on hand.”
I don’t think she understood, but she was up on an elbow. “Your mother no like you?”
“Good question. She loves me, but she doesn’t always like me. Not that I blame her. We write letters that are like interoffice memos. We write of my perfect brother and imperfect stepfather. Mai, you’d said your father had been dead a long time. What of your mother?”
“Mother alive. I know not where.”
“Why not?”
She lay back down and stared at the fan. End of topic.
Her technical texts. I pawed the nightstand for them. Still gone.
“Mai, your father was an engineer? You didn’t really say.”
“Yes. Engineer.”
“In the north.”
“Yes.”
“Where in the north?”
“In north.”
Okay, fine. “You didn’t say why you removed his books. Was it something I said?”
She didn’t respond.
“Are the books yours, too?”
That got a rise out of her. “Why you say books mine?”
“Lucky guess?”
She kissed my forehead.
“I’ll bet you’re good at math, too. Me and exponents, exponents is my middle name.”
“You talk crazy.”
“So?”
“When you go America, Joe, I no can bear I no see you forever.”
At that instant, I seriously considered popping the question. That was impractical, highly impractical. The inches-thick army and MACV paperwork was designed to wear you out and make you forget the idea, which was usually a bad one. The time I had left would not be enough time to extrude it through the bureaucracies.
Then again, I’d run through a blast furnace for her. What’s a little red tape? Man, I’m so confused and conflicted. Must be what you call your yin and yang.
Friend or foe, I had to confide in Mai about something, to layer our intimacy. I filled her in on my VV Day Celebration Party errand with her Dean, the whole ball of wax. Why the hell not? It was so nutso.
“We get statehood when you win?”
You win? Not us and our valiant South Vietnamese allies?
“Damned if I know. I do know this. The state flower will be the white lily, not the opium poppy.”
She squeezed my spare tire. “Oh, Joe.”
“If it isn’t, it should be, Mai.”
I still had marriage on the noggin. Commitment. Commitment I wouldn’t give Judy, who if I’d married, would’ve saved me from the draft, which would’ve denied me the chance of ever meeting Mai. My head was spinning like it was after our opium den experience.
I pictured Mai and me walking down the aisle, her in a white wedding gown (If you don’t like her in white, tough shit).
I pictured Ziggy in a tux, my best man. He looked like the offspring of a rhino and a penguin.
“What’s so funny?”
“Life.”
She traced the borders of Montana on my arm. “America?”
“An American province. Wide open spaces. Big Sky Country. It’s a long goofy tale.”
“Tell me.”
I told her my long goofy tale.
She giggled. “You drunk as drunk can be, Joe?”
“The one guy I ever met who got drunker than I was that night was a lifer I knew at Fort Ord, an old mess sergeant. After his last hitch, he’d gotten out of the army. For good, he claimed. He’d had a bellyful. But him and his separation pay went on a bender. He woke up two weeks later on a bunk in the Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri reception barracks. He recalled zilch, but he’d taken a Burst of Six, what we call a six-year reenlistment.”
“Silly man,” Mai said, resuming staring at the fan. “I no see you when you fini Vietnam?”
“You might hate America and hate me for taking you there.”
“Statehood. We be America, too, Joe.”
Bierce and his wild-ass rumor. I was a heel for leading her on. I veered from the subject by telling her more about Ziggy and his Martians.
“He seem nice man. I think he no frighten people on purpose. He believe in Mars man?”
“The first flying saucer that touches down, Zig will be at the LZ, handing out coffee and doughnuts to the little green men.”
“I study Mars in school.”
“In the north?”
“In north.”
“Where in the north?”
“You say you read much, Joe. You and Ziggy.”
I gave up on her north. “Yeah.”
“What you read?”
“What haven’t I read? Even poetry. At least I recently tried.”
She looked at me. “You and poem?”
“Yep. For five minutes. Paradise Lost is a poem and a big fat book too.”
“A book?”
“Actually more than one book. I didn’t get far. I checked it out of the library. In a nutshell, Paradise Lost was how Adam and Eve screwed up and we’ve been paying through the nose ever since. Poetry is the art of arranging words so you can’t understand them. I looked over a book by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Her most famous poem is ‘How do I love you, let me count the ways.’ I wish I’d memorized it all for you.”
