by David Joiner
"I did. But they weren't interested. And then, for some reason, I stopped trying."
"Rejection makes him collapse like a house of cards. Just blow on him and he crumples." Anthony jumped when Huong smacked his arm. "He knows I'm kidding."
"What was your last article?" Hoa asked.
"Something on Buu Long Mountain, but I'm not sure it got published. The last thing I saw in print was a piece about Friendship Village."
"Friendship Village — that's for Agent Orange victims?"
"Yes."
"You should keep writing," she said.
Anthony chuckled into his drink. "Nate's an expert on many things, you know."
The wariness in Hoa's eyes showed that she knew Anthony was capable of saying anything.
"Take lacquer painting, for instance. His knowledge on the subject is unmatched."
"You don't say? That's interesting."
"It is interesting." Anthony was smiling, having a good time with this. "I like lacquer painting, too — I have expensive pieces in my home and office — but I only know a fraction of what Nate knows. Can you believe that when he was in Saigon he actually fell in love with a painting?"
Before moving to Hanoi Nathan had shipped his belongings to Anthony's address. One item had been the lacquer painting Le had given him. Anthony claimed that his children had opened it when it arrived, and that he couldn't help having seen it. When he'd guessed that the subject was Le, Nathan affirmed with surprise that it was. Anthony laughed in equal surprise, saying he'd only been joking.
Hoa clapped in amusement, then touched Nathan's hand where it lay on the table. "Maybe you should write something about lacquer painting. If you learned about it in Saigon, take advantage of the position you were in. Maybe one of those newspapers that rejected you wants something like that. And Anthony says they pay well."
"I don't have time."
"That's true," Anthony said. "If you published something now, I'd think you were shirking your duties to my company."
"I like lacquer painting," Hoa said. "But I don't know much about it."
"Nate has a beautiful piece in his bedroom, framed in cherry wood and everything. A beautiful painting of a beautiful girl. Down in Saigon he was best friends with a gallery owner. If he wasn't at home, you knew he was at that gallery losing himself in all the beauty there."
Nathan's gaze lingered on Anthony, wondering what had triggered this bit of viciousness.
"I know some galleries in Saigon," Hoa said. "Which gallery did your friend own?"
He thought of making something up, but he didn't care what Hoa learned about his relationship with Le. Le wasn't a source of embarrassment to him the way she seemed to be for Anthony. That Anthony would mock him like this, deliberately putting him in an awkward situation, angered him. Not knowing how to stop him, he sank further into the helplessness he'd felt since Anthony showed him Hoa's photo.
"Bac-Nam," he answered.
"I think I know it. Is it on Nam Ky Khoi Nghia Street, in District Three?"
"Yes."
"Then I do know it. But only vaguely. I forget if I met the owner." She shut her eyes and rapped her forehead with her knuckles. "What's her name?"
But Nathan didn't answer. He was staring at Anthony, messily smiling at him.
"All that's in the past," Huong said. "Nathan lives here now. And he works so hard I'm sure he doesn't have time to go to galleries anymore."
"Aren't you burned out on those places?" Anthony said, leaning in. "Such pretentious people there . . ."
"I've been to a few in Hanoi already. They're not bad."
"Like Anthony said, you must know a lot about Vietnam. As a foreigner, the things you know put you in a unique position. It makes me wonder why you work in real estate. It seems like a waste of your skills."
Anthony laughed. "His problem is he has skills few Americans value: fluent in Vietnamese, eats dog meat, drinks snake wine. All of it gets his pecker up, and girls here love him for it. Vietnam's in his blood."
Huong broke the awkward silence that followed: "Nathan was the only one we trusted to work for us. In the beginning I had to pressure Anthony to hire him. And then suddenly he agreed and began recruiting Nathan."
"That's right," Anthony said, as if he'd forgotten. "Hiring him was your idea, wasn't it?"
Nathan turned to Hoa. "I never heard this before."
