by Vu Tran
Mai had wandered into the center of the room and was peering at the dark walls and the shadows cast across the ceiling. She stood there with her chin raised like she had smelled something.
“What is it?” I said.
“It’s like someone was here.”
“Everything looks the same to me. You see something?” I noticed a trembling along the bottom of the curtains, but it was only hot air blowing from the heater’s vents.
“No.” She gave me a sheepish look. “I just feel it.”
“Got to be more specific than that, kid.”
“I don’t know. It’s like sitting down in a chair that someone else was just in.”
She remained motionless as though trying to remember something, and I let her do that for a bit, not sure what to ask her or what to make of her sudden clairvoyance, until finally she shook her head and started for the door.
We didn’t say a word to each other the entire way down, through the casino, to the parking garage, and finally to her Jeep, where I loaded the suitcase into the cramped backseat, squeezing it alongside her things.
I stood by the driver’s-side window as she keyed the ignition. On a faded Chinese takeout menu she gave me, I wrote down Tommy’s address in Oakland. I thought of what he’d say to her when she arrived at his doorstep. I thought of how Laura, his beloved wife, was going to have a fit. Then I remembered all the times I’d saved Tommy from himself back in the day, from bar fights and unsavory women, from moments on the job when he’d been on the edge of losing it just as, countless times, I had been.
“It should take you nine hours,” I told Mai, “but drive the speed limit. You hear me? And drive straight there. Don’t stop for anything but gas and food—and take that food with you. When you get there, tell Tommy I sent you and that you’ll be staying for a few days. Tell him I’ll be coming soon to explain everything. Don’t say anything else—about me or Sonny or the money. I don’t care how hard he tries to get shit out of you. And stay put, understand? Don’t go anywhere until I get there. It should be no later than noon Saturday.”
“And if you’re not there by then?”
“I’ll be there by then. Remember, stay put and stay quiet. Tell him I ordered you to be a mute.”
Her hands were in her lap.
“What is it?” I said.
She shrugged. “My mother . . . ” she said. “Just because you guys were married doesn’t mean you have any responsibility to me.”
I just nodded. I checked the time: 8:20. Ten minutes to spare. “You’ll be okay driving for that long?”
“I’ve done it plenty times before.”
I stepped back. As her window went up, the glare from the fluorescent lamps overhead swallowed up her face.
The Jeep lumbered away, its tires squealing as it turned onto the ramp and dipped away from view.
AFTER SMOKING A CIGARETTE by the elevators for a good five minutes, enough time for Mai to have left the Coronado entirely, I walked back into the casino and made my way as casually as possible to the front entrance. Outside, a new pair of lifeless valet attendants stood leaning against the conquistador. They nodded perfunctorily at me as I passed them and crossed the rain-slicked street.
At night, the Coronado was lit up like a pinball machine, brilliantly reborn out of its dullish daytime appearance. It stood at the mouth of the pedestrian mall on Fremont Street, which went on for blocks beneath a mammoth canopy of white latticed steel, like a cavernous circus tent, flanked by all the old Vegas casinos. A colossal Christmas tree stood at the midpoint of the mall amid a swarm of revelers. It seemed impossibly real, towering over the casinos, reaching almost halfway up to the canopy.
I walked slowly, trying my best to steer clear of the crowds streaming onto Fremont. The rain had stopped but the wind picked up. Nobody noticed. People were too busy sipping at their plastic tumblers and snapping photos, their heads turning skyward when suddenly the lights dimmed and the canopy came alive, like a digital sky, with video of reindeer prancing down the length of the mall and pulling a sleigh manned by Santa and a gaggle of beautiful showgirls. A parade of nonsensical images followed, elves morphing into dancing trees, girls riding candy canes, yin-yangs spinning into flowers into snowflakes into psychedelic whirlpools of color, all as dancy Christmas music filled the mall and the crowds cheered and snapped more pictures.
