CHAPTER 19

Above the open door, OPIUM was spelled out in the red neon typeface that adorned Chinese take-out boxes, a font whose name might be chop suey, ching-chong, or ah-so-asshole. At least the Boss had shown some class and did not have a gigantic gong inside, ready to be struck by an artificially bucktoothed servant every time a guest entered. Instead you heard the same jazz quartet that had played at the orgy and was now swinging here, having had the opportunity, unlike you, to go home and rest. This was true for Lousy as well, who had ditched his harem guard costume for a more contemporary look, a mixture of Parisian bohemian and Nazi chic: basic black turtleneck, black slacks, black leather jacket, and black boots. The look perfectly suited the vibe of OPIUM, for what OPIUM represented was not the ancient or even just slightly older Orient of the nineteenth and earlier twentieth centuries, when French and British monopolists, the original global drug runners and pharmaceutical warlords, had forced the natives at gunpoint to buy their opium. Oh, no! This was the new and modern Orient, where opium was both cool and quaint, chic and cute, addictive and undemanding. Opium was the whole package and the perfect lover. No wonder why some people, like you, preferred the remedy.

Where’s the Boss? said Lousy, who was manning the velvet rope and artificially creating suspense by lining up a long queue of patrons. The females were quite a sight, all legs, and the males were quite a smell, more heavily dipped in cologne than the women were in perfume. As for you, you had gone back to your aunt’s apartment after leaving Heaven, and there you had changed into the only decent outfit you owned, a slim-fitting, secondhand dark gray suit with a three-button jacket that dated from the early 1960s, which clashed with the pastel shirts and exaggerated silhouettes of both the men and the women, their shoulders inflated with enormous pads large enough for eagles to land on. The suit was a gift from the now-too-rotund Maoist PhD, who had worn it in his university days when he rocked out to Johnny Hallyday. Your aunt had not been home, and you had taken advantage of her absence to wake yourself up with a shower, which also washed the sweat, smoke, fear, and taint of death from your body. Then you had drunk the last of the civet coffee and left the suitcase with the Boss’s money and the videos of the orgy under the sofa where you slept, the tapes worth much more than the cash. Even with the coffee, you felt light-headed by the time you parked far enough from OPIUM so that none of the dwarfs would see you arrive in the Boss’s car.

Where’s the Boss? Lousy shouted again.

How the fuck do I know? Last I saw him, he had just killed the Algerian. Then I went home.

The excuse would buy you some time. All you wanted was enough time to survive the evening, see Lana and kiss her hem, then come face-to-face with the faceless man and somehow manage to pull off a magic trick and save him from Bon’s vengeance. You entered OPIUM and the smell licked you, the languorous ceiling fans stirring the pheromonal trails of cologne and perfume, the smoke from cigarettes, hookahs, and your own homeland’s water pipes, and the haze of the incense burning in a censer carried around the club by a petite woman whose face was masked by a veil ripped from the pages of The Arabian Nights. You did not see Lana as you scanned the sexy crowd, but you did see a few women who had gotten into the spirit of OPIUM and draped their feminine faces with the silky black veils proffered by the incense bearer.

The mix of scents and your own light-headedness and exhaustion made you dizzy, and the only cure for that was a drink, which was the cure for most things. You passed the banana trees and birds of paradise, the rattan armchairs and red lanterns, the rice paper screens and framed calligraphy, and waited your turn at the bar among a crowd of giggling young things demanding drinks served in ceramic Buddhas and graced with tiny paper umbrellas that could provide shade for crickets or for the withered little worm of your morality. When it was finally your turn, you said, or croaked, I’d like the Guilt and the Shame, please.

The what?

The Guilt and the Shame! you bellowed, louder than you intended.

For a moment, everyone in your vicinity looked at you but, seeing that there was nothing to see, went back to their business of getting buzzed and trying to get laid without appearing to do so.

The bartender adjusted his turban and said, stiffly, I don’t know what that is, his professionalism being called into question by his ignorance.

It’s easy, you said. One part tequila, one part vodka, no ice, no garnish, no nothing. It should look like holy water and taste like Hell.

That sounds disgusting, said the bartender.