"He's too modest," Anthony said. "Aren't you, Nate? Modest like Ho Chi Minh."
Sensing the potential for Anthony to segue into more embarrassing areas, Nathan asked Hoa how she and Huong knew each other.
"We've always known each other," Hoa answered.
"Since childhood," Huong said. "Both our parents helped secure supplies along the Ho Chi Minh Trail during the war. Afterward, the government rewarded our families with a small room to live in and a bathroom to share with twenty other families. Hoa was my neighbor. We grew up together. I'm sure I told you about Hoa when we dated."
Nathan listened to them share anecdotes from their past. Soon they were speaking in Vietnamese, laughing at old times. Their switch to Vietnamese induced a weariness to settle over Anthony's face.
The evening wore on. Anthony drank more than Nathan was used to. The alcohol brought a crimson glow to his face and neck, while the heat and humidity covered it all in a clammy sheen. He constantly wiped his forehead with a wet facial towel, and then began using Huong's, which she hadn't touched.
Conversation swirled around various subjects, never sticking on one thing for long. On a TV screen at one end of the restaurant the BBC ran a story about the war in Iraq. There was no sound to the broadcast, only images of American soldiers patrolling an empty, debris-filled street in Mosul.
Nathan saw that Anthony's attention had strayed from the table, and he, too, looked over to the TV.
"Those insurgents are tough little fuckers, aren't they?" Anthony said.
"They blew up sixty people in a Baghdad market yesterday."
Anthony shook his head thoughtfully. His eyes drifted to Hoa. When she noticed him looking at her she stopped talking.
"I bet you didn't know that Hoa's fired artillery from American tanks."
Hoa smiled, dabbing her lips with her napkin.
"What are you talking about?" Nathan said.
"Tell him, Hoa."
"I was in Houston last month, pushing some business deals, and one of the companies I was working with invited me on a weekend retreat. I had no idea the retreat would be full of tanks and artillery. Our instructors were veterans from Vietnam and the first Iraq war, and they trained us on GPS devices, military gear, navigation tactics, everything. We learned things as a team. And I have to say, I've never had so much fun."
"It didn't bother you?" Nathan said. "Going to America and seeing adults and company leaders playing war?"
"No," she said. "I made lots of friends."
"To me," Nathan said, wanting to make a point while avoiding provocation, "turning America's war machine into personal recreation is a little sick. As if you can't get enough of it on TV or in any history book and have to destroy some beautiful area instead."
"Get off your soapbox already." Anthony's eyes were narrow with a malevolence Nathan wasn't prepared for. "It's not sick or destructive. It's classic teambuilding — not war games or whatever phrase you want to disparage it with. What's sick about it? Are people dying? Is the environment getting napalmed? No." Anthony answered his own questions quickly, not allowing Nathan a word in edgewise. "And guess what? I like the idea so much I'm thinking of bringing the concept here. A kind of paradigm shift — keep the real estate thing going but branch out. No one's doing company retreats here. The market's untapped."
"I just thought Vietnam had enough of that sort of thing last century."
"I'm sure they did. But we're not talking about war. It's abou
t making people work better. It's about making Vietnam more productive." He seemed to find in his words a catchphrase: "It's productive, not destructive. And I think it's brilliant."
"It's not as bad as you think," Hoa said, as if it were Nathan who needed placating.
Anthony drained what was left in his glass and told a waitress to get him another. "He's new to business," he said, wiping his mouth with his hand. "Green about the whole game and how it runs."
Nathan didn't say anything. He'd become interested in Huong's silence — from the corner of his eye he saw her watching him.
Anthony leaned forward, intent on convincing him of something.
"Like I said, I'm thinking of importing the concept here. You can fire AK-47s at Cu Chi, so why not build a command station and let people drive tanks on the mountains around Ba Be Lake? Investors were going to build a golf course there five or six years ago but never did. So we take the land off their hands and give them something for their lost investment. It'll be a steal for us, and good for them, too. Hoa and I've been talking about working together on it. I was going to put you on this, Nate, give you your first big project. But I can see you don't like the idea."
