“Okay, I’m not perfect. Is that what you want me to say? I’d like you to come back downtown with me, and you know it. But I could just as well walk away right now, and you know that too.”
“Think about this, Tina. When I was putting all those ads in the Voice for you?”
He nodded.
“Didn’t you like seeing them?”
He nodded again.
“You looked for them every week?”
Tina nodded yet again.
“Yet you never even considered putting one in yourself, did you?”
“Is that what this is about?”
“Not bad, Tina. I’m glad you didn’t say you were too old for that sort of thing.”
“Maggie, a lot of things are going wrong right now.”
“Did the city close Saigon?”
“I closed it. It was getting to be impossible to cook and kill bugs at the same time. So I decided to concentrate on killing bugs.”
“As long as you don’t get mixed up and start cooking them.”
Annoyed, he shook his head and said, “It’s costing me a ton of money. I’m still paying a lot of salaries.”
“And you’re sorry you didn’t go to Singapore with the little boys.”
“Let’s put it this way. I’d be having more fun than I am now.”
“Right now?”
“Now in general.” He looked at her with love and exasperation, and she looked calmly back. “I didn’t know you wanted me to put ads in the Voice too—otherwise I would have. It never occurred to me.”
She sighed and raised a hand, then slowly let it fall back to her folded knees. “Forget about it. But just remember that I know you a lot better than you’ll ever know me.” She gave him another calm look. “You’re worried about them, aren’t you?”
“Okay, I’m worried about them. Maybe that’s why I wish I was with them.”
She slowly shook her head. “I can’t believe that you get half-killed and think that you should be able to go on the way you did before—like nothing happened.”
“Plenty happened, I don’t mind admitting it.”
“You’re scared, you’re scared, you’re scared!”
“Okay, I’m scared.” He exhaled noisily. “I don’t even like going out alone in the daytime. At night I hear noises. I keep thinking—well, weird shit. About Nam.”
“All the time, or just at night?”
“Well, I can catch myself thinking weird shit at any time of the day or night, if that’s what you mean.”
Maggie swung her legs out from beneath her. “Okay, I’ll come down and stay with you for a while. As long as you remember that you aren’t the only one who can walk away.”
“How the hell could I forget that?”
And that was all it took. He did not even have to confess to her that right before he had come uptown, he’d been standing in his kitchen holding a bottle of beer and for a second had known that it was Ba Muy Ba and that the bullet with his name on it, the one that had missed him all those years ago, was still circling the world, homing in on him.
The General who was now a preacher stared at Tina just as if he was still a pissed-off general, and then barked a few words at Maggie in Chinese. Maggie answered with a phrase that sounded sullen and adolescent, and the General proved to Tina once and for all that he would never comprehend the Cantonese language by beaming at Maggie and taking her in his arms and kissing the top of her head. He even shook Tina’s hand and beamed at him too.
“I think he’s happy to get rid of you,” Tina said as they waited for the slow-moving, odorous elevator.
“He’s a Christian, he believes in love.”
He could not tell if she were being sardonic or literal. This was often the case with Maggie. The elevator clanked up to the General’s floor and opened its mouth. A sour stench of urine rolled out. He could not let Maggie see that he was afraid of the elevator. She was already inside, looking at him intently. Tina swallowed and stepped into the reeking mouth of the elevator.
The doors slammed behind him.
He managed to smile at Maggie. Getting inside was the hardest part.
“What did he say to you, just before we left?”
Maggie patted his hand. “He said you were a good old soldier, and I should take care of you and not get too mad at you.” She glinted up at him. “So I told him you were an asshole and I was going back with you only because my English was getting rusty.”
Downstairs, Maggie insisted on taking the subway, and demonstrated that she could still do an old trick of hers.
They had reached the top of the steps and were moving toward the token booth. The wind cut through his heavy coat and lifted the hood against the back of his head. When he looked around for Maggie and did not see her, the moment filled with a bright dazzle of panic.
A noisy knot of boys in black jackets and knit caps, one of them toting a huge radio, were punching the air and bopping along the platform in time to a Kurtis Blow song. Black women in heavy coats leaned against the railing and paid them no attention. Far ahead, a few men and women stared almost aimlessly down the tracks. Tina was suddenly, painfully aware of how high up in the air he was—suspended like a diver on a board. He wished that he was holding onto a railing—it was as if the wind could lift him off the platform and smack him down onto Broadway.
He had automatically fallen into line at the token booth. The boys had collected up at the head of the platform. Tina reached into his pocket, furious with Maggie for disappearing and furious with himself for caring.
Then he heard her giggle, and he snapped his head sideways to see her already past the turnstile and out on the platform beside the impassive women. Her hands were shoved deep in the pockets of her down coat, and she was grinning at him.
He got his token and went through the turnstile. He felt absurdly tangible. “How did you do that?”
“Since you wouldn’t be able to do it anyhow, why should I tell you?”
When the train roared up before them, she took his hand and pulled him into the subway car.
“Are they in Singapore yet?” she asked him.
“They got there three or four days ago, I think.”
“My brother says they’re going to Taipei too.”
“I guess it’s possible. They’ll go wherever they have to go to find Underhill.”
Maggie gave him a half-scathing, half-sympathetic look. “Poor Tina.” She took Tina’s hand into her soft, down-padded lap.
He sat beside her in the loud train, his fear now mostly under control. No one was staring at him. His hand rested within both of Maggie’s funny little hands, in her lap.
South they flew beneath Manhattan in the filthy train, Maggie Lah with her large secret feelings and Tina Pumo with his, which ran queerly parallel to those of his friends under the patient gaze of Pun Yin. I love Maggie and I am afraid of that. She’s a kind of original. She leaves me in order to keep me, she’s smart enough to get out before I kick her out, and she proves it by coming back as soon as I really need her. And maybe Underhill is crazy and maybe I’m crazy too, but I hope they find him and bring him back.
Here is Tim Underhill, Tina thought, here is Underhill out in a section of Camp Crandall known familiarly to the madmen of the good old Rearing Elephant as Ozone Park. Ozone Park is a bleak section of wasteland about the size of two city blocks between the rear of Manly’s “club” and the wire perimeter. Its amenities consist of one piss-tube, which provides relief, and a huge pile of empty metal barrels, which offers shade and a pervasive smell of oil. Ozone Park does not officially exist, so it is safe from the incursions of the Tin Man, for whom, in true army fashion, should exactly equals is. Here is Tim Underhill, in the company of a number of comrades wasted on Si Van Vo’s 100s and getting more wasted on a little white powder Underhill has produced from one of his pockets. Here is Underhill recounting to all the others, who include besides myself, M.O. Dengler, Spanky Burrage, Michael Poole, Norman Peters, and Victor Spitalny, who just lurks around the edges of the barrels, now and then tossing little stones toward the others, the tale of the running grunt. A young man of good family, Underhill says, the son of a federal judge, is drafted and sent to good old Fort Sill in beautiful Lawton, Oklahoma.…