‘Like what?’
He knocked his knee against mine. ‘Rotten drunk.’
‘If you’re rotten drunk I better call a cab and take you back to your dad’s.’
‘And if I’m not?’
I paid the bill and led Cal out to the street. He grabbed my arm and pressed his face into my neck. His hair smelt unclean, but his cheek was as smooth as a child’s. I lifted my hand and cupped his head, holding him against me. It was only for a second.
‘I need to get you home.’
‘To your place?’
‘If you like, but I’m calling Matthew as soon as we get there.’
‘Forget about him. Just let me come home with you.’ His lips pressed against my collarbone. I grabbed his shoulders and pushed him away.
He scowled at me, swaying slightly. ‘I’ll take that as a no, then.’
‘Do you want to sit down? I’m going to call you a taxi.’
‘Call it for yourself,’ he said. ‘I’m going looking for the party people.’
‘Cal. You’ve had a lot to drink. Maybe—’
‘Whatever, Mum.’
He staggered off into the quietening city.
At home I sat with my phone on my lap. Hanoi is one of the safest cities in the world. As long as he didn’t step out in front of a speeding moto, he’d be fine. The worst that might happen to him was getting ripped off by an unscrupulous taxi driver. Unless he went to a brothel. Surely he’d use protection. Probably.
I had just decided to call Matthew and let him know his son was drunk and at large, when my phone buzzed. Had fun 2nght, soz 4 b-ing a dick, and almost immediately a second message: Dont tell dad, k?
That night I dreamt I was in my childhood bed. I was being spooned by someone who I knew to be Cal. I asked him to take my pyjamas off, but he wouldn’t. Then my sister Margi came to the door and told me our parents were dead. That already happened, I told Cal, but he cried as though it was news.
I awoke with acid gnawing under my ribs and queased through the morning with an increasing sense of dread. Around midday, my phone buzzed and the lurching of my guts on seeing his name confirmed my mortifying suspicion that I was not merely hungover.
Last night was a blast. Wanna hang out again soon?
It took me twenty minutes to write: Sure. I’ll call your dad & organise something.
I meant u & me, he replied immediately, and then, after a few minutes: Dont wanna hang with my dad all the time. U know?
I flicked through the pages of the newspaper on my desk until I got to the entertainment listings. I found what I was looking for and texted back: Under 21s night @ Caspa on Hang Be tonight. You should go.
Thanks 4 tip, he replied and by five o’clock the gnawing and lurching had been overpowered by a headache. At home, I took some codeine, ordered in a curry and slumped on the couch watching American sitcoms from the nineties. When Cal texted to tell me the under-21s night was crap and he was heading to a bar on Church Street, I deleted the message, turned off my phone and went to bed.
fter I’d rebuffed Cal, I rarely thought of him, and when I did it was against my will, a mind-flash brought on by the unusually large biceps of a grocery boy or the blunt accent of a passing Aussie backpacker. I met Matthew for lunch and he mentioned Cal, of course, told me of his coming in drunk most nights, of his reluctance to speak about home or his plans for the future. I was alert to any signs of trouble between father and son, but found none. Matthew seemed happy to be grumbling and fretting over his son and I felt happy for him. I told him I thought Cal was charming and sweet and mature for his age. I said I wouldn’t worry about him too much, that he was just being young. Though this sounded contradictory it was the right thing to say. Matthew was clearly proud of his mildly-rebellious son and pleased that his friend had taken an interest.
A week or so after I’d last seen Cal I was at the Grog Hut with some workmates when I bumped into Henry and Collins. Henry convinced me to abandon my crowd and drink with them. He was more Matthew’s friend than mine and I had rarely socialised with him alone, but my table was getting rapidly more obnoxious so I was thankful for an excuse to ditch them.
Collins bought a round of Tigers and told unoriginal anecdotes about his time in Malaysia. Then Henry bought a bottle of shiraz – a rare treat in this wine-starved town – and the conversation moved, as it so often did amongst our tribe, to the dating scene.
