Dragonfish: A Novel

by Vu Tran

I got into the backseat with her and closed the door. “Come on,” I whispered and put my arm around her. “Everything’s okay.”

  Her hot face pressed against my chest, and she curled into that space that had already become hers, like she was wrapping herself into the folds of a coat. I felt then the dampness of her dress and hair, the bits of sand on her arms, strewn also over the car seat.

  “You are sure?” she said, hugging me tightly now.

  “Yeah, he’s fine.” At that point, I was convincing myself of that too. I could call the nearest hospital the next day and confirm it. “The police and the medics are there and they’ll take care of him. Let’s go to the hotel now and get some sleep, okay?”

  “And the woman?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The woman. In the back. She is okay?”

  “The woman . . . ” I repeated to myself. In the darkness, I could feel her staring into me, her breath warm against my chest.

  “She look like she sleeping. But then she open her eyes and she look at me.”

  The hair on my arms bristled, and the darkness felt stifling. Again I heard sirens wailing from afar, like she and I were in a cocoon and the world outside was burning.

  Had she hallucinated some phantom woman in the car, or was I the one who’d gone crazy and somehow overlooked another human being in the backseat? But why would the woman sit in back and the man in front? Did I even once glance back there?

  I said, “I’m sure she’ll be fine too. I promise you they’re both fine.”

  After we finally got to the hotel that night and showered together and then lay our wet heads down on our pillows, Suzy fell instantly asleep and I lay there blinking at the ceiling, promising myself that I would call the hospitals in the morning.

  When I awoke at dawn, she rolled over and embraced me and apologized for everything that had happened. We made love in the gray light.

  Afterward she wanted to describe the dream she had had that night. I braced for something terrible, for her to start crying as she recounted it. It turned out to be the one beautiful dream of hers that I know: of her living in a three-story house drifting on the ocean. You could reach outside the many windows and caress the waves that lapped the walls day and night. Her entire family from Vietnam lived there with her, even those who had died. Everyone had their own room, her mother and father, her aunts, her uncles, her sisters and cousins, and every room was colorful and unique and connected to the others so that you could walk through them all like you were walking through a garden of rooms. Only years later, thinking back on this dream, did I wonder if I had a room in this house, or if I was even there at all.

  In the afternoon we went to the beach and swam in the ocean and ate a lunch of grilled fish and oysters. I took her shopping afterward and bought her a new dress, then we saw a matinee showing of Dances with Wolves, which moved us both to tears, and in the evening we had a delicious dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant downtown. We made love twice more that night, and she cried the final time.

  Perhaps I made myself forget, but I never picked up the phone that day.

  9

  THE COTTAGE, which had white wooden shutters and a white chimney, stood facing the road, flanked by a strip mall of restaurants and a strip club called Paradise Palace. The tiny parking lot out front was empty, but I told Mai to park in back. We walked under a red awning and through a red door and stepped into a room cloaked in rusty light.

  All the tables stood afternoon empty, snugged up against button-tufted leather booths that looked proudly worn. Wood paneling and crimson wallpaper surrounded us, above us a low canopy of ceiling fans spinning lazily. The place had a saloonish quality, a cowboy gruffness despite all the dolls encased in glass cabinets along the walls. They stood side by side, dozens in each cabinet, some a foot tall, decked in period dresses and garish hats and hairstyles: a showgirl, a cowgirl, a geisha, an English wench, a French lady. Mai stepped up close to one cabinet and glanced at me to see if I shared her bemusement.

  A young couple were arguing quietly at the bar, their faces close, their lips moving swiftly. The girl was luxuriously blond and wore a green dress, and it took me a second to realize that the guy, who had on jeans and a T-shirt, was a girl too, her slender left arm covered in colorful tattoos as she gesticulated at the blond, their voices muted by Lee Hazlewood crooning “Some Velvet Morning” over the jukebox.

  At the other end of the bar sat an old bearded guy sucking on a cigar beneath his Stetson, too engrossed in his video poker to care about the girls or us. He was the one who looked out of place.

  Behind us, the front door opened and two men in suits and open-collared shirts walked in, both taking off their sunglasses to look around. They must’ve mistaken the bar for the strip club and promptly turned and walked back out. I couldn’t imagine Sonny setting foot in a place like this either, which explained why we were there.

  “We should probably order something to drink,” I told Mai.

  The bartender, a sturdy middle-aged woman, stood watching the TV on the wall, her short inky hair gleaming beneath the white Christmas lights strung above the bar. When she turned to greet us, her casual smile felt like the first genuine thing I’d seen in Vegas.

  “Getting cold out there, huh?” she said, her voice cigarette raspy. “I should put on a sweater, but my tits like to breathe.” She grinned innocently at Mai. Her blouse was low-cut, her leathery bosom less sexual than a proud badge of all her years in the harsh desert sun. “What you having, baby?”

  “A Coke,” Mai replied and turned to me.

  “Whatever you got on tap,” I told the bartender. I asked Mai, “Too early in the day?”

  “I don’t drink. Or do drugs. My cousin’s an idiot. Can’t do that stuff if you want to be good at cards.”

  I went for my wallet, but she had already set a hundred on the bar.

  “You play every day?”

  “When I’m not sleeping.”

  “Why poker?”

  “The money,” she replied dryly.

  “Bartender at the Coronado told me poker players are an honest lot. Very proud.”

  “He just means we’re control freaks. It’s great to be lucky, but it’s better to be in control. When you’re good, you can control the luck.”

  She tipped the bartender the price of both our drinks, and then she turned and noticed what I had not.

  Nested in the far corner of the bar was a small stage with a black piano, above it an unlit neon sign: DON’T TELL MAMA. A few tables stood against the wall by the stage. The older brother was sitting at one with a pitcher of beer, staring at us patiently through his cigarette smoke.

  “Don’t tell him your name,” I muttered to Mai.

  We got our drinks and made our way to the table. He couldn’t take his eyes off her, but then I remembered that he must have known what her mother looked like.

  As we sat down, he nodded at me and said “Hello, sister” to Mai in Vietnamese. On the wall above him was a cabinet of dolls dressed like old Hollywood starlets, their lipstick smiles made vulgar by the shadows.

  There were three glasses on the table, though only his was filled. He intended for us to talk a bit. Beneath the table, I noticed, leaning against his leg, was a small black backpack.

  “My name is Victor.” He pushed his cigarette pack toward me, the same one from this morning. Again he offered me a light. His name and a cigarette: gestures of goodwill. In the car this morning, he must have wondered what it took to earn the trust of a man like me.

  “Has he called you yet?” he said.

  “Your boss? Not if you’re the one who called me the last four times.”

  “He probably won’t, then, unless I report something. And I haven’t.”

  His voice had a cold, quiet edge to it that these young tough types cultivate nowadays, though I could see that it was shyness too that hardened his face. It was easy for him to intimidate. Much harder for him to look people in the eye and talk to them earnestl
y.

  Mai was peering at him as I imagined she would another poker player. She had yet to touch her Coke.

  I gestured at her. “They know about her?”

  “I would’ve already visited her if they did.”

  “Like you visited Happy?”

  He went silent, then blinked a few times at Mai. “She came to see you, didn’t she?” To me he said, “Mr. Jonathan—the son you spoke to—he was there. I had to do my job. Don’t worry, she gave up nothing. That’s why we had to go visit you in Oakland.”

  Mai said something in Vietnamese to him. His face crimsoned.

  “What was that?” I said.

  “I asked him if he liked hitting women.”

  “Of course not,” Victor replied. He recovered his calm and added, “Not even when they deserve it.”

  I jumped in, “So what are we doing now, Victor? You and your brother broke into my home yesterday and put a gun to my head and then drove me here to do something I don’t want to do. And now you say you want to help me.”

  “I said I want to help Mrs. Nguyen.”

  A glass shattered somewhere, and we all looked up. The bartender, her hands on her hips, was peering irritably at the floor behind the bar. Patsy Cline was playing now, and I noticed that the two girlfriends had stepped away to slow-dance by the jukebox, the blond with her head on the other girl’s shoulder, their argument doused. They had caught Victor’s attention too. I couldn’t tell if he was bothered or intrigued, but when Mai swiveled in her chair for her own glimpse, I saw him give her a lingering look.

  He coughed hoarsely into a fist and drank his beer. “It’s Mrs. Nguyen I want to help,” he repeated.

  “Then tell us everything you know. Start at the beginning. How much time do we have?”

  He flipped open his cell for a quick check and then set it back on the table. “It’s a bit messy.”

  “Only a bit?”

  He put out his cigarette. He’d only smoked half of it. “First thing you got to understand is I rarely know their reasons for doing anything. I do what I’m told, I don’t ask questions. Me and my brothers, we’ve been doing that for years now. We started out washing dishes, and now we do whatever needs doing. They like that we can take care of ourselves, that we send money home to our mother, that my brothers do what I tell them. Knowing your place and what you have to do—they expect that of everyone, especially people they trust. They put us through school, you know. That’s the other thing you got to understand. Me and my brothers came to America on our own. Our father died on the way, and we haven’t seen our family back home in thirteen years. So Mr. Nguyen and his son, they’re all the family we got here.

  “But like I said, certain things they don’t talk about. When Mr. Nguyen got married two years ago, we didn’t know he was with anybody. We were curious, of course. But we never saw her. She didn’t come by the restaurant, and when I drove Mr. Nguyen home or picked him up, I had to park by the curb, stay in the car. So I only ever saw her from a distance, standing in their living room window usually. I think he wanted it that way, her not knowing about his business, us not knowing about her. But some things you can’t help knowing. He started arguing with her a lot on the phone, spending more and more time at the restaurant, at the casinos. I lost count how many times he’d storm out of the house when I picked him up in the morning, all red-faced and cursing to himself. Drunk. He’s always been a drinker, but I’d never seen him start that early in the day until Mrs. Nguyen came along.”

  Victor kept his hands in his lap like they were handcuffed under the table. I noticed he didn’t gesture when he spoke, even when there was emotion in his voice. And it was strange to hear so many words come out of his mouth. He wasn’t that taciturn after all. He just had remarkable self-control.

  “Then one night last year,” he said, “I get a call from Mr. Jonathan, telling me I have to come to the house at once. I figure I’m in trouble or something. But when I get there, he’s waiting at the front door and waves me inside. First time ever. He looks nervous, which isn’t like him. When I walk into the living room, I see why. His father’s sitting slouched by the staircase in his underwear and no shirt on, and he’s holding his hand like it’s broken. He looks at me with bloodshot eyes, like he doesn’t know me. Mrs. Nguyen’s lying beside him at the foot of the stairs. She’s not moving. Her hair’s a mess. Her nightgown’s ripped at the shoulder. I can’t see any blood, but at the top of the stairs is an overturned lamp. Mr. Jonathan’s on the phone with 911, and when he hangs up, he hands me a pair of pajamas and orders me to put them on. He says Mrs. Nguyen has fallen and is unconscious, so when the paramedics come, I have to tell them I’m a family friend who was staying over and woke up and found her this way, that she accidentally fell down the stairs. I’m not to say anything else, or move her, or let her move on her own if she wakes up. He’s gonna meet me at the hospital shortly. I get even more freaked out now because I know he’s trusting me with her life. He grabs his father’s good arm and gets him to his feet, like he’s a stubborn child, and he starts hurrying him to the garage door. Mr. Nguyen hasn’t said a word yet, but suddenly he pulls his arm away and smacks his son across the face with his good hand. Mr. Jonathan glares at him like he’s ready to choke him. But then he just says, ‘Let’s go, Dad,’ and his father looks back one more time at Mrs. Nguyen and stumbles out the door on his own.

  “So they leave, and I do exactly as I’m told. An hour later Mr. Jonathan arrives at the hospital. He’s alone, acts real concerned with the doctor and the nurses, even holds back a tear when they tell us that Mrs. Nguyen broke her left arm and suffered a concussion. She was lucky she didn’t break her neck. After that I’m told to go home.

