Naked in Saigon (10 page)

But a week later when they discharged him, he announced that he had changed his mind. It’s hard to pack a kit bag with a handful of broken fingers but somehow he managed it. He even used his elbows and his teeth. I had never seen a more determined, or more stupid, man.

“I’m going to see this through,” he said. He still had a plaster across his nose and his eye sockets were yellow and purple. He looked hideous. One of the waitresses in the coffee shop had screamed when she saw him at breakfast.

“Are you insane?”

“Probably.”

“How will you take notes? How can you even look after yourself in the most basic ways with just one hand?
Dios mio!
”

“I can’t leave this story now, let some other journalist get all the credit.”

“You mean let some other hack die instead of you?”

“I’m not a hack.”

“It doesn’t matter what you are if you’re dead. Where are you going?”

“Vientiane.”

“Where the hell is that?”

“It’s in Laos. The guy I met in the bar that night, he gave me some names, people who know what’s going on in the government there, he said even the CIA are running dope in their own planes. No one’s going to believe it. This is one hell of a story, honey.”

“The only thing I don’t believe is that you are even thinking of going there when you’ve only just got out of hospital.”

“I’m Boston Irish, I’m unbreakable.”

“Yeah? Well you look pretty broken up to me.”

He held up his hand. “If this happened in a college game they wouldn’t even sub me out of the game.”

“You can’t write! How will you take notes?”

“I have a great memory and I’ll tape the interviews.” Somehow he hefted the kit bag under his arm.

I stood in the doorway. “You can’t do this.”

“I’m doing it. I’ll be back in three days, four at the most.”

“And if you’re not?”

“You can collect on the life insurance.”

“You walk out of here now and you walk out on our marriage.”

Did I say that to save his life or to save myself? I wondered. I wasn’t even sure of my own motives anymore.

He shoved past, then turned back and tried to kiss me. I twisted away. “Wait for me. Please.”

“I’ve told you. I’m leaving.”

“If I don’t do this, I’m not me anymore. I love you, honey, but I can’t give up me just to be with you. Besides, everyone has to believe in something.”

He pushed past me. I could have stopped him, I guess, if I’d been willing to break his fingers again. But that would have been the only way. When Connor O’Loughlin made up his mind about something there was no power on earth that could change his mind.

That same afternoon I took a taxi out to Tan Son Nhut, intending to buy a ticket on a commercial airliner back to the United States. I battled my way inside through the crowds; American servicemen, military police in white helmets, families of Vietnamese carrying their entire possessions in boxes tied with string, women in conical hats swirling
ao dai
.

I stopped halfway across the terminal. There was a man standing there in a white linen suit and a Panama hat, long black hair straggling across his collar. He had his back to me, staring at the departures board.

“Papi?” I said.

He turned around. He was holding a cardboard suitcase and he had a gold tooth and a white beard. He flashed a grin and took off his Panama.

“Madame?”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I thought you were someone else.”

He gave me a bow and turned and walked way.

Papi, what am I going to do?

I heard his voice as clear as if he was standing next to me:
You want to go back to Reyes? You’re a married woman now. What has Connor done to deserve that?
He loves you, no matter his faults.

“But I’m not in love with him,” I said.

The Pan-Am counter was right there in front of me. I looked up at the board and watched the flights bound for Honolulu and San Francisco ticking over one after the other.

That was seven years ago,
Papi said.
You had your chance. You can’t go back. Connor’s a decent man and he loves you and right now he needs you to be there for him. You know what Reyes is like, he’s selfish and vain and there’ll always be one more woman.

“You think I should go back and wait for him?”

I think it’s the only thing you should do.

I turned around, walked outside into the numbing heat of the afternoon and caught a taxi back to the Caravelle Hotel.

I kept thinking about what he had said before he left:
everyone believes in something.
Do they? I really didn’t know what I believed in anymore.

Chapter 16 

REYES

Reyes met Walt at a sex show in Cholon, at a seedy cinema in the Chinese quarter, with a dissipated audience of American servicemen and middle-aged Chinese.

Walt could have gotten the real thing on Tu Do for about the same price, but he said it was the occupational hazard of being a spy; he liked to watch. The other, better reason was that they could talk freely without being overheard. There were some things he didn’t like talking about even in his own office, he was pretty sure it was bugged.

“Did you get the popcorn?” Walt said as they settled in their seats at the back.

“The girl will be around in a minute with popsicles.”

“Yes, but where will she put them?”

The house lights dimmed. A tableau was lowered on a curtain behind the stage, a Vietnamese country idyll. A beautiful girl in a flowering
ao dai
stepped onto the stage. A Vietnamese flute played a haunting melody as she started to strip, preparing to bathe in an imitation pool. It was a classic Saigon fantasy, every man must have thought about this when he saw these ephemeral creatures along the Tu Do. They were sexier than any of the painted girls in the bars.

Reyes was struck by the irony. The next time the Marines in the audience saw the Vietnamese countryside there would be no goddesses in
ao dai
; there would be mines and Viet Cong snipers, and instead of flute music there would be the thud of rotors and the chatter of small arms fire.

A few of the young crew-cut kids at the front were catcalling. He saw nothing erotic in it. Instead he thought about Magdalena, lying by the pool in his house on Mulholland all those years ago, the curve of her hip, the flash of her smile over her shoulder. When you find one goddess, there aren’t any others.

“What was it you wanted to talk about, Walt?”

“The other day I was thinking about our little island hideaway island in Africa.”

“You ready to retire?”

“Hell, no, not in the style I anticipate. But I got this idea.”

“Yeah?” He guessed what was coming.

A young man appeared from the back of the stage in traditional peasant trousers and a conical hat. He was bare to the waist and his lean torso gleamed with oil. He saw the girl and stopped to watch her bathe. He took off his conical hat and trousers and crept closer.

“You’ve been out there once, remember? You needed to get your girlfriend out of town in a hurry. I set it up for you.”

“I remember.”

“I figure tourism is the coming thing. It will the business of the next decade, man.”

“Your point?”

“The shack next to Shofa’s place? We could buy it off him, the whole strip of land right along that beach. Build a resort there.”

“A resort?”

“We make it totally self-sustained. Like you don’t just sleep there, you have your whole damn vacation right there. We fly ‘em in there, we provide the best cooks, masseurs, dive instructors, and best of all, twenty luxury huts right next to this perfect lagoon.”

“What about the sharks?

“We build a shark net or some damned thing, don’t be so pessimistic.”

“They have one airplane fly in and out every week.”

“So we buy a bigger damn plane, get Jean-Luc to fly it.”

Things were heating up on stage. The girl had seen the boy spying on her and she looked shocked. She tried to run away but he caught her. The rape, if that was what it was intended to be, did not last for long. Soon she was kneeling in front of him, and had taken him in her mouth. Now they proceeded through the usual calisthenics of every sex show he had ever seen, a monotonous ballet increasing in dexterity.

“Why are you telling me all this, Walt?”

“All I need to build it is the money. If I can find a partner we can retire there ourselves, live in paradise the rest of our lives. I’ve got plans drawn up; I’ve worked out the figures. In five years my investor makes their money back and after that it’s all cream.”

“And what’s your part in this?”

“I do all the work, organize the construction, the management, everything.”

“It sounds great, but I don’t have that kind of cash. That sounds like a seven-figure operation.”

“But you do have that kind of cash, Reyes.”

Suddenly Walt’s voice had an edge to it. “I know you got that heroin. I can feel it in my bones.”

Reyes turned back to the stage. He admired the couple’s athleticism, but it wasn’t sex. He thought about the times he had made love to Magdalena. There had been such urgency to it, like they were trying to find a way inside each other’s skin. Sometimes he found long welts along his back where she had torn him with her nails; other times it was so slow and languid they hardly moved, everything happened in their eyes.

There was no performance to what they did. It was like being shaken in God’s fist, that was how she had described it to him once. She was still the only time he had ever lost control.

This? This was just ballet; it was impressive, but there was no temperature.

“Even if I did have it, Walt, and even if I was of a mind to cash up, there’s no way to sell it.”

“You may not have the contacts anymore but I do.”

“Even if I did have this shit, which I don’t, I’m not going to fund the rest of my life on a drug deal. I’ve done a lot of things I’m not proud of, but I wouldn’t do that.”

“You think the guns you smuggled in to Castro didn’t hurt as many people as a few keys of heroin? You think the opium you flew out of the Triangle didn’t end up in a needle somewhere? Is that what you’re telling me?”

Reyes knew he was right. So he told him the truth: “I’m through with all that, Walt. I want to be a better man.”

“Jesus fucking Christ. Are you serious?”

“You don’t think I can be?”

“I think you need to take a reality pill.”

“You’re probably right.”

They had finished on the stage. The house lights went up. A group of servicemen jeered and whistled; they had expected more.