Predator's Waltz

by Jay Brandon

  When he saw the contents he began to cry. Later he would pound the counter and swear and scream, but for the first long moments there in the gathering gloom of his shop all he could do was cry.

  Chapter 3

  A WAY OF TURNING UP

  The next morning, Saturday, Daniel woke feeling some­thing was wrong. His eyes snapped open as if the angle of light were unexpected or a familiar sound had been silenced. For a moment he thought Carol was gone. But she was there, curled into a ball against the coldness of the bedroom. The king-size waterbed in which they slept was so big and so malleable that each could form his own little valley during the night. Under the thick blue comforter Carol had almost disappeared.

  A very diffuse light filled the room like mist. There was no headboard, their heads were within a foot of the window behind the bed. Daniel pulled back a corner of the curtain and saw that the window was covered with frost.

  The bed almost filled the small room. When he crawled out he had to hug the wall and then thread his way carefully between the bed and the dresser. He padded down the hall, staying on the carpet runner to avoid the cold hardwood floor, turned up the thermostat, and hurried back into bed before sleep deserted him. The motion of the bed woke Carol. When her eyes opened they appeared already focused, and she gave him a hard look as if she were still mad, but she snuggled close to him. As the house warmed into life around them they murmured under the covers almost wordlessly, a hum of forgiveness lost in the hum of the furnace. Their faces smoothed as they fell back asleep, into a more restful sleep than they’d had all night, because now they were holding each other.

  What they’d had the night before couldn’t be called a fight. Just a matter of clashing preoccupations. His mind had been on his meeting with Tranh Van Khai. Hers had been on the friends she’d left behind at the reception. She was reminded anew of what Daniel expected of her, that she give up her whole past in exchange for life with him. It wasn’t a bleak life, but it wasn’t complete either. They had almost no friends. It was unfair to ask her to live a life of such isolation.

  About the time Daniel realized his mind had been far away, he realized Carol hadn’t been talking either. What was she thinking about?

  “Nothing.”

  When he pressed her and she snappishly repeated her answer, he guessed the truth. “Would you like to go back?” he asked.

  “Not now. It’s all over now.” She stared off across the threadbare Mexican restaurant as if she were looking for people she knew and frowning because they were late.

  He tried to strike up a normal conversation, but it was about his business and she seemed uninterested. So they had sat in cool silence over cooling food. At some point each realized that the position he had staked out was not quite his own, but by that time it was too late. It wasn’t the kind of fight that could be called off. It had to dissipate overnight

  Consequently they were being very tender of each other’s feelings this morning. They made breakfast to­gether, talking away last night’s silences, and continued to talk while they ate. Normally Daniel would have read the morning paper about then, but today he set it aside after just glancing at the headline: gang violence kills six. He didn’t read the story to learn that the gangs referred to were Vietnamese. In most Houston homes that morning the Vietnamese gang warfare emerging from the shadows was big news, but not in the Greer household.

  The day had warmed considerably by the time they went outside. Frosty dawn had turned into cool morning.

  “We don’t have to do this,” Carol said.

  “No, I want to.”

  “We don’t have to stay long. I just want to see what it’s like.”

  “Who knows, I might pick up some customers. Wan­der around, let ’em see I’m willing to make friends ...”

  They were on the freeway aimed at downtown. The cold front that had come through during the night had swept the sky clean. Against that vibrant blue backdrop the towers of downtown Houston looked like the Emer­ald City of Oz. It was a self-consciously modern city, nothing gothic about it: All the most visible buildings had gone up in the last twenty years. A day this clear was relatively rare. The buildings gleamed as if basking in it.

  In the neighborhood of Daniel’s pawnshop parking was already at a premium. A blue van occupied the “Employees Only” space in the alley behind his shop. Daniel cursed mildly and drove on. “Now remember where we’re parked,” he told her after he squeezed into a semilegal space farther down the alley. “Because I’ll probably forget.”

  She took his hand as they walked up the alley. The mostly brick back walls of the stores they passed were grimy and worn, and odors clung to them. There was grime underfoot as well, decaying gunk that could have started life as anything.

  “What’s the name of this holiday?” Carol asked. Her tone was light and chatty. They both knew Daniel was making a concession in coming today, but he was being nice about it, especially after last night. She was going to be nice as well.

  “Suck-in-the-Tourists Day. I’m sure it’s something they just made up.”

  “Cheer up. Maybe it’ll bring you some business.”

  “Yeah. They’ll spend all their money on egg noodles and come in to hock their Timexes.”

  They came around the comer of the building at the end of the block—a dry cleaner’s that was closed today— and Daniel said, “My God.”

  For two blocks the street had been closed off to automobile traffic. Overhead the streetlights and power lines were festooned with paper streamers, balloons, and long kites decorated as fish or dragons. In the middle of the street there were pushcarts and booths, and most of the stores were open as well. But what had caused Daniel’s exclamation was the crowd. The street was jammed with people on foot from storefront to store­front. Their flow was mainly counterclockwise, but that flow was disturbed by dozens of individual eddies and currents and lines at some of the booths.

  “I had no idea it would draw such a crowd,” Carol said, and again: “We don’t have to stay long.”

  But Daniel was fascinated now. He walked slowly into the throng, still holding her hand, staring around be­mused not at the vendors but at the patrons. The crowd was mostly Occidental, though Asians were well repre­sented. All the pushcart and booth vendors were Asian, usually several at a stand, a whole family working the business. Even little children had some sort of function they performed with serious expressions, carrying trays or sorting utensils.

  Carol and Daniel joined the crowd, walking slowly and being jostled occasionally. Someone bumped Daniel’s shoulder and hip, and when he turned to look there was no one there. He felt for his wallet and found it still in his back pocket. He kept his hand there. His other hand

  clutched Carol’s. She turned another direction and their arms stretched before the connection was broken. Daniel hurried to catch up to her.

  All street festivals are basically alike. Only the foods change. This one had Vietnamese trappings and the music coming from loudspeakers was unfamiliar, but there were still booths selling American beer, with men in cowboy boots lined up in front of them. Confetti eggs had no place in Vietnamese tradition, but there was confetti underfoot. Some such familiar elements inevita­bly infiltrated every fair. Or perhaps the cultures were blending before one’s eyes.

  This festival may have drawn a bigger crowd than Daniel had expected because it was so late in the season. Thanksgiving had come and gone; the time for street fairs had passed. This one drew everyone who was unwilling to let autumn pass without one more celebra­tion. Maybe the story of last night’s gang violence had cut down the attendance. On the other hand, maybe it drew the morbidly curious.

  “Let’s go in here,” Carol called above the crowd noise. Her face was flushed from the heat of the crowd and the cook fires they’d passed, but there was enough breeze to blow her hair back from her face. She looked beautiful— and happy as a child.

  She dragged him into a small shop on the opposite side of the street from
his own pawnshop. He would have been delighted if his shop were drawing half as many customers. The narrow aisles of this one were clogged. Everything for sale looked extremely flimsy to Daniel, baskets or figures made out of straw and bamboo. He was afraid to touch anything. The place was a shoplifter’s paradise too: The figures were so small and everyone’s coats so bulky. But Daniel glanced at the shopkeeper, an old man with a stringy white beard, and saw his eyes darting as if he could see everything. Daniel also saw a small Vietnamese child keeping an eye on the customers. Looking around, he saw others he had at first taken for shoppers but who were probably members of the owner’s family. The old man’s eyes lighted momentarily on Daniel and a small, ironic smile seemed to shape his features. Daniel wondered if the old man had recognized him.

  Carol was close at his side, oblivious to all but the flimsy treasures. Pressed close in the alien swarm—even the white people were alien—he could feel they were in a foreign city. Maybe that was the pleasure she drew from the cheap trinkets—the feeling of adventuring through a bazaar.

  “Hot in here.”