Nathan tried to move the conversation somewhere safer. "You can get government approval on imported tanks and a military retreat? And what about customs? Aren't tariffs on imported vehicles over one hundred percent?"
"They're around two hundred percent. But anyone well connected can avoid paying that. I'm sure the same goes for tanks. Just get the government to oversee the whole enterprise, promise some officials a cut of revenue, and voilà. In the bag. The only problem is, decommissioning makes it nearly impossible to get American tanks. British tanks are much easier. Old British FV4201 Chieftains are the way to go."
There wasn't much Nathan could say. Anthony had obviously done a lot of research already. "To me it's a waste of money."
"That's the greenness I was talking about," Anthony commented to Hoa. Then turning to Nathan he said: "It takes money to make money. And the Vietnamese would love this. Hoa said so herself, and Huong thinks it sounds like fun, too."
Nathan excused himself to the bathroom. To his surprise, Huong did the same. They walked down the back steps, scaring away two cats gnawing on the carcass of a frog. When they crossed the courtyard to an outbuilding with paired doors, Nathan looked at Huong, pointed at a sign with a man's figure on it and reached for the doorknob.
"Nathan," she said, waving him back. He followed her to the side where they couldn't be seen. "Tell me what you think. She's nice, isn't she?"
"She's all right."
"All right? That's it?" Something in her smile made him uncomfortable. "You've become quite the commodity. Good job, high salary, fluent in Vietnamese. You don't seem to understand that you can have anyone you want."
Her line of reasoning didn't appeal to him, however true it might be.
"I tried once," he said.
"That didn't count. She was only using you for a visa."
"It counted." The awkwardness he felt with Hoa was proof.
Anthony had referred to Hoa as a hot property, and now here Huong was calling him a commodity. For those who made their lives buying and selling, perhaps it was no surprise that their relationships too developed like businesses: there was a bottom-line involved with everyone they dealt with, and friendships were either profitable or not. He didn't want to be considered an investment, asset, resource, or any other dehumanizing term they bandied around.
Maybe he was only being petty, he thought. But where did pettiness like this come from?
Huong touched his arm, smiling almost pruriently. "What you're looking for might be right under your nose."
Something flashed in her eyes, and for a moment he thought she was referring to herself. But the thought was self-indulgent, and he flushed with shame at the idea. The intentness of her stare, however, kept the thought alive. His only escape from it was to look away.
The pond was visible from where they stood. He saw an oil lamp burning inside the floating hut, and the flame flickered as if at any second it might be snuffed out. Focusing on the unsteady glimmer, though, he realized there was no danger of that happening: the flicker was only bats feeding around the light's nimbus. The man he'd seen in the doorway was gone — but not gone, for his head now emerged from the pond and began to circle slowly around the hut.
It was loneliness Nathan felt, seemingly out of nowhere, and he had to fight an urge to confide in Huong about Le. If Huong really wanted him to be happy, she might even tell him to leave dinner early. But he didn't feel she had his best interests in mind. He sensed that, like Anthony, she had her own plans for him.
In the bathroom, his cell phone vibrated in his pocket. His first thought was that Huong had sent a message from the other side of the wall, giving up the indirect approach to tell him what she hadn't been able to say to his face. Instead, he saw a number on his screen he didn't recognize. The message was in Vietnamese:
It's Le. I wanted to remind you about the exhibition at the Fine Arts University. Or are old drawings of the German countryside boring to you? Tonight's the last night.
Nathan messaged her back:
Not boring. At dinner with friends now. Trying to get away. I'll be there.
Huong was waiting for him when he got out and, as they returned to the table, he asked what was eating at Anthony.
"What makes you think something's eating at him?"
