IN HANOI, Vanessa works with a translator, Ngon, who is around our age. When she introduces herself to me, she tells me her name means "soft and nice communication," and asks me about mine. I hear Bruce Willis in Pulp Fiction answer for me: "I'm an American; our names don't mean shit."
"I looked it up once," I say. "Think it means 'priceless.'"
She nods, then turns to Vanessa. "Vanessa, I never asked what your name meant. What does it mean?"
Vanessa blushes. "Butterfly."
"Why are you embarrassed? That is very beautiful."
"My father used to call me that." I turn and look at Vanessa, but she's still looking at Ngon.
Ngon thinks for a moment and then her eyes light up as if she's made a great discovery. "Do you guys like pizza?"
That night, as Vanessa and I get ready for dinner, I skim Lonely Planet's restaurant index. Apocalypse Now. DMZ Bar. The Raging Bull. I imagine Ngon flipping through a guide to Vietnamese restaurants in the U.S. and reading: Saigon Palace, Lucky Grasshopper, Pho Getta 'Bout It. Ngon's parents often spoke to her in French. Perhaps Ngon remembers enough to walk through Boston, gaze at Au Bon Pain and imagine opening a restaurant in Hanoi called To the Good Bread.
"Think Ngon would be up for a "roadhouse?" I yell to Vanessa while she's in the shower.
She laughs. "They serve pizza?"
"Of course," I say. "Just like a good Vietnamese roadhouse should."
"It's your call."
We tell Ngon we want the restaurant to be a surprise.
I hear The Cowboy Saloon before I see it. Michael Jackson had died the week before, so they are blasting a re-mix of "Smooth Criminal." As we approach the brightly-lit saloon—a two-tiered building with wooden railings, wrap-around porch, and spring-loaded doors—I see a banner advertising a Michael Jackson tribute show, an arm-wrestling competition, dollar drafts, and personal pan pizzas.
"Wow," I say.
"Nice work," Vanessa says.
Ngon giggles. "You picked here? This place is very loud."
I look up the block at the long row of dark store fronts.
"Give it a shot?" I ask.
They stare at me as if my question answers itself. We walk up the steps, pay the ten-dollar cover charge to the Vietnamese bouncer dressed in a pink cowboy shirt and Wranglers, and push our way through the saloon doors.
The inside is dark save for flashing neon lights. A massive disco ball spins above the bar. Vietnamese women in cowboy shirts knotted above their navels deliver glass boots full of beer to the dimly-lit tables. We appear to be under-dressed. The customers are mostly white men in suits, ties loosened around their necks, top buttons undone. On the wooden stage, beside haystacks and wagon wheels, several Vietnamese women move back and forth, swaying to the music.
We sit away from the bar, in line with the stage. The three of us lean close and yell in each other's ears. The laminated drink menu offers margaritas, sangria, Long Island Iced Teas, Sex on the Beach, Fuzzy Navels, and something called "Hot Screw against Wall." I pass the menu to Ngon and look around the bar.
"See anything you like?" Vanessa asks.
"Hey, I didn't know it was gonna be like this."
"I was talking about the menu." She grins.
"This place is different now!" Ngon yells. "One time, it was a family place! Now different!"
I can't imagine families sitting here, even if the lights were bright and the cowgirls only served juice. Our waitress, an older Vietnamese woman, moseys over and tips her white straw hat. We pass around the menu and point at each drink. Ngon speaks into the waitress's ear. They giggle.
"What did you say?" I ask.
"I say no tequila in Hot Screw."
We eat our pizza and have several drinks. A man dressed in black, wearing a heavy, rubber, Michael Jackson mask, moonwalks onto the stage. He grabs the microphone with one hand, his crotch with the other. The crowd goes wild.
As he brings the microphone to his lips, I notice the rubber jaw has been cut out, allowing him to sing without removing his mask. He sounds exactly like Michael Jackson. Even the yips and squeals seem as if they are coming from the jukebox, and not the speakers at his feet. His backup dancers are young Vietnamese women who move like this is the first time they've heard the song.
Perhaps it's the opening chords to "Beat It" or the several empty glass boots on our table that encourage me out of my seat and up to the bar to request another round. The place is jammed and many of the waitresses are no longer circulating among the tables. Instead, they are perched on stools, yelling into the mens' ears beside them. I peel a wet menu off the bar and point out my order to the bartender. She wears a black cowboy hat with an LED screen on the front that flashes H. O. T.
Beside me, a red-headed man who looks to be about my father's age balances a young Vietnamese woman on his knee. He shouts at her over the music. She also wears a black cowboy hat, as did each of the young girls talking to the men in suits. I look back at Vanessa and Ngon clapping and singing. The black lights at the foot of the stage flash on, illuminating the white cowboy hats on the older Vietnamese waitresses, as they wipe dirty tables and stick their fingers into empty glasses.