Henry was, like me, divorced, childless and unenthusiastic about future marital-type commitment. Unlike me, he had an active sex life. As a white, forty-something male in good physical condition and with enough disposable income to think nothing of paying forty US dollars for a bottle of very average wine, he was in high demand. He also had specific tastes and so he knocked back more sex in a month than I had in a year.
His preference – like that of half the white men in Vietnam – was for petite, long-haired Asian women who were, or appeared to be, between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five. The nice thing about Henry was that he wasn’t a prick about it. He didn’t lie to them or sweet-talk or make promises he didn’t intend to keep. When his honesty meant he couldn’t find a suitable partner, he had no hesitation in paying for one, but only from a brothel that prided itself on its policies of birth certificate verification and regular health tests. ‘I don’t want to be worrying about child trafficking or bloody AIDS while I’m screwing,’ he explained to me once.
When I said he wasn’t a prick, I was speaking relatively.
Anyway, this night at the Grog Hut, Collins mentioned a club near West Lake that he’d heard was a good place for Western men to meet ‘young Vietnamese singles’.
‘You mean boys,’ I said.
‘Young men wanting to meet slightly older men. Nothing wrong with that is there?’
‘No,’ I said, but my tone and face were, I knew, saying the opposite.
‘Mischa is jealous there isn’t an equivalent for straight white ladies.’
‘There is,’ I said, trying to regain my usual disengage demeanour. ‘It’s called the backpacker quarter.’
Henry scoffed. ‘Not even close, darling. We’re talking about lovely, fresh, eager Vietnamese youth. Not greasy-haired backpackers with sunburnt skin and vomit breath.’
‘Not everybody fetishises Asians, you know.’
‘No,’ Henry agreed. ‘Kerry, for example, wouldn’t sleep with an Asian if you paid her.’
‘Not that any of them would want to sleep with her,’ Collins chimed in.
‘Why am I speaking to you people?’ I asked and then answered myself by emptying the wine bottle into my glass.
‘I wonder though, Mischa, if you’re missing out unnecessarily. In KL, I knew women like you who—’
‘ “Women like me?” ’
‘Middle-aged and desperate,’ Henry said.
‘I’m ten years younger than you, you creep.’
‘Hmm. Not denying the desperation, I notice.’
‘—single women in no hurry to settle down, was what I meant. Anyway, there are men – young, attractive men – more than happy to play around for a night. Or longer if she has the money. I’ve not been in this town long enough to know for sure, but I’d be surprised if such services weren’t offered here as well.’
‘Of course they are. But Mischa, like most women, thinks paying for sex is beneath her.’
‘Don’t tell me what I think.’ I drank some more wine. ‘Fact is I’ve never thought about it at all.’
‘It’s not a matter of “paying for it”. Not like straight men have to.’ Collins nodded towards Henry. ‘You and I are lucky, Mischa. Most young men aren’t terribly fussy about who they fuck. If you show them you value their time – a dinner that costs what they earn in a month, a nice hotel room – well, they’ll reciprocate.’
‘Do you honestly not feel the tiniest bit uncomfortable about exploiting their poverty in order to get them into bed?’
‘You’re assuming they wouldn’t want to be in my bed anyway.
I give as good as I get, don’t you worry.’
‘I wasn’t worried, really.’
‘Cheer up, Mish. I hear that the satisfaction one gets from moral superiority is almost as good as sex.’ Henry put his arm around me. He smelt clean and his skin was warm. I let my head rest on his shoulder and wondered if he’d consider lowering his standards for one night.
‘I should call Matthew. He’d be on my side.’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Collins. ‘Pure as the driven, that one. Loves the place for its culture.’
I was drunk and it was noisy and Henry moved his arm up and pulled me into an undignified though not unpleasant headlock, but I’m sure I heard him say ‘Shut up’ or maybe ‘sshhh’. Anyway, when he released me, Collins was standing and asking what we wanted to drink next.
‘I’m out of here.’ I extricated myself from Henry’s blokey embrace and pecked him on the cheek. I walked home, hot and queasy and unable to shake the sensation that I’d been made a fool of.
I used to feel sorry for the Vietnamese women seduced by men like Henry. I still do sometimes. It’s complicated. Not long after I’d begun work at the magazine, I was sitting in the office lunch room when a few of the expat men began a loud, thoughtless conversation about why they preferred Vietnamese women. Being used to these kinds of discussions, I carried on reading my newspaper and sipping my tea. It was only when they left that I noticed one of the translators, a brilliant twenty-year-old named Thuan, had been sitting in the back corner the whole time. She was wearing headphones, but I could tell from the look of sad complicity she gave me that she’d heard every word.
‘Pigs,’ I said to her.
‘Yes. I can’t believe they speak like this when you are in the room. Don’t they care to hurt your feelings?’
‘My feelings?’
‘You are not like they say about western women. You are very elegant and nothing like a man. Your hair is so pretty and you have most beautiful skin. I think these men would be very lucky to love you.’ She shook her head. ‘But you would not be lucky. As you say, these are pigs.’
‘Well, that’s why I’m glad to overhear things like that. It helps me know who to keep away from. I just wish I could let all the single Vietnamese girls know to stay away, too.’
Thuan smiled. ‘Already they know. All Vietnamese girls know about foreign men. Some girls forget for a while, because it is, um, romantic to have a lover who is different and exciting. There is a story all Hanoian schoolgirls love: . You know this? Okay, on vacation in Sam Son, a beautiful young woman falls in love with a fisherman. He is dirty and has terrible manners but he has a body that is muscled and strong, not like the boys she knows in Hanoi. After her vacation she dreams of her lover, but when he turns up in Hanoi wearing silly old-fashioned clothes and speaking in his fisherman’s accent, she straight away does not love him. She sends him away and he dies of a broken heart. This,’ Thuan said, ‘happens every day with Hanoi girls and handsome men from far away.’
‘?’ I checked the spelling with Thuan and wrote it down in the notebook I carried when I still thought I could learn the language and understand the culture simply by scribbling down scraps of conversations with co-workers.
‘It’s a good story,’ Thuan said, gathering her folder and tape-player. ‘But I think I should write the second one, the, ah, sequel, yes? Yes. After she sends her lover away the girl marries a Hanoi boy whose clothes and manners and body is opposite to fisherman. But it is not happy ever after. When he takes off his wedding clothes and wedding manners she realises her husband is not opposite. He is the same, but worse, actually, because he does not even have novelty of the foreign.’
‘You should definitely write that.’
‘Yes, and all the schools should teach it because there is a very important lesson for romantic young schoolgirls. Doesn’t matter to marry a foreigner or marry a Vietnamese; you will end up married to a man.’
I was a romantic young schoolgirl when I fell for my foreigner. Glen was blond, tanned, tall and muscled. He surfed and skied, rode horses and dirt bikes. He was from California, which was the centre of the universe to a suburban Aussie girl addicted to soaps and Hollywood films. He was older than me, but still, I realise now, terribly young. He pulled out all the stops: weekend at a vineyard, helicopter ride at dusk, champagne and a diamond ring. I was a seventeen-year-old orphan, days out of high-school, living with my married sister and her new baby. When Glen slid that ring on my finger it felt like a happy ending.
Imagine wanting an ending of any kind at seventeen. Breaks my fucking heart.
Kerry came over after church as usual. She didn’t hug me or even say hello, just blinked tragically and slumped her way through to my kitchen.
I turned the gas on under the kettle. ‘What’s happened?’
‘Nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Three years I’ve been in this job, in this country and nothing has changed. No, that isn’t true. Things have changed for the worse. Infection rates are up. Child rape is rampant. Sex slavery is on the rise. School enrolment is stagnant, so I’ll take that as a win, I guess.’
‘Oh, Kez. What brought this on?’
‘Sermon.’
The bells rang out. I pulled the window shut. ‘It was in English today?’
