Chapter 34

Choices

 

Black or white? The choice seemed to boil down to that. A black silk, or a white linen? She hadn’t worn a dress in so long it was nice to have the luxury of such a minor dilemma.

She slipped the silk from the weird bamboo curlicue that passed for a hanger in these parts and opened the second door of her armoire/closet. She hadn’t opened this door wide enough to view herself in its full-length mirror for a month or more. Right arm across her chest, she held the dress against her body to study the effect. The black looks hot, she thought, the white cooler, more demure. Cool is what I need, I think, to slow down what may be turning into a headlong rush.

Showered, legs shaved, makeup in place, and with an extra squirt of perfume, she started down the wide, carpeted stairs in her high heels and the crisp white dress.

There he was, Curtis, waiting in the lobby. He looks like he took as much care to dress as I did, she thought. Clean-shaven, no safari jacket, an expensive looking summer suit. As he watched her coming down the last few stairs, his smile lit up both their faces. She could feel her widening grin matching his.

The party hosts were friends, or more likely sources, of his. The first thing Angela noticed was that the house had air conditioning! The elegant woman who greeted them at the door appeared middle-aged, and her slightly lock-jaw speech bespoke New England. She quickly introduced Angela and Ford to the nearest couple (a bird colonel and his wife), her mauve taffeta skirt whispering against the intricate Persian carpet as she moved on. A waiter appeared to offer champagne.

“Nice to meet you,” the colonel’s wife stuck out her hand. It was square and firm and brown. No nail polish, a no-nonsense hand, surprising in this setting.

“Ah yes,” said the colonel, looking at Angela with the light of recognition. “An interesting case.”

“Case?” Angela replied, a questioning look on her face.

“Well, yes, of course, you were the woman who was captured. But perhaps I shouldn’t be mentioning it. Is it classified?”

“Classified?” Ford looked from one to the other. “What are you talking about?”

“Well, now, there’s John and Barbara,” the colonel said to his wife, nodding his head toward a couple who had just entered. “We haven’t seen them in ages. We must say hello. Nice to have met you,” he said, as he took his wife by the elbow and steered her toward the new arrivals.

“What was that all about?” Ford turned a bewildered face to Angela.

She laughed. “I had a debriefing yesterday. Just a bunch of boys playing cloak and dagger.”

“I love the moxie of your brave front,” he said, smiling, brushing a stray wisp of hair from her cheek, “but are you sure it’s not something we need to worry about?”

“They wanted to know what I’d seen, and I told them. Don’t worry,” Angela assured him, smiling inwardly at his concern, “I think it was fine.”

“You certainly will let me know if there is anything I can do to help. I know most of these fellows, or at least their bosses.”

“The debriefing experience should make a good follow-up story to my capture stuff,” Angela said.

“Good idea,” Ford replied. “I also think it would be smart to do a piece looking at the possibility of Giap’s involvement in the siege at Khe Sanh. We’re coming up, you know, on the anniversary of the French rout at Dien Bien Phu.”

“That’s your bag, Ford, not mine,” Angela said with a laugh. “I’m not as hepped up as you are about that theory.”

“I still think your capture put you in a position to write about it,” Ford replied. “But let me hustle over to the bar and get us a real drink, then we can explore this more.”

Angela smiled.

I don’t want to explore it, she thought. It’s a cockamamie theory.

She took the opportunity to look around the room. It was tastefully decorated with Asian art and furnishings. Its most striking feature was tomato-red walls. Silent waiters, dressed in black and white, glided about offering silver trays of canapés or fizzing glasses of champagne. A full bar was set up at one end of the room. The guests were standing, holding drinks, a few perched on small chairs of bright silk. A smattering of military, several older correspondents whom she had seen around, but didn’t know. The rest of the 30 or so guests were unidentifiable, as far as she was concerned. Embassy employees? Expats? She had no idea. But they were all well turned out. Definitely a cut above those she’d encountered at that Halloween house party. God, that seemed a million years ago. Four months. A lifetime. The last time she’d worn a dress was the Embassy Christmas party. She’d been with Curtis that time, too. Wonderful to feel like a real person once in a while amid this chaos. He was going to be her anchor of normalcy, but she must be careful to see it only as that. He’s got a wife back home, joyless marriage, to be sure, but that’s not the biggest threat. The real danger was the undertow she felt in his presence, the way his smile lit up hers. But it could be a trap, she warned herself. Take your eye off the ball. Start trying to please someone else too much, and you will disappear. Again.

“Why the frown?” Ford asked, as he handed her a Scotch.

“Just pondering independence,” she said with a smile.

“Independence? For the South Vietnamese?”

“No, me,” she replied.

“Good Lord, you seem to have plenty of that.”

Ford took her arm to steer her to another couple, and she instinctively squeezed that arm tight against her body, and rested her head for a second on his shoulder. The silk of his dark suit touched her cheek, and she turned with a smile to brush at any makeup that might have been left behind. In a fluid movement, he moved his eyes from her face to the couple he was introducing. She nodded, but didn’t catch their names. She really should be writing the story about the debriefing. She had scribbled some notes when she first got back, but hadn’t begun to write. She felt she needed some kind of interesting lead-in. She couldn’t assume new readers had seen her old capture stories. She really should do it tonight. But she had a feeling she wouldn’t. Was she falling down the rabbit hole?

“You’re frowning again,” Ford said. He turned to face her directly, backing her up slightly as he passed his arm over her shoulder to lean his palm flat against the bright red wall. “What are you pondering this time? I hope it’s us. We make a very handsome couple, you know.”

The gesture made the Christmas party flash in her head: His heavy breathing, as though he’d been running, the tingle in her toes. She leaned her head back, resting it against the wall, and watched his face, so close to hers. His features almost seemed to melt, they took on such softness as he looked at her. He’s going to kiss me right here, in front of all these people, she thought. He almost did, they were nose to nose when he stopped himself.

“My God, let’s not make a spectacle,” he said, and gave a hearty, happy laugh.

A waiter came by offering more champagne, a couple Ford had known in Moscow stopped to chat, and the hostess dropped by to say in her clipped tones that she hadn’t meant to neglect them and wasn’t Saigon absolutely sweltering.

Shortly thereafter, Angela and Ford took a taxi to his place.

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