Lotusland

by David Joiner

  Overhead a sheet of blue plastic protected the alley from rain when it began to fall. Soon it came down in torrents.

  Nathan paid for his drink and, when he turned back to the street, sheltered by his umbrella, he saw the deliveryman he'd been waiting for drive up to the gallery. Rain had drenched his shirt and the front of his pants and made five strips of his hair, like a starfish. Luckily there were no paintings tied down behind him. Getting caught in the rain, Nathan mused, seemed to be this man's talent.

  Before Nathan could intercept him the man disappeared inside the gallery. But a few seconds later the girls working there forced him outside again. From across the street, despite the pounding rain, Nathan heard them berate him for entering the gallery so wet.

  There was nothing for the man to do but take off his shirt and wring it out. Afterward he wrestled his shirt back on and lit a cigarette.

  Nathan crossed the street, dodging the sparse traffic.

  "Excuse me."

  The man looked up wide-eyed. At the sight of Nathan he started coughing, and smoke briefly obscured his face. "Hello," he managed to say.

  "Can I ask your name?"

  The man touched his chest and said, "Lam."

  "Do you remember me, Lam?"

  "Yes," he said. "You came here a long time ago."

  "Those girls inside constantly abuse you."

  Lam laughed uneasily and glanced over his shoulder at the gallery.

  "You didn't deliver any paintings."

  "No. Maybe on Monday or Tuesday."

  "Do you earn much working here?"

  Again Lam laughed. "I'm very poor," he said, making a sour face. "I have two babies at home, but the gallery pays me next to nothing."

  "Are you working for them today?"

  "Sometimes they ask me to bring things here, but since the weather's turned bad they probably won't ask me to do anything. I only get paid when they have something for me to do."

  "Do you want to get paid today?"

  Lam pulled on his cigarette, then flicked it into a small current racing past the curb. "What kind of question is that?"

  "It's an offer. I'll pay you ten dollars for something easy."

  Lam leaned back against the building. "What is it?"

  Nathan reminded him of the conversation he had with the girls in the gallery back in March. To Nathan's surprise, Lam nodded.

  "I remember. They thought you wanted to cheat our boss."

  "Right. But I never intended to buy anything. I just wanted to meet the painter."

  Lam looked back at the gallery. "How do I earn the money?"

  Nathan took out his cell phone and showed him the photo of the painter's name. "There's another painting of hers inside, a new one. I want you to take me to wherever you go to collect her work." Nathan knew it was a strange request, and that a strange request might seem to Lam more trouble than it was worth. He was ready to pay as much as Lam asked for, even if only for directions. Despite the crudeness of the gesture, he took a ten-dollar bill from his wallet to show Lam he was serious.

  Lam nodded.

  "My motorbike's around the corner," Nathan said, "beside the post office."

  Lam told him to get it. "You can follow me."

  On the way to his motorbike, Nathan bought a pair of disposable raincoats.

  When Nathan pulled up beside him he tossed one into the metal basket beneath Lam's headlight. Lam shook it out of the bag and tugged it over his head and shoulders. In a flapping of thin plastic they were off.

  He followed Lam through the city. Few streets and intersections were yet familiar to him, and he was struck by how different Hanoi looked to Saigon. In Hanoi the French presence could still be felt, preserved in the architecture and layout, whereas in Saigon the atmosphere still harked back 30 or 40 years to the American era, the notion of aesthetics crowded out by practicalities of war. The scale, too, was different. Hanoi was a smaller, more manageable city, yet it was hard to imagine ever knowing it as well as he'd known Saigon.

  In a few minutes they were skirting West Lake, but on the side opposite from where Anthony lived. Here it was dirty and cramped with houses, a far cry from what he'd seen of Hanoi up to now. The road soon gave onto stubby vegetable fields to the left and a littered shoreline to the right. They came upon a broken down mule-cart beneath a tree, and at the next muddy turnoff they veered and entered an area of small, colorful houses and chickens pecking at stones. Perhaps because it was Sunday, and threatening to rain, few people were out. They'd been driving only 15 minutes, but Nathan felt like he was in some quaint country village.

  Lam pulled up to a woman at a road-stand for a pack of 555s. After he'd ripped the pack open, he discovered his lighter was waterlogged and wouldn't give a flame. The woman sold him this as well.

  "The painter lives here?" Nathan asked.

  Lam nodded at a house across the street. "That's where the paintings have been coming from over the last month or so."

  "What's the painter's name?"

  Lam thought for a moment. "I forget," he said.

  Nathan handed him the ten dollars and watched him drive off.

  The painter's house was a beat-up blue, its façade streaked with water stains. A frangipani tree bloomed in a corner of the yard, and a few spindly trees leaned toward the street. A number of flowering cacti dressed up the open doorway.

  Le was from Hanoi, though he didn't know in what part of the city she'd grown up. She'd never described living near West Lake, and the omission reminded him of how little he knew her and of how much she'd kept him in the dark about her past.

  No one answered when he rang the bell, and his calls echoed emptily in the darkness of the front room. Glancing behind him, he saw the cigarette vendor wander across the street to the gate. She was staring at him, half her face hidden by the gatepost.

