His friends told him that the gold offered by Mr. Khuất was too little, and that he should ask for more or find a different family. Five taels of gold in advance would be the market price.

  Walking back to the Khuấts’ house, Phong saw people sleeping on the streets, beggars stretching their palms, pleading to passersby. Boys his age bent their backs low in the sun, shining shoes for rich men. He didn’t want to be homeless ever again. Here was his chance to leave for a better future and he had to grab it. He couldn’t do it on his own, and Mr. Khuất seemed to know how to get him to America.

  That night, Phong told Mr. Khuất his friends were getting five taels of gold. The man said “I’ll give you another ring, for two taels in advance, then three taels when we get there,” and Phong nodded.

  During the next months, Mr. Khuất worked hard in preparing Phong and his family for the exit permit interview and entry visa interview. He staged scenes for their family photos which he brought to Chợ Lớn Market in the Chinese Quarters. A week later, he showed Phong the same photos, now faded, as if they had been taken years ago.

  Mr. Khuất also wrote down many possible questions and answers about them being a family and demanded everyone to learn them by heart. He ran practice sessions with Phong. The man was determined not to fail and his confidence calmed Phong’s anxiety.

  Once their exit permit applications had been submitted, Phong kept himself busy with new exercise routines: he ran up and down the staircase and did pushups; he lifted weights, using blocks of bricks. And he found himself a job: stringing bamboo curtains for a cooperative. As he squatted on the floor of his room, piercing the cut-up bamboo pieces with thin metal wire then connecting them into long strings, he imagined the homes where his curtains would travel to. Homes filled with good conversations and laughter. He was determined to build a home like that for himself. He’d started calling Mrs. Khuất and Mr. Khuất “Mother” and “Father” so that he would pretend better in the interviews, but didn’t feel comfortable with it. As much as he yearned to have parents, parenthood couldn’t be bought with money. It had to be earned and proven over time, and it certainly couldn’t be based on lies.

  But he lied and passed the exit permit interview.

  On the day of their American visa interviews, Phong was called in first, then Mr. Khuất, and finally Mrs. Khuất. The visa officer was friendly toward Phong, and he thought he did very well.

  That night, loud noises woke Phong up. He tiptoed downstairs toward Mr. and Mrs. Khuất’s room. They were arguing. By eavesdropping, he learned that when the visa officer had challenged some answers from Mrs. Khuất, she got frightened and broke down.

  “You’re a foolish woman,” shouted Mr. Khuất.

  “All of his questions, they made me feel like a criminal.” Mrs. Khuất wailed.

  “Now you’ll make us rot in this hellhole. Damn you!”

  “How can you commit to such a serious lie when you are a Catholic? Don’t you think God will judge you?”

  “God knows that I need to get us and our daughters out of this shithole. He will not judge.”

  The shouting got louder. Phong covered his ears. Back in his bed, he lay awake until the morning. He hoped they’d stop fighting. He felt sorry for Mrs. Khuất.

  He thought Mrs. Khuất cared for him, too, but the day they learned that their visa applications failed, she told him to return the gold rings, pack his things and leave. Her eyes were as cold as those of the fish she’d often brought home and butchered for dinner.

  “It’s not my fault, I did my best,” Phong told Mr. Khuất, who was sitting at the table, reading a newspaper.

  The man turned the page and kept reading.

  Phong trembled with rage. His dream of going to America had just been shattered. He went upstairs to collect his clothes. Standing next to the window, he looked into the silk bag. The four gold rings gleamed their promise under sunlight. He’d taken them to a gold shop to check if they were real; he knew the Khuấts were cheaters. “It’s pure gold, twenty-four karat,” the goldsmith had announced, then asked, “Where did you steal these? Want to sell them to me? Best price in town.”

  Now, Phong dropped the silk bag into the chest pocket of his T-shirt. The Khuấts had paid him so that he’d lie on their behalf, which he had done to his best ability. He’d fulfilled his part of the deal.

