My cousin takes a drag, then exhales and speaks out of the corner of his mouth.
“I forgot to tell you—the room’s free,” he says.
“What?”
“The room you were asking me about yesterday when you went crazy and ran up the stairs—two-oh-five. I checked the book and it’s free. No one’s staying in it now.”
It is at that moment that the first potted plant falls from above and smashes on the sidewalk at my feet. A second one follows shortly afterward and lands to my left in an explosion of terra-cotta, clods of dirt, and the remains of a hibiscus. I immediately recognize the blue-glaze phoenix design on the shards of the first pot—it’s from my mother’s rooftop garden.
“Oh shit, man! Shit! Get inside quick!” Thang hollers at me while he remains on the curb, slowly stubbing out his cigarette. He narrowly avoids being hit by a third potted plant. I grab him by a yellow khaki sleeve and drag him up the front steps and into the lobby.
“Shit, shit,” he says, looking outside over his shoulder. “It’s like 1972 again. Shit, man, what
was
that?”
I don’t answer him because I am taking the stairs two at a
time. When I reach the end of the seventh-floor hallway, I am startled to find the hatch to the roof still closed, latched from my side. I take out my key ring and unlock it, climb the short ladder, and step out, blinking in the sunlight, onto the terrace.
The roof is the only beautiful part of the Frangi, and the part that no one really sees. Over the years my mother has turned the space into a miniature botanical garden, filling it with pots of flowers, dwarf palms, lime trees, hot pepper plants, cacti, and cooking herbs: basil and mint, cilantro and sweet lemongrass. Before he died, my father built a crooked little arbor up here, and my mother has come to sit under it every evening of these two decades since his suicide. I help her and Ba Noi with the watering, and sometimes Mr. Henry does his early morning tai chi up here.
She is curled on her side on the red tiles at the far end of the roof, facing away from me, and still wearing the same ao dai, which looks more silver than black in the sun. As I watch, she slowly extends one sandal-shod foot and nudges a bamboo plant in an elephant-shaped ceramic jar off the ledge. A second later I hear the distant crash, followed by a bellowing that must come from Mr. Henry. The foot is moving dangerously toward a bonsai, and I rush over to try to intercept it.
I am too late. It topples and meets an unfortunate end on the sidewalk below.
“Stop it! Stop!” I skid to a halt precariously close to the unrailed edge and stand over her.
She rolls onto her back to gaze up at me, and her voice when she speaks is too cheerful, too high and strained. It’s
kind of scary. “It took you long enough to get here,” she chirps. Her lips are chapped and her eyes are wild and red-rimmed. For a moment I wonder if she will try to push me off the roof, too.
“I couldn’t think of any other way to get your attention,” she continues brightly. “I was thirsty, so thirsty, and you never came back! The window was open last night and the rain started coming in, so I just …” She pauses and runs her tongue over her lips. “And it tasted so good. It made me stronger, much stronger than your bathwater did. I came up here and drank and drank and drank the rain. But then it ended and the sun was so hot. It made me weak again. I didn’t mean to break so many of them, but I was trapped, you see?”
Her lower lip sticks out sulkily. She looks so young; little more than a child. The sun is beating down on the back of my neck and I feel droplets of sweat forming on my temples.
“How did you get up here?” I say quietly. “The only way is through the hatch back there, and it was still closed when I came out. I locked it myself last night.”
“Do you really want to know?”
Something drops in my stomach.
“Tell me.”
“I crawled out the window and then up the side of the building.”
The nonchalance with which she says this makes my skin prickle: Our building has no ladder or fire escape. I look into those dark, dark eyes and there is no doubt in my mind about what she means. Last night, while I was sleeping, she—if I can
still call her a she—must have passed by my window as she scaled the slippery concrete, opening her mouth to catch the falling raindrops while she climbed.
“What are you?”
“Oh, Phi, not that question. Ask me anything but that. You don’t want the real answer, believe me.” She smiles in a way that shows too many teeth.
“All right, how old are you then?”
To my surprise she gives a light, rippling laugh.
