I feel better after cleaning up and changing clothes. I checked out my lower back in the bathroom mirror. The slightly red mark there, about four inches by twelve, belies how much it hurts. The skin is red behind my knee, as well, but that pain has mostly subsided. I got a tender lump on the back of my neck. There is no abrasion so I’m thinking the guy hit me with a hammerfist strike, a hard one. I’ve been knocked out before and had a headache that lasted a week. This one is starting to subside already with the help of the three pain pills that Samuel gave me.
I’m having trouble wrapping my mind around what happened. First, there was the glorious night with Mai. It was better than any dream. Then to be jarred back to reality so violently was simply overwhelming. What I told Samuel about the sun in our eyes and the explosiveness of the attack was true, but I think the fact that Mai and I were lost in ourselves slowed our reaction as well.
I’ve only been in Vietnam for three days and while most of the people I’ve met are warm and charming, the rest of my experience has been not just a little unsettling. Bobby’s scuffle at the airport, the jerks at the tea café, and the kidnappers this morning—dukkha all over the place.
Mai meets me atop the back steps. She’s wearing clean jeans and a red top. Jaw dropping sensational. Hard to believe she was fighting for her life a short while ago and pumping bullets into people’s legs. As usual, her smile ignites my cardiovascular system.
“You feel better?” she asks. “I do.”
“Yes, thanks. How is your stomach?”
“It hurts but I will be okay. I did not feel any broken ribs.”
“Are you sure,” I ask. “Want me to double check?”
“Triple check. But not now. Now we have spring rolls and fruit.” She takes my hand and leads me into the dining area. No one else is here yet.
“I got to say, you just went through quite an ordeal and you look fantastic.”
We sit next to each other. “Thank you,” she says.
“And you don’t seem to be too upset.”
“I was before. Driving back, I had to pull over for a few minutes and have a good cry. At first, my cell would not work and then it did. After I was kicked and fell, the same man kicked me again in my hip and hit my phone. I will have a rectangular bruise, I think.”
“I’m so glad you’re okay.”
“Your visit is not happening the way I wanted it to,” she says, touching my hand. “Except for last night.”
“Last night was wonderful,” I whisper. “The rest of it, I am here to help. We’re family. Please don’t feel bad for me being here.”
Mai’s eyes twinkle. “You are the best half brother a girl could have.”
Ly, wearing a beautiful tangerine áo dài, enters the room with a large tray of tea and fruit. “Hello, Ông Sam,” she says. “Gỏi cuốn, I bring out one minute.”
“Thank you, Ly,” Mai says, leaning forward to distribute the cups. “Gỏi cuốn, is the same summer rolls you have before. But this time you dip them in peanut sauce. I think you will like it better than the nước mắm sauce you have last time.”
Two hours ago, I was rolling around in the dirt with kidnappers, and now I’m learning about Vietnamese dishes. “Sounds good.”
Tex slaps his way up the back steps, into the dining room, and swings into a chair. “Feel good now?” he asks kindly, looking at both of us. “Your father worry you, Mai. He no show worry but I know him too long. I know him worry.”
“Thank you, Tex,” Mai says. “I will not tell him that I know.”
He nods and turns to me, smiling. “Sam, Vietnam very fucking exciting, no?” he asks enthusiastically.
I sputter a laugh. “Yes, sir. It certainly is that.”
“Hello, everyone,” Samuel says coming in. He sets his cell on the table and pulls out a chair at the head. “Sorry I am late. I was with Kim. Hard day for her, so I am happy that she does not know what happened. She sleeps, so we must speak low.”
Ly brings in the summer rolls and sets them next to the fruit and tea. Samuel begins filling our cups. “Ly, anything you might hear us discuss in here does not get repeated to Kim. I do not want her to worry. Okay?”
She bows slightly. “Yes. Of course.” She leaves.
Samuel sips his tea and sits back in his chair. “Lai Van Tan has clearly gone to the next level.”
“We attack him now?” Tex asks excitedly, fingering one side of his long braided Fu Manchu moustache.
Samuel smiles. “Hopefully never, my old friend. I am sure it is what he expects of us, so I have tried to take him off guard by asking him for a meeting.”
“A meeting?” Mai repeats.
“Yes. I think that—”
The Superman theme.
“The monitor room,” Samuel says, lifting the phone to his mouth. “Lam… Cám ơn.” He sets the phone down. “Sifu is here,” Samuel says, scooting back his chair.
I twist to look out the sliding glass doors as Samuel moves through the archway.
Mai stands and moves to where Samuel was sitting. “Sifu come through the front gate this time,” she says. “Sometimes he does that. He likes to… what is the word…? Mess. He like to mess with Lam’s mind.” She scoots Samuel’s plate, tea cup, and chopsticks over to the first seat on the table’s long side. Tex hands her a clean cup from the tea tray, and she places it where Samuel had been sitting at the head of the table. She fills the cup.
“He no eat,” Tex says. “Just drink tea.”
“Sifu is joining us,” Samuel announces as he enters the room alongside Shen Lang Rui. I quickly stand as Mai moves next to me.
The master is dressed in brown slacks and a white overshirt. His longish salt and pepper hair looks windblown. I wouldn’t say that he’s delicate looking, but he’s not quite as healthy appearing as is Samuel, who is his junior by only three or four years. Incongruously, though, he radiates, for lack of a better word, an extraordinary life force. Samuel does too, but Sifu’s almost vibrates with it. For a second I wonder if I squint my eyes a little that I might see balls of energy pulsating and crackling all about him. He stops before Mai and me.
Mai and I bow. He responds with his palms together.
“Happy,” he says. His eyes, one green, one blue, penetrate first Mai’s, then mine. After a moment, he takes each of our hands and holds them in his. I feel that same warmth as I did before when he touched me, just not as intensely. He rubs his thumbs on our skin and nods as if understanding something. He releases our hands and moves toward Samuel’s chair. He speaks quietly to Samuel as we all sit.
Samuel looks at us. “Sifu says that your chi has been greatly disrupted this morning. Mai, yours the most. He says he cannot immediately restore it, but he has adjusted it so that when you rest you will recover almost one hundred percent.”
Mai dips her head toward Sifu and speaks quietly to him. I only understand ‘cám ơn’. I tell him thank you too. Sifu nods once and again speaks to Samuel.
Mai leans toward me, and whispers, “Sifu apologizes for the interruption and asks that we continue our conversation. Now Father tell him about what happened.”
Sifu nods and looks at Mai and me again.
Samuel sips from his tea. “Sifu understands what is going on now. Where were we? Oh yes. A meeting. Confucius said that ‘life is simple, but we insist on making it complicated.’ On that note, we can keep wondering what Lai Van Tan’s mindset is, or we can go to him and find out. I just got off the phone with one of his men, a man named Phong Tran. Phong Tran is the man I spoke with four months ago about setting up a meeting with Lai Van Tan to see if he would back off demanding so much money from our stores. Phong Tran seemed like a reasonable man then, perhaps the most level-headed of the crew.
“I made it clear that Lai Van Tan’s actions today were tantamount to an all-out war and that it is imperative that we talk so as to prevent that. Phong Tran said he would talk to Lai Van Tan about the possibility. I strongly urged him to make it happen.”
“Do you think he will, Father?” Mai asks.
Samuel lifts his palm. “Let me translate what I have said to Sifu.” Samuel speaks in a soft tone, all the while the master nods, and then speaks again.
Samuel looks back at us. “To answer your question, Mai. I hope Lai Van Tan will agree. Sifu also thinks that a meeting is a wise path to an understanding and agreement of some kind. He says that Lai Van Tan is clearly suffering great dukkha from having lost his son. He says we must have compassion for him, but we must do so with caution because in nature, there is nothing more dangerous than a wounded animal. And Lai Van Tan is clearly wounded.”
I like that Sifu is philosophical without seeing the world through rose-colored glasses and secondly, that Samuel is thinking the same way. But I detect something in Samuel’s face beyond his earnestness in wanting to find a peaceful solution. There is an occasional tightness around his mouth and an almost imperceptible flicker of that dead-eye look I saw in Portland just before he went into battle. Samuel wants peace but I think he’s ready to rain hellfire if he doesn’t get it. This could get ugly.
“What kind of a setup does the man have?” I ask. “Is he surrounded by bodyguards?”
“I do not know where he lives and Lu has been unable to find out. But I have been to his office, one of them. He occupies an entire upper floor of a building near the airport. There were six men in the room that time, all subservient to Lai Van Tan. All but one were in their thirties, hard eyed, tough looking. One man stood out. He was my age. Chiseled features, eyes that had seen violence, participated in it, liked it. I have heard rumors that Lai Van Tan has hired a few old Khmer Rouge soldiers to help protect him. I think that man was one of them.”
“Khmer Rouge!” Mai blurts.
“Number fuckin’ ten,” Tex says, shaking his head.
“The Democratic Kampuchea,” Mai says to me as Samuel catches Sifu up on the conversation. “For five years in the mid-nineteen seventies, they followed their leader Pol Pot to do, uh, gen… ocide. Genocide on their own people. The Khmer Rouge killed close to two million people. Their own people, Sam. Some say maybe it was more. That is one quarter of all the Cambodian population. They still find gravesites there, what you call… mass gravesites, put in ground by the Khmer Rouge. Even today many people are hurt and killed by the landmines they put all over back then.
“Mother has several newspaper articles she saved on it and I read all of them. I remember one was called “Year Zero,” and it stuck in my mind. That is what Pol Pot called what he did to his people. He said Year Zero means all the culture had to be destroyed, so he could start a new one. Start it from the beginning, from year zero. Even the Cambodian history was declared not important anymore, and Pol Pot wanted it removed from the people. So the Khmer Rouge soldiers followed these orders with much brutality and much violence.”
“Any idea how many Khmer Rouge he has working for him,” I ask.
Samuel shakes his head. “I do not. Lu is checking into it, so I am hoping to learn something from him. Tell me, Son, what do you think of having such a meeting?”
“I think it’s a good idea. We did it once in Portland with gangbangers after several weekends of fatal shootings.” Samuel translates for Sifu as I speak. “Our chief was screaming for something to be done, and so was the community, especially those suffering from all the violence. So our gang unit met with seven or eight leaders from black and Hispanic gangs. The officers told these leaders that they would hold them directly responsible for any future shootings, and that the gang unit would come down on them with every bit of firepower they had, and every prosecutorial device they could use.”
“What happened?” Mai asks.
“The gangbangers walked out. The leaders were enraged. I can’t say that I blamed them. They knew that too many of their subordinates were loose cannons—uncontrollable, and they didn’t want to have the turd put into their pockets.”
“Why put turd in pocket?” Tex asks. Mai looks confused too. Sifu’s face is neutral.
“Sorry. I mean we put the responsibility on them, the leaders.”
“But they walked out,” Samuel says.
“Yes. The shootings did slow down a little, but I don’t know if that was just a result of the normal increase and decrease of gang violence that we see.”
“Understood,” Samuel says, sounding a little disappointed.
“Still, right now, I think it’s your best option,” I say. “You don’t want the police involved, I take it?”
Tex is shaking his head. “No work for sure. Lai Van Tan too crazy for meeting.”
After Samuel translates, Sifu gently says something to Tex to which the old warrior immediately responds with a bow, palms together. He doesn’t look up.
Mai leans in. “Sifu say to Tex, ‘People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.’”
Good one. That should be on a poster or something. Tex lifts his head, apparently recovered from his gentle reprimand.
“I don’t know who Lai Van Tan has on his payroll,” Samuel says. “I have one friend on the police force, Vu Van Hien, but I think he is in Paris right now. That is what I was told last week, and the person I spoke with did not know when he is coming back. I will check again today.”
“Okay,” I say. “Let me see if I’m clear on everything. Lai Van Tan is into drugs, extortion, and now sex trafficking.”
“Yes,” Samuel says. “The sex trafficking we are just learning about.”
“He has an unknown number of people working for him including the possibility of some old Khmer Rouge soldiers. We also know from what happened in Portland that he has people elsewhere at his beck and call.”
Samuel nods. “Portland and Los Angeles that I am aware of. In Portland, though, I think he might not have any more people.”
I nod. That’s for sure.
“We don’t know anything about weapons,” I say, “but given today we can assume they have guns.”
Samuel nods. “And many are martial arts trained.”
“They seem hell bent on revenge.”
Mai leans forward. “That would be, as you say in America, an understatement. Remember what I told you in Portland about how some criminals think about Ba’o Th‘u, revenge? If they cannot get the person they want, they will go after that person’s family. They want to revenge very much and they keep trying, even it takes a hundred years.”
Tex has been eyeing me for the last few minutes. “Wish you be home, Sam?” he asks.
“No,” I say immediately. “You are all my family.”
He thrusts a fist toward me, stopping it a couple feet away. I bump it with mine.
“Can only do in chair,” Tex says. “Do on floor, I fall over.”
I smile a little, uncomfortably. But Sifu laughs. Guess he understands English better than I thought. He and Samuel exchange words, and Samuel laughs.
Mai whispers, “Sifu ask Father what do you call an Asian woman with one leg shorter than the other. I did not hear the answer.”
“Irene,” Samuel says, chuckling. “Get it? Sifu has got some good ones.”
While Samuel and Sifu talk quietly, Tex, Mai, and I eat in silence. I’m not terribly hungry and I seem to be getting more tired each passing minute. I glance at Mai and see that she’s sitting back in her chair, her face drained of color.
“How are you doing,?” I ask.
She rotates her head to the left and right, popping her neck. “I feel strange. Suddenly, I am very tired. Very, very tired.”
“You should feel tired,” I say, touching her arm. “I think the shock of what happened is starting to catch up with you. You’ve been getting progressively paler in just the last few minutes. If I may make a suggestion, you should lay down for a while.”
“Sam right, Mai” Tex says.
“Three against one, daughter,” Samuel says. “Go to bed for a while. Sifu says you will sleep very restfully.”
She puts her hands on her stomach. “I will,” she says somewhat feebly. “Excuse me.” She stands and touches my shoulder. “Sam, I will talk to you later.”
“Get some sleep,” I say.
“Sifu, Father,” she says weakly as she passes them.
“She white,” Tex says after Mai leaves.
“It is normal,” Samuel says. “The adrenaline has left her body so now she is tired and emotionally spent. How are you doing, Son?”
“Tired, but I’m mostly embarrassed that we got caught off guard. And I was so scared for Mai. I… I don’t know. I don’t have it all worked out yet in my head.”
