Chapter 35

Love Birds

 

Nick was heading up to the Givral to get some breakfast the following Sunday, when he spotted Angela and Curtis arm in arm, loaded down with packages and a pair of lovebirds in a bamboo birdcage. They both were eating ice cream cones as they poked along through the bazaar of a million antique, ordinary and bizarre items. It was the first time Nick had seen Angela in several days. She had landed some good assignments, so hadn’t done anything for Harry in a while. It was a clear morning with a rare breeze off the river, and for once Saigon seemed bright and shiny, not overhung by the pall of incessant heat and cordite. But the glow may have emanated from those two. Angela was exuberant, bubbly. Curtis wasn't much less. They really seemed happy together, Nick thought, and tried not to think much more about it than that. He didn’t understand this kind of stuff, so why bother? They spotted him, and despite his objections, had insisted they all go for a late brunch together.

By the time the three of them were nearing the top of Nguyen Hue street, Angela had acquired a jade bracelet, a sea green silk ao dai, a black lacquered fan, and three story ideas. Curtis said the jade colors were “smashing” with her green eyes and auburn-red hair. Nick realized with a start he’d never even noticed before that her eyes were green, and her hair always seemed pinned up under her combat cap or a helmet, except for that time when he’d noticed it looked like seaweed.

He wouldn’t have given it much thought even now, except that he saw the way her face lit up when Curtis made the remark. She seemed to glow as though a bulb had been turned on underneath her skin. Curtis seemed to have a way with everybody, Nick thought, not just generals and presidents. It flitted across his mind that he should think of clever things like that to say, but he wasn't big on noticing hair colors and stuff. He just noticed when he liked it – or maybe when he didn’t. Mary Alice Moriarty, she was definitely a blonde, he was almost sure of that. Maybe blondes somehow stuck out more. But, here, walking up Nguyen Hue, he had trouble conjuring up Mary Alice’s face. And her eye color, forget it.

He certainly had no trouble conjuring Angela, her face, her walk, her vibrance, so what the hell difference did the color of her eyes make? Details are important to a reporter, you have to notice them. But that’s different. When you’re working, you make a point to look because you’re going to have to write it down to convey an impression to a reader. He consoled himself with the thought that at least he remembered to say nice things to Angela about her work, and that he knew more about it than Curtis did.

When the trio got to the end of the street stalls of clothes and food and trinkets and gems and black-market U.S. cameras and weapons and electronic equipment spilling into the boulevard from under the brightly colored sidewalk awnings and umbrellas, they did a quick turn through the stores inside the Passage Eden.

It was there Curtis bought Angela the black satin nightgown. Jesus, Nick felt embarrassed. It seemed as though Curtis was going out of his way to look for things to buy her, as though she didn't have her own money or something. They had barely settled into a booth at the Givral for brunch when Curtis started telling Nick with obvious pride about the story ideas Angela had come up with before they ran into him.

“She sees stories in all these people. A million wire pieces have been done on the open black-marketing of U.S. equipment and weapons, but she talked one of the Vietnamese merchants into letting her spend a day with him and tracing the route the stuff takes, from PX, or wherever, to his sidewalk stall.”

“How the hell did you talk him into that?” Nick asked, startled, putting his orange juice glass down with a bang. “The guy could be setting himself up for arrest.”

“Of course I promised no names, including no names of GI suppliers. Beyond that, I guess I just . . .”

Curtis laughed, and broke in. “Beyond that, she appealed to his ego, implying he had the genius of Thomas Edison and the ingenuity of Henry Ford to be such a brilliant businessman. She wants the world to read about his savvy entrepreneurship. She's a clever lady. It’s hard to pinpoint quite how she does it. And it’s good to see her finding stories in town, don’t you think?”

So much for Nick’s having a lock on compliments about her work! He chomped down on his tough-crusted French bread with a vengeance, biting the inside of his mouth for his trouble. If anyone had asked Nick at that moment, he would have said that Curtis was every bit as clever as she. Although he wondered how long this “in town” shit was going to last.

Curtis had another special route to Angela’s heart. It had to do with General Giap and Curtis’ Dien Bien Phu theory that the 1954 French rout was going to be duplicated in Khe Sanh. Curtis had decided that Angela possessed some special insights on Giap. She not only had been with the Cong, but had been interrogated by some soldiers who were clearly North Vietnamese regulars and even more clearly had purposely released her to get some message back to the West that none of the correspondents had yet discerned. Curtis was hoping she could resolve the question of whether Giap was directing the assault at Khe Sanh.

Since Giap was North Vietnam's defense minister, it seemed pretty silly to Nick to be worrying whether or not Giap was personally directing the I Corps assaults – his hand was certainly in there one way or another. But lots of the columnists were continually debating among themselves and writing thumbsuckers on the fine points of the fall of Dien Bien Phu, drawing elaborate analogies between that and Khe Sanh.

Anyway, Angela seemed to Nick to be happy with Curtis taking her seriously and treating her like an expert on The North Vietnamese Mentality.

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