by David Joiner
Who the hell is Mr. Hung, Nathan wondered, tearing down the sign and stuffing it in his pocket.
He looked inside. The only person who appeared to be working was Thao, who was poring over a magazine as usual. Nathan was hardly surprised not to find Le there, but even so he approached Thao to ask where she was.
"Didn't she tell you?" Thao offered him a paper towel to wipe his face but he refused it.
When he asked Thao to explain, she said that Le had closed her gallery.
"Who's Mr. Hung?" he said, pulling from his pocket the paper he'd torn from the door.
"He's the new owner. I'm working for him now." She smiled at him. "It's all because Le got a visa to your country."
Nathan paused. "How did you know she got a visa?"
"She sent me a phone message three days ago." She gave him a strange look, and he could guess that she wanted to know why he was asking her these questions.
From the corner of his eye he noticed that the storage room door was closed. He wondered if Le's paintings were still there, but it wasn't important to him now.
"I need to talk to her," he said. "But she doesn't pick up when I call and she doesn't return my messages. I don't know how to get hold of her."
"That's strange," she said, looking confused. "Why don't you visit her at home?"
"Because I don't know where she lives."
Nathan watched in embarrassment as Thao's thoughts formed clearly on her face: a foreigner who'd lost in love.
"Do you have her address?"
"No," she said. Her lips fluttered wordlessly, he knew, with questions she couldn't bring herself to ask.
There was no obvious path to reach Le. All was guesswork now, and the way, if Nathan could find it, would have to be traveled in a blind, hurried spin.
"Then I'll have to try somewhere else." He turned toward the street, but when he got to the door he stopped. Although he couldn't stand being in the gallery any longer, the dark street and sky, and the silver-coin splashes of rain on the sidewalk, suddenly felt like a bigger threat to him now.
Not knowing where to go or what he should do, his thoughts returned to the party he'd recently left. He was thinking he might go back and look once more for Le when he suddenly remembered his conversation with Andrew. He felt a powerful urge to convince him to revoke Le's visa. He was about to step into the rain when Thao called out.
"Wait a minute," she said. "Mr. Hung left a folder here the other day. Maybe it has some information you could use."
She bent down behind the desk where she'd been sitting and Nathan could hear her open and close several drawers. In a minute she stood up with a black folder in her hand. Nathan waited for her to flip through a number of papers.
"Here's something," she finally said, walking over to him. "Does this look right?"
Nathan took the paper she held out and tried to decipher the penciled address beneath Le's name. It was an unfamiliar street that, in all his years in Saigon, he'd never had reason to visit. But it was in Thanh Binh, the same district where Le had told him she lived. Nathan entered the address in his phone.
He almost asked Thao to call him if Le returned to the gallery, but now that he had her address there was no need. "If she comes by here," he said instead, "don't tell her you gave me her address. Or that I'm looking for her."
"I won't."
Nathan thanked her and left.
Thinking of what he'd say to Le once he finally saw her again, he found that the coldness within him and the rain weren't so easy to disregard. Against every impulse he had, he decided to wait until morning to drive to Thanh Binh. By then, he hoped, his yearning to requite the pain she'd inflicted on him would be gone.
He hoped, too, that by the next day his inclination to urge Andrew to revoke Le's visa would give way to some more forgiving part of himself.
But he wasn't sure he could forgive her. He wanted her to know how it felt to have a dream crushed by someone she trusted.
Nine
No one answered the door when he rang the bell. He stepped back and looked around the gated entrance. To one side, hidden behind a potted sago palm, was a sign he'd overlooked: Doorbell broken. Please knock.
When he knocked and no one answered, he stepped back again, inspecting the windows on the second and third floors. For a moment he pictured Le sitting on the edge of the rooftop watching the planes come and go from Tan Son Nhat.
The building was like an old animal halfway through its molting; the building's grey skin, shaded by trees along the sidewalk, showed beneath a once-yellow coat. Mildew streaked the worn façade. It was the sort of place he admired: beaten up but not defeated. He doubted Le felt like this about her home, if in fact she lived here. Glancing at his feet, where ants swarmed over a crushed gecko, he guessed that pride had prevented her from ever inviting him here.
A white curtain fluttered at an open window. He cupped his hands and yelled through them: "Le! Come down and open the door!"
The next thing he knew, the door lock turned and two padlocks slid away from hooks above the inside handle. The tinted glass made it hard to see whoever was staring out. What he could see, though, was that the person never expected to find a Westerner at the door.
He'd been in situations like this numerous times. The sight of his white face often threw people in a panic, for perhaps they knew no English and never suspected him of speaking Vietnamese (though they'd just heard him shouting it). It was a game that began with a stalemate, over before it had started.
The door cracked open and the sliver of a woman's face appeared. She called behind her. Another young woman hastened to the door, draping herself over the first woman's back. They talked about him openly.
"He must be from the consulate."
