with red tiled roofs and white porte-cochères. You could even still hear the sound of bicycle bells on the Tu Do. It was all very charming and it couldn’t last.
The carpet-bombing and American search-and-destroy operations had brought millions of refugees flocking into the cities. Nixon kept throwing more conscripts at the problem. The city was sinking under the weight of its street kids and army trucks, the tamarind trees were dying from pollution, and soon the whole place would look like Detroit.
He was still shaken from seeing Magdalena again. She hadn’t changed at all, unless getting even more damn beautiful counted as major transformation. He hadn’t expected that seeing her again would affect him the way it had. He thought at worst he might feel a moment’s regret.
Instead he couldn’t sleep and couldn’t think, and had spent the last forty-eight hours in an alcoholic haze.
What could he have done differently? Life was so much easier to live looking backwards. She was right--he could have looked for her all those years ago. But when you are younger you have your pride, and he thought he would get over her, like he got over every other woman in his life.
He had tried taking home bar girls, he’d had a few casual affairs, but none of these things pleased him anymore. Sex was just sex, like eating or drinking. She was different, she had made him feel alive in ways he hadn’t counted on or thought of and he hadn’t really felt alive ever since he left her on Comoros.
The first time he had seen her he knew there was something different about her. He had expected to win her over with a little patience, back then he always got the women he wanted. He even planned on letting her tame him a little; he had felt ready to give away his womanizing by then.
But it hadn’t turned out anything like the way he had planned. He had rules and he always swore he would keep to them; a woman was unfaithful once, she would be unfaithful again, and you never risked a second time. That was his rule.
But now rules didn’t mean anything, now she was married to someone else and he still couldn’t think of anyone but her. What a fucking mess.
The whole point of his life had been to not care too much about anything or anyone and always play the main chance. Now it seemed his life was pointless.
When he first came to Asia in ’63, he was still working for the Agency, running opium from Laos. He came back in ’65 and started up the Nevada when US servicemen started arriving, and it had paid off big time. Back then it had seemed like the perfect life for a man as dissolute as himself. Took him way too long to work out what a damned fool he was and by the time he changed his mind and went back to New York, he found out she was already married to this hotshot journalist, and so he stayed two nights at the Ritz and then went back to Saigon. He decided she was happy and it was best to leave her alone.
If it wasn’t for the VC he probably would have disappeared inside a bottle forever. The fixtures and fittings weren’t worth a goddamn, and if he wanted he could get out clean and start a new life. But no kind of life that he could think of appealed to him anymore. What he wanted was to be back in the Hollywood hills in the pool with the princess.
He reached for the bourbon bottle beside him. After all these years of not believing in anything he finally longed for something to really care about, one reason to make living worthwhile.
He closed his eyes, remembered once seeing a rice field golden under a dipping flat sun, cranes silhouetted for a moment by the sky. For all the bars and battlefields he had seen this one moment was somehow seared into his memory. It suggested the possibility of finally finding peace. He just didn’t want to find it alone.
Chapter 14
MAGDALENA
I had bought my ticket from the Pan-Am office; this time tomorrow I would be on my way back to New York. I had no plans after that;
The carpet-bombing and American search-and-destroy operations had brought millions of refugees flocking into the cities. Nixon kept throwing more conscripts at the problem. The city was sinking under the weight of its street kids and army trucks, the tamarind trees were dying from pollution, and soon the whole place would look like Detroit.
He was still shaken from seeing Magdalena again. She hadn’t changed at all, unless getting even more damn beautiful counted as major transformation. He hadn’t expected that seeing her again would affect him the way it had. He thought at worst he might feel a moment’s regret.
Instead he couldn’t sleep and couldn’t think, and had spent the last forty-eight hours in an alcoholic haze.
What could he have done differently? Life was so much easier to live looking backwards. She was right--he could have looked for her all those years ago. But when you are younger you have your pride, and he thought he would get over her, like he got over every other woman in his life.
He had tried taking home bar girls, he’d had a few casual affairs, but none of these things pleased him anymore. Sex was just sex, like eating or drinking. She was different, she had made him feel alive in ways he hadn’t counted on or thought of and he hadn’t really felt alive ever since he left her on Comoros.
The first time he had seen her he knew there was something different about her. He had expected to win her over with a little patience, back then he always got the women he wanted. He even planned on letting her tame him a little; he had felt ready to give away his womanizing by then.
But it hadn’t turned out anything like the way he had planned. He had rules and he always swore he would keep to them; a woman was unfaithful once, she would be unfaithful again, and you never risked a second time. That was his rule.
But now rules didn’t mean anything, now she was married to someone else and he still couldn’t think of anyone but her. What a fucking mess.
The whole point of his life had been to not care too much about anything or anyone and always play the main chance. Now it seemed his life was pointless.
When he first came to Asia in ’63, he was still working for the Agency, running opium from Laos. He came back in ’65 and started up the Nevada when US servicemen started arriving, and it had paid off big time. Back then it had seemed like the perfect life for a man as dissolute as himself. Took him way too long to work out what a damned fool he was and by the time he changed his mind and went back to New York, he found out she was already married to this hotshot journalist, and so he stayed two nights at the Ritz and then went back to Saigon. He decided she was happy and it was best to leave her alone.
If it wasn’t for the VC he probably would have disappeared inside a bottle forever. The fixtures and fittings weren’t worth a goddamn, and if he wanted he could get out clean and start a new life. But no kind of life that he could think of appealed to him anymore. What he wanted was to be back in the Hollywood hills in the pool with the princess.
He reached for the bourbon bottle beside him. After all these years of not believing in anything he finally longed for something to really care about, one reason to make living worthwhile.
He closed his eyes, remembered once seeing a rice field golden under a dipping flat sun, cranes silhouetted for a moment by the sky. For all the bars and battlefields he had seen this one moment was somehow seared into his memory. It suggested the possibility of finally finding peace. He just didn’t want to find it alone.
Chapter 14
MAGDALENA
I had bought my ticket from the Pan-Am office; this time tomorrow I would be on my way back to New York. I had no plans after that;
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