  Downstairs, he headed for the door, only to see it blocked. Mr. Khuất stood there, a large wooden stick in his hands. “Return us the gold,” the man pointed his weapon at Phong. “You only had one task to do, to convince those American people, but you failed. Yes, you did! ”

  “You destroyed my chance for a better life, and now you blame me?” Phong slung the strap of his bag over his shoulder and rolled up the sleeves of his T-shirt to show off his muscular upper arms. “You said you had asked many people about me, yes? So you must know that I love to teach those I hate some lessons.”

  The Heat of Sài Gòn

  Hồ Chí Minh City, 2016

  Dan picked up Linda’s suitcase and followed her out of the airport. He was surprised nobody had given him trouble. The immigration officer didn’t take the money Linda had slid into his passport, and no one had inspected their belongings.

  A few feet from the exit, he paused. Too many people were standing outside. Once, in a dream, he was walking somewhere in the Mekong Delta when a man ran behind him and stabbed him in the back with a knife, shouting, “Return my wife and my children to me!” The man bore the same face as a farmer he’d seen kneeling and howling outside a burning home.

  Linda turned. She smiled, stretched out her hand. She’d seen him pace their living room during the nights before their departure. He reached for her, tethered himself to her fingers.

  Outside, all the people were looking past him, searching for arriving passengers, babies and flowers clutched to their chests. Several guards stood casually in dark green uniforms. None of them had weapons. The heaviness in his chest eased.

  “Where’s our guide?” Linda stood on tiptoes to look further, then pulled Dan forward. She waved to a man who’d emerged from the crowd, holding up a sign that read Mr. Daniel Ashland & Mrs. Linda Ashland.

  The man smiled, lowered the sign, hurried toward them. He was slim and looked fit, and it was difficult to guess his age. A big scar cut across his left cheek. “You can trust him,” Duy had told Linda. “He’s an old friend, my former comrade. An experienced tour guide, too.”

  The man extended his arm. “I am Thiên. Welcome to Sài Gòn!”

  “Thanks for picking us up, Mr. Thien.” Linda beamed. She’d followed her friends’ advice and addressed Thiên with a respectful title.

  Darkness had fallen. A strong wind blew, ushering the smell of rain forward. Thiên waved for a taxi. In the car he handed them each a business card. “This has my mobile number. If you get lost, you call me. You call me anytime you need.”

  Dan put the card into his breast pocket, telling himself there’d be no way he would let Linda out of his sight. Especially here.

  Thiên gave Linda a copy of the itinerary, explaining their two-day program in the city before leaving for the Mekong Delta.

  When they had planned the trip, Linda had suggested that they experience Việt Nam beyond the war. No visits to war museums or to the popular Củ Chi tunnels where tourists got a glimpse into the lives of Communist soldiers living underground during the war. Dan couldn’t agree more.

  Linda had read the itinerary so often, she must have memorized it. Still, she switched the light on and studied the pages as if it were the first time she’d seen them. “Looks good,” she announced happily before putting them into her handbag.

  Thiên gave Linda a small bottle. “Mosquito repellent. My wife made it herself, from lemongrass. She has a small shop. Please . . . spray your arms and legs every day as you go out. It’s rainy season, so there’s dengue fever.”

  “Thank you so much,” said Linda, beaming. “By the way . . . Duy and Như sent some medicine for your mother. It’s in my suitcase.”

  “Ah, they’re so kind. I wish I listened to them and tried to go to America. Too much corruption here. Little freedom of speech.”

  “How bad is the corruption, Mr. Thien?”

  As Thiên and Linda gossiped about local politics, Dan listened to the rain hammering onto the car. It had often rained like this. He’d been frightened of it, but Kim had said rain was her music. She would lie with him in bed, humming, her naked body a beautiful brown next to his white skin as raindrops tapped onto the windows of their apartment.

  The street was almost empty. Through the thick curtain of rain, he saw two moving figures. A woman was pulling a child’s hand. They were running.