"If he was, wouldn't he dress better?" She looked past him toward the street. "Where's his car? He'd have a black Mercedes with an American flag on the door if he worked there."
"What do you think he wants?"
"Wasn't he calling for Le?"
While they discussed him he glanced over their heads. Through the opening he saw a room with a low table and three chairs. He heard a TV and the sound of running water. Magazines, newspapers, and wadded-up clothes littered the floor. Beyond this mess was a small bedroom: a bed with striped sheets was pushed to one side.
The door opened wider so they could stand side by side. "Hello," they said in English, laughing and slapping each other's arms for having spoken at the same time.
"Is Le here?" he said in Vietnamese.
"Ui! I've never heard a foreigner speak Vietnamese so well!"
"I said ‘Where is she?'" His seriousness seemed to startle them.
"I don't know. Maybe she went to the American consulate." They didn't explain, but he didn't need them to.
"When is she coming back?"
The woman shrugged. "She left before we woke up."
"Excuse me," the other woman said, making another pointless attempt at English. "What your name?"
"Nathan." He waited for recognition to cross their faces, but it never did. It was hard to push aside the hurt he felt that after four months Le must never have told her roommates about him. "What are your names?"
"I'm Phuong."
"And I'm Khanh."
"Can I wait for her here?"
He saw his request made them uncomfortable, but he didn't blame them for this. After all, they had no idea who he was, and he guessed he hadn't impressed them with his friendliness.
"You want to wait?"
"I won't stay long." At this point it didn't matter if he saw Le this afternoon. Now that he knew she lived here, he could return any time.
"Why do you speak Vietnamese?"
"For the same reason you do," he said. He regretted that he'd revealed his ability to understand what they said. Perhaps now they'd be more guarded an
d not speak freely before him. "I'll wait inside if that's okay."
"It's okay. But we're embarrassed by the mess. Le had friends over last night, and no one's cleaned up."
They led him through the clutter to a torn vinyl couch. Broken shrimp chips were wedged between the cushions. Across from him, a small metal sink overflowed with unwashed bowls and glasses.
"Would you like tea?"
"No," he said, sitting down.
As he was trying to decide what to do, they told him they'd been Le's roommates for over a year. They were sad to see her go. They enjoyed living with her because she, like them, was from the north. Southerners, they said, were too untrustworthy to live with.
"Did you know her in Hanoi?"
"No. We met here."
"Does she ever talk about her life in Hanoi? Maybe her family?"
They shook their heads. "She isn't comfortable with her past."
"That's why it's easy for her to leave. Maybe she can't believe in a future where she's already buried her past. That's just me thinking out loud, of course. But she once said that going to California was like being handed a clean slate. I asked what she meant, but she just smiled."
"She's nice to us, but we haven't gotten to know her well. We tried, but . . ."
Nathan heard a noise beyond the front door and sat up. Someone walked past, but they were tall and thin, like a man. Whoever it was continued out onto the street.
"It must be crowded here with the three of you," he said.
"It's okay because we get along. Anyway, in two weeks when Le leaves, we won't look for another housemate. We both just got raises."
Her words stopped him. "Two weeks?"
They hesitated before answering, as if his question was strange. He realized later that they must have thought he already knew — otherwise why would he be here?
The news was a stronger blow than the first.
"Have you ever been to Los Angeles?"
He cleared his throat, trying hard to regain his composure. "Once."
His answer excited them. "What's it like?"
He stared vacantly at them, hearing their question but not understanding he was expected to answer it.
"We hope to visit her. We're sure she can introduce us to many rich, eligible men." Their laughter bounced off him like the first drops of a downpour.
They waited for him to say something, then asked again what Los Angeles was like.
"It was a long time ago," he said, gripping the arm of the couch. Strangely, at that moment he could remember nothing of his visit but a couple he'd run into while walking along Santa Monica Beach one night. It was near midnight, and they were caressing each other beneath a pier where the tide had gone out. Only a few weeks before something had reminded him of this, and at the time he could recall not only their faces but also their surprised, then angry voices as they yelled at him to go back from where he'd come. They'd thought he was a tourist, and of course they were right. That had happened seven years ago, and now he could hardly remember why he'd gone. "You start to forget about a place after you've been away a long time."
"I don't believe that. Surely it's different when you leave a place at her age. How could she forget about her motherland?"
"Her forgetting has already started."
"What makes you say that?"
"Because I've seen it with my own eyes."
"What have you seen?"
Tiredness blanketed him as he wondered how to make them understand. But to be convinced they needed to experience that kind of pain, not simply be told about it. "It doesn't matter what I've seen."
They sat with him a while longer before heading off to their room.
He slumped back on the couch, thinking how odd it was to be in Le's apartment. It wasn't obvious she lived here. It hardly seemed possible that this was where she came after they'd gone out at night; that this was where she slept; and that Khanh and Phuong were the people she saw after saying goodnight to him. Not once had she mentioned them.