And, sipping the Guilt and the Shame for the first time, you admitted that it was disgusting, but how else should such a pairing taste? A few doses of the Guilt and the Shame and you wouldn’t remember a thing the next day, your head a coconut with the top sliced off, so someone could insert a straw and drink the contents of your mind while blowing bubbles into it. With a double Guilt and Shame in your hand—you always got a double, being a man of two minds—you wandered through OPIUM looking for Lana, but all you saw were servers wearing sexy cheongsams that ended midthigh and walls decorated with framed prints of black-and-white photographs from the nineteenth century: an aristocrat with curled fingernails the length of knife blades, bare-breasted women in indigenous clothing, an old lady smoking a cigar the size of a corncob. Are those Africans or Asians? a giggling young thing next to you asked another giggling young thing. I dunno, the other one said, resting her chin on the head of her ceramic Buddha. But they’re cool.

You looked over a mural that covered an entire wall. It was mesmerizing, a photorealistic black-and-white painting of your half-naked countrymen and -women kneeling on the earth in what appeared to be a rubber plantation, wiry and grimy, wearing only tattered pants and headbands to keep the sweat out of their eyes. Their backs were to the painter, or to the viewer, their concentration focused on the woman striding among them, wearing a close-fitting vermilion dress that hugged an incredible form. In contrast to the rest of the mural, she was in full, blazing color, and she appeared to be the most beautiful woman in France, otherwise known as Catherine Deneuve. Why she had been transposed to a rubber plantation, only the painter knew. The only non-photorealistic detail about the entire mural was that Catherine Deneuve did not have sweat stains in the armpits of her dress or on the sternum-sticking front of her dress, for even the most beautiful woman in France, and therefore the world, must sweat like everybody else. What a spell she cast, Catherine Deneuve, and indeed La France herself, her spectacle hypnotizing you until you felt a tap on your shoulder. It was Bon. Standing next to him was a slim woman in a minimalist, micro-miniskirted affair that was to “dress” what “bikini” was to “bathing suit.” Her slender form struck you even more than the form of Catherine Deneuve, hers being a shiv that wedged between your ribs and came extremely close to your lungs and heart. A black silk veil covered everything beneath her caramel-brown eyes. A hand with long, delicate fingers and manicured nails as polished as an adulterer’s lies rose from her side to sweep the veil off her face. You stepped forward, saying her name, ready to bestow bisous on her cheeks. She, in turn, drew back her elegant hand and slapped you so hard across the face you saw hammers and sickles, your ears ringing so loud you could barely hear your ever-present ghosts laughing their incorporeal asses off.

You bastard, Lana said, with an emphasis on “bastard.” I’ve waited a long time to do that.

The last time you saw Lana, in her apartment in Los Angeles, only a few hours before you killed Sonny, the two of you had swung along the electric dialectic between Hegel and Marx, Spirit and Being, Ideal and Material, Mind and Body, Making Love and Having Sex. She was like one of the forbidden red books that Man had shared with you clandestinely in your study group, beginning with The Communist Manifesto and Mao’s Little Red Book. Books like those inflamed the mind, energized the body, burned the hands that opened them, holding secret knowledge that paradoxically could be shared with everyone. You know you want it, Lana had said. I know you want it. And so you opened her. Both of you faced the mirrored doors of her bedroom closet, actors and spectators at once. You looked at each other’s reflections and each other’s gazes in the mirror, everything backward and yet still making sense. Seeing yourselves in this glassy scene, yourselves and yet not yourselves, made you hard as a mirror. When your mirror shattered, you lost not only your sense of sight but your sense of touch, every extremity numb, including your toes and fingertips. You collapsed, still conjoined, the remnants of your shattered self inside her, and with her eyes closed, language reinhabited her.

You bastard, she whispered, with an emphasis on “bastard.” I knew you’d be good.

Did Lana not remember that night? Or did she remember it all too well? It was difficult to ask, not just because of Bon being present but also Loan, who was saving a table on the second floor of OPIUM.

Your cheeks are so red, Loan said on seeing you. You’re as excited as I am to see Lana!

You mumbled something inarticulate that simply made you seem starstruck, although in this case the star, Lana, was not a superstar whom everyone would recognize, like Cher, or Olivia Newton-John, or Karen Carpenter, but a distant star in a galaxy that required an ethnic telescope to see. All the Vietnamese knew Lana, while anyone not Vietnamese had no idea who she was, although that did not stop the people in OPIUM—men and women—from looking, simply because she exuded a star’s heat and light.

