The Time in Between (7 page)

THAT EVENING, ADA WENT OUT ALONE AND WALKED THE STREETS and then stopped for a drink at a garden café. There was a blind man sitting in a corner with a dog at his feet. The man looked to be her father’s age. He was American and he was an ex-soldier: she knew this because the man was wearing his old fatigues. He sat alone and felt for his food with his hands and occasionally bent to offer the dog a morsel. He moved his head back and forth and at one point he called out, “Young girl,” and when the waitress arrived he said he wanted another beer and more fish.

The waitress slipped away and asked Ada if she wanted another drink. Ada said no, she was fine, and as she spoke the soldier looked up and stared at the spot where Ada sat.

He called out, “American?”

She looked around the empty café. A blond girl in a bikini smiled at her from a Danish beer poster.

“No,” she said, “Canadian.”

The soldier considered this and asked, “Are you alone?” “I’m waiting for my brother,” Ada said.

A large hand rose and fell. “Join me till then.”

Ada did not want to face the man. She did not want to sit across from his stripes and his medals and have him tell her war stories, about how generals led from the rear, and how he came to be blind, and the drama of his life. Finally, he would tell her why he was here and what he was looking for and how he had not yet found it.

The man lifted his head in anticipation.

“I’m sorry,” Ada said. “I’m actually meeting my brother in a few minutes. At a different place.” She stood, put money on the table, and picked up her bag.

The soldier stuck out his hand. “George Giguerre.”

Ada looked at his hand and then walked over and shook it. “Hello,” she said.

George said he was here alone. “Except for Julie.” He pointed at his dog, whose head was down, jaw pressed against the floor.

“Pretty dog,” Ada said.

“That’s what I’m told. Tourist?”

“Yes. Yes.”

“Thought so. You’re about twenty-two.”

“Twenty-eight.”

A nod and an angling of the head. The thick hand came back out. “Nice to meet you.”

Ada shook his hand again and pulled away. She stood outside the café, her hands in fists, breathing quickly. The blind man’s desperation and his uniform and his soft hand, all of this had dismayed her. She imagined her own father sitting in a bar in some other place, perhaps Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City, nostalgically telling strangers about his history. She lit a cigarette.

The boy, Yen, appeared at her side and said, “I have a bird for you.” He held up a small bamboo cage. “From me to you.”

Ada stepped back. “I don’t want a bird.”

“Yes, you do. It’s good fortune. And besides, the bird is an orphan and needs an owner. Please. It would make me very happy.”

Ada put out her cigarette and began to walk away, following the path along the river.

Yen caught up to her and said, “Just yesterday I saw you at Christy’s. With your brother, playing pool. I said to myself, Yen, Ada is unhappy. What would make her happy? And I thought of a bird. So, I bought him for you and he lives with me at Mr. Minh’s but Minh doesn’t like birds so you must take him. I give him to you, with levity.”

“Who is this Mr. Minh?”

“My uncle. He works at the Chess Hotel. He is an underchef and I know you are interested because you are a chef as well. So was Bac Ho, Ho Chi Minh. It’s perfect, you see. Uncle Ho, Uncle Minh, and Miss Ada. All of you making food. That makes me feel full of fortune. I do not think, Miss Ada, that this was chance. It was planned long ago, our meeting.”

Ada kept walking. She did not argue with Yen.

He said that he wanted her to meet Minh.

She said, “No, I’m tired.”

“He thinks maybe that he met your father. Or saw him.”

Ada stopped walking. “What do you mean? Where?”

“He is not sure. He thinks maybe he saw your father one day in the restaurant. I had a photograph of your father that I procured from a shop owner, one of the shop owners you talked to, and I showed that photograph to my uncle. He recognized something, perhaps the shirt, or the hair. Of course, he might be wrong. This happens.”

Ada, alarmed, said that Yen had no business following her or taking her father’s photograph to show to some uncle of his. She said that she would like that photo back. She began to turn away but Yen shook his head vigorously and said that he meant no harm. No harm at all. “Surely you must want to see what Uncle Minh has to say.”

He beckoned and set off at a quick walk. She followed at a distance. He did not speak as he guided her, birdcage swinging from his hand, through the streets to the rear entrance of the Chess Hotel.

“Come,” he said, “I will introduce you to Minh.” He set the birdcage down by the door. They went down a hallway, past a bathroom with a squat toilet and beyond that a storage area with dry goods and pots and pans. The kitchen was small: a five-foot grill and three gas elements, a fridge and freezer. Yen called Minh’s name. A man appeared; he was not more than twenty-five, maybe younger. He was shirtless, and Ada was aware of his smooth chest and dark nipples. She looked away and then at his face. He shook her hand, said her name, and drew out the last vowel into an expression of surprise.

“He wants to make you onion soup,” Yen said.

Ada said she wasn’t hungry. “When did he see my father?”

Yen spoke to Minh, who folded his arms and said something back, then smiled at Ada.

“How about salad?”

“No, no, thank you.”

Minh left and returned with a glazed pastry that had half a peach at its center. He put it in a box and handed it to Ada.

She said, “My father, you saw my father.”

Yen said, “Minh didn’t make it. Soon, one day, he will know how to make peach pastry. But, not yet.” His voice got softer and he went up on tiptoes and said, “He saw your father, or a man that looked like your father, one afternoon in the restaurant of the Chess Hotel. He was eating peach pastry, just like the one you hold in your hands, with a beautiful woman. This is what Minh knows. And I know the rest.”

He paused, licked his lips, looked up into Ada’s face, and said, “She is American. She is Elaine Gouds and she lives here in Danang with her husband, Jack, and they have two children. This is what I know.”

“Can I meet her? This woman?”

Yen shrugged. He said that he did not have that kind of power. He was not a magician.

“You know where she lives, don’t you?”

Yen said he did.

“Take me there.”

Yen waved a hand. “Not tonight, Miss Ada. It is too late. Tomorrow.”

Ada walked outside and stood in a light drizzle. An umbrella snapped open and appeared above her head.

“Please,” she said.

“That man you met in the café,” Yen said. “George. I knew him. For two days I was his guide, fed his dog fresh bones, took him to Hoi An, made sure he was safe. And then one day he called me a name and hit me with his cane. See?” Yen raised his arm and showed Ada the welt just above his elbow.

“Oh,” Ada said. “What did you do?”

“Nothing. Well, I might have tried to take his dog. But just for a walk. It is a large dog with very shiny fur. Of course, you have met the dog.”

“Did he pay you, this George?”

“A little.”

“I guess I should pay you,” Ada said.

“Oh, no. Never.” His black eyes, hard and bright.

“Tomorrow,” she reminded him. “You will show me that woman’s house.”

“Absolutely,” he said. “I will meet you outside, right here, at two o’clock.” And he stepped sideways and then turned and disappeared into the darkness. Ada raised a hand to call out that she had his umbrella, but he was gone.

AT NIGHT, SHE WOKE AND REALIZED THAT THE RAIN HAD STOPPED. She went to the bathroom and then stood by the window and watched the harbor and listened to the sounds of the city. Jon had not yet come home. She saw her reflection in the dark glass of the side window. She was too thin: her legs, her arms, even her face had diminished. She leaned out the window and saw, on the street below, a motorcycle pass, its taillight glowing red and then disappearing around a corner. The sign on the photography shop blinked on and off, and in the doorway of the shop she saw, intermittently, the shape of something; perhaps a small animal curled into itself, or maybe a person, its back to the street. She stood for a long time, smoking and watching, and then she closed the window.

She was still awake and sitting in the darkness when Jon came in. He reached for the light and she said, “No, leave it off.”

She lifted her nose. He smelled of cigarette smoke and something—or someone—else. He was breathing heavily from the climb up the stairs. “Where were you?” she asked.

He said that he had been out at a small bar where young people danced to music from the seventies and sang karaoke. “It was strange.” He paused and then asked, as if to deflect further questions, “Are you okay? Did something happen?”

She shrugged her shoulders, even though she knew that he could not see the gesture. She said that she had been thinking about home and about Del. She had tried to call but no one answered. Of course, it was noon or later there, and why should Del or Tomas be waiting for a phone call from her. She said that she missed the mountain and the smell of the mountain and she missed the mornings when they were young and would find their father sitting by the stove drinking coffee. “I miss him,” she said.

Jon came to her and stood behind her and wrapped his arms around her chest and pressed his cheek against her head. “Don’t,” he said. “You’re making yourself crazy.”

“And I worry about you. This city isn’t safe in the dark.”

“I’m here. I’m safe.”

She felt the heat of his breath against her head, his forearms against her breasts. “What will we do?” she asked. “Do we keep looking? Give up? Go home?”

He released her and stood by the window and when he spoke his voice was quiet and floated upward. “We can’t give up yet.”

“But I’m the only one looking. Jon, back home, when we hadn’t heard from Dad and we thought something was wrong, and we met with Del and Tomas, you said you wanted to come with me. We agreed to come here together to look for Dad. The problem is, you just don’t want to face the fact that Dad is missing and maybe dead.” She paused and then said, “I’m so tired.”

Jon did not answer. In the darkness, she said, “Do you think he wanted to disappear? People do sometimes. Maybe that’s what he wanted.”

Jon sat on the edge of the window. He was facing Ada now and he leaned forward. “He wasn’t happy in the last year. You know he wasn’t happy.”

Ada shook her head. “But coming here seemed to be something he wanted to do. I still remember his phone call. He announced that he was going to take a trip to Vietnam, as a tourist. He sounded so hopeful, which was odd for him.”

“He was always able to dupe you. Or himself, as if everything was fine when he was with you.”

“I’m not naïve,” Ada said.

“He liked you best,” Jon said.

Ada began to protest but Jon interrupted. “He adored you.”

“Adores,” Ada said. “He’s still out there somewhere, adoring me.”

“Of course he is.”

“Did he tell you something different? Before he left? Did he say, ‘Jon, I’m planning on going to Vietnam to disappear’?”

“He told me very little. He phoned right around the time Anthony had decided to leave, though I never mentioned it. Maybe I thought it would please him too much. Anyway, at the end of the phone call, he said he was going to Danang. Just for a while. He did call me several weeks later, when he was already here, but I’d been sleeping and the conversation was kind of slow. He seemed to be elsewhere, though he was affectionate. He said he loved me.” Jon stopped talking. Looked down at the street. Finally, he said, “And, here we are.”

He lit a cigarette and offered Ada one. A light flashed in the harbor. A ship’s horn sounded. Ada said, “Dad asked me one day if you didn’t ever like girls. I said that you liked girls, that wasn’t it, you just weren’t physically attracted to them.” She paused.

The darkness was a fine thing. She could not see Jon’s face, and this made intimacy more possible. She asked, with more cynicism in her voice than she intended, “So, is it fun? Is it fun with strangers?”

Jon gave a little laugh.

Ada said, “I knew a boy in college, several years ago, who wouldn’t let me close my eyes. He wanted to be a filmmaker and thought that everything should be observed. It was bizarre. Once, we modeled for each other, we weren’t wearing clothes, and we looked at each other through binoculars.” She laughed quietly, then stopped and said, “Oh, why did I tell you that!”

“That’s okay. I won’t tell anyone.”

She stood and without turning on the light she found two glasses and the half-full bottle of whiskey and she brought it back to her chair and poured out equal amounts. They touched glasses and drank.

She spoke quietly. “What you said, about Dad liking me best, does that make you angry?”

“I’m not angry.” He paused and then said that he was lucky in a way. “His love for you is like a weight that you have to carry.”

Ada denied this. She said, “If Dad’s dead, I just want to know. I just want someone to climb those stairs and knock on the door and tell me that he’s dead.” She lifted her hands and let them fall.