I stood at the edge of everything, just out of reach of the canopy, and had to remind myself that I was still in the desert, watching this Martian circus come alive before me in the dead of winter. Part of me found it ridiculous, like the rest of the city, while another part of me wanted nothing more than to dive into all that lurid revelry and drown myself.
Some joker in a Santa hat, wearing only a T-shirt and cargo shorts, went skipping around and tapping everyone with a giant candy cane like it was a magic wand. He came close and I saw his bleary eyes, and he slurred at me through his bushy red beard, “Merry fucking Christmas, man!” When his cane tapped my shoulder, it felt like a blessing.
I finally heard the cell phone ringing at my breast and hurried to an empty wall outside the mall to escape the clamor. I had already missed three calls.
“Yes,” I said into the phone, covering my other ear.
“I thought you were ignoring me.” It was Victor. “Where are you going?”
“Nowhere. This was the only way I could get you to call me. Listen—I need Happy’s phone number.”
“You know I can’t give you that.”
“Why not?”
“Stay at the hotel, Officer, and wait things out until tomorrow morning. We went over this. That’s the only way you’re ever leaving this city.”
I was making my way back to the Coronado. “I’m not going anywhere. Mai just left with the money and is headed out of town as we speak. She has a safe place to go. All I’m asking now is to speak to Happy. One quick conversation.”
“That’s not gonna happen.”
“Victor—”
“Goodnight, Officer.”
“Victor, hold on. Why did Suzy wait four days to give Mai this money? Four days she sticks around town when she knows Sonny’s after her. What was she doing all that time?”
“You got to stop. Put this all behind you.”
“And why didn’t she just bring the money to Mai’s apartment? Why go through all the trouble of leaving it here for her—in that specific room?”
Victor was silent.
“Are you there?” I said, nearly shouting over the thousand voices behind me singing “Jingle Bell Rock.”
“I don’t have any answers for you.”
“Well, if you don’t, then Happy’s all I got.”
I was back in the Coronado and the new quiet of singing slot machines. I lowered my voice. “Mai just left town with a load of your boss’s money. I can’t keep her safe if I don’t know everything Suzy did to steal it for her. You understand? Victor?”
He finally spoke up, muttering Happy’s phone number with quiet reluctance. “If you take another step outside the casino tonight,” he warned me, “I’ll have no choice.”
I RETURNED TO my room for the duffel bag I’d dropped off, then went back next door to 1215. What Mai had said—that someone had been in the room—still troubled me. Not that I believed her, but that same hush used to pass across her mother’s face every now and then, like she had seen or heard something I could not.
I checked the room more carefully this time, even getting on my knees to inspect the carpet. Nothing peculiar finally except a whiff of sweetness in the air which I hadn’t noticed until then, like that smell in my apartment from a few days before.
A thought startled me and I searched my pockets for my badge. I rummaged through my duffel bag for a few minutes before finally remembering that Mai still had it. She had forgotten to give it back. I couldn’t think of why I’d need the badge at this point, but having it stripped from me made me feel like a shade of my former self, lighter but also less substantial.
I shook it off and sat down beside the telephone on the nightstand.
Happy’s phone rang six times. I hung up, waited a minute, and tried again. This time, on the fourth ring, she picked up. Her hello sounded small, distant.
“It’s Bob,” I said. “What took you so long to answer?”
“I just get home. How you know this number?”
“We need to talk. Look, I know you didn’t give us the full story. I understand why, but I’ve sent Mai on her way. She’s probably already past the city limits. You can tell me now.”
“Bob—”
“Don’t deny it, okay? What else did Suzy want from you?”
“Bob . . .” She uttered my name this time with pity and exhaustion in her voice.
“Happy, listen . . . I was mean to you back at the apartment and I’m sorry. I don’t have any right to be angry. And everything that happened with us—I’m sorry about that too. I’ve been a mess ever since the divorce, you know that. But all this stuff in Vegas—I didn’t ask for any of it. I’m just trying to do the right thing, so please help me out here, okay? I deserve to know everything that happened.”