  During the last time that he saw Kim, she had clutched his wrist tightly, telling him she was pregnant, and that she wasn’t lying.

  He sank deeper into the seat, pressed down by the weight of guilt. He hoped Kim and the child had survived the war.

  And he hoped Linda would forgive him, if he ever got up the courage to tell her. During the first year of his return, he had often thought about confessing his affair to Linda. But he feared she would leave him.

  Linda centered him. He’d realized how loyal she’d been to him on the day of his return to Seattle from his one-year tour in Việt Nam. He had no memory of stepping off the plane, only of being suddenly in the arrival hall with a group of soldiers, all of whom, like him, looked dazed in their khaki Class A uniforms decorated by rows of ribbons, and silver pilot or aircrew wings or combat infantry badges on their chests. A crowd of people stood outside, Linda and his mom among them. Linda was rushing to him when someone shouted, “Look at those fuckers.” A woman and a man spat in his direction. “Baby killers!” someone shouted, “How many kids did you kill? And how many women?” As his mom started crying, he stood there, stunned. The people screaming at him weren’t carrying banners or signs. They looked like anyone waiting for loved ones. His countrymen.

  “I’m sorry, honey,” Linda said later as she drove him and his mother home. Her knuckles were white as she gripped the steering wheel. “Those people . . . they’re just ignorant. A bunch of rich, spoiled brats who’ll never be forced to really risk their own asses. Regardless of how I feel about the war, I can never resent you or anyone else who has to fight it. You did what you thought you were supposed to do at the risk of your own life. You’re a man of honor, Dan. Don’t let anybody tell you otherwise.”

  A man of honor. He clung to her words, as if her saying it could make it true.

  “She’s right.” His mom reached toward the front seat for his arm, her eyes welling up with tears. “I’m proud of you son. I’m glad, so glad you made it home.”

  He had a month’s leave before reporting to new duties at Fort Wolters, Texas. In the weeks after his return, as demonstrations against the war raged around town, Linda stayed by his side, defending him ferociously when anyone put down veterans. They were working-class kids who had no choice, she would say. “If Dan hadn’t gone, someone would have to go in his place,” she told her friends. It took her three weeks to confess to Dan, as if admitting to an affair, that she’d been to several anti-war demonstrations. At some level, she felt her protest was a betrayal of him. He told her he was proud she’d gone; he would join her if she decided to go again. She never did when he was around. Perhaps a part of her remained disturbed and embarrassed that he’d been in the war. She told her friends and acquaintances that his only job had been to conduct search and rescue missions, and that he’d risked his life to save others. She truly believed that he hadn’t killed any civilians.

  He never corrected her. If he let her define him, it would give him something to live up to.

  Their marriage had survived because she considered him an honorable man.

  “Mr. Thien . . .” Linda leaned forward in the taxi, her voice cheerful, “when we’re done with the city tour tomorrow, could you take me to the hairdresser my friend Jenna went to? She was there a few months ago and said the service was excellent and the price so cheap.”

  “Everything here cheap for Americans,” said Thiên. “Madam also wants new clothes? I know good tailors.”

  “Yes, but I’d like to go to the tailor Jenna recommended. He did such a great job.”

  Jenna was a member of the veteran spouse support group Linda attended. She had visited Việt Nam with her husband and said the trip was better than any doctor, better than any medicine.

  Outside, as their taxi approached the center of town, groups of people stood on the pavement, squeezing themselves into the narrow spaces under the eaves of houses and buildings. Several raced by on motorbikes, their heads covered by rain ponchos. Dan tried to look at their faces but everything was a blur. Would he recognize Kim if he saw her? Probably not. Years had passed and she’d look very different. Or she might be dead.

  A cell phone rang. Thiên picked it up, speaking rapidly. Once the call was done, he turned around. “My granddaughter. She got nine out of ten in her math test.”

  “What a clever girl,” said Linda. “How old is she?”

  “Eight, Madam. I have a son and one granddaughter. How about you?”

  Silence filled the taxi. “We don’t have any children,” Linda said finally.