  “Look at this,” she said, holding up a carved devil mask. “Do we know anyone who’d like this?”

  “God, I hope not.” Daniel gave a mock shudder. Carol held on to the mask, though her eyes traveled onward. “Let’s get something to eat. Breakfast was a long time ago.”

  A few minutes later Carol followed him reluctantly out of the shop. “I’ll have to come back later.”

  “How come you never showed any interest in investi­gating these stores on normal business days?” Daniel asked.

  “I was interested. I just never had the time.” She looked at his amused expression and slapped lightly at his arm. “All right, it’s that now I feel a desperate sense of competition with all these other shoppers. Is that what you think?”

  “That’s what I think.” He led her out into the street where they wandered for a while sampling the food at the booths: imperial rolls made with rice paper rather than dough and so lighter and crispier than Chinese egg rolls; marinated fruits, some relatively unfamiliar, such as kumquats; a Vietnamese poorboy made with fresh-baked French bread and stuffed with both meat and pat6. Daniel was familiar with most of the food from excur­sions to the two Vietnamese restaurants in the neighbor­hood, but in the fresh air, freshly made, they seemed like a new experience. “This is delicious,” they kept saying to each other. “Taste this.”

  It was midafteraoon, the sun was already declining, but Daniel felt uncomfortable in his jacket. He was also tired of fighting the crowd. “I want to go check on the shop again,” he told Carol, meaning his own pawnshop. He had glanced into it once when they’d first arrived.

  “Good,” Carol said. “I’d like to do some shopping without you looking over my shoulder.”

  “So I can’t stop you from buying something ridiculous?”

  “I just don’t want you watching. Christmas is coming, you know.”

  An expression of horror crossed his face. “All I want for Christmas is that you not buy me something here.”

  “You never know, there might be—”

  “I know I have enough bamboo crap to last a lifetime.”

  “You see why I don’t want you along?” she said sternly, but smiling.

  “Why don’t you check out the other pawnshop?” he suggested. “They probably have wonderful stuff in there. Junk even Vietnamese couldn’t stand to have in their own homes.”

  Carol just nodded. Her thoughts had already left him.

  “All right. Meet me back at the shop in—an hour?”

  “And a half,” Carol said, not looking at her watch.

  Daniel sighed. “All right. You remember where the car’s parked, in case you want to put something in the trunk?”

  Carol nodded, still distracted, half turned away from him. Daniel pulled her closer and said, “I love you.”

  Her eyes and smile focused on him again. “I love you too.”

  They’d only been married a year, they said the words every day still, but with a wide variation in feeling. Today it was more than perfunctory. She kissed him lightly and turned away.

  For just a moment as Carol disappeared into the crowd he was gripped by fear for her. The crowd looked sinisterly indifferent as it swallowed her up. Everyone seemed to be glancing slyly in her direction. Daniel didn’t want to let her go.

  The feeling passed. A few minutes later Daniel had forgotten it. He was making his way back to his shop, but in no hurry. He stopped for a beer and carried the can through the crowd. It had thinned out slightly; walking was less of a struggle.

  He reached the sidewalk and almost stepped on a Vietnamese boy who was looking down, shepherding an even smaller girl. The boy lifted his face and gazed at him with mysterious intent. Then he realized it was Thien. Daniel found himself delighted to see him. “Hello, Daniel,” Thien said, as if he’d been expecting to run into him.

  He indicated the younger girl, who was probably five years old, but tiny. How could her parents let her loose in this crowd? “This is my sister Alice,” Thien said with some pride.

  “Alice?” Daniel thought his American ear must have turned a Vietnamese name into something more famil­iar.

  “She is American,” Thien explained. “Born in this country.”

  “Hello, Alice.”

  “How do you do,” said the little girl, with the same concentrated expression that seemed to have been doled out to all Vietnamese children.

  Daniel stood chatting with Thien for a few minutes, feeling the glances of passersby. He enjoyed the feeling that he belonged in this neighborhood, wasn’t just a tourist at a festival. So small a link to the Vietnamese community, Thien was, but for a moment he gave Daniel a sense of place.

  “Do you need help in the store?” Thien asked sudden­ly. Without waiting for an answer, he bent to his tiny sister and said, “Go to Mama. See? Go to Mama.” Daniel craned his neck, curious to see Thien’s mother, but there were several women who would have qualified in the direction in which Thien was pointing. The little girl made her way unerringly through the crowd to one and hugged her skirts. The woman looked too young to be Thien’s mother.

  Together Daniel and Thien threaded their way through the crowd. The boy came to Daniel’s shoulder. At the door of Daniel’s shop a Vietnamese man only a few years older than Thien was lounging. It seemed to Daniel, with his newfound sense of belonging, that the young man looked familiar. But that was silly. Daniel didn’t know any Vietnamese except Thien. The young man’s eyes slid over the crowd and settled on Daniel’s face as if he too had experienced a moment of recognition, but then he looked away. His gaze settled on Thien as well before he drifted off from the door of the pawnshop.

  Coming in from the street festival made the shop look even dimmer and dustier than usual. Also emptier. One young couple was idly making their way around the shelves, looking as if they were surprised and uncomfort­able to find themselves there. At the counter a young woman glanced back furtively at Daniel. She had streaky blond hair and a drawn face and looked old before her time. She went back to conferring in whispers with Jeff, who lounged inside the cage looking uninterested, the proper pawnshop clerk’s expression. Jeff was a part-timer Daniel employed only a few hours a week and didn’t entirely trust. He looked scraggly this morning, as if he’d been dragged out of bed abruptly before he was ready. When he wasn’t working in the store Jeff was a college student, now in (Daniel estimated) his seventh year at the University of Houston.

  Daniel went inside the cage and rang up no sale on the cash register to see how much money was in it. Some­thing less than a fortune. The bills looked worn, like family heirlooms. He closed the drawer. Beside him, Jeff straightened up slightly and the customer lowered her voice even further. Daniel saw that she was trying to sell a bracelet that could have been silver and turquoise or could as easily have been tin and glass. He hovered nearby to see that Jeff didn’t offer too much for it. Daniel’s presence seemed to
make both of them nervous, and they failed to come to terms. The young-old woman turned away and looked at the young couple browsing, as if she were thinking of dealing with them directly, but then she hurried out of the store without speaking again.

  “Any drift from the fair?” Daniel asked.

  “Mostly they just look in the windows and walk on.”

  Daniel nodded.

  “Those two there’ve been here longer than anyone else all day.”

  As if they heard Jeff’s remark and felt stigmatized, the couple went out without looking back. Daniel felt briefly annoyed. Jeff was a good buyer, as stingy as if the money were his own, but at customer relations he sucked.

  “Why’oncha take a break, Jeff? Go see some of the fair.”

  “What’d I want with any of that junk?” Jeff responded, but he picked up his jacket and walked out, giving Thien a suspicious look on his way.

  The American man and the Vietnamese boy sat there in companionable silence for a while. Thien picked up a broom but didn’t do anything with it. He was gazing out the window at the crowd of people. Daniel wondered what he saw.

  “Is it strange to see so many of your people at once? Like being back home?”

  “When we came here,” Thien said instantly, as if he’d been waiting to be asked precisely that question, “I thought we would be all alone. I thought we’d fall into America and have to blend. I thought we would have to be Americans. I didn’t understand there would be so many of us we could—make little Vietnams anew.”

  “You seem fairly well blended to me,” Daniel said idly. “You’ve been here what, eight years? Half your life.”

  “I was seven when we left. My father had been a government official in the old government. He called himself just a clerk but I think he was more. He was deathly afraid the Communists would find out who he had been. When Saigon fell he escaped with us to the countryside, but the fear never left him. Once in a while he would hear that another of his old colleagues had been killed or imprisoned. Besides, my father was no farmer. When he could live like that no longer he decided to escape.”