His decision to come here suddenly felt ridiculous. Catching her in a lie gave him no advantage, even if it was true that she'd been dishonest about her visa application. Her dishonesty would only confirm a suspicion, and make him hate himself for having believed in her.
He'd put himself in a position to be hurt — and for what? For a poor Vietnamese girl with pink hair whose life dreams were rooted in misguided hopes? True, a visa offered her a chance, but happiness wasn't assured. Not once had he heard her talk about the struggles she expected to face. Not once had she made him think she was prepared to deal with the hardships that awaited her.
He tried to recall exactly when mere affection had transformed into ardor. Unable to remember, he thought that maybe he'd never started simply with liking, but that in him, from the start, it had been love.
It was too precious a thought, though, and too conceited. He'd been foolish to fall in love and that was all. But he hadn't been cozened for the usual reason. Rather than his lack of money, her plan to go to America seemed at the heart of her abrupt coldness.
An old French song drifted from a tinny stereo in their room. Le's roommates had just turned it on, probably to fill the silence.
He saw there was only one bed for the three of them to share. (Apparently, the window he'd yelled up at wasn't theirs.) In one corner was a small desk and chair. There were no paintings, only knick-knacks on twin shelves. A poster of two Western children dressed like groom and bride faced a photocopied advertisement of Titanic. Phuong and Khanh periodically looked through their door at him.
Finally, one of them said: "Do you have a girlfriend?"
At first he thought they recognized who he was, but their expressions indicated otherwise.
"No," he said, almost choking on the word. The realization struck with an anger he wasn't prepared for.
"Since you speak Vietnamese, it must be easy for you to find a girlfriend."
There was no easy reply he could make. "Does Le have a boyfriend?" The question would probably sound innocent to them, but to him it was a poisoned arrow. Not knowing where it might land, there was no way of defending himself.
"She has too many," the girls tittered.
If this was how they were going to be, what was the point in digging deeper? As he asked himself this, suspicion exploded inside him — what had Andrew meant when he said he questioned her visa support; did he learn something about her uncle? — and he realized that if he wanted answers he'd have to look for them closer to the life that Le led here.
He stood and kicked through the clutter to their room. Frozen in their seats at his uninvited entrance, they could do nothing more than watch him barge in. Even when he began picking through various items they merely sat there wide-eyed.
He raised the bottom of their sheet and spotted two suitcases under the bed. Only when he bent down and pulled one out did Phuong or Khanh — he no longer remembered who was who — stand up and protest. Her presence of mind abandoned her and her words shot out in a vicious staccato.
"What are you doing?"
The suitcase was heavy when he lifted it — the weight of a new life. He tried to open it but found it locked; slamming it against the floor did nothing, either. He ran his hands over its surface and came across a raised black square with a blank address card inside it. He wedged his fingers beneath the square and ripped it off.
The girl bent down to push the suitcase back under the bed. Nathan didn't prevent her.
"Get out! Get out before I call the police!"
He went to the doorway and stopped. "Don't forget to tell Le I dropped by. I'd leave her a note, but in all this disgusting trash I'm afraid it would get lost. You should clean this place up. Any unexpected guests might leave with a bad impression."
"Who do you think you are? Just because you're a foreigner doesn't mean you can abuse
us. Get out!"
"It has nothing to do with my being a foreigner." He felt he needed to hammer that home, but he didn't know how. "It has to do with people being decent to one another."
"Is this what you call being decent?"
"With Le the rules don't strictly apply."
"What are you talking about? She's not even here."
He gave one last look around the apartment. "It's not supposed to end like this," he said in English.
She clearly hadn't understood his last statement. In her ignorance, she seemed to think he'd cursed her. She punched him in the arm.
"I said get out!"
Storm clouds were rolling in when he stepped outside. A caged bird sang from a neighbor's window. The bird fell silent, though, when the door behind him slammed shut.
He got on his motorbike and noticed various neighbors milling about. He felt their eyes on him as he kicked his motorbike into gear and raced off.
At the first stoplight he came to, his eyes flitted to a long white scratch in the sky. The lower portion was broad, for it had begun to dissipate, but higher up it was narrow and concentrated. He could just make out the airplane at the tip of the trail. He could see it inching higher.
Ten
Only 30 minutes separated his home from Le's apartment, but that was long enough for him to stop by a Vietnam Airlines office and buy a ticket to Phu Quoc. If she were going to leave without saying goodbye, he'd make it easy. In fact, he'd beat her to it. If she tried to make contact, he wanted her to find him away on his own adventure, having left her before she could leave him.
"How many people?" the woman behind the desk asked indifferently. A female colleague stood behind her, separating her hair into braids.
"One."
She took a long time to find him a seat, as the phone rang and she answered it rather than the woman braiding her hair. The delay, combined with the indolence of both women, angered him beyond reason. He snapped at them to hurry up.
"How many days?"
The question triggered something inside him, and he wondered if he was about to commit a grave mistake. "Two days."