  “Oh, sorry, Madam. . . . Sorry I asked.”

  Dan reached for Linda’s hand, intertwining his fingers with hers, hoping she’d feel comforted. What a pity they’d never been able to have children. By the time they considered adoption, Linda said she was too old to handle a young kid. He should have tried to change her mind, assure her how much he would help, and that she would make a great mother. She had no siblings, and with his only sister living in Australia and deliberately out of touch, sometimes he wished for a bigger family.

  Perhaps Linda would never forgive him for the child he’d had with Kim. It would mock their failure to have children.

  The rain’s drumming eased, then disappeared. A motorbike passed the taxi, carrying two adults and two children squeezed between them. On another motorbike a young woman embraced her lover, laughing with him. He and Linda had looked like that before the war, inseparable, laughter spilling out of them as naturally as the air they breathed. The war had robbed them of their youth, their pure joy.

  Linda rolled down the window. The wind rushed in, carrying with it the fresh smell of rain.

  A boy who sat behind a motorbike waved. “Hello! How ah you?” he called toward their taxi.

  “Oh, hello there.” Linda waved back, smiling.

  “I am fine, thank you. And you?” The boy beamed as the taxi sped away from his bike.

  “People here are so friendly.” Linda responded to another child’s wave.

  “Because you are nice. To unfriendly people, we can be nasty.” Thiên laughed. “We have a saying . . . hmm . . . I hope I can translate this . . . When go with Buddha, we wear Buddhist robes, when we see ghosts, we wear clothes made of paper.”

  “It sounds good, but what does it mean?” Linda asked.

  “In the company of Buddha, wear Buddhist robes, in the company of ghosts, wear ghost clothes?” Dan offered a translation.

  “We make a perfect team!” Thiên clapped his hands.

  The taxi turned onto a big boulevard lined with trees and lit up by streetlights. Dan was amazed to see all the fancy shops, recognizing international luxury brand names. Even under the hands of the Communists, Sài Gòn looked rich. There were hardly any homeless people sleeping on the pavement, unlike Seattle. It was incredible how he’d been brainwashed about Communism, its danger to humanity. During his military training, he’d been told about the domino theory, that if one country fell to Communism, others would follow and Communism would take over the world.

  How naïve he’d been about the war. In fact, he’d known nothing about Việt Nam when he signed up for the service. He had imagined the country as an exotic place. Although it was 1968 and the anti-war movement had already started, he’d been too distracted with problems at home to pay attention. And secretly he’d dreamt of being a hero. Heroes were born out of wars and there he was, feeling proud he would join one of the most powerful armies in the world to rescue the pitiful Vietnamese from the savage Communists. But his reading later about Việt Nam taught him that the Vietnamese didn’t need pity. They had fought courageously for independence against the Chinese, the Mongolians, the French, and the Japanese.

  It had taken him years of such reading to understand that he’d been sent to Việt Nam to save it from the Vietnamese, and saving the Vietnamese meant killing them. By the millions. Learning all this made him angry, made him drink, but it also made him nod at the truths his reading kept revealing. There was one book that made him scream in outrage and throw it against a wall—the one by Robert MacNamara. He still remembered the eleven reasons the former Secretary of Defense gave for America failing in Việt Nam, among them “our profound ignorance of the history, culture and politics of the people.”

  Not just ignorant, they’d been arrogant and racist. General Westmoreland, former commander of U.S. forces in Việt Nam, had said: “The Oriental doesn’t put the same high price on life as does a Westerner. Life is plentiful. Life is cheap in the Orient.” Dan shook his head. If Westmoreland had met Kim, what would he say to Kim’s love for life and the many things she’d done for her family? Would he be able to look Kim in the eyes and tell her that life was cheap for Vietnamese?

  “Here we are. Majestic Hotel!” Thiên announced as the taxi pulled to a stop.

  Dan hesitated at the sight of people and motorbikes outside; then he took a deep breath, pulled his backpack onto his shoulder, and stepped out.