“How very cheeky of you, Phi! How very cheeky and how very clever. I’ll tell you this much, for I am tired of this game: I’m a great deal older than you think. I can remember many, many things. I remember a time when you could still watch the Chinese junks sailing down the Red River. I remember a man who spoke in French, smelled of opium, and liked to weave the yellow flowers that fell from a certain tree into my hair. I remember the sound of the B-52
S
, and I remember the rubble. But those memories are hazy. I can remember other things very clearly, Phi, things that might interest you.” She pauses and looks up at me with her black eyes. “For example, I can remember things about your father. I can remember him very, very well, and I have an idea that can give both of us what we want.” Her voice drops to a low hiss and I have to lean in to hear her next words. “Make me a promise, Phi—promise not to ask me any more questions. If you promise not to ask me any more questions, then I’ll promise not to make any more messes. And I’ll even tell you something about your father. A secret.”
In the back of my mind something is panicking, screaming that this is a bad idea, a very, very bad idea. But I know I will say yes. She knows I will say yes. She has known all along.
“All right.”
“Do you
promise
?”
“I promise.”
“No more questions?”
“No more questions.”
She flashes her feral little smile, and when she speaks again her voice is disturbingly cheerful.
“Good. But I take my promises very seriously, you know. Perhaps I should have told you that before we made our deal. Now, would you carry me back down to my room? Pushing over all those plants has made me very tired. No one will see us—they’re all outside cleaning up the mess. And then you can make sure that I have some water to drink, for I’m still thirsty. So very, very thirsty.”
Somehow, she seems heavier this time, and I am wheezing when I reach room 205. I set her down on the bed and then I wordlessly dump out the plastic flowers in the large vase on the bedside table, fill the vase from the bathroom sink, and bring it back to her. She takes the vase in her arms and curls herself around it in the bed. Slowly, she dips an index finger inside, daintily swirls it around in the water, then brings it to her lips.
“Thank you, Phi. I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you not to talk about my little mishap with the plants. If they’re curious downstairs I’m sure you’ll be able to think of something.
Now if you don’t mind, I think I need to rest a little—I’m feeling weak after my exertions and it’s important that I save my strength. You will see me soon.” With that, she closes her eyes, still holding the vase tightly. On my way out I make sure that the “Do Not Disturb” sign is still hanging on the doorknob.
M
R
. H
ENRY IS WAITING
for an explanation at the foot of the stairs.
I’m so sorry, Mr. Henry, the centuries-old humanoid creature currently napping in room 205 asked me not to talk about it
. I frantically try to think up a story, but nothing’s coming. My brain feels waterlogged. When I reach the bottom I still have no idea what to tell him. Possessed by some strange instinct, I ignore him and keep going, walking past him and across the lobby, and then sit down behind my desk and shuffle my papers as if everything were perfectly normal. He comes over and stands in front of the desk, glowering at me. I look up.
“Hello!” I say sweetly, as if addressing a jet-lagged guest.
“Well, what was it?”
“I’m sorry, what was what?” I offer him my most endearing smile.
“The hell is wrong with you, boy? What was happening on the roof?”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand. Do you mean … what happened on the roof?”
“Of course that’s what I mean, you idiot!” He is breathing heavily, as if he has just ingested a particularly strong chili
pepper. “Things were falling off the roof. You went up—to the roof—to check on it. What did you see?”
I try a different tactic: “Uh … ask me anything but that. You don’t want the real answer, believe me.” It had worked on me, after all.
Mr. Henry looks as if he might reach across the desk and strangle me, but at that very moment the American providentially returns.
“Gentlemen!” he exclaims as he flings open the glass doors and strides in. The shiny black car is nowhere in sight and his shirtsleeves are rolled to the elbow. He comes right up to the reception desk and pounds a meaty fist on the scratched wood surface. “I have some great news!” he says. Mr. Henry momentarily forgets about the roof and looks over at me expectantly for a translation.
“He has good news.”
“Well, why is he telling
me
?” Mr. Henry mutters.