"He's turned extra nasty is all. But maybe it's my imagination."
"There are problems," she said, but they were approaching the table and she couldn't say more.
Hoa was by herself. Nathan looked toward the bar at the front of the restaurant, around the corner from the outbuilding. Anthony was there, fingering an empty shot glass. Nathan wondered if he'd heard them talking.
"What were you two gabbing about back there?" Hoa said when they sat down.
"Just the weather," Huong said. "Nathan says all this rain we've had depresses him."
"Why don't you take a trip? One of my friends just came back from Phu Quoc and raved about it."
Hoa's mention of the island shot into his ears like cold water. "I don't think I'd like it," he said.
"Really? I hear it's a perfect escape. No noise or pollution, and beautiful, romantic sunsets . . ."
"There's no such thing as a perfect escape." Saying this, he realized he was extinguishing a genuine attempt to draw him out. He promised himself not to speak if there was any question about sounding affable. He soon forgot, though, as Huong asked Hoa about a new salon, leaving him alone with his half-drunk beer.
When Anthony returned, he was on the phone. He'd brought back two whiskey shots. He pushed one across the table toward Nathan, but Nathan pushed it back. Anthony stopped talking and without cupping his hand over the phone barked out: "Drink it, goddamnit. I got that for you."
"I don't like whiskey."
"I don't care. It's good for you, so drink the damn thing."
Nathan threw back the shot and chased it with beer. When the burn in his throat was quenched he glanced at Huong and saw her smiling at him — the same lurid smile as when she told him he could have any woman he wanted.
A few minutes later Anthony hung up and started texting a message. Without looking up he said: "I'm serious about developing company retreats. It's a big niche that needs to be filled. I'm putting you in charge of it."
"I don't know anything about it."
"That's the whole point. You get experience. Learn on the job. Grow some thicker skin. Feel the thrill of making money. You can be Vietnam's ‘corporate retreat guy'."
"I'll think about it."
Anthony's eyebrows angled downward in a quizzical, half-angry way. "What are you talking about? If I tell you to do something, you do it. Are you my boss? Are you paying my rent? Did you bring me up here from Saigon
and save me from a hopeless situation?"
"Yes on the first two, no on the last one. Corporate retreats are no problem, but playing with tanks doesn't appeal to me."
"I'm counting on that changing."
Nathan didn't want to talk about work anymore, nor did he wish to argue over obligations. But it was hard to keep silent. He resented being forced to do whatever Anthony said, even if it was a simple matter of carrying out his job. Wishing he could make his own choices, he realized suddenly that there was something he could do on his own — always there was that. The consequences of going through with it, however, were uncomfortable to consider.
Hoa's arm touched his, and it occurred to him that even she was part of something Anthony had forced on him. If there was a distinction between what Nathan owed Anthony and what Anthony had imposed on him, he couldn't determine what it was.
Anthony gestured for the check by scribbling his name on an invisible bill that hung in the air. "I have to stop at the office and then hit the sack early." Clapping his hands, he tried to corral everyone into calling it a night.
"Now?" Hoa said. "I was going to suggest we go to the Sofitel Plaza. They're hosting a charity event that's getting a lot of media attention."
"We'd like to," Huong put in. "But my parents are expecting us back."
"Just half an hour?" Hoa said. "It never hurts being on TV and in the papers."
"If the cameramen have a choice between you and me," Anthony said, "they'll focus on you every time. I could wear a gorilla costume with our company logo on the chest, but I wouldn't get a bit of attention with you there."
Hoa laughed at the compliment.
"As long as Nathan's there, that's fine." Anthony turned to him. "Just stand next to her. That way you're bound to get equal exposure."
"Come with us," Hoa implored Huong in Vietnamese. "It'll be more fun with four people."
Aware that Nathan understood what Hoa said, Huong glanced at him. "We're both tired," she said in English, "and my parents won't want us out late. They're taking care of the kids."