by David Joiner
"A family altar?" Mrs. Thompson said. "Surely he won't want us to keep it for him."
"I don't think so."
"The last thing we need is for the kids to break someone's family altar," Mr. Thompson mumbled. "I'm sure there'd be hell to pay for something like that."
Mrs. Thompson called her sons' names. When they didn't answer, she started back upstairs. By the time she returned, the disturbing images of deformed children were thoroughly emblazoned on Nathan's mind.
Twenty
The next day Nathan found Anthony sitting with his head in his hands, trembling. The shades were drawn in every window, but sunlight still penetrated his office.
The office was sterile to begin with: white curtains, whitewashed walls, white-carpeted floor. A triangular calendar was propped on his desk, and a framed photo of his wife and children stood by his phone. The room was furnished with cushioned rattan chairs and a glass-topped table. Aside from two paintings of the sea on his walls, the only color came from the canopy of an areca tree out the window. But the diaphanous curtains Anthony had pulled shut muted even this.
"What is it?" Anthony rasped.
"I was hoping we could talk. But you look like hell, so maybe I'll come back later."
"No, no. It's okay. Unplug my phone, will you? I don't want to move."
"Why don't you lie down?" Nathan said, removing the plug from Anthony's phone.
"It doesn't help."
"If you want, I'll call your driver and have him take you home."
"Home? Where my kids run around screaming all day? It's an eternity of zoo feeding times there. Besides, my wife and her parents don't understand these things."
"Then use my place."
"My head feels like it'll split in half if I budge."
Nathan didn't push it. Anthony had been having migraines for over a month. Before that, he said he'd never had so much as a headache. Pressuring him to take it easy was pointless. Ever since Nathan had known him, Anthony considered suffering a concomitant to life in Vietnam. "Suffering cleanses me of my sins," he joked when they lived in Saigon and hangovers were a daily part of his life. Nathan was surprised to see a bottle of aspirin on top of his desk.
"If you're just going to stay here and be miserable, I'm going back to work. Like I said, we can talk some other time."
He headed for the door but Anthony smacked his hand weakly on his desk and called him back.
"I said we'll talk, so let's talk." He waved vaguely to the chair in front of his desk and Nathan sat down. "Man, I need a vacation from this hell."
"What hell are you talking about?"
"Work . . . Vietnam . . . my family." His voice was so low Nathan had to strain to hear it. There was a long silence. Anthony closed his eyes and told him to shut the door. "That's better," he said when Nathan came back.
"Shutting the door means something, right?"
"It does mean something. But I reserve the right to a preamble. I don't ask much of you, I give you lots of freedom, so just return the favor now, okay?"
Nathan smiled inwardly at the skill with which Anthony had usurped his request to talk. "I'm all ears."
Anthony gritted his teeth and rubbed at his temples with such force Nathan thought he'd penetrate the skin. "You ever get like this? Like your head's being slowly tightened in a vise?"
"Until you decide to go home and take care of yourself, you don't get any pity from me."
"Pity? What the fuck do I need your pity for?"
"I don't know. Why do you?"
Anthony stared at him through a plaster mask. "I make a point never to miss work. Even now, when I feel like I'm dying, it's not enough to chase me away."
"Maybe you should rethink that. Perseverance is good, but what's the point if it makes you feel like this?"
Anthony raised his hand to stop him from going on. "You've missed a lot of days lately, haven't you? Late coming to work. Long lunches. Leaving at five, even four o'clock sometimes. You do it when I'm gone or occupied. You think I don't know, but I'm the one who steers this ship. I know everything that goes on around here."
"I wouldn't say it's happened a lot."
Anthony's laughter was flat and lifeless, like a car thumping along on punctured tires. "Why am I so patient with you?"
"I'm not sure," Nathan admitted.
"I even caught you sleeping in your office when you didn't show up for a meeting. Remember that? On Monday morning, the week before last. If you'd been another employee, I would've given you serious heat. You're putting me in an awkward position."
Anthony reached into his desk and shakily removed a photo of his staff. "There are eighteen people in this picture. In the last year I've hired six more, not including you. I swear, I feel like everyone sees me as an enemy. I'm not sure if it's because I'm their boss or because I'm a foreigner. But no one respects me. No one sees me as quite human."
He brushed dust off the frame before dropping it onto his desk. He winced at the clatter and kept his eyes shut.
Nathan didn't take Anthony's disapproval seriously. Two days earlier Anthony had heaped praise on him for his work with the Thompsons. Nathan had helped them secure a lower rent, the removal of the owner's family altar, and a higher fence in the back yard to keep the neighbors from peeking over and picking fruit from their trees (both of which happened on the Thompsons' second visit). He had even put in overtime to find a trustworthy housekeeper who could cook Western dishes how they liked. "You did well with that family," Anthony had said. "You went further than I would have gone to make them happy. You keep impressing me, Nate." But Anthony's praise didn't stick. Nathan was merely conscientious; he didn't think twice about helping the Thompsons. Yet helping them didn't satisfy him. He took no pride in being skilled at this line of work.
