She smiled, turned, and walked onto the beach.
I watched her as she strode across the sand, and she had a beautiful walk.
She stopped along the way to talk to the Vietnamese couple, who were sitting on a rock under a tree. They were smiling and nodding away.
Periscope down, I walked onto the beach toward Susan, who was now lying on the sand with her head on the tote.
I knelt beside her, and she looked up at me and smiled.
She flipped over and handed me a tube of suntan lotion from her tote. “Can you do my back?”
“Sure.” I spread the lotion on her back, then over her buttocks and down her legs.
She said, “Oooh, that feels good.”
I massaged her neck, shoulders, back, and butt.
She said to me, “I’ll do your back.”
I lay on my stomach, and she sat on my butt with her knees straddling me as she massaged the lotion into my back.
She said, “Hey, do you want to take some pictures?”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“I want to remember this day. I have an idea. We’ll get someone to take our picture together, and we’ll hide our faces.”
She stood and walked over to the Vietnamese couple and spoke to them. The guy came back with her, but the girl seemed shy and stayed on the rock under the tree. Susan introduced me to Mr. Hanh, and I stood and shook hands with the young man. She gave Mr. Hanh her camera, and Susan and I stood close together with our arms on each other’s shoulders, and our hands covering each other’s faces. Mr. Hanh thought that was funny and took a picture while he giggled. For the next shot, our other hands covered each other’s pubic area. This was all a little silly and maybe a little kinky. I’m from South Boston.
We thanked Mr. Hanh, who bowed and went back to his companion. I asked Susan, “Will they develop these in Saigon?”
“No, they won’t develop nude shots here, and if they do, they’d be all over Saigon in two days. I’ll send the film to my sister in Boston. Is that okay?”
“Sure. If I ever meet her, we’ll have something to talk about.”
Susan laughed.
We sat cross-legged in the sand and cracked open the Coke cans. I said, “And what will you tell your sister about the pictures?”
She replied, “I’ll tell her I met a wonderful man who was here on business, and we spent some beautiful days in Saigon and Nha Trang, and he went home to Virginia and I miss him.”
I didn’t know what to say, but I managed, “I wish things weren’t this complicated.”
She nodded.
The sun was behind the Nha Trang Mountains now, and the dying light silhouetted the land against the dark blue sky. The water, too, had become darker and no longer sparkled. A fleet of blue and red fishing boats were making their way through the twilight back to Nha Trang. I looked around and saw people getting dressed and leaving the beach.
There were a number of places out there on the mainland, not too far from here, where I came close to death. And if I’d died here, I wouldn’t be on this beach with this woman, and I would not have lived long enough to see this country at peace. If there was a heaven for the men who died here, it should look like this.
We got dressed and walked back to the boat.
We arrived at Cang Nha Trang after dark, and I gave Captain Vu his fee and a nice tip, plus a fiver for Minh as compensation for missing the nude beach.
There were a few taxis at the wharf, and we took one back to the hotel.
Upstairs, we went to Susan’s room, opened the French doors, and let in the sea breeze.
She turned off the lamp and lit the candle she’d bought at the market. I opened the bottle of rice wine, and we poured some into two plastic cups. We touched cups and drank. There was music coming from the beach café across the road, Fats Domino’s “Blueberry Hill,” which would not have been my first selection for this moment, but my CD player was in Virginia.
Susan said, “Let’s dance.”
We put down our wine, kicked off our sandals, and danced to “Blueberry Hill.”
This was fun, and I like some non-sexual foreplay, but I was a little tense, and very worked up.
The music changed to Johnny Mathis’s “The Twelfth of Never,” and this is my all-time favorite slow dance song.
We danced close, and I could feel her breath on my neck. She put her hands under my shirt and caressed my back. I did the same on her back, and unhooked her bikini top.
We pulled up our shirts and danced, bare chest to breasts. She slid her hands down the back of my pants, and I did the same, cupping her buttocks tightly.
We didn’t finish the dance because suddenly we were into each other’s clothes, which were all over the room in about five seconds.
We practically dove into the bed, and she pulled the mosquito netting down around us.
We kissed hard, and our hands were all over, and our bodies were thrashing around in the small bed.
Finally, we got it under control, and we lay side by side and held each other for a while, then our hands started to roam. She was very wet and I was very hard.
I got on top of her and slid in easily.
We made love, then fell asleep exhausted in each other’s arms.
I woke in the middle of the night with Cynthia on my mind and Susan in my bed. I also thought about Karl, what lay ahead, and what awaited me back home.
This mission had gotten off to a bad start at Tan Son Nhat Airport, and when that happens, you’re supposed to abort before you crash and burn. But this mission had become a personal journey, and if that included an unhappy ending, I was prepared for that, too.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
In the morning, with the sun rising over the South China Sea and a breeze coming in through the open French doors, we made love again.
We showered together and lay naked in bed until about ten, then got dressed, went down to the veranda and had coffee.
Everything looked the same as the last two mornings, but the world had changed for me, and for her, I think.
We both understood that she wasn’t going back to Saigon while I was still in Nha Trang, but I was very firm about her not accompanying me to Hue. I said to her, over coffee, “Hue is the start of my official business here. We got away with this, but if you went with me to Hue, Washington would go ballistic.”
She replied, “I understand that. But I will see you in Hanoi.”
Susan wanted to sightsee, so we hired a car and driver and went to the Oceanographic Institute. We saw a bunch of fish in an aquarium, and thousands of dead sea creatures preserved in glass jars. It’s places like this that could use a direct hit from an artillery shell.
In the afternoon, we visited the Cham Towers in the area, slightly more interesting than the pickled fish in the jars. Susan had a brochure, and informed me, “The Cham people were Hindus, and they occupied this area from the seventh to the twelfth centuries before they were conquered by the ethnic Vietnamese coming down from the north.”
“Fascinating.” Would I be doing this if I hadn’t gotten laid?
There was a Cham Temple complex called Po Nagar where the statues of the Hindu gods and goddesses were very erotic, and this place was kind of interesting. There were sculptures of these huge penises called lingas, and vaginas called yonis, and one of the yonis had a water fountain gushing out of it. You don’t see stuff like this in a Catholic church.
We spent part of the afternoon exploring the countryside, including an enchanted spot called Ba Ho where three waterfalls fell into three pools in a secluded forest. As we sat by the waterfalls with our feet in the water, Susan studied my guidebook and said to me, “I know you like nude beaches, so I’ve found another.”