There are more pictures on the walls inside the office. Before and After pictures, profiles of breasts enlarged or made smaller. A picture of the doctor in Army fatigues sitting on a pile of sandbags. Tan closes her eyes, tries to steady her heartbeat.
Tan lived in a bad-smelling Mission Street hotel run by an old Thai man. The rent seemed high, but that was something the nuns hadn't taught about in English. Tan avoided talking to anyone, she took all her money with her if she went out and never walked more than a few blocks from the hotel. She waited for Plunkett.
A young brown-skinned woman with a little baby lived in the next room. Sometimes at night she would play her radio, slow, sad songs in Spanish to keep her baby from crying. Tan would lie in bed, listening through the wall, and think how nice it would be if she could be friends with the woman.
Tan waited. Her American money began to run out. She ate rice at a Vietnamese restaurant on Powell Street. On the sign out front was a map of Vietnam with the northern half painted red and the southern half painted green and all the major cities labeled. Young American men would come by with their girls and point to spots on the map, but very few came inside. Mr. Thuong, who ran the restaurant, would talk with Tan while she ate. He had come to America during the fighting between the French and the Communists. He seemed very kind, but Tan was careful not to tell much about herself. Her bill never came to what it said on the menu.
Tan waited in her room on Mission Street. She was afraid. Afraid of the Americans, afraid of being alone, afraid of being caught with the opium. They had searched her when she got to the Hawaii airport, a woman had put her hands up in Tan's private parts.
Plunkett wrote her a letter saying when he was coming. He wrote in the child-language he had used to talk with her. It was very hard to read. Tan went to the docks to meet him.
Passengers came off the big boat, but Plunkett was not among them. Tan asked a man from the boat, who took her to a policeman. The policeman said that Plunkett had been taken for questioning. He asked Tan's name and address and she gave him false ones. Plunkett never showed up at the hotel. Questioning meant the same thing in America that it did in Vietnam.
Mr. Thuong gave Tan a job at the restaurant when her money was gone. She made salads in the kitchen and tried to avoid the busboys and dishwashers, who were all Chinese. Mr. Thuong couldn't pay her much, she didn't have a Green Card, but if she ate at the restaurant she had enough to pay her rent.
One of the waitresses, a Korean girl named Kim, was friendly to her. Kim had another job, being a girl in a Chinese bar on Pacific Street. The Chinese men would come in a little drunk and Kim would sit by them and talk and they would buy her drinks. It made more money for the bar. The Chinese tried to do more and you could make extra. Kim let them touch her breasts. Kim said she was willing to sell her breasts but nothing beyond that. The girls in the bar were all Koreans and had American boyfriends or husbands. They had come over from their country with soldier husbands. Kim said it would pay much more than making salads, said the Chinese men would like Tan. She was small and delicate but had big breasts for them to touch.
Kim told her to have the round-eye operation. If she ever wanted to get an American boyfriend, to be able to become a citizen and get papers so she could have a nice job, she would have to have her eyes changed. That was how they wanted it. Tan said she was interested, but kept putting it off.
One morning Mr. Thuong came out from listening to the news and began to paint the bottom half of the Vietnam map red. There were tears in his eyes as he painted. At least, he said, it is all the same color now. It was that morning Tan decided for the operation.
Kim showed her the ad for the plastic surgeon in the yellow pages, a big ad with a picture of the doctor. Tan recognized his face.
Tan lies in the reclining chair wondering what he'll do. If he'll remember her. If he'll steal it from her or give her to the police. But one way or the other, she'll be free of it. The last of Vietnam locked inside her, next to her heart, will be gone.
The doctor comes in rubbing his hands on a towel. Tan catches her breath, tries to look calm. She wonders what she'll do when her eyes are round and unguarded.
Hello Tan, says Dr. Yin. I've been expecting you.
Children of the Silver Screen
AIN BLASTS THE STREET, each gray bullet bouncing up a half-foot from the pavement before it disintegrates. There is a loud, flat smacking from the posters on the wall. Black tears stream from
Bogart's eyes, strings of ink dribble from his cigarette and gun. In the background a burro smears into desert sand.
Shine unlocks the glass doors though it is still early. He examines his reflection — forty, pleasant-looking but not handsome. Comic relief maybe, or the hero's older brother. He has always thought of himself as a sidekick, but never found a Duke Wayne to play Ward Bond to. The type that could never carry a picture alone.
The regulars start to trickle in, sniffing and dripping on the nearly bald red carpet, and Shine calls Gerald out to man the tickets. Gerald is deep into Eisenstein today, making change and tearing stubs without looking up, scowling intently at the book in his lap. "Montage," he mutters from time to time, nodding his head. "Montage."
They straggle past him, the buck-twenty-five matinee regulars, stomping their feet and blowing their noses, peeking back uneasily at the storm-slapped doors. Shine slides behind the candy counter and stations himself between gurgling tanks of orange and purple. He tries to guess what each will have, though there is not much to guess at with the regulars. Raisinets are a big mover, as are Black Crows and Chuckles, but the word has spread that the mr. Goodbars are past their prime.
The regulars mill beneath publicity pix of stars past and stars present, touring the lobby walls like penitents making the Stations of the Cross. A tall girl, made taller by the rubycolored platforms she stands on, pops jawbreakers with her back teeth and wrinkles her nose at Carmen Miranda. The ruby is repeated on the girl's fingernails and wide, painted mouth, her polka-dot blouse is cinched in at the waist and puffed at the shoulders. Carmen Miranda smiles back, topheavy with fruit, face frozen in a wink. Hard candy crunches, plastic jewelry clacks and the tall girl hums the opening to "Give Me a Band and a Bandanna." Catholic Prep boys, four of them, fidget and jostle in the middle of the floor and periodically bust out laughing at some enormous adolescent in-joke. A shifting, self-conscious island, they pace in their blue-nylon school jackets, flitting their eyes to the full-length lobby mirror with each pass and swiping furtively at the hair hanging wet on their foreheads. A very fat girl under an orange poncho drifts near the counter, sighing down into the glass, then tears herself away to stand by the water fountain. Her eyes never leave the bin of too-yellow popcorn. Two young men in tight, bright jean-suits sit on the black Naugahyde couch crossing their legs so their toes nuzzle between them, discussing triumphs and tragedies of the Great Ladies. Marvelous, they say — exquisite. It is all Marlene, Bette and Babs with them, Judy and Barbra and Joan and of course Poor Marilyn. They share a box of wintergreen Canada Mints and jiggle their matching two-tone saddle shoes. A thick-bodied old woman in tweeds enters, shaking droplets from her long, black umbrella. She sees Shine behind the counter and comes over to express her condolences.
"You've given us all a great deal of pleasure," she says, "I think you should know that we appreciate it."