Xuan opened the door and came in holding a tray. She placed two coasters on Anthony's desk, followed by glasses of iced tea.
"I think maybe you're thirsty," she said, smiling at them.
Nathan smiled back, but Anthony told her to take his away. "I didn't ask for this. And I've told you hundreds of times to knock before entering." When she tried to remove his glass and coaster he shook his head, which made him moan. "Just leave it!"
Confusion and fear flared in Xuan's eyes.
"Don't let his mood scare you," Nathan told her in Vietnamese. "I'm trying to get him to go home."
She apologized and hurried from the office. On her way out she forgot to shut the door. Nathan got up and did it for her.
"What did you tell her?"
"I told her your bark's worse than your bite. And I said you're going home to rest."
Anthony pressed his iced tea against his forehead. "You've turned into one of them."
"One of whom?"
"One of them. One of the people I can't trust. One of the people who sees me as someone to take advantage of after I've gone out of my way to help them."
Anthony's words burned in Nathan's ears. "When you help someone, you shouldn't do it with the expectation that there's a return in it for you."
"You're so fucking naïve. You're like a child. A child who got a taste of power and decided he liked it, even though he knows nothing about how to wield it."
"Is that what you think of the Vietnamese?"
"How I think of the Vietnamese is complicated." He glanced at the door, as if to make sure it was closed. Then he squinted his eyes shut and rubbed at his temples again. He took a long shuddering breath and spoke quietly. "The Vietnamese are easy to respect if we're speaking historically. They've suffered more than you or I could ever comprehend. And while that kind of survival's easy to respect, and the respect is natural, wouldn't you say that on the very opposite end they're just as difficult to love?"
"I have no idea. I prefer to go through life without judging everyone so reflexively."
Anthony
smiled weakly. "You're right. I wish I weren't like this. As far as I know I've become this way only recently — since marrying into the culture, or whatever I've done. I need criticism that's constructive, because I can't get enough distance from my life to see where I've started to crack. And without knowing where I'm falling apart, how can I possibly keep myself together?"
His weak voice had grown hard with bitterness. Nathan didn't know if he was being serious or preparing to cut him down. Anthony sat in dark silence. He swallowed hard, wincing again as he did. "So what you said was good," he finally said, swallowing even harder. "I shouldn't be so judgmental."
"I wasn't criticizing you."
"Yes you were. I needed it and like a friend you gave it to me."
"Anthony," Nathan said, "I'm telling you this as a friend: take some time off. Get away for a couple weeks. The firm won't collapse with you gone. But listen to yourself. This job and all its stress is messing you up. You have to take care of yourself better. It's time to step back a little."
"I'm glad you're here, Nate. We should go on vacation together. A long one, somewhere far away. How's Florida sound?" Only when he started coughing did Nathan realize he'd been trying to laugh. "When I was a kid my family went to Florida every summer. We'd pile into our car and spend three days driving south. Cooped up in the back of that car, my brothers and sisters constantly fought. My parents would argue over where to eat, when to stop for a bathroom, how much to spend on motels." He closed his eyes and kneaded his temples. "Have I told you that for the last few weeks I've been dreaming about those vacations? That was thirty years ago, yet those memories have come back and are screwing with my head . . ."
"How do you mean?"
Anthony licked his lips and wiped his mouth. His mouth stayed open and he hovered a few seconds over what he wanted to say. "I mean I'll never have that again. Not with my family. Not with my life here. Not with–"
He began to gag. With his feet he pulled over the small trashcan beneath his desk, but he couldn't bend down to pick it up. Nathan hurried to give it to him. Anthony looked as pale as his office walls.
"Nothing ever comes up. It just stays inside, rotting my guts."
"You should go home."
"What I should do is sell this business, sell my house, cash in. I should go back to teaching or something. Move back to America. I could buy a place in the country, hole up and never see anyone again."
"If you do, will I have to give up my digs?" Nathan said, trying to aim the conversation somewhere lighter.
"I negotiated hard for that place. I told myself: ‘If I can get Nate this house, there's no way he won't take this job.' And I did, and I was right."
Nathan disliked being reminded of what Anthony had done for him, even if it was true that he'd done a lot. "Still, your house is better than mine."
Anthony grimaced as he laughed. "Hey Nate," he said. "What was the name of that girl you were seeing in Saigon?"
"Le."
"She messed you up more than you realize. You need to get over her. It wouldn't have worked out."
Nathan felt himself grow angry: why did he always bring her up? And what had triggered it now? For some reason the anger stayed with him. He was glad he hadn't told Anthony that she was back in Hanoi and he'd been seeing her again.
"We need reminding sometimes. We all do. I wish someone had shared the same wisdom with me before I'd gotten into the trouble I'm in now."
But to Nathan, what he was talking about had nothing to do with wisdom. Anthony was being condescending. Except for one night before Le left, Nathan hadn't come to Anthony about her. Maybe that was the problem. Even so, there were better ways to raise the subject than by making passing judgments.
"What did you want to talk to me about, anyway?"
They'd been focusing on Anthony so much that Nathan had almost forgotten. "Reuters contacted me . . ."