  “A week later, I finally see Mr. Nguyen again. He’s got a metal splint on two of his fingers. Him and his son act like nothing happened, but for the next few months, he’s a lot calmer and nicer on the phone with Mrs. Nguyen. He’s drinking less, brings food and flowers home to her. They even go to Hawaii for a week, and I know how much he hates flying.

  “But once she gets better, things go right back to how they were. I pick him up one morning and he’s got a big bandage above his left eye. Few days after that—this was about a month ago—she comes storming into the restaurant during dinnertime and demands to see him. Mr. Jonathan tries to calm her down, but she swipes a glass from the counter and smashes it on the ground. That’s when Mr. Nguyen comes rushing out of the kitchen, grabs her by the arm, hauls her into the kitchen. There’s a lot of yelling at first, stuff flying around, but then his office door slams shuts and we don’t hear anything for hours. Even after the restaurant closes, they still don’t come out.

  “So I wasn’t all that surprised when Mr. Jonathan took me aside the next day and told me to start following her. It was now my full-time job. Rent a different car every day, park down the street, wait for her to leave the house. Anywhere she goes, I go. She didn’t work anymore, so I was usually following her to the grocery store or the shopping mall, sometimes to the movies. One thing she liked doing was going to the casinos in the afternoon and just walking around, gambling a little, watching people. Sometimes she’d go driving for an hour and then come straight home. I reported all that.”

  Victor had been telling his story mostly to me, but now he turned thoughtfully to Mai. “What I didn’t report was her visiting you. One afternoon she parks across the street from your complex, crosses over on foot. She walks directly to your apartment, drops an envelope in your mailbox, and doesn’t stop until she gets back to her car. I guess you got that letter.”

  Mai gave me a knowing glance but offered Victor only coolness. “You just kept that to yourself? Respecting her privacy all of a sudden?”

  I expected someone like Victor to bristle at sarcasm, but again he seemed surprised, more hurt than annoyed by her tone. “I was respecting the situation,” he insisted. “I figured I was following her because Mr. Nguyen thought she was cheating on him or something. This felt like something
else though. The way she looked after she went to your apartment . . . When she got back to her car, she sat there for a long time with her hands gripping the steering wheel and just stared at your complex. It was like someone had died. I went back to your apartment that evening and waited on that bench by the pool. You passed me, actually, when you came home. You were wearing exactly what you’re wearing now. I knew at once who you had to be. It’d be obvious to anyone who’s seen your mother. And I don’t know—something about the whole thing . . . it felt so private, I guess. I admit I was curious, but I didn’t want to say anything until I knew more.”

  He tried to look Mai in the eye, searching for some approval, and I could see now why he was doing all this. The first time he saw her, she must have inflamed his curiosity just as her mother did to me ten years before. He probably went back to that bench the following night and every night after that. Might have even fantasized about this very conversation, in this bar, with her and only her sitting across from him.

  “I watched her mostly during the day,” he went on. “Mr. Nguyen was home in the evening, and she rarely went out after sundown anyway. The one night I had to keep watch was Thursday night, which has always been Mr. Nguyen’s long session of poker. He plays at the casino from seven in the evening to seven in the morning, so she spends that night alone, and recently she started going to the movies. That didn’t surprise me. I had already followed her one afternoon to a showing of Castaway. Sat four rows behind her and saw her cry several times, even during parts of the movie that weren’t sad at all.”

  His face softened. He spoke to Mai with sudden confidence, an intimacy he seemed sure she would reciprocate: “You and her left Vietnam by boat and were at sea for a long time. Awful things happened, I’m sure.” He said a few words in Vietnamese, as if reciting some adage she surely knew too. Then his voice leaned into her. “Mr. Nguyen and his son were also on that boat. All four of you went to the same refugee camp.”

  Mai appeared to withdraw from him in her seat. In a small voice, like she was claiming innocence, she said, “My uncle said my mom and I were on Pulau Bidong.” She pronounced the name with Vietnamese inflection.