The American is speaking quickly now, and in his excitement a tricky little accent has emerged that I hadn’t noticed before. I can barely follow him, let alone translate for Mr. Henry. “I don’t know how I did it, but I did it!” I can grasp that. “The big deal I came here for! I’m gonna spare you the details, but it’s big, it’s real big! We were in the boardroom for six hours today, sweating like pigs the whole time, but the contract got signed in the end.” He pumps his fist in the air and gives an honest-to-God “Whoop!” that echoes around the lobby. “New Hanoi branch’ll be opening in two months, and the president will be none other than yours truly! How ’bout
that? I’m on cloud nine right now; hell, I feel like I could do anything, anything!”
He pauses and looks uncharacteristically shy for a moment before continuing. “Why don’t you both come out for a quick drink with me to celebrate? It’ll be my treat. I found a great little place, not too far from here.” On any other day I would rather re-grout every bathroom in the hotel than go out drinking with the American, but I seize this opportunity to escape from explaining the events of the afternoon.
“We’d love to!” I say to him in English. I turn to Mr. Henry and give him a rough recap in Vietnamese, and then I bolt for the door.
Mr. Henry and I look ridiculous walking behind the American, as if we are the tourists and he is our Hanoi guide. Everyone on the street stares at us as we pass, and some snigger. It doesn’t help that we are both a good foot shorter than he is and have to jog awkwardly to keep up with his stride. I’ve never been this uncomfortable before, which is pretty remarkable considering the past two days. He keeps talking as we walk, and when I feel like it I translate for Mr. Henry, who is more confused than angry now.
“I’m so glad I decided to stay at the Frangipani Hotel instead of the Sofitel,” he says. “My company booked me a room there, but there was no local color! No culture! So I decided to walk around the streets and look for somewhere myself—I try not to use the company car unless I have to—and when I saw your place, I said to myself: ‘This is it! This is what you’ve been looking for! This is the real deal!’
“Aah, now we’re getting close to it,” he says as we round a corner and go down a dank little alleyway. I’m surprised he wasn’t mugged the last time he was here. “You know, the guys I work with like to drink at the Royal Club and the Metropole and the expat bars in the French Quarter, but they’re missing out, you know? They don’t get any of the real Vietnamese experience.”
The alleyway ends in a small
bia hoi
joint. There are hundreds of beer stalls like this one tucked into grimy nooks all over the city. I’ve brought my business to this particular bia hoi before, carousing with Loi and Thang, and it’s the same every time: hard white lights, harder plastic chairs, and dirty pitchers of cheaply brewed lager with flies buzzing around the brim. Whenever you’re here you try to get as drunk as humanly possible in order to ignore the smells from the slaughterhouse next door. Now, as twilight is falling, half the tables are filled—there are a few olive-uniformed policemen fresh from their shifts, shirtless boys who look too young to be here, and the usual neighborhood drunks—and they all turn and look at us with glassy eyes as we enter.
“Isn’t this great?” the American gushes, pulling out Mr. Henry’s chair for him. “Yesterday I had the car drop me off in a different part of town so I could try and find my own way around—get a local’s feel of
Hanoi
”—the nasally way he pronounces it makes my toes curl—“you know? And on my way back I just stumbled across the place!” By now the proprietor has made his way over to our table with a pitcher of beer and three glasses, which he sets down with wary looks back and
forth between the American and Mr. Henry and me. “It’s such a shame,” the American continues; “most visitors stay on the same, beaten path. They miss discovering the real culture here, and you have such a beautiful, beautiful culture!” He raises his glass in toast to the proprietor—who has retreated back behind his bar and doesn’t raise his own glass in return—and then knocks it back. There are snickers from around the room.
To assuage the awkwardness of the situation, and because I have told him that the drinks are on the American, Mr. Henry has picked up a mug of beer in each hand and is swilling from both at record speed.
I pick a drowned fly out of my own beer and try to make myself as inconspicuous as possible. But then I realize that the American is watching me, so I take a sip and try not to grimace. The beer is always warm and tastes like it was distilled inside a cement mixer. But the beauty of it is, the more you drink, the less you taste it. I bring the glass to my lips again.
“That’s right! Drink up, buddy!” the American says with his gigantic grin stretched taut across his face. I don’t know how he can smile and speak at the same time. I take another swallow and then, with a private chuckle, say: