Dragon Lady

by Gary Alexander

  “I simply cannot.”

  She seemed sincere to a degree. Frightened too. I approached her obliquely. “Okay, who’s Quyen the cackler? Truthfully, Mai.”

  She straightened as if slapped. “Why do you ask again? I have told you.”

  “Big sister disappears when you do. Big sis bossed your Cholon neighborhood around. The first time I laid eyes on you, Sis pinch-hit for you with Papersmith, for whatever reason.”

  “I asked her to. When Dean drinks like he does, he is so, so repulsive.”

  “Who is Quyen? Who is she to you? Who are you? C’mon, Mai.”

  She removed her shades. I saw something new in her eyes. Resignation?

  “You will keep whatever I say in strict confidence, Joe?”

  “You know I will, Mai.”

  “Absolute secrecy.”

  “Scout’s honor.”

  “Quyen is a high-ranking officer in what you refer to as the NVA.”

  “The North Vietnamese Army?”

  She hushed me with a hand on my mouth and said, “Quyen is a colonel in the PAVN, the People’s Army of Vietnam. She most decidedly is not my sister.”

  “Who the hell is she?”

  “You might tag her a watcher, a handler, a minder.”

  “A professional chaperone, like in a spy movie?”

  “An apt definition.”

  “She’s from the north, you’re from the north.”

  “Yes.”

  A waiter came for our orders. Mai wasn’t hungry, and my appetite had taken a hike. She asked for a glass of white wine. I went for a double Scotch-rocks. My nerves required medication.

  “You probed me about the technical books on my bookcase.”

  “Books that belonged to your late father. You moved them out of sight after I did.”

  “I secreted them from Dean and Jakie. Why did I allow you to see them? I shall explain that too.”

  “They’re yours, aren’t they?”

  “They are.”

  “Yet another facet to my exotic Dragon Lady.”

  It pleased me that she couldn’t suppress a smile. “I was good at mathematics in school and in pre-engineering classes too. Boys were supposed to excel at mathematics, not girls. It was unnatural. The other students made fun of me.”

  “Same same in the States.”

  “I refused to hide my abilities. Joe, you once alluded to Dien Bien Phu.”

  “Bad joke.”

  “You were accidentally accurate, more accurate than you could have dreamed. I was in secondary school during the French War. I was recruited and brought to Dien Bien Phu. As a result of heavy casualties through years of fighting, there was a dearth of surveyors and math-related specialists. Whether I was unnatural or not, our leaders were pragmatic. When we moved the big guns up the hills surrounding the French garrison, my job was to calculate artillery coordinates.”

  The Terry and the Pirates Dragon Lady could not have been a fraction as complex as mine. Could not. Not that the comic strip counterpart was a dummy, but c’mon. No way was she a math whiz, a teen prodigy at geometry and trig and algebra and drafting. Terry’s was no ant either.

  I sucked in a deep breath. “You did one helluva job. Why the hell are you telling me this, Mai? I am your enemy.”

  “Not personally an enemy. I like you, Joe. I may love you.”

  “I know I love you, Mai. You drive me crazy, whoever and whatever the hell you are!”

  “You suspected I was a communist spy, but that knowledge did not dissuade you from climbing into my bed at every opportunity. You are so devoted and courageous.”

  I had no reply but a neck-scorching blush.

  “I came to Saigon months ago when the 803rd began operation.”

  “From the north.”

  “Yes, Joe. From the north. Again, utter secrecy?”

  I raised my right hand. “Mum’s the word.”

  “I am a native of Haiphong, where I continue to reside. Until I was conscripted into this duty, I taught algebra and calculus at Haiphong University. I learned rudimentary English in secondary school. They enrolled me in advanced English classes at the university. The bar-girl pidgin was a ruse. As was my concomitant promiscuity. It was loathsome to me, but necessary for access to the American serviceman.”

  “Thanks a bunch.”

  “Joe, you are again behaving like a spoiled adolescent. It is beneath you. What was I to do, ‘accidentally’ bump into my targets and discuss quadratic equations over coffee, then segue to secret projects on the second cup?”

  “I know, I know, I know.”

  “You and I are different, Joe.”

  “God, how I wanna believe that!”

  “I did what I had to.”

  “Who’s this ‘they’?”

  “Use your imagination.”

  “I’m afraid to. Our boy Dean-o taught math too. Was that a factor in zeroing in on him?”

  “We thought so at first. But no. His expertise was levels below mine. He was not helpful in those disciplines nor in computer science, which is in its infancy at home. It and the machines themselves are spoon-fed to us by our benefactors in Moscow.”

  She shifted to a whisper. “Do you know what we call the Soviets?”

  “No.”

  “Americans without dollars.”

  I laughed and said, “Mai, let’s talk about love. Romance. Why me?”

  “I was not to you merely a surrogate in an unhappy marriage or an ejaculatory depository. Your longing, your passion for me. Your idealization of me. The allurement of you being smitten by me as a result of a fantastical cartoon. Your attraction to me was beyond exceptional.”

  “There are kinkier fetishes. I know there are,” I said in my own defense. “Did Lanyard, like Dean, have an unhappy marriage?”

  “Jakie’s wife was a penitentiary guard before they wed. He did not complain constantly about his Helen as Dean did about his Mildred. I drew some disturbing conclusions from snippets. Helen knows how to use her baton, but the marriage is barren otherwise.”

  “Wow. To be a fly on their bedroom wall.”

  “To paraphrase our Mrs. Browning, Joe, let me count the ways I love you.”

  “Take your time. Don’t leave anything out.”

  “Brazenly letting you see Jakie’s uniform in my wardrobe was a test. If intimidation overruled affection, you would be out the door, as you would when you discerned my political allegiance. A roll in the sheets would not be worth the risk to you, when sex is available on numerous street corners and in the numerous bars of this decadent cesspool of a metropolis.”

  “I was intimidated, if you’ll remember. At least a part of my anatomy initially was.”

  “You are a loyal if misguided American. You and yours have not an inkling why you are here, only the domino theory propaganda. Forgive my redundancy on this, but you risked and continue to risk your freedom and even your life to be with me. I cannot emphasize that too often.”

  “Don’t remind me. In retrospect, I guess I’m finally realizing that my subconscious mind told me I could reform you, and we’d both be in the clear. My heart and my, you know, overruled, as they so often do. One thing I really really need to know,” I said, having a harder than hard time spitting it out. “Mai. In a word. Ziggy.”

  “I am so sorry you lost your best friend, Joe. I swear it was not my doing. Yes, the NLF, the National Liberation Front, the Vietcong as they are to you, is a close ally. We do not always agree and one is not always informed of what the other is doing. Friction between us is commoner than your side realizes.”

  Office politics, I thought, giddily speechless. I was so relieved, she could be Ho Chi Minh’s mistress

  “If I had known what was planned and that you and Dean and your Ziggy were going to be in that bar, I would have insisted that Quyen use her influence to put a stop it.”

  “At one helluva risk to yourself, Mai.”

  “Perhaps, but there is no shortage of Americans to kill.”

&
nbsp; I shivered at her matter-of-fact statement. “A couple more questions. Your full name?”

  She smiled. “Sorry, Joe. I must be a Jane Doe.”

  “Where were you the night I raised a fuss when I couldn’t find you?”

  “A cell meeting, endlessly rehashing the 803rd.”

  “And what did you decide?”

  She looked at me and put on her shades. “I do not want to talk now, Joe.”

  I caught her meaning and gulped down my Scotch. “Me neither.”

  We got a room upstairs. Sans a gold dollar, we were all over each other the second the door shut. With apologies to Sally, Mai and I made the most intense, ferocious, gratifying love of my lifetime. I held her so tightly I feared I’d cracked her ribs. Her nails raked my back so relentlessly I feared I’d lost a quart of blood. No matter. We could not restrain ourselves. I licked and kissed and nibbled and bit every square millimeter of her flesh.

  In the middle of the night, she said, “Joe, you have not questioned in detail my interest in the 803rd. In you and Jakie and Dean and General Whipple.”

  “General Whipple too?”

  “You and your dirty mind. With profound apologies, he professed such love for his wife, Katherine, that chastity was his only alternative.”

  “All outfits have weirdoes in them.”

  “Adultery was as toxic as a DDT dusting on a food crop, the general said to me. I rarely fail in seduction. I was trained well. I was at once charmed and insulted. Once more, why have you not relentlessly demanded an explanation of my interest in your liaison detachment?”

  “I thought it was obvious. You were spying on us because of Cerebrum 2111X and CAN-DO.”

  “At the outset, yes. But early on, my superiors discovered the mission of the computer was to predict the end of the war. They deemed it ludicrous. Hilarious. They felt that when the computer’s conclusion did not come to pass, it would demoralize your generals and political leaders.”

  “In hindsight, you were very correct.”

  “Joe, we have been fighting the same war intermittently for two thousand years. Only the invaders are different. The Chinese, the French, and the Americans, among others.”

  “Yeah? Your Russkis, your Americans without dollars? I bet they’re getting more and more like a snoopy, bossy mother-in-law.”

  “In 1945, Ho Chi Minh was quite amenable to being allies of the West, but you gave us back to the French.”

  I shook my head. “Trying to debate politics with a commie is like debating religion with a Southern Baptist.”

  “May I return to the issue at hand, Joe? I related to Quyen what Dean said drunk, what Jakie said in his sleep, and what you said voluntarily about Cerebrum 2111X and CAN-DO.”

  “As Ziggy once said, I’d’ve given you the recipe for the H-bomb if I had it and you asked nicely. Slight exaggeration, but you get the message.”

  “To become the most reviled traitor in American history because of me, that is so sweet of you, Joe,” She kissed my cheek. “Quyen and her superiors thought the 803rd mission was hilarious. We have people on Saigon’s docks who knew exactly what the components were. They took pains to ensure that the machinery wouldn’t be stolen or destroyed in an NLF attack. Quyen had a terrifying tantrum when you almost did it yourselves that night you damaged the power grid. She can be indiscriminately murderous when she is in a rage.

  “They were ready to withdraw me and bring me home when a serious problem occurred. A growing initiative for South Vietnam to be America’s fifty-first state. Your 803rd Liaison Detachment seemed at the center of it in a secret function we are still unable to determine. Oddly, when the 803rd was disbanded, the statehood talk faded and quickly fizzled out. Was it a coincidence, Joe?”

  I wondered if Vo Nguyen Giap’s People’s War People’s Army dealt with outrageous rumors of enemy annexation. If it did, I missed it.

  I grinned. “My turn for hilarity.”

  “How so?”

  I gave her a complete rundown on PFC A. Bierce and his rumor-mongering, tossing in his exponents primer for validation.

  She breathed heavily. “That is a sigh of relief, Joe. It never was, never will be anything but a practical joke by an aspiring novelist?”

  I kissed her cheek. “You got it, kiddo. President Johnson went apeshit when he heard.”

  “You have madman generals who would bomb Hanoi and Haiphong with nuclear weapons if we occupied American domestic soil, which the State of South Vietnam would be. This was our primary concern.”

  “You’re on the mark. You and Bierce.”

  “So I have to go home, Joe.”

  “No you don’t. Piss on them. Stay, Mai. Please. If they discover who you are, I’ll try to arrange amnesty, I’m a great negotiator.”

  “I cannot, Joe, and this is why. I lied to you about my mother and father. They are alive. They live as man and wife. I have three brothers and two sisters. We live within a block of one another in Haiphong. There are veiled threats what would happen to them if I did not explicitly obey orders. Quyen was here to keep me on the correct path.”

  I didn’t know if I was relieved she wasn’t a gung-ho commie spy or devastated since the heartless bastards had her over a barrel, extorting her. Whichever, I was euphoric.

  “Hold me, Joe.”

  I held her, gradually admitting to myself that I could not take her to the Land of the Big PX. We fell asleep clinging.

  How she slipped out of my arms and out of the room before morning I’ll never know.

  I had thirty-eight and a wakeup.

  26.

  THE LAND of the Living is gorged with surprises. The Great Beyond is, too.

  Today in the latter is a stunning example.