  "No one's inside," he told her.

  She pointed to a path that led behind the house. "Walk toward the lake. She's likely to be painting under the banyan tree."

  As he stepped toward the path the woman asked if he was a painter.

  "No," he said. "But I admire her work." He left her smiling at him, clinging to the gatepost.

  An odd admixture of certainty and uncertainty, of excitement and dread, whipped through his mind. If Le were truly here, might this mark the resumption of an old journey or would it finally bring closure to it? He felt the drumbeat of his heart and an iciness in the pit of his stomach. There was no telling what she would do when she saw him. His expectations were low, but even if she were to act upset he still had a right to see her. Rationalizing his feelings, however, got him no closer to what he wanted from her now. Acceptance would be enough, he told himself, and then perhaps they could take things from there.

  Potted plants and trees lined the path; the shade was cool and wet, trilling with cicadas. In the middle of the path lay a cracked palette, a farrago of bright and dark colors. Behind this were a number of overturned jars. As he stepped over them he saw Le at the end of the path.

  Her back was to him, draped with untied hair. A strip of plastic tarp, bluer than the sky, stretched above her, and the ground beneath her feet was a tawny circle of reed mats speckled with paint. Beyond this spread West Lake, its dark waters rippling in a breeze. An easel stood before her, and she was gazing at it, not painting.

  He was struck by something different about her, and he waited tensely for the feeling to clarify. While he couldn't determine what it was, he wasn't about to stand there forever thinking about it. The longer he waited, the more nervous he got.

  Halfway to her he realized that she'd changed her hair from pink to black. Amazed by the change, for a moment he thought the woman might not be Le at all. But her profile, and her height and figure, brought back his certainty that indeed it was Le — and, with black hair, she was also the woman in her painting
s.

  The sense of familiarity grew stronger the closer he got. He wanted her to turn around, but she was intent on whatever held her gaze. When he was 20 feet away, he stopped.

  "Em ơi," he called out.

  Le turned as if his voice had come from her shoulder, and it was then that her familiarity fully resolved itself in her profile. She turned all the way around and froze. Her mouth dropped and stayed open, as if at any moment she might shriek. She just stared at him, one hand over her heart in shock.

  "Nathan," she said, barely able to get his name off her tongue. "What are you . . ."

  Intensely conscious of himself, he could do nothing more than gawk at her. He waited for bitterness to assert itself in his heart, but there was only a pleasant numbness.

  She was looking around, he thought, for someone to help her. He saw that she was scared.

  "I've been hating you for a long time," he finally said. "But hate's not why I'm here."

  "How did you find me?"

  He stepped toward her again but stopped. "At least, I don't think I hate you. I should, but right now I feel pretty in control of myself. I think I might actually be happy to see you."

  "Please don't hate me," she said.

  Inwardly he smiled. Had their time apart healed his wounds? Or did he simply feel sorry for her, here in her unkempt clothes, in this run-down house? On his way here he had felt entitled to hate her, but now — perhaps it was only having found her that made him happy.

  He watched as she set her paintbrush and palette on a table, and then, eyeing him suspiciously, walk toward him.

  "What is this place?" he said as she came close enough they could have touched.

  Rather than answer his question, she raised a hand to wipe her forehead, leaving a purplish smear behind. He reached to clean the paint off her, but she drew away.

  "How did you find me?"

  Her shirt was splotched with paint, with swirls of bright colors covering her breasts and stomach, and reached down past her knees. He had never seen her wear such a thing. She looked completely different from the Le he knew in Saigon.

  "I met someone who knew where you lived."

  She seemed to become a bit more relaxed.

  "But why are you here? Did you come all the way to Hanoi to find me?"

  "No. I moved here for that job at my friend's real estate company."

  The sound of a fish breaching the lake's surface made them look toward the water. Nathan's eyes swept over the canvas she'd been painting when he arrived but he couldn't see it well.

  "Nathan, I don't know what to say to you." Her eyes suddenly filled with tears. "Why are you here? What do you want from me?"

  "I want . . .," he started, but couldn't finish. A full half-minute passed before he said, "Well, some tea would be nice. And maybe a chair to sit in and drink it."

  "Tea?"

  "Iced tea, if you don't mind. As you can see, I'm sweating."

  "Iced tea," she said, turning to the house but not moving toward it. He heard her release a lungful of air.

  "And a chair."

  There were two chairs beside the door to the house, and she hurriedly brought them over. "Iced tea . . ."

  He watched her disappear inside, but instead of sitting down he walked toward where she'd been working. The canvas was half-sketch, half-painting. When he looked for a girl with a stem-like neck, he found none — only a small boat along the shore with unrecognizable objects around it. Bringing his gaze beyond the canvas the tableau was filled in before him.

  He breathed in deeply. Something in the shade of the tree where he stood smelled of her, and he felt he could stay here for hours watching her, or sleeping at her feet, or creating something beside her. Recognizing the feeling, which was more powerful than anything he'd felt in many weeks, he drew back into himself as much as he could.