“A normal reaction,” he says. “I think you might need rest right now.” When I nod, he says, “You fought very well, and so did Mai, but after you two were taken by surprise. It is a hard way to learn, so it is important to analyze what happened and learn from your findings. Always keep learning, right?” Sifu says something and Samuel nods, and looks back at me. “Sifu says that ‘pain is a wonderful instructor but no one wants to go to its classes.’”
I smile and nod to both men. “Cám ơn.”
“All of us here are martial artists, Sam, very good martial artists. But we are humans first. That makes us capable of mistakes.” His eyes twinkle. “Even me, as hard as that might be to believe.”
“Even Sifu?” I ask, smiling a little.
Samuel says something to his teacher and Sifu responds.
“Sifu says that ‘the more masterful one is, the bigger his mistakes. We make them as do our enemies. When our enemies make them, do not stop them.’ And to that I will add, do not let them learn from them either.”
I nod to both men.
“You get some rest, Son, and we will talk after. Mai will probably sleep for hours. You should do the same.”
“Thanks, Samuel, Sifu. If you will excuse me, I’m going to go hit the hay.”
“Why you hit hay?” Tex asks.
“It means sleep.” I say, lightly punching his shoulder.
“Hit hay same-same sleep.” He shakes his head, shrugs. “Got it.”
*
After leaving the dining room, I went back to my room, stretched, shadowboxed for about five minutes to burn off my remaining adrenaline, and took another shower. My plan was to do a little meditating, but a wave of fatigue pushed me down on the bed, which is the last I remember.
I’m awake now, sitting on the edge of the bed and feeling wonderfully refreshed. Wow, it’s four in the afternoon. Four! I slept for nearly five hours. My lower back, behind my knee, and the lump on my neck are all tender, but I feel pretty darn good otherwise. I check my cell. No calls. Mai is probably still sleeping.
I’m still bugged about getting caught off guard. If we had had our heads on right, Mai and I would have at least considered that Lai Van Tan’s people knew we were inside. We would have eased that door open instead of bursting out of it like school kids at three in the afternoon. As Samuel said, you can’t block what you can’t see, but if you’re paying attention, if you’re taking precautions, you can reduce the element of surprise.
Once when I was working uniform, I pulled over a car for a traffic violation in a quiet residential area. I gave the guy a warning and let him go. Walking back to my car, I felt a little antsy, though there was no one else out in the hundred and five degree August day. Still, I had a case of the creeps. It felt like someone with bad intent was watching me.
A few days later, the shift sergeant took me aside and asked if I had stopped a car on Southeast Lincoln a few days prior. When I said yes, he told me that a woman had called earlier and said that she and her boyfriend, an ex-con, were in their apartment and saw me pull over the motorist. Apparently, her boyfriend went psycho and got a rifle from a closet. At first, she thought that he was just showing off for her, but then he loaded it and thrust it out the window. She said she shouted at him, which made him look away from me. When he looked back, I was driving off, which angered him so much he smacked her around. That’s when she came to the police to report how close I came to getting a pine box overcoat.
I had many narrow escapes on the PD, so I don’t know why I’m thinking about that one right now. The Grim Reaper is always fluttering his cape in and out of our lives. The sniper would have turned my head into a red cloud if it hadn’t been for his girlfriend’s shout. Lai Van Tan’s goons could have offed us as we came out the door, but didn’t. I got the best of a couple of them, which probably kept me from getting beaten to death, still the guy who screwed the gun in my eye could have shot me. And Mai’s situation could have turned out a whole lot different if Samuel hadn’t trained her so well. Sometimes it seems like life is just a series of near misses.
Okay, enough of this line of thinking.
I walk out into the garden area and sit on the hard bench by the koi pond. Man, you could bake cookies in this heat. There’s a bit of a breeze rustling the tops of the palm trees, but the solid, high walls around the house prevent the wind from reaching ground level. The koi have the right idea: They’re lying motionless at the far end of the pond in the shade of a palm tree.
I close my eyes and take a deep, calming breath. I do another, focusing on drawing the air into my belly, holding it there for a few seconds before slowly letting it out. After a few exchanges, I return to breathing normally, or I try to. Funny thing is that I’ve been breathing for over thirty-five years, but now when I try to do it normally, the more erratic it becomes. I either breathe out too fast or too slowly, or I hold it in too long. It’s like trying not to think about purple elephants. Oh good, now I’m thinking about a giant grape-colored Dumbo.
“Listen to the wind, Son.”
“Shit!” I half shout, snapping my arms up.
Samuel smiles at me. “Jumpy are we? One gauge of knowing that you are meditating deeply is that you cannot be startled. Calmness is one of the byproducts of meditation, you see. Keep at it. It is worth the effort, and it will affect your whole life in a good way.”
“How is Mai?”
“Ly looked in on her about twenty minutes ago and she was sleeping soundly. I have seen Mai go and go and go and then sleep for twenty-four hours.”
“She is amazing,” I say.
“She thinks the same of you.”
“Really?”
“How was your rest?”
“I feel wonderful.” I look toward the glass doors. “Did Sifu leave?”
Samuel squats down Asian style at the shady end of the pond. “Yes, about two hours ago. You rested well because he, uh, adjusted is a good word for it, he adjusted your chi, and Mai’s. He has incredible healing powers but some things he cannot fix directly. Like chi that has been greatly disturbed. But he can set into motion the healing by helping you to rest deeply.”
“He’s incredible.”
“More than you know.” He makes a little circle in the water with his finger. “Meditating can be difficult at first.” The koi undulate away a few inches and then are motionlessness. Maybe they’re meditating. “Focusing on your breath can be especially difficult after you have been agitated. But keep at it. Soon you will be able to do it easily, anytime, anywhere.”
“I liked how I felt those times we did it in Portland.”
“You took to it like,” he flips the water again with his finger, “a koi to water.” The fish don’t move this time. They have either mastered meditation or they don’t feel threatened by him. “You will enjoy the sense of calm you gain from it, and how your thinking becomes clearer and more focused.”
I nod, sitting motionless, watching him watch the koi. I listen to the palms fronds whispering above us. The intense heat is starting to feel not so, well, intense, and the sounds of traffic outside the walls are sort of a low-volume white noise. An insect buzzes somewhere near, but not close enough to bother. I’m liking this moment a whole heck of a lot.
Time passes.
“I have been out of the American dating scene for a few decades,” Samuel says, still watching the fish. “But I’m assuming young people still go to fast-food eateries and park down at the river.”
“That might be a little dated,” I say, wondering where he’s going with this. “And I might be a little old for that scenario, but I guess in general terms that’s right.”
He chuckles. “But yours and Mai’s courting is mostly about fighting other people.”
I nod, then shake my head. “Yes, and I wish that weren’t the case. Last evening, though, we enjoyed a normal date. We walked along the river, ate, talked.” I’ll leave out the all-nighter part of it, though I know he knows. “The normalcy of it was wonderful,” I say quickly, so that I won’t think about the eighth floor. Whoops, just did.
Still looking at the water, he smiles, either at what I said or at my struggle to not think about the eighth floor. Damn, I just did it again.
We sit in silence, Samuel teasing the koi with his trailing finger, me thinking about the fights Mai and I have been in. There is something that has tweaked my brain a little about them, and I was planning on talking to Mai about it. But since Samuel and I are having a moment here…
“May I ask you something about Mai?”
“If you want her hand in marriage the answer is no.”
