Never Say Die (23 page)

The next day, and every day for a week, the American emerged from the GI compound to buy a Coca Cola. Though a dozen other children clamored for his business, each waving soft drinks, the man bought only from Siang.

At the end of the week, the man presented Siang with a brand-new shirt, three tins of corned beef and an astonishing amount of cash. He said he was leaving the valley early the next morning, and he asked the boy to hire the prettiest girl he could find and bring her to him for the night.

It was only a test, as Siang found out later. He passed it. In fact, the American seemed surprised when Siang appeared at the compound gate that evening with an extraordinarily beautiful girl. Obviously, the man had expected Siang to take the money and vanish.

To Siang's astonishment, the man sent the girl away without even touching her. Instead, he asked the boy to stay—not as a lover, as Siang at first feared, but as an assistant. "I need someone I can trust," the man said. "Someone I can train…"

Even now, after all these years, Siang still felt that young boy's sense of awe whenever he looked at the American. He glanced at the rearview mirror, at the face that had changed so little since that day they'd met in Happy Valley. The cheeks might be thicker and ruddier, but the eyes were the same, sharp and all-knowing. Just like the mind. Those eyes almost frightened him.

Siang turned his attention back to the road. The man in the back seat was humming a tune: "Yankee Doodle." A whimsical choice, considering the Soviet passport he was carrying. Siang smiled at the irony of it all.

Nothing about the man was ever quite what it seemed.

It was late in the day when the truck at last pulled to a halt. Willy, half-asleep among the rice sacks, rolled drowsily onto her back and struggled to clear her head. The signals her body was sending gave new meaning to the word
misery.
Every muscle ached; every bone felt shattered. The truck engine cut off. In the new silence, mosquitoes buzzed in the gloom, a gloom so thick she could scarcely breathe.

"Are you awake?" came a whisper. Guy's face, gleaming with sweat, appeared above her.

"What time is it?"

"Late afternoon. Five or so. My watch stopped."

She sat up and her head swam in the heat. "Where are we?"

"Can't be sure. Near the border, I'd guess…" Guy stiffened as footsteps tramped toward them. Men's voices, speaking Vietnamese, moved closer.

The canvas flap was thrown open. Against the sudden glare of daylight, the faces of the two men staring in were black and featureless.

One of the men gestured for them to climb out. "You follow," he ordered. "Say nothing."

Willy at once scrambled out and dropped onto the spongy jungle floor. Guy followed her. They swayed for a moment, blinking dazedly, gulping in their first fresh air in hours. Chips of afternoon sunlight dappled the ground at their feet. In the branches above, an invisible bird screeched out a warning.

The Vietnamese man motioned to them to move. They had just started into the woods when an engine roared to life. Willy turned in alarm to see the truck rattle away without them. She glanced at Guy and saw in his eyes the same thought that had crossed her mind,
There's no turning back now.

"No stop. Go, go!" said the Vietnamese.

They moved on into the forest.

The man obviously knew where he was going. Without a trail to guide him, he led them through a tangle of vines and trees to an isolated hut. A tattered U.S. Army blanket hung over the doorway. Inside, straw matting covered the earthen floor and a mosquito net, filmy as lace, draped a sleeping pallet. On a low table was set a modest meal of bananas, cracked coconuts and cold tea.

"You wait here," said the man. "Long time, maybe."

'' Who are we waiting for? " asked Guy.

The man didn't answer; perhaps he didn't understand the question. He turned and, like a ghost, slipped into the forest.

For a long time, Willy and Guy lingered in the doorway, waiting, listening to the whispers of the jungle. They heard only the clattering of palms in the wind, the lonely cry of a bird.

How long would they wait? Willy wondered. Hours? Days? She stared up through the dense canopy at the last sunlight sparkling on the wet leaves. It would be dark soon. "I'm hungry," she said, and she turned back into the gloom of the hut.

Together they devoured every banana, gnawed every sliver of coconut from its husk, drank down every drop of tea. In all her life, Willy had never tasted any meal quite so splendid! At last, their stomachs full, their legs trembling with exhaustion, they crawled under the mosquito netting and, side by side, they fell asleep.

At dusk, it began to rain. It was a glorious downpour, monsoonlike in its ferocity, but it brought no relief from the heat. Willy, awake in the darkness, lay with her clothes steeped in sweat. In the shadows above, the mosquito net billowed and fell like a hovering ghost.

She clawed her way free of the netting. If she didn't get some air, she was going to smother.

She left Guy asleep on the pallet and went to the doorway, where she gulped in breaths of rain-drenched air. The swirl of cool mist was irresistible; she stepped out into the downpour.

All around her, the jungle clattered like a thousand cymbals. She shivered in the thunderous darkness as the water streamed down her face.

"What the hell are you doing?" called a sleepy voice. She turned and saw Guy in the doorway.

She laughed. "I'm taking a shower!"

"With your clothes on?"

"It's lovely out here! Come on, before it stops!"

He hesitated, then plunged outside after her.

"Doesn't it feel wonderful?" she cried, throwing her arms out to welcome the raindrops. "I couldn't take the heat any longer. God, I couldn't even stand the smell of my own clothes."

"You think that's bad? Just wait till the mildew sets in." Turning his face to the sky, he let out a satisfied growl. "Now
this
is the way we were meant to take a shower. The way the kids do it. When I was here during the war, I used to get a kick out of seeing 'em run around without their clothes on. Nothing cuter than all those little brown bodies dancing in the rain. No shame, no embarrassment."