‘No, but . . . Part-way through I was just overcome with a call to service. It was what I felt forever ago back at school when I felt called to be a nun, but I was such a tart and everybody knew it and so Sister Margaret Mary convinced me that the call was to serve in a different way and we prayed together and it turned out she was right, because I had a vision – oh, not a vision-vision, but an idea that came out of nowhere – that I would help girls like me who weren’t lucky enough to live in a place with free clinics and condoms and stuff. Don’t bother hiding your disdain, Mish, I know you don’t believe it, but it doesn’t matter. What matters is that in church this morning, I felt that same wave of love and certainty, but then straight away I realised I have failed. I might as well have been a nun for all the good I’ve done.’
‘You haven’t failed,’ I said, although I had no idea if that was true. I did find it difficult to imagine her as a serious and useful person, though I knew she must be to have an office of her own in the UN French-colonial mansion with its dusty yellow walls and barbed wire and Hollywood-movie guards in pale blue hats.
‘Just because the statistics look crap, that doesn’t mean you’re not doing good.’
‘The thing is,’ she said, wiping sweat from her forehead with a tissue she pulled out of her bra, ‘that I forget who I am and what I’m for. Day-to-day life takes over with all its petty tasks and distractions and I forget my purpose.’
The kettle whistled and I went to the bench to prepare the coffee that Kerry would curse as petrol and drink in three gulps.
‘Kez, most people have no clue what their purpose is, or even that they’re supposed to have one. I sure as hell don’t know what mine is. You can’t beat yourself up because you haven’t single-handedly fixed a nation that’s been broken for longer than you’ve been alive.’
‘But what am I here for then, Mish? I don’t mean here on this planet, although there’s that, too. I mean here in Hanoi. I’m lonely. I’m depressed. I’m borderline alcoholic because the noise of the traffic stops me sleeping unless I’m half-smashed. I’ve got a permanently upset stomach and heat rash for ten months of the year. What’s the bloody point if I’m not making things better?’
I’m always shocked to find people don’t feel the same way about Hanoi as I do. It’s like overhearing nasty comments about a close friend. It’s hard to accept that one’s love is not universally felt.
‘So leave.’ I plonked her coffee in front of her. ‘If you’re not happy and you feel you’re not getting anywhere, just hand in your resignation and go home.’
Kerry looked at me like I’d told her she had a month to live. ‘You don’t understand, Mish! This is it for me. I’m thirty-five years old and I’ve worked for the
same organisation since I graduated. I’ve uncomplainingly done my time in every shit-hole they’ve sent me to, three years here, five years there, moving up half a rung on the ladder each time. Hanoi is a dream posting. No militias or terrorists, rapidly developing economy, semi-decent plumbing. If I can’t hack it here, that’s it for me. Career over.’ She gulped some coffee, grimaced. ‘And the worst bit is that I never even wanted some big life-dominating career, but since the husband and two kids have failed to materialise the bloody career is all I have, so if that’s done with, well . . .’
‘Maybe the husband and two kids will come along after all,’ I said. ‘Or maybe something even better. You need to hang in there. And stop going to bloody church if it gets you so riled up.’
‘If I stop going to church I’ll really be done. There’ll be nothing left of who I intended to be.’
‘Maybe that’s not a bad thing.’
‘Maybe. Shit. We’re going all Eat, Pray, Love. Enough.’ Kerry balled up her tissue and lobbed it across the room into the bin, then held her hand up for me to slap. ‘Let’s just call this a bad day, and move on.’
We were quiet for a few moments, then Kerry said, ‘I ran into Marcus Scott the other day.’
Marcus Scott, a Canadian nurse working at the French Hospital, was one of the two men I’d dated in Hanoi. Except for a long-distance sighting near the English bookshop I hadn’t seen him since we broke up over a year ago.
‘How is he?’
‘Married.’
‘Gosh.’
‘She was with him. Very pretty. Not much English.’ Kerry picked a bit of purple nail polish from her thumbnail. ‘Never go to that chintzy nail bar near the Metropole. I asked for cerise and I got this grapey muck.’
‘I’m not at all surprised.’
‘About the bad nail job or Marcus marrying a Viet?’
‘Both.’
‘Well, I was bloody surprised. Disappointed, too, to be honest. I didn’t know he was one of them. After you broke up I thought about going after him myself until I remembered how fucking dull he was.’