You were hot just sitting next to her, and this, along with your exhaustion and your light-headedness and the memory of the Boss and the Ronin and Le Cao Boi, their faces permanently painted on the walls of the cave of your mind, combined with the Boss’s ill-gotten cash, led you to call over one of the waifish servers in her sexy scarlet cheongsam and order a bottle of the finest Champagne. We have a lot to celebrate, you said, and then leaned over and whispered, I work for the Boss, I should get the employee discount, to which she smiled stiffly, adjusted the chopsticks in her hair, and said she would see what she could do.

What are we celebrating? Loan said. Besides being here with Lana?

You lit Lana’s cigarette, which she had been holding in the air for a minute, waiting, and said, Yes, we are celebrating Lana arriving at last in Paris. We are also celebrating you two lovebirds.

Bon flushed with embarrassment but said nothing, preferring to tug at his tie while Loan squeezed his other hand.

Congratulations, Lana said, leaning forward to shine her light on them. You deserve it, Bon.

You could tell she remembered the last time she had been in a dimly lit situation with Bon, when you and he had seen her perform at Fantasia in Los Angeles. There he had confessed the loss of the loves of his life and had wept, the only time he had ever wept in the presence of an adult besides his wife and me.

Loan, Lana went on, you are a beautiful woman and I am so happy for the two of you.

Bon said, Uh—

Are you happy, Bon? Loan said.

Bon flushed even redder. Am I—am I— Emotion embarrassed him and made him stutter in a way that death and killing never did. Am I—uh—

You nudged him under the table with your foot, and when he looked at you, you gave the most imperceptible of nods, and he said, Yes—yes—happy—and, you know—uh—we all have to move on . . .

Yes, you must move on, Loan said, taking his hand. But that does not mean that you have to forget Linh and Duc. You never have to forget Linh and Duc, not that you ever would. They are always a part of you and therefore always a part me, dear Bon!

This flash-bang grenade of emotional explicitness thrown into Bon’s lap left him shell-shocked. As for you—you poor, dumb, crazy, ugly bastard­—­you suddenly and unexpectedly started to weep uncontrollably, making everyone uncomfortable. What the fuck was wrong with you? Your body shook as the tears gushed out and you sobbed, God, sorry, I don’t know—what—ugh—

You stood up to make a dash to the bathroom, but Bon leaned across the table, grabbed you by the hem of your jacket, and muttered, Sit down, you sad bastard. We’re all friends here.

Lana put her hand on your arm. It’s okay, she said. Let it out.

Not that you could have stopped. Where were these tears and sobs coming from, except from some false bottom in your soul? Beneath the false bottom, in unfathomable darkness, deeper than the pit of Hell, dwelt not fire but water, the profound well of your feelings, especially for your mother, the only woman whom you ever truly loved, a woman whom you would have died for, but no one gave you the chance. There was no other woman for whom you could have said the same thing, unlike Bon. Seeing the scar in the palm of his hand that signified your blood brotherhood, you knew he would die for you but that he would also do the same for Loan, as he would have sacrificed himself for Linh and Duc, if given the chance. As for you, you would die for Bon, and you would die for Man, even now, even after all he had done to you, because you were still blood brothers. Your love for these men, a love that might one day kill you, also let you know you were worthy of life.

I love you, Bon, you said.

It was something you neither wanted nor planned to say, and his stricken look told you that you had spoken the unspeakable, but so what? You had uttered so many obscenities in your life and committed so many sins that not even Bon’s dis-ease or the mocking laughter of your ghosts made you regret saying out loud what should have been performed only as inarticulate acts of manly camaraderie.

All right, Bon said, patting your hand. It’s all right.

The server came back at that moment with the Champagne and an ice bucket, and the next minute passed in awkward silence as she uncorked the bottle and poured four flutes of Champagne, all while you wept, sobbed, breathed deeply, huffed, snuffled, sniffed, and, finally, eased shut the trapdoor covering your soul’s false bottom. Um, the server said, perhaps taking pity on you, I just wanted to say that you do get the employee discount. She handed you the cloth napkin she would have wrapped the bottle with and left you to wipe away tears and blow the snot out of your nose.

