by David Joiner
"Maybe another time, then. I'm sorry, Nathan, but I should get back. We were in the middle of a rather awkward discussion when you called. Have fun tonight with Anthony."
Suddenly he didn't want to spend any more time with Anthony. "What were you talking about?"
"Nothing very interesting. They want me to give them money."
When he asked what had happened, she explained. That morning, three generations of distant family had piled onto a motorbike and driven to Hanoi. They'd shown up at Le's door two hours before, after calling her on the way to find out where she lived. The auntie had already asked Le to take in her daughter so she could find work in the city. When Le balked, using her landlord as an excuse, they asked for money. Le couldn't say no twice. Because the only things of value she owned were her paintings, she decided to sell them. Half an hour ago she arranged for a dealer to appraise all her work. He would come tomorrow morning. She hoped that her paintings together would fetch what her relatives had asked for.
It sickened him to hear they were pressuring her like this. "How much do they want?"
"A thousand dollars. My auntie asked for more, but her daughter said it was enough."
"What do they need it for?" He imagined it was because the old woman was sick, but he wanted to make sure.
"A new motorbike. New cell phones. Different things."
"You're not going to do it, are you?"
"I will if I can. That side of my family helped me when I was younger and had nothing."
"But they don't need your money. They're just being greedy."
"Don't be upset. I want to help them."
He couldn't stop his voice from rising. "But you haven't thought this through. You'll end up selling your paintings for less than they're worth."
"If I can help them, that makes me happy. For as long as I can remember, I've been sending them small amounts of money whenever I had it. It's my duty to them."
"You never told me that."
"But all Vietnamese do this. I didn't know I needed to tell you."
Rather than appease him, her way of thinking only frustrated him more.
"Your paintings are good, Le. The money you could —"
"Stop it, Nathan. Talking about money like this with me doesn't suit you."
"Why not?"
She paused before speaking, as if to give him the chance to recognize an obvious truth. "Because you're a writer, not a salesman. Leave the money-making to Anthony."
Her words stopped him cold. What did she mean by calling him a writer? Once he'd taken the job at Anthony's agency, any claim he had as a writer belonged to the past. As far as he could tell, he was nothing anymore. A quitter didn't seem to qualify for much.
But what pierced him was the realization then of how much he had become like Anthony, and in such a short time. She was right, of course, but then he'd been right, too — she could make a better living if she went about it right.
He envied her the confidence she showed in living as she now did. Perhaps his worry was misplaced after all; he should have been celebrating her renewal as an artist, encouraging whatever force spurred her on. And yet, the fact that neither of them could get ahead financially made it seem like they were perpetually mired.
On his way back Anthony detoured to the bar and asked to see another bottle of whiskey.
"I'll call you later," Nathan said into his phone. "Maybe I can visit tomorrow."
"I wish I could see you tonight. I miss you already."
A minute later Anthony came back. He told Nathan he'd just called Huong. "She thought I was already home."
"It's that big house you've got," Nathan said. "It must be hard to keep track of everyone there."
Anthony frowned and shook his head. "So is your girlfriend coming here or are we going somewhere to meet her?"
"Neither," Nathan said. "Her relatives stopped by unexpectedly."
Anthony swept his arm across the table, knocking their plate of ham and cheese to the floor. His eyes shot open wide — he seemed surprised by the sound of porcelain smashing on the tiled floor, and he looked at his hand as if it had acted independently of him. Their waitress hurried over to clean up the mess.
Without commenting on what he'd just done, Anthony mumbled: "Is that really what happened?"
"You think I'm lying?"
"Just because I don't like her doesn't mean I'll cause trouble. You don't trust me. You don't trust me like I trust you."
Nathan asked himself why he wanted to introduce Anthony to Le in the first place. Would it make his life easier if he had Anthony's approval? Would Anthony respect him more for seeking it? In his drunkenness, his mind tumbled back to the conversation he'd had with Le.
"They asked her for money. But she's got nothing to give them, so she's selling her paintings for a pittance."
"She must have learned from you when you were at that magazine in Saigon."
"You think it's funny?"
"Not really."
Anthony withdrew from his pocket a silver clip stuffed with cash. In its stretched maw Nathan could see the careful organization of two currencies. The moss green of American twenty-dollar bills was pressed against an assortment of vivid blue, pink, and green Vietnamese dong.
"How much does she need?"
"Put it away."
Anthony unrolled his stash of money. "Choose her best painting for me and I'll pay whatever you say. Consider it a lesson in how to handle her family in the future. You can pay me back later out of your salary."
"How is this a lesson?"
"Ever hear of a one-off? Give them more than they ask for — once. And tell them to enjoy it because they'll never get another penny from you again."
When he held out the money, Nathan pushed it away.
"Take it. Just don't tell Huong about it. If that's not enough cash, I'll give you the rest at the office." He slipped the empty clip into his pocket and once more held out a fist-sized wad of bills.
Nathan thought Anthony must be as drunk as he was, and he wondered if his own drunkenness was the reason he didn't get mad at him now. Nathan pushed the money away, more forcefully this time.