I feel my face flush blood red. “What? No.”
“Good. You agree that it’s too soon, then?”
“Yes. For sure. I wouldn’t…” Even with his face turned away I know he’s grinning.
“Just screwing with you, Son.”
I laugh. “You’re good at it.”
“Okay, what did you want to ask?”
I take a deep breath, not sure why I’m nervous about asking this. So I say it quickly to get it out of my mouth. “I have a bad temper and I was wondering if Mai does too.”
Truth is, I don’t think I have a temper at all. I’m just trying to soften the question a little. While force was needed in each of our altercations—the one at the tea café here and the ones in Portland—the way she performed was… what? Over the top? Yes, that’s it. Excessive. It was either rage, an explosion of temper, or, I don’t know. Maybe that’s just the way she fights. I’m falling hard for Mai, but I’ve made bad choices before and I want to know how she thinks.
Samuel looks up at me. Still squatting, he shuffles around and sits on the ground facing me, folding his legs into lotus, each foot on the opposite thigh. “I do not think so, not if a temper means she is out of control with anger. But there are things that make her angry. People who want to hurt her family. Bullies who prey on the weak. Ignorants attacking her because she is of mixed heritage. Injustice.”
I nod. Maybe that’s what it was. Or was it?
“What makes you angry, Son?”
“Same things, I guess. I definitely hate bullies and I don’t like prejudice jerks. I’m not mixed, of course, but a cop in uniform is definitely in the minority. During the years I wore that uniform, I was hated by a lot of people, hated because of the color of my clothes. Many black people hated me because they saw me as the epitome of the oppressor: I was white and in a uniform that gave me power over them.”
“Understood. People who did not know you still judged you negatively. You might be the greatest man in the world, but because you wore a uniform, they hated you.”
“Exactly. I was doing my job. I put my life on the line, with the best of intentions, but that wasn’t enough for some of them. I’ve been verbally and even physically attacked because of my damn clothes. Just before I left uniform for Detectives, I was coming out of a business where I’d just taken a call, and a hippy girl walked right up and spit on my chest. Called me a Gestapo. I’d never seen her before, never had any dealings with her. She told me when I was taking her to jail that she hated all cops. She was so riled by this time that she spit on the plastic shield that separates the front seat from the back.”
Samuel looks at me, reading me. Soothingly he continues. “So you can understand a little of how it is with Mai. Of course, she cannot remove her mixed race like you removed your uniform. She wears hers, how you say in America, twenty-four-seven.”
“I understand the difference. What got me thinking about this was the incident at the tea café with those two racist punks. I don’t have a problem using force when there are no other options, but Mai went off before we had even tried to leave. I have to admit I was a little taken back by the explosiveness of her actions.” I wait for Samuel to say something but he only nods. “Please don’t think I’m being judgmental or that I’m being a girly man. Those two clowns needed some attitude adjustment and Mai gave it to them. But I still think that… I just want to understand her more.”
Samuel looks across the yard, takes a deep breath, and eases it out as he looks back at me. “I was not there, but what I understand from what Mai said, they were trying to make her feel small and you as well. People cannot make you feel bad about yourself unless you let them, right? So she did not let them. I do not know if I would have chosen her way to accomplish that, but she chose it and I trust her instincts.”
Hmm. Well, I’ll give her the benefit of a doubt that she was giving them a lesson, and for sure they will think twice before picking on the seemingly weaker, as will those who were on the side of the bullies. Maybe she picked up on something culture-wise that I didn’t, something that indicated that they were about to get physical. Maybe I should drop the subject. But then there was the fight in the massage parlor in Portland.
He looks at me. “You think she lost her temper in Portland because of what she did to that woman’s arm?”
Okay, that was eerie. I didn’t even get to ask the question. “I guess what bothers me a little is that after Mai knocked her down and the woman was hurting and having trouble getting up, Mai went for a coup de grâce.” Did that sound like I’m accusing her?
“You are referring to Mai’s kick against the woman’s elbow joint.”
“Yes.”
“You thought it excessive?”
Oh man, I wish I wouldn’t had started this conversation. “Uh, I think because the woman was already down, she was no longer a threat.”
“Son, you sound like one of those left-wing liberal newspaper people I have heard you rant about,” Samuel says, his look amused. “Worse, because you were there and you saw that we were in a desperate battle. Mai was not play fighting in a sporting event. The woman she hurt ‘excessively,’ as you say, would not have stopped attacking because the buzzer rang, or just because she was stunned.”
I nod, but the argument in my head carries on. Part of my issue is that as cops we fight to get resisters controlled enough to get them into restraints. We don’t fight them to finish them off.
“Here is what I believe,” Samuel says. “I believe she did not lose her temper. She destroyed that attacker’s arm because at that moment it represented the threat to our family. She felt she had to do what she did because you and I were in that room with her, and because of the danger to her family here in Vietnam. I do not believe she did it because she lost her temper.”
Again he studies my face. “Let me ask you this, Sam. Do you think I lost my temper at Portland State?”
“I wasn’t there when you did those things,” I say quickly, with a shoulder shrug thrown in to imply that only he would know. But In the weeks since, I’ve often thought that he did lose it, and who would blame him? The three of us were being attacked in Portland, and his family was under threat here in Saigon.
“I did not lose it,” he says emphatically. “I was being logical.”
Logical. Like in reasonable?
“It was logical to take that shooter’s eyes so that she would never use them again to harm others.” He straightens his legs for a moment and refolds them into lotus again. “Understand that our world here in Vietnam is light years away from your world in Portland, Oregon, or any other place in the States. Life here is intense. Crime is monstrous, racism is widespread, feuds and revenge are practically an art form. Some of that followed me to Portland and threatened your life, Mai’s, mine, and my family’s here. That is the reality that we live in.”
“Yes,” I say, too confused to add more to it.
“Do you think it was wrong?” he asks, nudging.
I shrug. “No, I don’t think… I’m not sure. Well, legal-wise, yes, it was wrong in Portland. But as far as the temper issue, I did wonder a little if these things were done out of anger.”
“You have never responded out of anger, Son? Even when those people attacked you for wearing your uniform, for doing what they asked you to do, for doing what you thought was right?” One of the koi splashes water near Samuel’s knee. He doesn’t acknowledge it as he waits for my answer.
“Yeah, I have. But it made me feel bad after because I should have been better than that. Acting that way is not what I trained for both as a cop and as a martial artist.”
“Yet you wondered about Mai and me.”
I do an okay-you-caught-me smile. “Still, I weigh everything against what has been pounded into my head for fifteen years as a cop: We don’t administer justice on the street. That is the job of the courts.”
“Ah, the courts. What is that expression I hear on American television? Something like ‘and how is that working out for you?’”
I chuckle. “Sometimes not too well. For the police, it can be hard not to want to administer justice on the streets. That’s because cops get to the scene as it’s happening or shortly after. So we are the only ones in the judicial system who see, smell, and taste the carnage up close. When the courts get the case months, sometimes years later, the facts, the reality, the horror, are reduced to legal arguments and suppressed evidence.”
“And the bad guys walk,” Samuel says.
I nod
“What if you destroyed the offending arm, or whatever, at the scene?”
“I get your point. But what if we did and we were wrong? Thank God when I overacted I wasn’t wrong. But what if someone else did the crime and we destroyed an innocent person in error? Or what if at first what appears to be a crime turned out to be a situation where the person was justified to do what he did, but we punished him before we learned that? Or, what if we destroyed the so-called part out of rage, anger, or hatred because we didn’t like the person who did it. Or we didn’t like his race, his religion, that kind of thing? So not liking the person was really our motive for punishing him, not so much for what he did.”
“And yet you shot those men. In one case an innocent boy died as a result.”
“What?” Even without his mind reading abilities, Samuel must see the hurt in my face. “What does that have to do…”
“I am not trying to hurt you, Son. I know that you suffer from what you have had to do, and that you are a good man. Clearly it has caused you to reassess your life as a warrior. You have been through a lot, even for a cop. But, perhaps it will help to remember that you chose to be a warrior. Maybe fate helped you along, but it was your choice.”
Samuel smiles. “Mai did not choose to be a warrior, or maybe she did. Either way, it is her life now. And she accepts the choices she makes to stay alive and to protect her family. Perhaps that is what you need to do.”
He studies me to see if his words are sinking in. I honestly don’t know if they are. Maybe it’s too soon right now.
“You said that sometimes it’s hard for a police officer not to punish on the spot?”
“Yes.”
“Do they ever?”
“The less disciplined do.”
“You said that you have.”
I nod slowly. “A couple times, yes.”
“So does that mean you have a temper?”
I look at him, maybe sheepishly. I can’t tell because my face feels numb.
He lifts his eyebrows.
Let’s see, in the last few weeks I smashed my kitchen wall phone to bits, I attacked my heavy bag until my knuckles were literally skinned and bleeding, I pushed a vandal who had broken my living room window into a fight, and I tried to attack my partner in the Detective’s Unit.
Some ass clown points a gun in my face and I’m suppose to decide in a half second the ‘right’ thing to do—of course the brass, the media, and the ‘citizens’ all have a different take on the right thing. Meanwhile, I’m trying not to stop a round with my forehead and trying not to shoot anybody else, including the whack job with the gun. And don’t get me started on those GD liberals sitting in their safe little houses just waiting to stand on their liberal little soap boxes and… and when I see those perps, those vicious animals who prey on the weak… I want to…
Samuel gives me a look. “Listen, Son, maybe we all have tempers. For sure, it’s something that we—our family and our circle of friends—must fight against since we possess lethal skills.” He turns and looks at the white koi that has moved from the cool shade and wiggled its way into Samuel’s shadow. “We are all a work in progress, no.”
“Yes,” I breathe. Then, “Thank you, Samuel. Much to think about.”
He looks back at me, smiles. “Me too.”
I watch the now motionless white koi, how it’s found comfort in Samuel’s shade.
I say, “I must have done something right, sometime, to have found you and Mai.”
He looks into my face, the emotion in his nearly bursting. “I feel exactly the same way.”
We both smile, probably looking like goofs.
“You ever played Chinese sticky foot?” he asks.
The abrupt change of topic takes me a second. Then, “Not sure I know what that is.”
“Please stand.” He straightens easily as if he hadn’t been sitting in lotus for several minutes. If I’d sat that way I’d need a massage, a steam, and pulley system to get up. “Your back okay for this?”
“I can feel where they hit me but it’s fine,” I say.
“Chinese sticky foot,” he begins, as we head over to the big bag, “teaches you much about which muscles you use when you kick. If you fail to stay focused or try to kick too hard, you lose your balance. Not safe to practice on a rooftop.”
“Good tip,” I say. I have seen his mind-boggling hand speed a few times but I haven’t seen him kick. Wait, I did too. In my house, when he was demonstrating his style’s Third Level of speed. Actually, I didn’t see his kicks. I felt them, though.
“No demonstration this time,” Samuel smiles. “Just a simple drill. Okay, my left leg is forward so you need to put your right one forward, so we are like a mirror. Good. Now we lift our front legs until our thighs are parallel with the ground and our lower legs are hanging straight down. I will place my shin against yours. Like that. We must keep our shins touching at all times. Ahh, you have excellent balance.”
Right. I’m swaying and he’s as still as a photo.
“The drill is to spar using only kicks launched from this shin-to-shin position. Just throw whatever kick you want without setting your foot down first. The other person’s task is to use their leg to prevent the opponent’s kick from landing.”
“Like this?” I fire a sidekick at his support knee, stopping it against his pant leg.
“Yes!” he says. “And thanks for not actually hitting me.”
I smile, though I know he let me do it.
“Okay, I will try to kick you in the groin and you use your shin to stop me.”
He launches a medium fast roundhouse kick. I draw my raised leg in close to my groin to stop his foot with my shin.
“Good! You understand already. We can hop around if we want, but we must keep our legs raised and our shins always touching. Do not kick higher than the mid section and do not block with your arms. Try to feel my energy and balance, and understand how the two change when I kick. With practice, you will know which kick your opponent is launching.”
I would have liked a warm-up, but oh well. I snap another sidekick toward his support leg, which he knocks off course with his shin, making me have to hop a couple times to regain my balance. He throws another roundhouse, this time at my support leg thigh. I’m too slow to react and it lands hard enough that I have to set my leg down to recapture my balance. I lift it again and touch shins with him.
“You cannot use momentum with these kicks,” he says, hopping in a circle around me. Hard to believe he’d be getting Medicare if he were in the states. “Use only the muscles in your legs and core. It is good physical exercise as well as good for training sensitivity.”
He smacks the ball of his foot solidly into my gut, then quickly withdraws his leg back to the shin-on-shin position.
I hop a couple spaces to my right and throw my world famous roundhouse at his abdomen. He hops back just enough for it to miss. I set my foot down quickly to keep from toppling over.
“Each time you need to touch the ground, Son, ask yourself what happened to your balance. Learn from it.”
“Okay,” I say, before snapping a front kick to his middle. He leans away so it misses him by inches.
“Very good.”
“Thanks. So what is the worse case scenario with Lai Van Tan?”
His leg leaves mine and begins a roundhouse. When I lift my shin to block it, he snaps a crescent kick in the opposite direction that smacks into my stomach. “Worse case,” he says, ignoring the fact that he knocked the wind out of me, “is that we will have a war.”
“What does that mean?” I thrust a toe-out kick at his shin and the arch of my foot actually touches his leg. Score one for me. “A war? An all-out fight?”
“You see? You used a simple approach and you got me. Simple is best. Always do simple.” He shoots his leg out as if to do a hook kick. When I lift my leg to jam it, he changes it to a low-snap sidekick into my inner thigh.
“That wasn’t simple,” I laugh. “That was a combo fake and kick.”
He smiles. “But first I put an expectation of simplicity into your mind.” The smile disappears. “What does anything mean with Lai Van Tan? I do not know. But I can tell you that should it look like war, I will take it to him. Your turn.”
“My turn?”
“To kick. Your turn to kick.”
“Oh, yes.” I drop the ball of my foot hard onto the ground and bounce it up into a head-high roundhouse kick.
He leans away from it, but just barely. “That was pretty, but remember, you cannot touch the floor or kick above the waist.”
“But you said simplicity was best. My plan was a simple one: to cheat.”
Samuel laughs. “You are a good student. You listened and you improvised. Let us remember that simplicity, cheating, and improvisation are all important fighting concepts. Want to do another drill?”
“Sure.”