Well, said Loan.

Sorry, you said, or maybe whimpered. So sorry. Really, very sorry.

Bon picked up his flute. I guess we should toast.

I have a toast, Lana said.

You all turned to look at her expectantly. She raised her flute, and so did everyone else. Here’s to you, she said to you, which surprised you and brought a hopeful smile to your face. Congratulations, you bastard. You’re a father.

To your credit, you neither passed out nor ran for the nearest exit. You simply gawked at Lana, swiveled your head left and right to look at the expressions of astonishment on Loan’s and Bon’s frozen faces, then turned back to an unmoving Lana. You’re a Father was the title of the most horrifying horror movie you could imagine, unless it was one of the sequels like You’re a Father Part 2, 3, or 4, or, if you were Catholic, You’re a Father 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, or 12. You knew yourself, and you had no desire to continue the cycle of abuse otherwise known as life. Your greatest contribution to the propagation of the human species was not to propagate yourself, even if your mother badly wanted a grandchild. Imagine how wonderful it would be if you brought a child into the world! On every occasion she had said this, you had smiled, caressed her hand, and lied. Of course, yes, one day, surely! Now doomsday had at last arrived and all you could blurt out to restart time and space was: But I used a condom!

Lana sipped her Champagne and said, Maybe you bought a bad condom.

If the rubber in that condom came from a French rubber plantation, then the French had fucked you yet again. You opened your mouth and Lana said, Don’t you dare ask if there might be another candidate. You’re the only asshole there is.

You shut your mouth and looked to Bon for help, but he swallowed all of his Champagne and said, It’s not the end of the world. Some of us want children.

Well, Loan said, smiling brightly. Boy or girl?

Girl.

A boy would have petrified you, because he would surely one day grow up to slay you, which you admittedly deserved, but a girl was not much better, perhaps worse, because you would have to do things like braid her hair, avoid discussing her menstruation, and contemplate her one day meeting someone exactly like you and marrying the rotten bastard. You breathed deeply to calm yourself down. What did normal people say in situations like this?

How—how old is she?

Three years old.

She’s here?

She’s in Los Angeles with my parents.

What’s her name?

Ada.

Ada. A slightly unusual name that Westerners could pronounce, and a completely foreign name that Vietnamese people could still wrap their tongues around. A-d-a. A Morse code of a name. Long A, hard d, short a. Three letters. A palindrome. The same whether left to right or East to West. Ada, the grandchild whom your mother had always wanted and whom you had finally given to her, too late.

Do you have a picture?

Ada was a little girl with pure black hair that framed her face and ended at her chin. You hated children, which was not a prejudice but rather a logical reaction from years of childhood exposure to the little trolls, who were nothing but monstrous adults-in-grooming. But this girl—everything about her face was round, from her eyes to her cheeks to the tip of her nose. Her eyes were dark, her lips pink, and her skin fair. If she had been fully white, her skin color would just be called white. But since she descended from you, and you were half white, she was only one-quarter white. Her semi-whiteness was not what interested you, however. What was most striking about her to you, besides the chubby cuteness that even you could recognize, was whom she resembled.

Your mother.

Ada, you said. Ada.

That’s her name, Lana said.

After the bottle of Champagne was finished, and after you had drained your third chalice of Guilt and Shame, and after Bon told Lana the short version of what had brought the two of you to the City of Light, and after Lana asked why you had gone to France and not the United States and you said because you wanted to visit the land of your father, and after she asked why you had never let anyone know you were here and you had honestly said because you didn’t think anyone cared whether you lived or died, which made her bite her lip and look away, you and Bon made a break for the men’s room. Facing the urinals, you informed Bon of the recent deaths, which fazed him not at all. They weren’t exactly the best people, he said, shaking off their fates and zipping his pants. But that’s a mess we have to clean up.

Right, you said, although you had no intention of cleaning anything up, which actually just meant making things even messier by continuing the war with the Mona Lisa and Saïd.

But first, we have to take care of the faceless man. Tonight.

