Dukkha Reverb. Loren W. Christensen
concrete column and the double gate opens. It closes behind us with a heavy metallic sound similar to a jail cell door. “This way,” she says pointing to the left.
Samuel’s house is on a quiet, tree-lined street, quiet compared to the traffic anarchy I saw yesterday. There are not many pedestrians and just a few motorbikes passing each way. About fifty yards ahead I can see where this one feeds into a cross street and, judging by the mass of motorbikes and cars rushing past the opening, it looks like those insanely busy ones I saw yesterday.
Looking at me, Mai says, “Do not be obvious, but do you see that green building to the right across the street?”
“Yes,” I say, detecting it out of the corner of my eye.
“There is a man on the top floor. You cannot see him because he is back from the window, but he is one of our security people. We have another man who watches from a car in the alley behind the back wall. I think it was the man in the window who called Father when we were eating at the table.”
“Impressive. How do you feel about it, the security I mean? Do you feel safe?”
“Not until all this ends.” She points to a woman selling fruit near the corner. “We buy our fruit from Qui.” She smiles and nods at the old woman, who smiles back with bright red lips and teeth. The woman looks at me, laughs, and says something. Mai laughs heartily and waves goodbye.
“What was with her mouth,” I ask, when we’re a few feet away.
“Oh, you will see that many times. People, especially older women, chew betel nut. It is common here for hundreds of years. They get a little, uh, buzz?”
“Buzz? You mean like a drug high?”
“Yes, yes. Not too strong. But it stains the mouth.”
“Interesting,” I say, though I really mean weird.
“She say that you are a very handsome man and that you should be in Playgirl magazine.”
I sputter a laugh. “Playgirl? How does she know about that?”
“Popular here,” Mai giggles, bobbing her eyebrows.
What a day so far. I meet the most venerable Shen Lang Rui, who chi-zaps my jet lag away and now I’m walking with my Mai, talking about Playgirl, in Vietnam. It’s excellent except for one thing. After another unabashedly staring person passes us, I say, “I feel a little self-conscious.”
“It’s your size. Everyone looks because you are so big and you have the muscles.”
“Also because I’m so good looking?”
“Oh yes,” she says, banging me with her shoulder. Small pleasures. I’d like to hold her hand, but I’m guessing that would be a no-no.
“Sifu is an amazing person,” she says. “He is about the same age as Father, but our father sometimes thinks of him as his father. Also his brother and his best friend.”
“That’s wonderful. I still can’t believe that Samuel is sixty-five. If I didn’t know, I would have guessed a very fit man of fifty. But he moves better than most people in their twenties.”
“You will learn much from both of them. Okay, we turn left here. This street is much busier.”
Oh man, this is the bedlam I remember from yesterday. I barely hear Mai laugh over the roar of a million motorbikes.
“Sorry to laugh,” she shouts into my ear as we zig and zag around a mass of people on the sidewalk. “Every time I see this through your eyes it cracks me.”
“Cracks you?” I shout. “Oh, you mean, ‘cracks me up.’ Well, I think it’s sort of frightening.”
“Oh, there is Hung,” she says waving at a shirtless, elderly man squatting before a partly dissembled motorbike. He is smeared with grease from his bare feet to his concave chest to his matted hair. “He fixed my motorbike about two weeks ago. He is a very sweet man.” She waves as we approach. “Chào Hung.”
The old man looks up, his grease-covered face instantly brightening upon seeing Mai. “Mai!” he cries, as he struggles to stand. “Chào, chào, chào.”
Mai speaks warmly to him and gestures toward me. The old man nods several times as he presses his greasy palms together. When he smiles, I don’t see a single tooth.
“He says he is sorry, but he will not shake hands with you because he is so dirty. But he is happy to meet you.”
“Please tell him I am also happy to meet him.”
She tells him, and the man responds, then laughs with a cackle.
“Hung say to tell you that he is going to marry me. I am actually thinking about it because he fixed my motorbike very, very good.”
“Tell him that he is a wise man.”
“Thank you, Sam,” she says with phony sweetness. They converse for a moment longer before we nod our goodbyes.
“Sweet man,” she says as we proceed bobbing and weaving our way along the busy sidewalk. “He tell me before, that place on the sidewalk has been his bike shop for thirty years. He is ninety-two years old. No retirement here.”
“Incredible,” I say. “We got it so good in America.”
A motorbike jumps the curb five feet in front of us. We wait as the elderly woman driver jockeys her ride across the sidewalk and parks in front of a shop. She looks at me, smiles.
“Here is tea cafe,” Mai shouts, pointing to a storefront bearing an overhead sign: Café Eighty-Nine. “In Vietnam, many names of businesses are the same as their address.”
The sidewalk tables are occupied so we take one of two empty ones inside, ignoring all the blatant stares from other tea sippers. Happily, the traffic roar isn’t as overwhelming in here, so we don’t need to shout at one another.
Mai says something to a cute little girl who can’t be more than ten or twelve. The girl turns to me for a moment, her expression serious, then it transforms into a huge, brilliant smile.
“I ordered for you,” Mai says. “Green tea, of course.”
“Thanks.” The heat has flushed Mai’s face a little. Looks great. “So, good lookin’, is this our first date?”
She gives me that Las Vegas lights smile. “I think you are right.” She tilts her head down slightly and looks at me from under her eyelashes. “Do you want to touch me as much as I want to touch you?”
I love her straight forwardness. “More.” My face feels hot and this time it isn’t from Vietnam’s heat.
“Impossible,” she says, still doing that flirtatious head tilt thing.
Oh man, I must have done something right in a past life.
The young waitress sets down two small cups and a teapot, looking at me the entire time. When I wink at her, her face erupts into that huge smile again. She’s going to break a lot of young men’s hearts in ten years. She turns and walks away a few steps before looking back at me over her shoulder. She’s got the flirting down already.
“Thanks,” I say when Mai scoots my full cup over. “You must get looked at a lot. I’m almost six feet and you’re practically eye to eye with me.”
She shrugs. “I do. But I am used to it. Being tall bothered me when I was in my teens, but I do not care now.” She looks up at me from under her naturally long eyelashes. “Did I stare at you when we first met?”
“Oh man, you were shameless.”
She giggles. “Well, you were… what do you call it? Oh, yes, eyeballing me first.”
“No way.”
“You were,” she laughs. “I felt violated. That is the right