EYES LOCKED on Mai, whose eyes were locked on mine, I told Ziggy to play out the phony telegram hustle. I told him to look sad and to snag Ralph Buffet however he had to. If anybody raised an objection, call them heartless bastards who couldn’t possibly have loved ones of their own on the home front or they’d understand.
Like a Ziggy sci-fi character, I teleported or levitated or dream-walked to my Dragon Lady. Face to face in full daylight, she was even more breathtaking. She was simultaneously as fragile as that lily and as tough as titanium.
“Why you give me flower?” she asked, expressionless.
I was gaga, on the ragged edge of drooling and swooning and
peeing
my knickers. I tried to dredge up a semblance of cool, of savior faire. In a pathetic stab at a mix of David Niven and Rock Hudson, but probably coming off as Larry, Moe and Curly, I said, “Flowers are the only gift that comes close to matching your beauty.”
With no visible reaction to my treacle, she said, “I am Mai. I saw you when you bring Dean to house. I saw you looking at me. Who are you?”
“Joe. I’m Joe. Joe.”
Puzzled, she said, “Joe, American GI soldier give me Crisco and Pall Mall and Anacin. American
give
me dollar and piaster. American
give
me dental floss and Schlitz beer. They give me Ritz cracker,
Louisiana
hot sauce, Clorox, Campbell Chicken Noodle and Cream of Tomato. They give me transistor radio and Canon camera and Akai tape recorder. They give me anything the PX and
commissary have
I tell them to give me. Did you buy flower for me at PX?”
“No.
On Le Loi.
Street of Flowers.”
“Why you do?”
“It’s lovely. You’re lovely.”
That was the unvarnished truth coming from a guy whose long suit was not candor with women. Not so many months later, barely discharged from the service, after a three-day, brawling bender, battered and filthy, brimming with self-loathing, I underwent a crude precursor of the vasectomy when few people had heard of the procedure. I likened it to being gelded in a barn. I empathized with any woman who endured a backroom abortionist and his coat hanger.
I had not wanted the responsibility of bringing a creature such as myself into the world. The physician had accepted my logic and the remainder of my mustering-out pay.
During normal child-bearing age, I’d been married to Lea, Charlotte and Janelle, One through Three respectively. They had not questioned the purported causes of my sterility, despite how absurd. My reasons had ranged from Agent Orange to Vietcong torture to Pentagon radiation experiments to a parachute opening improperly. That I hadn’t always kept my tall tales straight was irrelevant. They weren’t as naïve as they were relieved.
My elasticity with facts when I wanted something made truth-telling a vivid memory.
Mai paused. I knew she was attempting to absorb what I’d said. It was so abstract. It did not mesh with her knowledge of interaction between Vietnamese women and American GIs. The latter paid to fuck the former, renting their bodies in the short-term (as in “short time” or “boom
boom
,” both slang for a quickie) or in the long-term, paying directly with piasters or indirectly with gifts, a charade of love, or a “relationship” in exchange for cash and/or goods.
“No
man ever give
me beautiful flower. I can not eat or drink or sell flower. Why you give me flower?” she pressed, disoriented and suspicious.
“Uh, romance,” I said. “The flowers say I care for you.”
“You no know me, Joe.”
“I do know you, I know you better than you think,” I said, then shutting up before I stupidly blabbed my cartoon Dragon Lady
hang-up
.
“I no know romance. What does romance mean?”
“Romance is an English word, an American word. It means emotion and love of a guy to a girl and a girl to a guy, something along those lines. You know, like boy-girl in the movies.”
“Romance?” she asked, looking at the lily, still suspicious. “Is this romance?”
Romance.
Yeah, the perfect word.
Romance
conjured Hollywood and its love affairs that, outside of the movies, usually went up in smoke.
Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher.
Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh.
Liz Taylor and whomever.
With Judy and I, in retrospect, it had not been romance beyond empty words and groping and heavy breathing and dry-humping and, at long last, “going all the way” at the drive-in theater. Judy and I went all the way while
The Longest Day
had played. It had taken me nearly to the end, when beachheads were secured, to score.
Until that occurred, every drive-in movie with her had been the longest day. The romance of entry inside her pantyhose meant entry into the kingdom of commitment and marriage and living happily ever after. Romance was conformity, meeting the expectations of others.
“Romance,” I said, bobbing my head as if addled, deciding what the hell. I dug the Dragon Lady
cartoon
panel out of my wallet so clumsily the rubber came too, landing at my feet. The rubber was a “gold dollar,” so named for its gold foil wrapper. It was not inconspicuous.
“Shit.” I did a goofy fandango to get a shoe over it, stomping on it as if an insect, though much too late.
In reaction to my awkwardness, Mai covered what I knew was a gorgeous smile. I handed her Terry Lee’s nemesis.
“You, her.
Her, you.
Romance was her who is you. Romance
is
you.
Biểt
?”
Her nose twitched, as if whiffing raw sewage. She wadded and dropped it.
“Ugly old lady.
You say me ugly old lady, Joe?”
Well, the cartoon version did pale in comparison. “No. Oh no.
No way.”
“Joe, you know Dean Papersmith, huh?”
Dean and his two inches of manhood.
“Sure do.”
“Dean
say
he lead men into jungle fighting communists.”
I managed a nod and a straight face.
“Absolutely.
A special assignment if there ever was one.”
“Dean says he marry me and take me to
America
. He
have
no love with wife Mildred. No
romance as you say
. He say he divorce her, marry me. I do not think he have romance for me. If he
marry
me, romance, if there is, will be all gone. People
marry,
fini
romance.
Here.
”
She gave me the lily. “You buy flower for me, I buy for you.”
Before I fainted and/or said something else dumb, Ziggy came to us, jerking along a pear-shaped guy with a cowlick and smudged glasses. I presumed that Ziggy’s disobedient mutt was Warrant Officer Ralph Buffet.
“His buddies, they gave me a ration of shit, Joey. I told them I was with the Red Cross.”
“Nice work, Zig,” I said as Mai looked Ziggy up and down, as if he was one of his own Martians.
“Is it my Aunt Peg?” Ralph Buffet whined. “Is it? She has diabetes. She’s had a leg amputated.”
I waited till the oddballs’ bus turned the corner,
then
flashed Buffet his little red book. “Aunt Peg is in finer shape than you are, pal. We’re not Red Cross. We’re with a hush-hush agency that’s CID and CIA, with the FBI sprinkled in. We don’t have much patience with fifth columnists.”
Buffet’s whining
rose
an octave and fifty decibels. “I can explain.”
Mai watched me, hopefully impressed.
A cyclo deposited an unsteady Captain Dean Papersmith at the 803rd. Mai’s back was to him. The eyeballs of Dean, groom of Mildred, looked as if they needed tourniquets. Had he seen us? I didn’t think so, but if he hadn’t he might unless we scrammed.
Multitasking was a buzzword of decades hence. Buzzword was also a buzzword of the future. Regardless, I was multitasking within spitting distance of far too many people. We had to scram before Papersmith saw us.
“Hey,” I said. “My stomach’s growling. Who’s ready for lunch?”
***
The Continental Palace Hotel was a downtown Saigon institution. Open air, ceiling fans, white-jacketed waiters older than Ho Chi Minh. They claim the atmosphere hadn’t changed since the 1920s. A zillion deals had been cut on the Conti
terrasse
, lies told in twenty languages. This joint was a blast. It was a zoo. You ate and drank while you gawked at the two-legged wildlife.
I thought it was as safe as a popular American hangout could be. VC sappers were flinging satchels of
plastique
into
Saigon
bars at an increasing rate. My theory on them avoiding the Conti was the open walls on three sides. A satchel charge wasn’t powerful enough to blow out the pillars that held up the four stories of hotel above us and without walls to hold in the explosion. The concussion wouldn’t kill enough folks to be worth the risk. Besides, half the antique waiters were probably Vietcong sympathizers and spies, listening in and taking notes.
We ordered Nha Trang shrimp and sautéed chicken and stir-fried vegetables and a heaping bowl of sticky rice. Eating family-style was my idea, to eliminate tension, especially my own. To wash down the food, I ordered
Biere 33
all around. It was the premier Vietnamese suds.
Known as “
ba
-mi-
ba
,” a mild corruption of
ba-muoi-ba
, the Vietnamese number 33.
They say it’s brewed with formaldehyde. I was a believer. Drink a dozen or so, and you’ll wake up in the morning feeling like you were dead and embalmed, and wishing you were.
Mai demurely asked for a cup of tea.
“So, Comrade Buffet,” I asked. “How long have you been a fellow traveler? Or are you a card-carrying Red feeding the enemy classified info?
Which is a quick ticket to a firing squad.
”
The chopsticks that he hadn’t mastered fell out of his hand. “You have me all wrong. My brother found it at a
Toronto
bookstore. All manner of subversive literature is available in
Canada
. Titles like
U.S. Imperialism Will Be Defeated
and
Revolutionary Armed Struggle of the Indo-Chinese Peoples Will Certainly Triumph
. He sent it to me as a gag.
A lark.
I’ve been reading it. I’m curious how those people think. That’s all.”
“You, who is working on a top secret project vital to our nation’s
defense
.
A likely story.
What’s going on in there?”
“I can’t tell you. As you said, it’s top secret.”
I nodded to Ziggy, who quoted from
Quotations from Mao Tse-tung
,
“People of the world, unite and defeat the U.S. aggressors and all their running dogs.”
“Ouch,” I said. “Some lark.”
A nervous Mai touched her lips with a manicured and lacquered fingernail.
“I want a lawyer,” Ralph Buffet said, absently digging at earwax.
“A military or civilian lawyer?
Which are your druthers?
Neither one can save your sorry ass.
You can have Clarence Darrow for all the good it’ll do you, Comrade Buffet.”
“Please don’t call me that. How do I know you guys are who say you are? You look familiar. Haven’t I seen you across the street?”
“’The army in the Liberated Areas must support the government and cherish the people,’” Ziggy recited.
“What did he say?”
I said, “I’m asking the questions. Whip some ID on me, soldier.”
He did not comply. He stared at me. I stared at him. It was Dodge City, Marshal Matt Dillon (me), in front of Miss Kitty’s Long Branch, faced off with the villain. I won the bluff. Buffet finally slapped leather, drawing his wallet.
Ralph Buffet was Chief Warrant Officer CWO-2 Ralph J. Buffet. Warrant officers were in a twilight zone between commissioned officers and enlisted personnel. Warrants had many privileges of commissioned officers, but technically a twenty-five-year man, a CWO-4, the highest warrant grade, was outranked by a fuzzy-cheeked second lieutenant. In practice, that was not the case. If the second
louie
knew what was good for him, he wouldn’t try to pull rank.
“Are you gentlemen at the Annex all warrant officers?”
“If you know so much, you tell me.”
“Talk to us about the Annex.”
“You know I can’t.”
“Okay, stop right now. It you’re not gonna
cooperate,
we have no choice but to remand you to the proper authorities. I guarantee you won’t be playing your little games for long. They have their methods. Major Zbitgysz, take our prisoner into custody, him and his Marxist smut.”
Buffet looked at Ziggy and gulped.
“Quote another incriminating passage, Major.”
Ziggy sounded like a truck speeding on gravel. “‘We must see to it that our cadres and all our people constantly bear in mind that ours is a big socialist country but an economically backward and poor one, and that is a very great contradiction.’