"The way it should be."

"That's right," he said. Softly he added, "The way it should be.''

All at once, Willy felt him watching her. She turned and stared back. The palms clattered, and the rain beat its tattoo on the leaves. Without a word, he came toward her, stood so close to her, she could feel the heat rippling be-

tween them. Yet she didn't move, didn't speak. The rain streaming down her face was as warm as teardrops.

"So what are we doing with our clothes on?" he murmured.

She shook her head. "This isn't supposed to happen."

"Maybe it is."

"A one-night stand—that's all it'd be—"

"Better once than never."

"And then you'll be gone."

"You don't know that. I don't know that."

"I do know it. You'll be gone…"

She started to turn away, but he pulled her back, twisted her around to face him. At the first meeting of their lips, she knew it was over, the battle lost.

Better once than never,
she thought as her last shred of resistance fell away.
Better to have you once and lose you than to always wonder how it might have been.
Reaching up, she threw her arms around his neck and met his kiss with her own, just as hungry, just as fierce. Their bodies pressed together so tightly, their fever heat mingled through the damp clothes.

He was already fumbling for the buttons of her blouse. She trembled as the fabric slid away and rain trickled down her bare shoulders. Then the warmth of his hand closed around her breast, and she was shivering not with cold but with desire.

Together they stumbled into the darkness of the hut. They were tugging desperately at each other's clothes now, flinging the wet garments into oblivion. When at last they faced each other with no barriers, no defenses, he pulled her face up and gently pressed his lips to hers. No kiss had ever pierced so true to her soul. The darkness swam around her; the earth gave way. She let him lower her to the pallet and felt the mosquito net whisper down around them.

Making love in the clouds,
she thought as the whiteness billowed above. Then she closed her eyes and lost all sense of where she was. There was only the pounding of the rain and the magical touch of Guy's hands, his mouth. It had been so long since a man had made love to her, so long since she'd bared herself to the pleasure. The pain. And there
would
be pain after it was over, after he was gone from her life. With a man like Guy, the ending was inevitable.

She ignored those whispers of warning; she had drifted beyond all reach of salvation. She pulled him down against her, and whispered, "Now. Please."

He was already struggling against his own needs, his own urgencies. Her quiet plea slashed away his last thread of control.

"I give up," he groaned. Seizing her hands, he pinned her arms above her head, trapping her, his willing captive, beneath him.

His hardness filled her so completely, it made her catch her breath in astonishment. But her surprise quickly melted into pleasure. She was moving against him now, and he against her, both of them driving that blessed ache to new heights of agony.

The world fell away; the night seemed to swirl with mist and magic. They brought each other to the very edge, and there they lingered, between pleasure and torment, unwilling to surrender to the inevitable. Then the jungle sounds of beating rain, of groaning trees were joined by their cries as they plummeted over the brink.

Even when she fell back to earth, she was still floating. In the darkness above, the netting billowed like parachute silk falling through the emptiness of space.

There was no need to speak; it was enough just to lie together, limbs entwined, and listen to the rhythms of the night.

Gently, Guy stroked a tangled lock of hair off her cheek. "Why did you say that?" he asked.

"Say what?"

"That I'd be gone. That I'd leave you.''

She pulled away and rolled onto her back. "Because you will."

"Do you want me to? "

She didn't answer. What difference would it make, after all, to bare her soul? And did he really want to hear the truth: that after tonight, she would probably do anything to keep him, to make him love her?

"Willy?"

She turned away. "Why are we talking about this?"

"Because I want to talk about it."

"Well, I don't." She sat up and hugged her knees protectively against her chest. "It doesn't do anyone any good, all this babbling about what comes next, where do we go from here. I've been through it before."

"You really don't trust men, do you?"

She laughed. "Should I?"

"Is it all because your old man walked out on you? Or was it something else? A bad love affair? What?"

"You could say all of the above."

"I see." There was a long silence. She shivered at the touch of his hand stroking her naked back. "Who else has left you? Besides your father?"

"Just a man I loved. Someone who said he loved me."

"And he didn't."

"Oh, I suppose he did, in his way." She shrugged. "Not a very permanent way."

"If it's only temporary, it's not love."

"Now that sounds like the title of a song." She laughed.

"A lousy song."

At once, she fell silent. She pressed her forehead to her knees. "You're right. A lousy song."

"Other people manage to get over rotten love affairs…"

"Oh, I got over it." She raised her head and stared up at the netting. "Took only a month to fall in love with him. And over a year to watch him walk away. One thing I've learned is that it doesn't fall apart in a day. Most lovers don't just get up and walk out the door. They do it by inches, step by step, and every single one hurts. First they start out with, 'Who needs to get married, it's just a piece of paper.' And then, at the end, they tell you, 'I need more space.' Then it's 'How can anyone promise forever?' Maybe it was better the way my dad did it. No excuses. He just walked out the door."

"There's no such thing as a good way to leave someone."

"You're right." She pushed aside the netting and swung her feet out. "That's why I don't let it happen to me anymore."

"How do you avoid it?"

"I don't give any man the chance to leave me."

"Meaning you walk away first?"

"Men do it all the time."

"Some men."

Including you,
she thought with a distinct twinge of bitterness. "So how did you walk away from your girlfriend, Guy? Did you leave before or after you found out she was pregnant?"