"Le has her own way of making money."
"I'm trying to help."
"No, you're making things harder, worse."
"I'm helping more than you are. You don't have the money." Anthony laughed. "Penury's chronic with you."
It was easy for Anthony to say that from where he stood. He had money that Nathan would never have. But at least I still have dreams, Nathan thought.
"Would it help if I called it a bonus?" Anthony said. "Or let's make it an advance on your salary."
"I haven't done anything to deserve a bonus, especially when you've put a moratorium on pay increases for everyone else. And if I need an advance, I'd rather come to you for it than have you offer it like this. Out of sympathy. Or to be some kind of hero."
Anthony's cell phone beeped and he took it out and smiled at whatever message he'd received.
"Happy Halloween, baby," Anthony said. "I wonder who sent this. I can't place the number, and the body doesn't ring a bell, either."
Without a second thought he passed his phone to Nathan. A grainy photo of a naked woman filled the small screen. The woman lay on a bed with Hello Kitty sheets. She wore a black mask and witch's hat, and an overhead light illuminated her small, pointy breasts, sunken stomach, and a sparse triangle of hair between her legs. It wasn't clear if she'd taken the picture herself or had someone do it for her. Her body, which was nothing compared to Huong's, appeared undernourished. Nathan found himself slightly repulsed by her.
"Wrong number?" he said. "That could be an embarrassing mistake."
"I'm not sure. I usually know who it is."
Nathan wondered how many women sent Anthony nude photos. Were they prostitutes?
Women he met at bars and restaurants? His own employees? Thinking of Huong, he decided he didn't want to know.
"By the way," Anthony said, "what's it say under the picture?"
Nathan scrolled down and saw the Vietnamese: My body aches for you. Come quickly.
"She's horny and wants to see you. But you probably guessed that from her picture." He handed back Anthony's phone.
"Damn. I wish I knew who she was."
"Better not let your wife see that."
Anthony laughed. "Huong was talking on my phone once when a photo like that came through. Like now, only a number showed on the screen. I said it must have been sent by mistake, and Huong messaged the girl back telling her never to contact me again. She didn't seem that upset, though. She was kinder to the girl than I expected."
Nathan told Anthony he wanted to go home.
To his surprise, Anthony didn't object. When he finished typing something into his phone, he pushed himself out of his seat and lurched back toward the bar. He flipped to the back of a drinks menu and pointed at something.
"Get me a bottle of this. And give me the bill while you're at it." Even before the bill came he leaned against the bar and totaled what he guessed he owed. He dropped a wad of cash on the counter.
The bartender reached behind him and took a bottle of whiskey off the shelf. In Vietnamese he said: "That's sixty-five dollars."
"What did he say?" he shouted at Nathan.
Nathan told him what the bottle cost, but Anthony didn't listen. He pushed his cash toward the bartender. "Here. You figure it out."
When Anthony had his change he lurched back toward the table.
"Are you sure you don't want to keep drinking? My driver doesn't go home until I'm ready for him to."
"I've had enough for one afternoon."
"If you go home, where am I supposed to go?"
"Your home doesn't seem nearly as bad as you describe it." The settledness Anthony always rejected was hard for him to fathom. "I wish I had it myself."
"Be careful what you wish for. The way things look, the chance might come sooner than later. And what will you do if it does?"
"I don't know," Nathan admitted.
But somewhere inside him, not far from the surface of his life, he was confident he'd be ready.
Nathan walked home. As he steered his body through the Old Quarter toward Truc Bach, the periodic shouting of English words became more frequent, and he picked up his pace. But the more he walked, the more he tripped over the uneven sidewalks; the brighter the neon from the endless mom-and-pop stores shone in his eyes; and the louder the city's clamor buffeted him from every direction.
As he crossed Phan Dinh Phung Street he came upon an expanse of quiet. Set off behind a tall, barred metal gate, Cua Bac Church towered over the surrounding trees and buildings. White light poured through the open entryway and the overlapping circles in the rose-patterned window above it.
Approaching the church he saw guests filling half the pews, while a white-robed priest spoke from behind a podium with outstretched arms. A couple in matching white stood on the stage between the priest and the singing choir. White flowers on the corner of each pew decorated the centre aisle.
Nathan hovered in the entryway, mesmerized by the clean light inside and the pure sound of voice that made the chaos behind him disappear. The light and voices had a liquid quality to them, and he had a sense, merely standing there, of being bathed by both.
An old man in a striped tracksuit, kneeling to arrange flowers in plastic holders on the floor, waved him inside.
"Are you here for the wedding?" he said. "Or to worship?"
"I'm not sure why I'm here," Nathan answered.
"It doesn't matter. Please, come in."
Nathan wandered down one side of the nave. The church's blue-grey walls were hung with paintings of Jesus on the cross and, on the ceiling above the chancel, spread the words Regina Martyrum Ora Pro Nobis.
Several wedding party guests turned and smiled at him as he settled into a pew near the back. They were young — men in jackets and jeans, women in áo dài or knee-length dresses and colored leggings.