“Tell me this, Sam. Is not most fighting improvisation? Maybe you have heard of this expression that we had in the army: ‘No campaign plan survives first contact with the enemy.’”
“Yes. And cops say, ‘All plans turn to shit when the first shot is fired.’”
“I like it. Crude and to the point. Okay, let us both put our left feet forward and place the backs of our left wrists against one another. There, good. Now apply just a little pressure. I think you have probably practiced this drill. The objective is to backfist the other person before they can block it. It is about sensitivity and speed.”
I give him a you-got-to-be-kidding-me look. “Soooo, what chance do I have?”
He smiles. “It is about the exercise, about understanding reflexes, muscle control, and relaxation. I am not giving you a speed demonstration.”
“Right. And the check is in the mail?”
“Feel my wrist, the pressure against yours. Do not let me hit you.” He fires a backfist over my hand, which I block before it gets to my head. “Very good, Son. What did you feel?”
“I felt the pressure of your wrist disappear, and I saw the way your shoulder moved that you would backfist my face.”
“Yes, yes, very good. The pressure was released, you knew I was going to hit, and your experience told you with what and where.”
“I’ve done the drill before.” That was smug. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to sound—”
“No problem,” he says, waving me off. “But I wonder how deeply you have gone with it.”
“Deeply?”
“Okay, I said I was not going to do a demonstration, but allow me a little one so you can see the possibilities. This time, hit me with a backfist somewhere: stomach, groin, face, wherever. Do it fast, but don’t knock me out.”
We cross wrists and apply slight pressure against each other’s arms. Although his eyes seem to be directed at our hands, they appear to be looking elsewhere. Knowing him, probably another galaxy.
I pop a fast backfist at his head—
His forearm blocks my blow, which incongruously sends a penetrating pain through my belly. “Ow,” I blurt. “What the…? You blocked my arm but why do I feel a sting in my…”
“Your tum-tum?’ Samuel asks, the corners of his mouth turning up.
“Yes, my tum-tum. My belly. What did you do?”
Samuel looks up at the palm tree. “The sun has moved,” he says. “Let us move over into the shade. This is better. Okay, when it was my turn to backfist you a moment ago, you felt my wrist leave yours.”
“Yes.”
“That was the ‘tell’ that we talked about in Portland. My wrist leaving yours told you that I was launching a blow.”
“Okay.”
“This time when you snapped your backfist at me, I tapped your belly a fraction of a second before your wrist moved off mine.”
“What? That doesn’t make sense. Your wrist left mine before my wrist left yours? Even if that was possible, you cheated.”
“I suppose one could argue that it’s cheating, but I would not agree. And yes, it is confusing but only because the limitation of language makes it so. Okay, think of it this way. When I threw a backfist at you earlier, you felt my wrist leave yours.” I nod. “It was your experience, skill, and speed that enabled you to block me. Was that cheating?”
“No.”
“So when it was your turn to hit me just now, my experience, skill, and speed enabled me to feel your plan. Feel your thoughts.” He shakes his head. “I know you’re thinking that I read your mind. No, I did not. At least not in the normal way.”
There’s a normal way to read minds?
“You see, when the thought passed through your mind that you would backfist at my face, your brain sent an electrical current to your muscles. No, it was not a message to ‘throw the backfist.’ That one would be sent in a moment. The first message was to tell your muscles that the second command was on its way. In my layman’s mind, I think of it as your brain telling your muscles, ‘Get on your mark, get set,’ and telling them in less than a nanosecond. Then the second message is sent to your muscles to go, that is the starter pistol: Bam! That is when you launch your backfist. All these things happen much faster than you can blink your eyes. Understand?”
“I think so.”
“It’s all about practice. With lots of it, you can develop the sensitivity to feel your opponent’s plan an instant before he implements it.”
“The hit to my belly?”
Samuel shrugs. “I did it to prove my lesson, to demonstrate what is possible. I tapped your belly with my backfist in the middle of that nanosecond between your thought and your physical backfist.”
“So, you basically hit me twice. The first time between my thought and action and the second time to block my action. You do know I didn’t even see the stomach blow?”
“Of course, because it was too fast, which is why I tapped you there in the first place. If I did not give you that little sting in your belly, would you have believed me that it is possible to move with such speed?”
I shake my head in disbelief. “It’s hard to consider it even with the sting.”
Samuel chuckles. “Right now I can do it when touching you. In this exercise, it is the wrist that is the conduit, you see. I feel your thought, your plan, through whatever point is touching. I was able to develop this skill through lots of sensitivity practice with my sifu. The next step for me is to do it when I am not touching the opponent.” He sighs. “It will take lots more practice, I think.”
“Damn!”
“Well said, Son. It is an example of attacking the enemy’s strategy, just as Sun Tzu suggested in The Art of War. If the meeting with Lai Van Tan does not work and he wants war, that is what we must do: attack his strategy.”
“You don’t sound optimistic about the meeting.”
“Mark Twain said that an optimist was a ‘daydreamer more elegantly spelled.’”
*
I’m still feeling the effects of the thug encounter so I’m happy when Samuel soon calls an end to our Sticky practice. No sooner do we sit down—actually, I sit and Samuel squats Asian style, commenting that the hard bench hurts his rear— when my cell rings. With all that had been going on, I forgot that Bobby and I were supposed to meet today.
I tell him that I am really tired and ask if we could do it tomorrow. His voice cracks as if he were about to cry. “Please, Sam,” he says. “Please meet me.”
I tell him to hold on and give Samuel the condensed version of my contact with Bobby, and ask if he would work out the details of a meeting place since I haven’t a clue where I am, other than the address.
After about five minutes of speaking in English and Vietnamese, Samuel says, “Okay, see you in a few.” He closes the phone and hands it to me.
“What’s happening?”
“He seems like a pleasant young man, except he is frightened.”
“Of being caught?”
“Yes. And of being in Saigon alone.”
“Where can we meet him?
“It is walking distance. I did not want him to come here for security reasons. May I go with you?”
“Sure. You will be better able to advise him, anyway.”
I fill Samuel in on what little else I know about Bobby while we walk toward the busy street. Mai and I turned left when we went out for tea; Samuel and I go right. It’s almost dark now and the explosion of lights dazzle, and the frantic pace on the street and sidewalk has actually increased from when Mai and I were on it.
“Look,” Samuel says, pointing at a two-story building across the street.
“Looks like a clothing shop of some kind.”
“Not that. Above it, on the roof.”
It’s about fifty yards away, so all I can see against the darkening sky are about half a dozen people, no, there’s more, maybe a dozen more, all wearing blue jackets. I can only see the top halves of their bodies as they punch and kick at each other.
“Vovinam,” Samuel says. “Vietnam’s martial arts style. It combines hard and soft and uses many kinds of weapons. It is a very good system.”
“I’d love to see it sometime.”
“We will try to make it happen.” He points toward the end of the block. “We are to meet your friend for noodles down there.” He looks behind us and across the street, no doubt looking to see if we are being followed.
“Sounds good,” I say, looking behind us as well. Not seeing anyone quickly stepping behind a lamppost or turning to window shop, I turn back and say, “Thanks so much for… Oh, I see him. There by that cluster of bicycles.”
Bobby is no longer wearing his “Westminster, California” T-shirt, a wise decision since it stands out too much for a guy who is on the lam from the states. He’s now wearing a white one with “I ♥ Vietnam” on the chest, with black shorts and running shoes. He looks like any other sixteen-year-old, one jerking his head all around like he’s been popping paranoia pills.
“Bobby!”
He snaps his head toward us, smiles, and quickly walks our way. “Sam,” he says, pumping my hand. “I’m so happy to see you. Thanks for meeting me.” He looks at Samuel. “Hello,” he says, and extends his hand.
“Bobby, this is my father Samuel.” Wow, I said it again. Father. That’s twice now. Samuel looks at me, his face beaming. He takes the boy’s hand. “Samuel, this is Bobby, my airplane companion.”
“Nice to meet you, sir,” Bobby says. He looks behind him. “Can we get off the sidewalk?”
“Right here,” Samuel says, pointing at an eatery the same size as the tea café Mai and I visited. Three of the four tables are occupied; we sit around the other.
“Sam, if you are tired of phở, you should try their noodle salad here. You get a bowl of cool noodles with cucumbers, lettuce, and mint, all topped with stir-fried vegetables and meat.”
“Sounds good. Bobby?”
“Yes, that is fine,” he says, nervously eyeing passersby on the sidewalk.
As Samuel tells the waitress what we want, I lightly punch Bobby’s shoulder. “You doing okay, man? Want to tell me what’s going on?”
He glances at Samuel.
“He’s cool,” I say.
Bobby’s face scrunches. “I feel bad about lying to you, Sam. I don’t lie but I was afraid. Didn’t know who to trust.”
“Your father filed a runaway report on you.”
“Yes. He must have called the police here and asked them to stop me at the airport. They were suddenly on me. I just sorta panicked, I guess.”
“Sam said you kicked them,” Samuel says.
“You saw that?” Bobby asks, looking at me with surprise. When I nod, he looks down at the table, his face tight. “I saw you from the cab, but I didn’t think you saw that happen.”
“You drew a crowd.”
He shakes his head. “I was just so scared and so focused. All I saw was those guys and they grabbed me so hard. I just like, reacted.”
The waitress puts down the bowls of noodles and tea. Samuel thanks her.
“Why did you run away from the states?” Samuel asks.
“Because I’m stupid,” he whispers, shaking his head as if in disbelief at how much so. “I met a girl online, a girl from here. She lied to me the whole time we talked. Said she loved me and all that, and begged me to come here.”
“No dying grandfather?” I ask.
“He already died,” he says softly. “That is why I came over with my mother and father two years ago.” His eyes tear up, probably because he used his grandfather in his fabrication. “My mom read some of my emails to Cam, that’s the girl here, and she saw the emails when I talked to her about coming here, how I already had a passport and everything.. My mom got really mad, and when she told my father he got like even madder. Crazy mad. He slapped me. When he tried to hit me again, I blocked his hand and pushed him back. I didn’t push that hard but his head hit our refrigerator.” Bobby’s tears are flowing now. “He wasn’t hurt, but I felt terrible and my mom screamed and backed away from me like she was real scared. I tried to go to her, but she got like hysterical and covered her head with her arms. My mom… scared of me! Like she was afraid I was going to do something to her. I mean… shit!” He rubs at his tears with the back of his hand. “Shit!”
Samuel and I look down at the table for a few moments as Bobby tries his best, but fails, to stop weeping. It’s a silent cry, the kind that makes his shoulders bob up and down. When he finally collects himself, he apologizes in a barely audible voice and empties his teacup in one big swallow.
“You should eat your noodles before they get cold,” I say.
“They are supposed to be cold,” he says, sniffling.
“Oh.”
He looks up at me and notes my barely constrained smile.
“So that’s how it’s going to be. Get the kid who makes the plane wait.” We smile at each other.
“Inside joke,” I say to a puzzled Samuel. “What happened then, Bobby?”
“I apologized to my parents like ten times. They wouldn’t accept it. My father told me to get to my room before he called the police. So I did, and I started getting my things together. I had my passport and visa, I had one thousand eight hundred and fifteen dollars, money I earned helping a friend of my dad’s who owns a restaurant, doing dishes and stuff, and money I got selling a ton of CDs and some other things a few months ago. I was supposed to bank it, but I never did. I Googled flights out of John Wayne Airport that could get me to Vietnam and found one that stopped in Portland for a connection. It took almost all of my money but I didn’t care. Anyway, Portland is where I met you.”
“Where is… what was her name?” I ask. “The girl you met on line?”
“Cam. She wasn’t who I thought she was. She was playing a game with me. She picked me up at the airport and took me to this place where there was like a ton of teenagers. All of them liked her and all the guys acted like they had been with her, you know? She talked to them more than she talked to me. When I told her that I was tired, she asked where I was going to stay. When I said that I thought I was staying with her, she just laughed and said that her parents wouldn’t like that. I said I thought we had talked about this online and she laughed again, said she never thought I would actually come over. I mean, I told her the night before I left that I was leaving the next day, and she said she was like really excited. Then at the party she started talking with this other guy. I couldn’t hear what she said because the music was so loud, but when he looked over at me, he laughed. So I just left. Man, I’ve never felt so stupid.”
“So where have you been staying?”
“In Ph ạm Ng ũ Lão. There are lots of cheap places where Americans and other people stay who are backpacking around the country.”
“Ph ạm Ng ũ Lão?” I say, looking at Samuel. “Isn’t that where your store is, where Mai and I went yesterday?”
“Yes.”
“Is it dangerous for Bobby?” I ask. I already know it’s dangerous for Mai and me. Your honor, I present Exhibit A: Baby Cakes.
“It can be. Since you are Vietnamese, Bobby, you will have fewer problems than do Caucasians, but you have to be careful. You have been here before so you know that the locals can easily spot an American Vietnamese. Some don’t like you.”
“I know,” Bobby says. “I’ve gotten the hard looks and stuff. And people have hit me up for everything, like dope, girls, free taxi rides, and other stuff. I had to knock a guy’s hands off me yesterday when I was leaning against this wall just watching everything and wondering what I was going to do. I don’t know what he was doing, maybe pick pocketing me or something. I smacked his hands real fast and I think it surprised him. He did a lot of big man talking then walked away.”
Bobby slurps a mouthful of noodles and continues. “Then last night, I was sleeping in this place where there were like twenty other people sleeping. They had sleeping bags and stuff. I was just sleeping on the floor using my backpack as a pillow. One time I woke up, I don’t know what time it was, and this big dude was going through one of the pockets in my pack. I grabbed his wrist and he like hit the top of my head.” Bobby drops his chin and parts his hair to show us a small bump. “He said something to me but I couldn’t understand him. He sounded like those Nazis dudes in Saving Private Ryan. Maybe from Germany or something.”
“Good movie,” Samuel notes.
“What did you do?” I ask.
“I kicked him. I spun around on the floor like a crazy break dancer and kicked his ribs. And I yelled for everyone to wake up because there was a Nazi dude stealing from us. A bunch of big guys grabbed him and threw him out. I thought he might be waiting for me outside this morning, but he wasn’t.”
“Bobby has a black belt in taekwondo,” I tell Samuel.
“Good thing you have knowledge. Your visit has required you to apply it.”
“What’s your plan, now,” I ask, struggling not to smile as Bobby tries to figure out Samuel, his accent and his demeanor.
Bobby shakes his head. “Not sure. I’ve shamed my family so much, I don’t know if they would want me back. They were always so proud of me and just like that I ruin it. I don’t feel worthy of… I don’t know what I think.”
Samuel studies him for a long moment. “Do you really believe that, Bobby?” he says, reaching into his pocket.
The boy shrugs and picks at his noodles.
Samuel looks at him for a long moment before extracting a crisp bill and dropping it on the table. “Tell me, would you like this two-hundred đồng bill?”
Bobby lifts his head and wipes his eyes. “Sure.”
Samuel crumples the bill and pushes it a few inches in Bobby’s direction. “And now? Crumpled. You still want it?”
The boy shrugs. “Yes.”
“Now?” Samuel asks, wadding it to the size of a spitball. He sets it on the table and hammers it twice with his fist, flattening it. “Still want it?”
Bobby nods, leaning away from the crazy man.
“Hmm. So, no matter what I do to the bill, you still want it. Why?”
The boy shrugs. “It’s still two hundred đồng.”
“Indeed, sir,” Samuel says. “It still has—value.”
Bobby looks at him.
“There will be many times in your life when you make a bad decision and life crumples you, wads you into a spitball, and hammers you down. For a moment after you make those bad decisions, and you see the problems and the hurt they caused, you feel terrible, ashamed, worthless. But no matter what has happened, no matter how much you have been crumpled and wadded up into a spitball, and hammered down, you are still priceless to those who love you. You see, your value is not about your bad decisions, but about who you are. And I can see that you are a fine young man. Yes, you screwed up and that cannot be undone. That was yesterday. But you can fix it—now.”
Bobby looks at Samuel for a long moment, slowly nodding as he digests the words.
“Thank you,” he whispers, the tension gone from his shoulders and face.
Samuel looks at me and back to the boy. “‘Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That is why it is called the present.’ Do you know what that is from?”
Bobby shakes his head.
“Kung Fu Panda. Good movie. Lots of good messages.” Samuel returns to his noodles.
Bobby looks at me and nods his head toward Samuel. “Should I be scared?” he asks with a smirk.
“Eat your noodles now,” Samuel says, satisfied he’s fixed the boy.
“So do I get the two hundred đồng?” Bobby asks.
“No way,” Samuel says, slapping his palm on the spitball without looking up from his bowl. He pockets it.
*
Samuel keeps all exterior lights burning in the backyard at night, so even with the wooden shutter closed on my windows, bars of white light find their way through the cracks to fall unevenly throughout the dark room. One long rectangle of light runs across the floor and over the side of Bobby’s sleeping face where he lies curled in a tight ball on a mat at the foot of my bed. I adjust the ceiling fan to low speed, flop onto the bed wearing just my boxers, and kill the lamp. The fan feels good.
Bobby must have gotten to Samuel too, because he invited the boy to stay with us. On the way back to the house, Samuel mentioned his canh sát buddy, who he learned had just returned from Paris. The mention of a policeman stopped Bobby dead in his tracks. I thought he was going to bolt, but Samuel quickly patted his shoulder and said that his friend would help him as long as he didn’t kick the man in the face.
Once we got back here, Samuel found a mat for Bobby to sleep on, and the boy zonked out at the foot of my bed within seconds of lying down. No chatting, no shower, and no changing clothes. My shower didn’t wake him and neither did my fussing around with my suitcase. Kid probably hasn’t slept well since the plane trip.
He’s really got himself in a jam. Reminds me of how my mother used to send me off to school each day with the same four words: “Make good choices, Sam.” Sometimes I’d say it with her to make her laugh. Mom… Anyway, maybe I’ll give Bobby a make-good-choices speech in the morning.
Tired.
Very… tired…
Very…
“Where you been, Sam boy?” comes out of the rotten-mouthed tweaker, his head protruding from the tunnel under my bed.
The naked man’s head pops up next to him. “Helloooo, deeetec-tive,” he says in that syrupy voice.
Now Jimmy’s head appears, laughing. “This is cool!” the seven-year-old says. “It’s kinda like Whack-a-Mole at Chucky Cheese.”
“‘Cept ol’Sam boy don’t use no mallet,” the tweaker says, his remaining blackened teeth falling from his swollen, cracked lips. “He uses a Glock 9. Right Sam boy?”
The three heads disappear into the hole and pop right back up. “Neener, neener,” Jimmy says.
“Noooo shooooting, Sam?” the naked man asks. “Cat got your gun? Huh, Saaaam?”
I awaken with a jolt.
I’m not at Chucky Cheese. It was that dream again. When will they stop? Please make them stop.
I’m on my back, my forearm across my forehead. The back of my head hurts from where I got hit. I just want to—
A hand on my chest.
“Sam?”
“Huh?” I sit up quickly, widening my eyes to force out the fuzz. Bobby? What’s wrong with the kid?
“Sam, I am so sorry. I did not mean to startle you.”
Mai. I sit up and swing my feet to the floor.
“I knocked but you did not answer.”
She is standing next to the bed, her body lit only by the yard light that seeps through the shutters, and through what looks like white silk pajama pants and a white silk top held closed by a single button over her breasts. The pants ride low on her hips making her long, bare midriff look even more—
“I am sorry I slept so long today,” she says. “I want to be with you.” She drops her chin and looks at me with a combination of shyness and lust as she moves between my legs. “I have missed you.” She releases the lone button and shrugs off her top in one smooth move. She picks up my hands and places them on her breasts. So silky. So full. So warm. So—
Bobby!
She bends down. “Mai,” I say, but her devouring lips stop my words and inebriates my brain. She pushes me onto my back… the perfume of her hair… the silkiness of her skin… She moves a leg over me, and covers me with her hungry body.
Bobby!
“Mai—”
“Mmmm.” She lifts herself enough to slide her hand down between us. “Wow,” she whispers, then sucks my lower lip between her teeth.
“We’re not alone,” I manage.
“I would have to agree,” she says, her hand busy.
“Mai,” I say, sounding more like I’m coughing. “Bobby is here.”
“He called?” she asks disinterestedly.
“Yes, and now he’s here.”
“Here?”
“At the foot of the bed. On the floor.”
She looks at me for a moment, her hand no longer moving but still working its magic. “In this room?”
I nod.
“Sam!” She scrambles off me, leaning her weight on my—
“Ow!” I grab at myself.
—and lands on the floor, her top clutched to her chest. She peers slowly over the end of the bed; her mouth drops open. I roll up onto my knees and look. The boy is still curled into a ball, breathing softly, rhythmically.
Mai pushes me back onto the bed, and quickly slips on her top. “Why did you not say anything?” she whispers.
“I tried, but you kept interrupting and then for a few seconds I kind of forgot.”
“You forgot a boy is sleeping right there?”
“Sorry. You mad?”
“Of course,” she says. “I will see you tomorrow.”
“Wait. It seems he’s a sound sleeper. Maybe if we were careful not to make a sound—”
“Trời ơi!,” she says in the same tone one would say ‘what a pervert!’ She picks up a silk bathrobe that matches her pajamas and slips it over her shoulders. She opens the door quietly, steps part way out, and turns back to me. The backlighting is bright enough to penetrate the layers of silk, revealing all the wonders I’m not going to get tonight. “You are a bad man, Mister Sam,” she whispers. Oh man, the way she says it…
“Wait, Mai. Maybe if we were careful not to wake Bobby, we could carry him out into the yard…”
She closes the door.
Bobby starts to snore, quite loudly for a little guy. And annoyingly.