Then Eileen was at my elbow. She’d moved her chair closer to mine and she leaned near and she said in a low voice, “The men do go on about the war, don’t they?”
This snapped me out of my little fantasy and I looked over to Frank and he had turned his attentions strictly on my husband, and Vinh was listening to him, leaning slightly forward and listening as if with great interest. He spoke to Frank and I didn’t catch the words, but Frank nodded vigorously and said more and I turned to Eileen and replied, “My husband doesn’t often talk about all of that.”
“Was he a soldier?” Eileen asked.
“Yes,” I said, “a very good one. He was a major in the airborne. But later, about a year before the end of the war, he was reassigned to Saigon City Hall, where he worked in a special program to develop business in the city. They were trying until the very end to make the economy work, to make people want to defend their way of life. Everyone respected my husband.”
Eileen looked over to her husband and pursed her lips. “Frank was a good soldier, too. He wanted to do so much. He really felt like he was responsible for everyone.”
I looked at Frank and his hands were before him, gesturing, shaping some point. He was talking about helicopter engines. I said, “He has so much energy.”
Eileen Sighed softly, in both appreciation and exasperation, it seemed. “I just wish I could get him to focus it where it’s needed.”
I wondered where that might be, but I did not ask. Perhaps I should have. Perhaps Eileen had something she needed to talk about and she was waiting for me to ask. But I did not. I have no trouble intruding on people’s lives by reading the things that they show. But I have trouble asking my way in. So I sipped my own glass of white wine and Eileen and I watched the men talking for a while longer and then she leaned forward and touched her husband on the arm and said it was time to go.
Frank turned to her and looked at his watch and said she was right. He rose and shook our hands — his hand taking mine was large and hard but surprisingly gentle — and Eileen thanked each of us and said she hoped we could speak again soon and they moved off. I watched them carefully. Frank led the way with an air almost of determination, like weaving between these tables and overstuffed chairs took the skills of an experienced tracker. Eileen followed two paces behind. Passing by, Frank bumped one of the chairs and kept on moving and Eileen paused to straighten it.
When he was clear of the lounge area, Frank stopped and turned and waited for his wife, but when she drew near him, he was looking out over our heads, back out to the sea, and she spoke a word to turn him and they walked off. They were side by side now, but they did not hold hands, though American couples often do.
Vinh and I remained in the bar for only a brief time. In the elevator, we were alone, but as the doors were closing, a young couple got into the car with us. She had one of those hairdos that looked like she’d slept standing on her head, full of wild waves and wrinkles. The man had a very thick neck and they were both wearing bathrobes. But their hair was not wet and they did not smell of suntan lotion, so I knew they’d spent the day in bed. Newlyweds. And I knew at once that they, too, were from a game. When they entered, the wife’s robe fell open at the top and showed a lot of bare cleavage, and the husband clamped it shut and looked at me and said, “She’s like that.” “So are you,” she said, slapping at his hand. “My little show-off,” he said and he tried to kiss her on the cheek. She turned her face in mock anger and then kissed him and I looked to the front of the car. “The Newlywed Game.” Unquestionably.
And I thought about Frank and Eileen, leaving the lounge. How they had moved away with a space between them and he had not taken her hand and she did not take his, for whatever reason. As Vinh and I lay beside each other that night in the dark, well before Vinh’s breathing was due to turn soft and regular with sleep, I said, “What do you think of them?”
From the few moments of silence that followed, I knew that he understood who I was talking about, even though he finally said, “Who’s that?” If he really didn’t know, then he would have asked that question immediately. Instead, he’d been trying to think what to say, or perhaps trying to understand for himself why he’d been as receptive as he had to the couple. So now he either knew the reason and didn’t want to tell me or he was as puzzled as me; I didn’t know which.
“Frank and Eileen Davies,” I said.
“Oh, them,” he said, and then there was silence again.
I waited for a while and decided not to let him off the hook.
“Well?”
“What’s that?” He forced a slur into his voice. But I knew he wasn’t really sleeping.
“You seemed to be very friendly with Frank.”
“Was I friendly exactly?”
“You ordered him a drink.”
“I couldn’t avoid that. There they were.”
“When the two of you were speaking, you leaned forward for his words. You don’t do that to just anyone.”
Vinh thrashed about with his covers. “I hate it when you do that,” he said.
Two could play his little game. I let a few moments pass and then said, “What’s that?”
“You know what I’m talking about. When you start telling me what my little gestures and looks mean. I don’t even know.”
I could hear music from somewhere. Very faint. I couldn’t control the sigh that billowed up from my chest. It was very clear, the sound of my Sigh in the dark room, but I wasn’t sure that Vinh had noticed. I wished that he had. I wished that he had my own little gifts so he could tell me why it was that I made that sound right then.
Then he said, softly enough that I could hear the music behind his words, “I’m not being critical.”
I didn’t answer. I turned my face toward the sliding doors. I’d left one of them open and the curtain moved a little in a breeze and the music was out there, out in the bay. There was a horn and there were guitars and a violin. “I don’t know,” Vinh said.
“You don’t know what?” I asked, and I truly didn’t.
“I don’t know what it is about that man.”
I found I didn’t care, for the moment. I rose and moved to the windows and listened to the music. It was a looping kind of melody, a mariachi waltz. I brushed the curtain aside and stepped out onto the balcony and far out in the dark bay was a triangle of colored lights, red and blue, and it was moving slowly and I looked harder and could see the boat, its decks flashing faintly, color wheels whirling there, and I could imagine the couples waltzing, the sweat still on them from the fast songs, and now they were holding each other close and gliding across the deck, their skin flushed with colored light.
“What is it?” Vinh’s voice came to me faintly, as if it was he who was far across the bay. I could even hear the rasp of the maracas now. And then the maracas faded, and then the strings, and the horn, and I watched until the boat disappeared down the shore. When I slipped back into bed, Vinh was asleep.