Over the last minute Anthony had his head cradled in his hands. But at the mention of the news agency he lifted his head and peered at Nathan through the red slits of his eyes. "What do they have to do with anything?" he whispered.
"They want me to write some articles. Freelance stuff. About Agent Orange. The deadline for the first piece is three weeks away. I don't want it getting in the way of my responsibilities here, but it's not like I'm critical to the agency's functioning." Nathan laughed self-mockingly. "I'd like to cut out early for the next three weeks to write the articles. You can dock my pay."
Even more than the news that he wanted to write on company time, Nathan's suggestion that his pay be docked seemed to anger Anthony. He struggled to sit up in his chair, as if it were a position from which his authority naturally flowed.
"In other words, you're bailing on me."
"I'm not bailing on anything. I told you, I just need some time to do a couple articles. How can I if I'm putting in eighty hours a week here?"
"You don't put in eighty hours a week."
"I used to."
"Have you heard of Sunday?"
"It's not enough."
"It's enough for my other twenty-four employees."
"I'm twice as efficient as them, and I don't even know what I'm doing."
Anthony's face twisted into something beyond a scowl. "What are you saying?"
"I'm saying these articles mean a lot to me."
"Maybe they mean more than they should. I feel like I mean nothing to you, and if anything I should mean the most. I pulled you up when you couldn't do it yourself. I was there for you."
"You gave me a job, and I've done my work well. Like I said, I'm not even asking for pay, although I'll come to the office whenever I'm needed. I just have to . . . I need to write."
"You sound like you've already decided. So why are we talking about it? Do you want my approval, my forgiveness, or both?"
"I don't need your forgiveness."
The dim light in Anthony's eyes grew dimmer. "But you need my approval."
"I don't need that either. Real estate means nothing to me."
Anthony fell back in his chair like he'd been shoved. "What makes you think Agent Orange is worth reporting on? From what I've heard, the evidence can't be corroborated. There's no direct link between Agent Orange and all the birth defects Vietnam reports. That's true, right?"
"It's more complicated than that. Politics got in the way of science after the war, and the two sides couldn't cooperate."
"Couldn't cooperate? Didn't the Vietnamese say ‘we don't need you' when they needed us badly?"
"They had every reason to turn us away. It hurt them, but so did the embargo we put on them for twenty years. We killed more than three million people here, most of them civilians. And for a war we now admit we started on false pretenses. Why should they have wanted us back?"
"So what are you now, some kind of saint? What do you hope to accomplish? Are you going to save all these sufferers? Spread the gospel of peace around the world? Convince Bush and his cronies that war's wrong, un-Christian, and unjust? What's the point of writing an article few people will ever read anyway?"
"I only want people to think for a moment. That's all I want."
"Think? That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard."
"All right: I want people to reflect. If the Vietnamese were like most Americans, they'd never forgive us. Plenty of Americans haven't forgiven the Japanese for bombing Pearl Harbor. They see a twenty-year-old exchange student from Tokyo and make a nasty comment about something that happened forty years before that student was born. And look at you. You've made yourself a life here. You even told me once that you could never live this well in America. You'd never have had this success if the Vietnamese hadn't gotten past the hardship we forced on them. They forgave us, and you're lucky they did."
"Your preaching makes me laugh. For a moment I thought I was actually going to fire you."
&
nbsp; "Do what you have to do." Nathan couldn't keep the defiance out of his voice. "I know I will."
"I'll tell you what. I'll let you work half-time for two weeks. Let's assume you get your article published: if there's any sort of backlash I'll have to let you go. This is a business. I help people find homes. It's hard enough without my employees publishing political editorials in major U.S. newspapers."
"I've thought about leaving anyway."
Anthony's eyes shot open, and the pain contorted his face so he was barely recognizable. "What are you talking about?"
"If Reuters offers me more work, that's what I'll have to do."
The red eyes looking back at him seemed to retract. Nathan hadn't intended for his words to be judged a threat; he'd merely spoken from the heart. He wouldn't take back what he'd said.
"What have I done to deserve this?" Anthony said. "Can't you handle kindness? And friendship?"
"You've changed. And so have I."
"So what if we've changed?" He stopped talking as Nathan stood up. "Change isn't something to lash out at. I don't like change much myself, but that's how things are."
"It's not the act of change I'm talking about. It's the direction of change on those rare times we're given control over it."
"I don't follow you."
"Anthony," Nathan said, pushing his chair close to the desk so he couldn't sit back down. "We're complicit in how our lives have turned out. We're not riding on an electrical track. We've chosen for ourselves exactly what we have right now."
"All I know is that I've tried to be your friend, and you've never made much effort to reciprocate."
Anthony's bent figure caused a pang of concern in Nathan, but the feeling was nothing he hadn't already given voice to. Anthony massaged the back of his neck, unable to look at Nathan. His eyes now were riveted to the picture of his family.
"I'd rather you quit than make me fire you."
"If it comes down to that," Nathan said, "I will."
"That's nice. Now leave me alone to die, will you? And shut the door on your way out."