You looked in the mirror and the sight of your reflection somewhat surprised you. Half the time now, you expected to see no one there, that your body would be as invisible as your soul. What you also saw, besides yourself and Bon washing hands, were your grinning ghosts, standing behind you and drilled with holes, still dripping with the perpetual stuff of life. But you did not see the Boss, Le Cao Boi, or the Ronin, or your father, or the communist agent.

He’ll be there, Bon said, wiping his hands. I know it.

I don’t have a gun, you said, which was your only gambit to avoid killing Man.

Bon shrugged, put his foot on the edge of the sink, and pulled up the hem of his pants to reveal a small pistol strapped to his ankle. My backup, he said, giving it to you. You should always have a backup. Have I taught you nothing?

You drove the Boss’s Bavarian behemoth to the theater, Bon and Loan in the back seat holding hands, Lana next to you. The Boss had a cassette tape of her songs, and as you drove, you listened to her cover of the song that had compelled you, when you heard her sing it in the Fantasia of Los Angeles, to take the fateful steps that led to her and ultimately to Ada. “Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down).”

Does she know I’m her . . . father? you said, finding it hard even to say the word.

I don’t have so much as a picture of you, Lana said. But she has asked about you.

She has?

Just who and where her father is, why everyone else has a father but not her.

What do you say?

My parents have forbidden me to say your name to her.

Madame. And the General, who had stuffed the muddy sock of these words in your mouth just as you were about to board the plane for Thailand and the invasion: How could you ever believe we would allow our daughter to be with someone of your kind? You are a fine young man, but you are also, in case you have not noticed, a bastard.

So I’ve been erased from her life? you said, still able to taste the foulness.

I tell Ada that her father is a soldier who went to take his country back, who gave everything he had to liberate his people. And that maybe one day he’ll come back to us and we will give him a hero’s welcome. When I say that she smiles and I hold her close. And feel sorry for you. Not because of what might have happened to you, but because you would never know what it feels like to hold your little girl, to hold her when she was a baby, to cuddle her fat little body, to squeeze her and make her giggle, to have her kiss you whenever you ask for it, to hear her say, Daddy, I love you, like the way she says, Mommy, I love you.

“Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down).”

You’ve missed all those things and you’ll never get them back. But that doesn’t mean you have to miss what she is like now, what she’ll be like next year and the rest of her life.

You want me to—

Not for me, you bastard. For her. She deserves to know her father and make up her own mind about you. Otherwise she’ll grow up hoping her heroic papa might come back one day. Or else she’ll believe that he’s in France and never bothered to let anybody know he was still alive and that he had abandoned her. Don’t do that to her.

Bon coughed. I think we passed the theater a couple of blocks ago.

After you parked the car, you and Bon walked to the theater behind Lana and Loan, who had many questions about Fantasia and its stars. The two of you smoked a cigarette in brotherly silence, each preparing for meeting the faceless man. You had no other ideas, a lack you blamed on having consumed too much of the remedy or not having any of the remedy on hand. Checking your pockets, you discovered that there was still no remedy secretly waiting for you. You began to tremble from all of it, the Champagne, the Guilt and the Shame, the fear of what would happen, the terror of suddenly being a father, the killing of the Boss, and the lack of the remedy. At the theater’s back door, you said goodbye to Lana, who said, Come see me after the show. We have more to talk about. I’m leaving tomorrow for Berlin.

Germany?

The Vietnamese there love us.

She is so nice, a starstruck Loan said as you walked to the front. You’re so lucky. I can’t believe that she—that you—not that she wouldn’t with—well, you know what I mean.

You did indeed know what Loan meant and you took no offense, since you were so revolting that you revolted even yourself. The only ones more offensive than you that night were Angry and Smelly, lurking in the theater lobby.

Where’s the Boss? said Angry.

And Le Cao Boi? added Smelly.

How the fuck do I know? you said. Last I saw him, he had just killed the Algerian. Then I went home.

Hey, said Angry. There’s the Boss’s secretary.

The luscious secretary had arrived for the VIP reception in the lobby, thankfully no longer wearing a see-through nightgown but instead an elegant midnight-blue evening gown with a dead animal draped on her shoulders. On closer inspection, the poor thing turned out to be just a fur.

Hey, said Smelly. Where’s the Boss?

How should I know? said the luscious secretary. Then she looked at you, curled her lip, and hissed, You’re disgusting, you filthy bastard!