I could hear her breathing over the long silence that followed. Finally she said, “She give me a shoe box. It have the letters for Mai.”
“She wanted you to deliver them?”
“She want me keep them. If I hear something happen to her, only then I give them to Mai.”
“If something happens to her?”
“I don’t know, Bob. I not want to ask her that. She make me promise I not read them or give them to nobody.”
“Well Mai’s gone for good now. You won’t know where to send her the letters anyway.”
I could see Happy with her phone to her ear, staring at the wall, wondering what else she should tell me.
“I want to tell her at the apartment,” she said, “but I promise Suzy I not do nothing—”
“Yeah, until something happens to her. That could literally mean anything. Jesus, why does she talk this way?”
“What way?”
“Come on, you know. She used to talk like that to me all the time. Everything was like some fucking riddle. It was like she was constantly trying not to lie to me and not tell me the truth either.”
“But she not mean to.”
“Of course she did. She never trusted me, Happy. With anything.”
“She do. She marry you.”
It was the old Happy again, explaining the pain away, dismissing the truth to soften its blow. It surprised me, with everything that had happened between her and Suzy, that she could so easily slip back into this role.
“You know why she married me? I was safe. I was a dumb American who would take care of her. Do shit for her. Protect her from whatever.”
“Bob, why you say that? You know Suzy care for you.”
That was all she had for me, and it sounded for a moment like she didn’t believe it either. But when she spoke again, her voice was sad, almost a whisper: “She also write letter for you.”
When I didn’t respond, she went on, “She ask me keep it too. One day I send it to you.”
“You weren’t going to tell me this?”
“I promise her.”
“Happy, it might say where she’s going. I could help her—even save her life. You have it there at home with you?”
“No, Bob, you don’t come here.”
I squeezed the receiver tightly, then looked at the time. It was nearly nine. “I’m at the Coronado, Happy. I’m sitting in the same room Suzy went to every Thursday evening. I know she came here to write the letters. You can keep Mai’s, but please come bring me mine.”
I regretted the idea as soon as I said it, but my overwhelming need to get the letter felt justified. In an instant, it had become the thing I deserved all along, after everything that had happened here in Vegas and everything I’d been through all those years with Suzy.
Happy said, “How you know that?”
“Sonny’s boy told me. He sent me here. Put me in the room next door and made me wait in case she showed up one last time. He and his father have no idea why she was coming here. But they’re barred from the Coronado. You probably know that. It’s just me here. You’ll be safe.”
“No.”
“I’m leaving tomorrow morning. You got to do this for me.”
“No way I go to that place.” There was an edge again to her tone. I couldn’t tell if she was refusing my request or refusing something else.
“It’s a casino. You’ll be safe.”
“That place—I can’t tell you.”
“Good God, tell me what?”
“You not believe me.”
“I’ll believe anything at this point.”
Happy made a sound, like a pained laugh, like she was ready to cry and tell a joke at the same time. “Bob,” she said in a pleading voice, “how I can explain it to you? Her husband. Her first husband. He die in Vietnam long long time ago. She think he come to the room. She think he come back to find her.”
I waited a moment before saying, “Are you kidding me?”
“No,” she murmured, and I could almost hear her slowly shaking her head. She hung up before I could ask the question again.
I called her back, but the line just kept ringing. I banged the receiver on the nightstand and let it drop to the floor.
The heater by the window clicked on. A dull drone permeated the room. I stood up to sniff the air. That smell was still there, and as I looked around the shadowy room, my skin crawled and it made me want to yell at myself for being so easily spooked.
“If you’re there,” I said out loud, “say something. Vietnamese, English, just fucking say something.” I picked the receiver off the floor and slammed it down on the cradle.