The atmosphere was marked by a kind of seriousness he associated with home; a purposefulness he rarely found in Vietnam, a peacefulness both warm and familiar.
Anthony and Huong had married in a restaurant one afternoon near her parents' home. Anthony had described the ceremony as "standard Vietnamese Buddhist ritual, which is to say a bunch of mumbo-jumbo." They'd invited Nathan, but he'd used a writing assignment as an excuse not to attend.
Nathan wondered if the man who'd invited him into the church had suspected him of drinking; if the guests five pews ahead of him could smell his whiskey breath; and if the people who'd watched him proceed from the entryway to his seat noticed his drunken gait. He also wondered how Le would react being here with him; not long ago she told him that she'd never been inside a church.
He gazed at the bride's profile, whitened with makeup. A white shawl draped her shoulders, but on her exposed back the skin appeared darker, either from a lack of powder or perhaps merely from shadow. From the shawl down, her arms, too, were bare. He found in her a vague resemblance to Le, but he couldn't put a finger on it.
The bareness made Nathan want to touch the woman's skin. It was this, he decided, that had made him think of Le.
As the priest lifted his arms, everyone in the wedding party stood. The priest began speaking in a strange, formal Vietnamese that Nathan never had occasion to hear before; he was reading from the Bible.
Two nights before, when Nathan last slept at Le's, it had been colder than now, and in her bedroom she'd stuffed old paint rags in the cracks of her window to keep them warm. But her tactic failed and, as they lay in her bed reading, she'd gotten up and taken the blanket with her. "Where are you going?" he'd said, and then realized that she wanted him to follow her — she was leading him, fully in control, as on the first night they'd slept together. (It seemed so long ago; their lives were so different now.) She brought him outside, beneath the banyan tree, beneath the plastic tarp that blocked a square of sky, erasing the stars and moon. This was her outdoor workspace, and it smelled of earth mixed with canvas and paint. Her straw mat was rolled up and stuffed in a crevice between branches; she pulled it out, unrolled it, and started a small fire in a charcoal burner nearby. She lay down, pulling the blanket over her. Shivering, Nathan lay down, too, then peeled the blanket back and wrapped himself around her. She was warmth like he'd never known warmth, and she was wet like he'd never known her to be wet. He entered her and they folded into each other like creatures of the deep sea sharing the same shell. Afterward, as she stretched across his chest, tousling his hair, she wondered aloud what he'd be like when he got old. Would he be fat? Bald? Cranky? But her last question — how many people would love him? — made him ask what she meant. "Do you want children?" she'd said. And at the mention of children Nathan had thought of Anh and Hao. "Yes," he said. "When it's time." She was quiet a while and then said: "Me, too. When it's time."
Nathan tuned in briefly again to the priest's speech — "Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral. Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have" — and then he tuned right out again.
For a moment he considered contradicting Le's wish and going directly to her house. He wanted to observe her with her relatives, to hear what they talked about, and to see if she transformed into the Le whom Anthony warned him about. He was clear-headed enough to realize that he was, more than ever, afraid of losing her — not to a rival, or to ennui, but to a particular history in which he played no part. He wondered if he could only love her if she became less Vietnamese and more like himself. Despite Anthony's warnings, he was ready to sacrifice all he had for a future with her. But what was
best for their future? The individual choices he was used to making now compelled him to think of how they might affect her. This was a different way of living for him, and he knew it would take time to get used to. Inevitably he would make mistakes along the way.
"But if the unbeliever leaves," the priest continued, "let him do so. A believing man or woman is not bound in such circumstances; God has called us to live in peace. How do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband? Or, how do you know, husband, whether you will save your wife?"
Nathan wasn't here to listen to a Vietnamese priest read from the Bible. He was here because of the light and because a chorus of voices had sung beautifully in the lonely night.
He sat there until the priest brought the bride and groom together. He asked each in turn if they would be faithful to and respect each other. Thua có, each said, and the promises brought polite applause from the pews.
Nathan got up and walked down the aisle to the entryway. He heard a rustle of coats and jackets behind him as people turned to watch him leave, but this meant nothing to him.
The man in the tracksuit waved a basket of white roses at Nathan as he went by.
Stepping outside again into darkness and noise, Nathan felt vastly better. He hoped it wasn't merely the effect of alcohol.
Twenty-Three
Nathan slid his paddle into the water and, using his wrists and forearms, pulled back with it on the right. Lifting it out in the same motion, he slid the paddle into the water on the opposite side of the kayak and pulled it back as before. With momentum the twin motion became nearly effortless. The kayak moved forward, though it was Anthony who propelled them from the rear.
"That's the movement you want," Anthony said. "Pull the paddle down with your top hand to steer us left."
A few feet to their right were the plastic buoys of a fishing net that extended from the Hanoi Club's pool. Farther back was the asphalted shore from which they'd launched.
This wasn't Nathan's first time kayaking, but he hadn't done this since college. There was a newness to it, and being on the water at sunup, before much of the city was out of bed, was invigorating.