  I call Smitty down for breakfast. He doesn’t answer. “Rocket Man” is on, and maybe he’s stuffed toilet paper in his ears. I go upstairs. His room is littered with empty mac and cheese cartons, but he’s not there.

  I scramble eggs and eat alone.

  On my way out for a walk to the strip mall, I check my neighbors. To my left, the door is ajar. I go in. Smitty’s not there either. The nuns are gone, too. I don’t smell baking and there are no cookies or brownies set aside for me.

  I go to the other place. No Slick. No nothing. I find a large rock in the landscaping, between a couple of shrubs that could use water. With all my might, I throw it at a side window. It breaks, glass tinkling inside and out.

  This is a surprise, a vulnerability, albeit a trivial one. I go around the house, find more rocks, and break each and every downstairs window. I have proven nothing. I have behaved like a “baby-san.” It feels damn good.

  I walk on to the strip mall, which is no longer there. It’s been replaced by another deserted cul-de-sac.

  I head home, feeling so fucking alone.

  All windows remain broken at my neighbor’s. Good.

  A red, white and blue The Great Beyond Postal Service (TGBPS) truck pulls in. I stand in front of my mailbox to play my little hologram game. The truck does not run through me. It stops five feet away, bad brakes squeaking.

  The blue-uniformed driver is redheaded and weedy. He leans out and says, “What’s the matter with you? I run you over and I lose my job.”

  I smile and crack the corniest of jokes. “I have a death wish.”

  He does not smile. “That’s your problem, man. I got a schedule to keep.”

  I salute and step aside.

  And touch the side of his box as he passes.

  And feel a slipstream and smell exhaust when he accelerates away.

  With a shaking hand I reach into my box and pull out material addressed to: OCCUPANT THE GREAT BEYOND

  It’s all printed matter--books and paper-clipped studies on chaos and the chaos theory.

  I am in the midst of sadistic and well-planned chaos.

  I have found a pattern and a solution to the enigma. There is no pattern and there is no solution.

  I sit cross-legged on the soft grass on this perfect San
Diegoesque day and browse the materials. Chaos theory, I read, is a newer science that permits us to see order in what we previously thought was erratic and random.

  Weather in The Land of the Living is a prime for-instance. In our day and age, if a meteorologist in temperate zones can accurately predict weather four days in advance, that is an accomplishment.

  Let’s say it’s January 2041 and computers are a trillion times more powerful than they are now, powerful enough to implement a program that accurately converts chaos into reality. The weather bureau can then inform you that Hurricane Sadie is going to come ashore where you live in September 2045. You can start stockpiling plywood to board up your windows. Look for sales on it.

  Smitty and Madge and Slick and seedy strip malls and vacant cul-de-sacs and the rest are chaotic elements that are steps in a procedure. Will I ever be able to figure it out, to project what is ahead in my life after death? I have all the time in the netherworld to try.

  I’ve told you this often and it bears repeating. Our honchos are antic and not always in an unkindly manner. They are playful, and their occasional largesse can be touching and flabbergasting.

  I go inside and find on my dinette table a stack of blank invitations and a recommended guest list. Unbeknownst to me, a reunion has been arranged. For me. It will take place two weeks from today at our neighborhood cabana. We do not have a cabana, but I’m sure one will exist then. Punch and cookies will be served. If I can connect with whoever decreed my party, I’ll lobby for baby back ribs, cole slaw, garlic bread, and potables with a stronger zip than the punch.

  A typed and unsigned (of course) note atop the tastefully engraved stock requests that I handwrite my signature to each and whatever else strikes my fancy.

  I hear hammering. I look out a window and see a cul-de-sac halfway down the block that did not exist ten minutes ago. Workers are pounding nails on the wooden skeleton of a townhouse condo complex. I open the window and whiff fresh lumber. There is a sign at the curb: VIETNAM VET ESTATES. OPENING SOON.

  I return to the table and the guest list, which includes:

  My mother. We’ll hug and I’ll listen when she speaks to me and treat her with respect. I’ll try to atone for all those days and weeks and months and years that I didn’t as a child who knew everything.