I sat on the bed with the duffel bag in my lap and stared at the time blinking on the VCR atop the TV set. Then, like an alarm had gone off, I remembered the videotape.
I didn’t want to, but I had to turn off all the lights in the room.
Victor’s account had been unsettling, but watching the video with my own eyes—remote in hand, constantly fast-forwarding and rewinding—was like seeing three versions of Suzy at once: the one I remembered, the one Victor romanticized, and this other phantasmagoric shade of her that had descended into Sonny’s darkness. Her bizarre behavior appeared harmless one minute, heartbreaking even, but the next minute grotesque. When I got to that final footage, where Sonny is on top of her, I found myself watching it as a stranger might. Could she not be enjoying herself? How could you tell if she had truly forgotten any of it, that what she felt in Sonny’s dark office that night was horror and not shame? And yet despite the questions, I still felt sick seeing her on the screen, seeing Sonny there with her, looming like an incubus. I thought watching the video would bring me more clarity, but after half an hour the story felt as incomplete as ever.
I shoved the tape back into the duffel bag and changed into some dark jeans and a black sweater. I washed my face in the bathroom, drank a full glass of water though I wasn’t that thirsty.
Leaving all my things in the room, I hurried downstairs to the casino. In the gift shop, I bought a black down coat with a hood and a midnight-blue baseball cap with the Coronado’s logo and put them on before leaving the shop.
At the front entrance of the casino, I jumped into one of the waiting taxis and showed the driver the address I had torn out of the phone book from my room. There were over thirty listings under Happy’s surname, and sure enough one of them—Tuyet Phan—matched her phone number. The driver said it was thirty minutes away in Summerlin, which was west of the Strip and sounded like some faraway made-up place.
“Get there in twenty and I’ll pay you double,” I told him.
As we sped away from Fremont, I peered behind us for any suspicious-looking cars. The driver was playing holiday music and I asked him to turn it off, which he did a little begrudgingly.
In the darkness of the cab, I looked again at
the listing and wondered if the first name—Tuyet—was fake, then realized I’d been foolish enough all these years to believe that Happy was actually her real name.
15
WE MERGED ONTO THE 95 going west. Towering sound walls flanked the highway like Native American murals, emblazoned with turtles and geckos and giant scorpions lurking beneath parabolas of shadow and amber light.
Traffic was moderate, easily navigable, and the driver was weaving across the four lanes with a wildness that pleased and slightly nauseated me.
I held the cell phone in my lap, waiting for it to ring, unsure if I would answer it. Victor would have called by now if he had seen me leave. For the first time since Happy hung up the phone, I considered the possibility of this working out, of me convincing her to hand over Mai’s letters too. Who else could deliver them at this point?
I could see her standing by the phone with her hands over her ears as it rang and rang. She might have regretted telling me about the letters, but my suspicion was that she had wanted to all along, that all her redemptive promises to Suzy had become too burdensome for her. Happy meant well. Despite what she’d done, she wasn’t a liar. But she also wasn’t someone who sought the truth or lived very easily with it. Her preference was for the scenic route, the path that skirted the forest and the brush and led circuitously to the sea, and if you were lost she’d draw you a map, or better yet blindfold you and lead you by the hand. That’s why she was the perfect friend for Suzy.
What made Suzy good for her was still a mystery to me. The same question I had for myself.
I pictured Suzy bent over the desk in the hotel room, scribbling away for hours to her daughter, to Victor, to God knows who else. All those years of her being as generous as a mute, and now she apparently had words for everyone. Even me.
Was it something I needed to know or something she needed to tell me—secrets she was at last confessing? That she had abandoned her only child twenty years ago because she was too young and afraid, too selfish, to raise her on her own? Because she’d lost that child’s father, a man I’d never been able to replace, no matter how happy I had made her in those first few years or how hard she had tried to bury him and their child and that life they had together before she came here, before she ever met me? And now this man had returned. A ghost? A figment of her imagination? An impostor?