Goddamn! said Angry, nudging you as the luscious secretary walked away. She must be having a hell of a period.

Or you did something to her that the Boss won’t like, said Smelly.

Angry and Smelly contemplated you the way butchers inspected barbecued ducks hung by hooks from their anus. So, before matters got worse, you confessed to your fecal faux pas in the Boss’s bathroom, leaving Angry and Smelly howling with laughter until tears squeezed out of their eyes. Filthy bastard, they said, chuckling. Filthy bastard!

What was that all about? Loan said when you joined her and Bon.

She handed you a flute of Champagne and you said, Nothing. How about a toast? To the two of you. And because it was Paris, because it was love, you said, Levons nos verres à l’amour!

Loan’s smile faded even as you and Bon clinked your flutes.

Something wrong? Bon asked, his flute suspended in the air.

Yes, Loan said, pale. He just asked us to raise our glasses to death.

L’amour ou la mort? Love or death? What was the difference? Some say tom-ay-toe, some say tom-ah-toe. It was only a slip of the tongue, or rather, it was your tongue unable, in conjunction with your lips, to mold the crucial word properly. Damn the language of Molière! Always putting words in your mouth that got stuck in your molars, but then again, every language does that. Unfortunately, there was no way to call the whole thing off. Not with Bon’s backup tucked into your waistband backing you up, not with Bon next to you scanning the lobby for the faceless man as more and more excited patrons of Fantasia arrived. Loan had wandered off to chat with friends after the fatal switch you had committed, while you made small talk with the bohemian youth of the Union, who greeted you heartily and then whispered to inquire about the goods. You told them to call you tomorrow, although you had no idea where you would be then, except covered with earth and six feet closer to your mother if the remaining dwarfs found out what happened or if Saïd changed his mind. Meanwhile, you just wanted to enjoy, for a brief moment, the rare sight of harmony in the lobby, as Vietnamese people of all kinds mixed together in joyful anticipation of Fantasia: the liberal to left-wing to outright communist members of the Union, who had been in France two or three generations and tended to be middle class to upper-middle class and above; the conservative to right-wing to outright fascist members of the Association, who were recent refugees and tended to be very poor to somewhat poor to working class; and everyone in between, those on the margins, or the politically uninterested, wanting only to enjoy themselves, which made them the same as just about everybody else on the planet.

It’s the ambassador, Bon said.

The ambassador had the shape of a bowling pin and looked fairly well fed, given that he was representing a starving country where people lived on rations, or so Le Monde and Le Figaro reported. He was with a woman in an ao dai, presumably his wife, and two teenaged children, a boy and a girl, the former in an ill-fitting suit, the latter in an ao dai like her mother. Members of the Union flocked to greet them but also to put a wall between them and the Association’s members, who glared and muttered. I’ll get him, too, Bon said, and you murmured encouragingly. Who were you to get in the way of a man’s dreams and aspirations?

Then it was showtime, with no sign of the faceless man, and you followed Bon into the theater to join Loan.

Everything all right? she said to Bon, ignoring you.

Everything’s fine, Bon said. We were just people-watching.

Programs rustled in people’s laps as they murmured, chattered, and laughed. The curtains were still closed but anticipation was high, for your people had waited months for Fantasia to arrive. The only one disappointed was Bon, although you were relieved, if for the exact same reason: no faceless man. Both of you should have known better.

You had barely taken your seats when someone behind you said, Take a look at that guy, so you did as the man strode down the aisle to your right. He wore a nondescript dark blue suit, an average outfit for an officially underpaid civil servant from a poor country. His wispy hair revealed an underlying parchment of scarred scalp, partly covered by a black band around the back of the head. Bon inhaled sharply as the man paused before the row in which the ambassador sat. When he turned to his left so that he could enter the row, the entire theater saw what the person behind you had glimpsed: not a face but a mask, held in place by the black band. A mask with eyebrows, cheeks, and a broad, but certainly not flat, nose. A mask with lips, as well as holes for eyes that might be ever-so-slightly angled, or tilted, but certainly not slanted. A mask with a face that might have been Asian in its inscrutable features, but that might also have been just human in its unreadable immobility. A mask that was utterly, completely, thoroughly, and indisputably white.