Mai said I was sweet and wanted to know why I was snickering.
“I do remember this poem I learned in Basic Training.”
“Yes?”
“You were not to call your rifle a gun. It was a weapon or a rifle. If the drill sergeant overheard you say ‘gun,’ he’d have you recite over and over, ‘this is my rifle, this is my gun, this is for fighting, this is for fun.’”
I showed her the required hand motions, in which you alternated between pretending to aim a rifle and to masturbate. I went to the fridge for a cold Ba- mi- ba while Mai recovered from laughing.
We shared the bottle, and then I said I’d like to write her a poem if I managed to think one up as lovely and wonderful as her. I was stammering when I finished and was rewarded with a lip lock. We had the gold dollar choreography down pat this time, using the second and last I had.
We were long and loving, loosening every nail and screw in Mai’s bed. A happy, soggy, sticky mess, we climbed in her shower together. Her hot water was supplied by sunlight on rooftop pipes. We didn’t even mind when the water cooled.
Exotic didn’t come within a mile of describing tonight. Terry Lee’s Dragon Lady, by comparison she was the Little Old Lady from Pasadena. Tonight wasn’t Paradise Lost, it was Paradise Gained.
“I can’t stay the night, Mai.”
“Statehood is why no can stay?”
“Martial law is why.”
“Joe.”
“Uh-huh?”
“I lie. Friend me no say Vietcong blow up Saigon power plant. He say 803rd secret building, it do bad things to Saigon electricity.”
“Smart friend. Anybody I know?”
“CAN-DO ready, Joe?”
Bingo. Dreaded suspicions confirmed. Let’s amend tonight to Paradise Sort of Gained.
“My Mata Hari.”
“Who?”
I whipped a biographical sketch of the slippery Dutch courtesan on her.
If she was insulted, she didn’t say so. “Cerebrum 2111X ready, Joe?”
“Honestly, you know as much about it as I do, Mai. Probably more.”
“Statehood?”
“Same same.”
It was daylight. I got up and peeked outside. I saw my Lee Harvey Oswald. CWO R. Tracy leaning on a lamppost by a corner ph�
�� shop, arms folded, looking in our direction, voluntarily or involuntarily smirking. Finalizing his dossier for my firing squad.
“Really gotta go, gotta scoot,” I said, putting on my clothes, planning to hustle out there and wrap my hands around Tracy’s neck until he spit out some answers. I gave Mai a lunging smack on the cheek, just as a suburban hubby would do when he was late for the commuter train to his office.
I was buttoning my shirt and zipping my zipper when I reached the sidewalk. Lee Harvey had vanished.
I spotted the 803rd’s rattletrap Jeep approaching from the next block. I ducked into a doorway and watched Colonel Lanyard pull up to 421. He dismounted and went through the gate. Since Mai hadn’t pushed me out the door, her Jakie’s visit was probably impromptu, his need for an ass-paddling fervent.
I made a mental note to leave a container of talcum powder on his desk for his inflamed heinie, to make him aware his dirty little secret was out.
Nah. I changed my mind. Mai would take the rap.
The key was in the ignition. I hopped in the Jeep and accelerated from the curb. Stealing it provided lesser satisfaction than a talcum powder stunt, but it did provide a ride home.
21.
MY ONE and only dream in The Great Beyond has come true. In the form of a nightmare.
I’m fixing lunch, improvising a pulled pork sandwich, remembering when I was cutting my culinary teeth at a faux Cuban restaurant. Black rice and beans, plantains, shredded beef in a tomato-based criollo sauce. Yum.
The pork part is easy. I’m shredding one of Smitty’s pork loins I’d cooked. From the TV dinners I hadn’t traded to him, I find a barbecue something and use the sauce. I have no bread or buns to wrap the meat in, so from another TV dinner, I take bread crumbs and layer on each side of the pork. The “close enough for government work” saw is apropos. I remove cooked mixed vegetables from another dinner and have a balanced meal.
A piano rendition of “Shake, Rattle & Roll” plays at half speed.
It’s a normally abnormal day in The Great Beyond.
Dragon Lady Page 19