He stepped over the legs of those with their backs up against walls, using Coke bottles for ashtrays, sharing rolling papers and pizza brought up, dried and cold now, curled in boxes. He saw some guys from the bureau and fell into conversation about an assignment. Curtis’s girlfriend arrived in a miniskirt and unshaven legs, looking like a scruffy cheerleader, and kissed him full on the mouth. Locke showed up, holding court with one group, then another. People called him ‘The Information’, a name he didn’t seem to mind. A couple of guys would go off to find some more beer, or better beer, or more pot, or better pot. A group would bring in a few more records and then, for no reason, a song would be interrupted halfway through as the LP was changed, the great scrape of the needle across vinyl singing in the speakers and someone calling out, Shiiiiit, what are you doing, man? A bicycle was hauled up the stairs—it belonged to a student who didn’t dare leave it on the street. A guy whose two silver bars said he was a captain borrowed it off him and was now trying to wheel it through the crowd. The captain was here only because his girlfriend lived in the hotel. She was nothing to do with the war, but exported goods to the US.
War talk, all of it. Locke described a particular hill battle near Kontum and how he’d traded cigarettes for grass, ounce for ounce, and all the better ways they could have used the Montagnards as fighting soldiers with American advisers, but didn’t, and now they’re giving information both sides, what a fucking waste. The guy he was talking to said he’d lost three cameras: one stolen, one ruined by water, and another hit by shrapnel.
While you were using it?
No, man, it was in my hag.
There were correspondents, and soldiers—officers—and two GIs on R&R planning to bunk in the room, guys who worked construction or something anyway and didn’t talk about the war or anything but just sat stolidly and drank one bottle of 33 beer after another, lining up the empties in neat rows like game pieces.
It was odd to see anyone sober, or anyone over thirty. He watched Susan and noticed that she didn’t drink much, that she didn’t know many people. She seemed to flit about, talking only briefly here and there, not entirely at ease. She had some friends among the exhausted nurses, who slumped on the floor with their oversized drinks, and pulled her down to talk to them. There were women: wives or girlfriends, some who worked for the USO or other relief organizations, the nurses who’d been brought in by jeep by some bunch of seriously in-breach soldiers. The women had their moments of peculiar talk and outrageous flirtations, except for the nurses who looked so tired they might lie down and sleep right there across a doorway if that’s where they fell. They sat on the floor or lay on the floor, their hair falling all around them like lank seaweed, looking up at the ceiling fan going round and round, or staring at the smouldering end of their lit cigarette, or leaning into the arms of one guy or other, crowding around the air conditioner, laughing, drinking, once in a while bursting out crying.
At last he found her alone at the window, one of three large sash windows with great swags that had grown dusty and old now, the ornate gold piping frayed along the seams. He went to the window next to where she was standing, amazed that she had not noticed him yet, much less recognized him. It occurred to him that she might be avoiding him. The way she studied the sidewalk outside seemed almost a deliberate turning away, and in one respect this gave him hope. That he’d had an impact on her, that she hadn’t forgotten the bunker in Con Thien, what passed between them in those minutes, what he thought had passed. If she wanted to avoid him, then it must be that she remembered, that she knew the power of their first, extraordinary meeting when she fled like Cinderella from the ball, holding her helmet with one hand, her notebooks in the other. In his day dreams he had often entertained himself with that last image of her, running toward the jeep, leaping up on to the open bed. It seemed wholly at odds with the woman he saw now, in a dress that hugged her hips, her hair falling in a fan across her shoulders, and the contrast he found dazzling, exhilarating. He didn’t know if he dared talk to her.
He glanced through the window and saw army trucks and clusters of careening bicycles, people rushing from the first throes of evening rain. The pedicab drivers leaned into the motion as they worked. The kids traded money and sold things they’d found or scrounged, pens and card packs, pictures of naked girls, all of them getting soaked now, getting drenched. A boy in a T-shirt three sizes too small and a pair of underpants, nothing more, darted across the crazy street like a dog, trying to avoid being killed outright, selling cigarettes that nobody wanted to buy. It began to rain harder and his hair shined with it, his underpants dragged down his hips, his bald little legs splashed in puddles. At some point the boy looked up and saw Marc at the window and called out Wanna buy? Marc reached into his pocket and found a clump of notes, dropping a colorful bill down to the boy who stood with his hand stretched out, his chin to the sky, rushing one way, then another as the note floated, swooped and dived to the street below. It felt mean to have made him work so hard for the note, so he threw some change and the boy ran for it, too; other children, hearing the coins scattering on the pavement, started doing the same. A crowd gathered, rushing in from adjoining lanes, not just children but old men, teenage girls, all of them rushing now. A child with only one arm danced below the window trying to lift the coins from the road with her single outstretched hand. A round woman with long gray hair pushed a child to one side. They were all running for the coins, calling up, screaming for more. But the rain was fierce, banging down on to the steaming tarmac and bouncing up again, streaming down the edges of the road, soaking the clothes and hair of the people below and drowning out their voices.
Suddenly, a spear of lightning cracked across a piece of sky to the west and all the lights went out. The street went black as though it had disappeared altogether, like a stage across which the curtain has been drawn. Inside, too, the room, the party, was suddenly immersed in darkness. He glanced away from the street and into the sudden gray shadows of the hotel—he didn’t even know whose room it was—and looked across at the adjacent window, blinking, searching for Susan, but she was gone.
The lights stayed off but no one was alarmed. It was a city of precarious amenities. Water, light, access down a particular street or building, at a particular hour or a different one, were granted or not granted. One night, as the guest of an embassy official (someone he assumed to be a spook), he’d been in one of Saigon’s best French restaurants when a blackout had taken hold of several city blocks. The waiters hurried with hurricane lamps and table candles, reassuring the diners that all was well. They had a generator for the kitchen, the food would not be a minute delayed. The waiters carried small flashlights, like theater ushers, and set out a line of lanterns at the station where they brought orders. He and the official carried on with their meal, though the man seemed suddenly quite awkward, straining through the darkness to see the other restaurant guests, who paid no attention at all to the blackout. If anything, they seemed to enjoy it. Outside, the streets were lit by headlamps and starlight; while the restaurant, now cloaked in the candles’ amber glow, felt like a festive cavern. Everyone spoke more softly than before, as though the candles enforced a kind of secrecy, and Marc found himself having to drop his own voice, leaning across the table and into the cloud of light made by the flickering flame between him and the official, in order to hear the man speak. They carried on for a few minutes and then he saw the official’s face suddenly glaze over. He was staring into a small spray of flowers that had been on the table all the time but, until now, had gone unnoticed. They were tiny lavender buds, each one the size of a thimble, and they let off an unusually strong scent in relation to their small size. In an abrupt move, the official dropped his napkin on to the table. Let’s get out of here before someone takes us for a couple of faggots, he said, standing. He summoned the waiter for the bill, threw some money on the table. One of the waiters followed them out apologetically, suggesting that they at least finish their main course, but the official said, Wrap it up, give it to someone. He looked down at the plate of change the waiter had brought, rumpled bills on a saucer of white porcelain. To Marc, he said, They give you these dirty notes so you’ll leave them as a tip. Why should I give him all that? The place doesn’t even have working lights. Then he said, Come on, let’s get something to drink.
Marc remembered this now, standing in the darkened party, and it made him smile and cringe at the same time. He listened as someone bemoaned the dead stereo, the unexpected discontinuation