After the arm-wrestling match between a short Vietnamese man dressed as Rocky and a stocky Irishman pretending to be Ivan Drago, Ngon asks for the check. Vanessa and I pay the bill.
I feel embarrassed, but can't say why. I don't own the saloon. I didn't choose the entertainment. I don't know for sure that the waitresses doubled as prostitutes. But I feel connected with the jumbled, distorted assortment of American pop culture that pulsed between the faux-wood tables and plastic cacti. I grew up on it. I know all the lyrics and movie quotes by heart and, though I hate to admit it, a part of me was comforted by the sights and sounds of it all. It felt similar to seeing McDonald's golden arches rising high over New England back roads, how on a long scenic drive that bright "M" elicits a mixture of guilt and ease.
We walk Ngon back to her apartment and she thanks us repeatedly.
"I hope it wasn't too much," I say.
"No," she says. "The pizza was very tasty."
She and Vanessa speak for a few minutes. They hold hands. I watch them talk, amazed by Vanessa's ability to connect with people so quickly. She has only known Ngon for a couple of days. Perhaps the hand-holding is a custom I am unfamiliar with. But then I remember a photograph from Vanessa's trip to the Philippines: Vanessa sitting on an old woman's couch, their hands clasped tightly between them.
"I feel bad," I say to Vanessa on our walk back to the hotel. "I hope I didn't offend her."
"No, not at all," Vanessa says. "She's fine. It was an experience."
"I wonder what my Dad would think of that place. This whole place. It's like walking into one giant Hard Rock Café. All the stuff that once meant something else is on display or for sale."
"It is weird," Vanessa says. "But what did you expect?"
"I don't know. Not this." It was quiet for a moment. "It's amazing that you and Ngon are so close already."
"She's a really smart woman," Vanessa says. "And she's been through a lot. She lost her father during the war. That's how she put it. 'I lost my father and I look for him all the time.'"
I reach over and hold her hand. She looks up at me, then gently presses her cheek to my shoulder. It makes sense now why Vanessa is so open with Ngon. The word "father" sounds different to me when Vanessa says it, as if when the word moves between her lips, it does not have the same meaning. If Vanessa happens to mention "father" in an e-mail, the word seems to glow, cast in permanent highlighter. Sometimes I feel a little uncomfortable even saying the word "father" around her. From what she's told me, her father was a loud, dominating presence: His incessant yelling from the sidelines of her soccer or basketball games, his fits when the orange juice cap wasn't twisted tight enough, or his tirades over Vanessa's hair in the shower drain. Once, knowing he'd use the shower after her, she spelled out her name with long wet hairs on the tile wall. He didn't talk to her for three days.
The night Vanessa moved away to college, he wouldn't open the door to his apartment because she was five minutes late. He yelled out through the window, but refused to see her. She left. Soon after, his body rejected a second liver transplant, and he died.
Perhaps if I met the man I'd feel differently, but each time I visit Vanessa's family, her mother and sister sitting close on the couch chatting like girlfriends, it's hard for me to imagine him in the family. I know his death is a wound, but the three women seemed to have healed, in the way a scar pulls taut the healthy skin that remains.
I think about Ngon's father and Vanessa's father and the ways we choose to describe the dead: passed on, or in a better place, or lost. If I know exactly where my father is, then what am I searching for?
By the time we find the hotel, the sun is rising over Hoan Kiem Lake. We stop at a small convenience store for water. We wait in line behind a Vietnamese man who is also buying two bottles of water. The cashier rings him up and the man pays with a few small coins. When we approach the counter, the cashier smiles, rings up our water, and asks for triple the amount. Vanessa and I look at each other. The cashier nods. We look at the man with the water. He nods. We pay.
Lonely Planet encourages me to barter, but I feel ridiculous, squabbling over a few thousand dong, the equivalent of pennies. My life in the United States is devoid of bargaining. I was raised to accept face value. Besides, the Vietnamese salespeople were slick: pushy men on the corners hawking U.S. dog tags or children selling Zippo lighters. A man working at the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City offered me the same fake souvenirs. His upturned palms gestured to the dog tags in the display case as if he were a model on The Price is Right. I imagined a massive sheet metal factory tucked into the city, stamping out the social security numbers and blood types of soldiers that never lived.
Before Vanessa and I leave the convenience store, I see a tray of Army pins and patches. As I dig through, I discover another tray, this one filled with coins. U.S. coins. I wish I could say that the Eisenhower silver dollar—the same year as my father's coin—glows like the Golden Ticket or casts a halo around the store or burns in my hand like coal. But it doesn't. It's dirty and dull, buried beneath wheat pennies, buffalo nickels and a gilded Sacajawea glancing over her shoulder.