  At the lake's edge he scanned the far shore trying to locate Anthony's home. The general area was not hard to find, for the Sheraton, rising above the trees and the multi-storey lakefront homes, was less than a five-minute drive from where he lived. But the houses were too small in the distance to distinguish between them. With the big banyan tree here, he wondered if he could identify Le's home from where Anthony lived.

  He turned around and decided that this was indeed a good place. Le's painting space, the old house and overgrown path, the breeze off the lake, the copious shade of trees, the air loud with cicadas, the fading blue of the house, the roof tiles full of fallen flowers and leaves — all these things somehow made it so.

  She returned carrying a tray. As she poured tea, he noticed that her slender fingers, too, were stained with paint.

  They sipped their tea in silence.

  Needing a starting point Nathan said: "What made you change your hair? I almost didn't recognize you like this."

  "I didn't like how it looked."

  "But you never complained about it before."

  "It gives me a different kind of confidence."

  "Confidence in what?"

  "Starting over."

  He cleared his throat and took another sip of tea. He sensed that she wasn't in the mood for small talk, but he'd only started the conversation he wanted to have with her.

  "I'm surprised to find you living in a place like this."

  "You say it like it's a beautiful house."

  "I can tell it was beautiful once."

  "It's a simple place. Simple is what I need right now."

  "A house must be expensive. Unless you're living here with a friend."

  She shook her head. "Someone's letting me use it."

  "I didn't think you knew anyone in Hanoi anymore."

  She sat there, not saying a word. Her hands, trembling slightly, peeled away from her teacup. "I lied to you."

  He waited for her to explain.

  She looked toward the lake and seemed to stare at a single spot. "I never had an uncle in California."

  A burst of heat flashed behind Nathan's eyes. He couldn't speak, but only sat there waiting for her to say more.

  "The man I called my uncle is named Quan. I've known him many years."

  Nathan swallowed hard. "Your uncle was the one thing I guessed was true."

  "I'm sorry, Nathan."

  He didn't need her to tell him that this lie, too, had been a means to an end, but he couldn't help wonder how different things would be now if she'd been honest with him from the start. Maybe he wouldn't have grown so close to her in Saigon, and by this point she'd be gone from his life forever. In a twisted way, he felt almost grateful for how things had turned out. After all, he was with her again now.

  "So if Quan isn't your uncle, who is he?" Nathan forced himself to ask.

  She made her answer brief. Until she'd lost her visa, she said, he was her fiancé. He was also a painting prodigy and the youngest son in a rich, powerful family. But he was spoiled, too wild, and three years before when he had run into trouble — she was vague about this, but he wanted no details — his parents sent him abroad. He had enrolled in a prestigious art school in California and now made his living there as a painter. He hardly needed to work, partly because his parents supported him, but also because his paintings sold well. Because he couldn't return to Vietnam for fear of reprisals, he had convinced Le that if he posed as her uncle she might obtain a visa to America and join him.

  As Nathan listened to her he wondered if all of this were a lie, too, rehearsed for his benefit on the small chance that he'd force her hand. He marveled at his own calmness. Perhaps he'd expected this all along.

  "And the house?" he said.

  "It belongs to Quan's father. He says I can stay here for as long as I like."

  He looked coldly toward the lake as she explained how Quan's father had arranged for her to live here. He owned the property and much of the land in the ne
ighborhood. When her visa was revoked he'd offered to help her. "Fulfill your promise as a painter," he'd urged her. The house was to be Le's studio for as long as she needed it. He'd put no conditions on her staying here.

  Nathan stared into the green-yellow residue at the bottom of his tea. For a moment, he thought that he still hated her after all. "You're still seeing him?"

  "No. But after my visa was revoked his father offered to help me. He owns several properties and didn't have any plans for this one."

  "Maybe he hopes you and Quan will work things out."

  "Maybe. But his hopes for us don't matter."

  Watching her for a reaction, he wondered if she were deceiving him again. There was nothing for her to gain from it, though, and he dismissed the thought. It was hard to believe she would have given up her life in Saigon for a run-down house and an easel beneath a banyan tree, even if living here were free. While he recognized her talent as a painter, he never thought she had the single-mindedness and temperament of an artist. The thought reinforced the idea that he never really knew her.

  "Nathan, please tell me why you're here."

  He didn't know what else to say. "I don't know why. I didn't plan it. I guess I had you on my mind."

  "I don't believe you. Thinking about me and going out of your way to find me are different."

  "Are you upset that I'm here? Because I sort of thought you'd be glad to see me and know that I wanted some kind of fresh start for us."

  "So that's what you want? A fresh start?"

  Nathan wasn't sure what he was saying. "I don't know what I want."

  "Well, I do. I came here to change my life."

  "And does your new life have to exclude everyone from your past?"

  "It feels simpler that way." Nathan watched her for clues over where the anger in her voice had come from. And then suddenly he found himself feeling angry with her.

  She offered him more tea, but he covered his glass with his hand.

  "I really don't know why I'm here. Call it impulse, or call it whatever you want. But I'm ready to be friends with you. No arrangements, either. Just friends."