“He understood me. He’ll take them to the country or something.”

Suddenly the rain started full force again. Robert grabbed her hand, and they ran, laughing.

“One of those ducks will probably be on your plate by the time we order,” he said.

They arrived at the restaurant and were forced to stand in the doorway by a grim-faced maître d’ who demanded towels be brought from the kitchen for them to dry off. He stood in front of them, arms folded across his chest, tapping his foot as they waited. Helen looked down and saw he wore women’s shiny black patent-leather shoes.

Robert took Helen’s elbow and led her to a large table of reporters at the far end of the room. When the men at the table saw Helen, conversation stopped. Helen’s wet hair fell in stringy strands; her dress had turned the dark blue of midnight. Some of the faces looked stony, others outright hostile. A few were bemused. The lack of welcome was palpable.

“You look like a goddess risen from the sea,” Gary said.

“Did you swim here from the States?”

“Everyone, this is Helen Adams. She’s a freelancer just arrived a week ago,” Robert said.

“So now the girls are coming. Can’t be much of a war after all.” “Quick work, Robert. What do you do? Wait for all the pretty ones to deplane at Tan Son Nhut?”

“Funny.” Robert made introductions around the table. “And that’s Nguyen Pran Linh down there. He’s the poor bastard who has to help that scruffy-looking guy at the end, the famous Sam Darrow. More commonly known as Mr. Vietnam. Either the bravest man here or the most nearsighted.”

The table broke up in laughter and catcalls. The awkwardness lingered.

“Don’t you usually bring nurses, Robert?”

Darrow rose from the end of the table, unfolding his long legs from under the low-set table. His skin was tanned, his graying brown hair curling long around his ears. His hands smoothed out the rumpled shirt he wore. The furrow between his eyes, though, was not dislike. He just couldn’t stand the sight of another shiny, young, innocent face landing in the war, especially a female one, and he was irritated with Robert for bringing her. Still, she looked pitiful and wet, already tumbled by the war, and he wasn’t going to let the boys go after her. He gave a short bow, his assessing, hawklike eyes behind his glasses making her self-conscious.

“Excuse the poor welcome,” Darrow said. He looked down at the table and picked at his napkin, then continued. “Helen, the face that launched a thousand ships.”

“Watch out, Robert. Incoming.”

Gary laughed too loud and turned away. “Where are my lobster dumplings? Get the waiter.”

“I propose a toast to the newcomer,” Darrow said. “Welcome to our splendid little war.”

“Getting less splendid and little by the day,” Robert said. He sensed his mistake in bringing her there.

Darrow raised his hand to push his glasses up on the bridge of his nose, and Helen noticed a long burled scar running from his wrist up to his elbow, the raised tissue lighter than the rest of his arm. He lifted his glass and spoke in a mock oratory:

“And catching sight of Helen moving along the ramparts,

They murmured one to another, gentle, winged words:

‘Who on earth could blame them?’ ”

“My God,” Ed, a straw-haired man with a large nose, said. “Do you have crib notes in your egg rolls or what?”

“Now he’s showing off. Making us all look like illiterates.”

“Fellows,” Darrow said, “most of you are illiterates.”

Everyone laughed, the tension broke, and Helen sat down. Darrow had okayed her presence. Gary passed a shot of scotch to her to join the toast. She picked up the glass and emptied it in one gulp. The table erupted in cheers.

“You flatter me,” she said. “But I’m afraid you’ve got the wrong Helen.” She knew he had taken pity on her, but she wouldn’t accept it.

The white-coated waiter brought a platter of dumplings, filling her plate.

The effect of her arrival over, the conversation resumed its jagged course. “So I’m out in Tay Ninh,” Jack, an Irishman from Boston said. “And I have my interpreter ask the village elder how he thinks the new leader is doing. He says Diem is very good.” Grunts and half-hearted chuckles around the table.

“Oh man, looks like we’re winning the hearts and minds, huh?” Ed said.

“So I tell him Diem was a bad man and was overthrown two years ago,” Jack continued. “He asks very cautiously who the new leader is.”

“You should have said Uncle Ho.”

“Only name anyone recognizes anymore.”

“So I said to him Ky was in power,” Jack said.

“What does he say?”

“ ‘Ky very good.’ ”

Guffaws and groans. “So much for the domino theory. The people don’t care which way it goes. No one cares except the Americans.”

“The French would make a deal with Ho himself as long as they could keep their plantations and their cocktail hour. Just go off and be collective somewhere else, s’il vous plait.”

Helen stopped eating. She wanted simply to observe and hold her tongue, but she couldn’t. “I don’t agree.”

“What’s that, sweetheart?” Ed said, eyes narrowing.

“That the people don’t care. They cared in Korea. Everyone wants to be free.”

“What do you think, Linh? Our mysterious conduit to the north.”

Linh looked up from his plate. “I think this rice is very good.” The table burst out in laughter and when it died down, he continued as if he had not noticed the interruption. “Many people in this country haven’t had such good rice in years.”

“Our Marxist Confucian mascot. ‘Let them eat rice,’ ” Jack said.

“I’m sorry, but what do you know about Korea?” Darrow asked. “You’re just a baby now. You could have been prom queen last year in high school.”

Maybe, after all, she would not escape the night unscathed. “My father died there. Nineteen fifty Chosin. My brother was in Special Forces. He died in the Plain of Reeds last year.”

Darrow refused to offer sympathy. “Half of this table is probably here out of curiosity,” Darrow said. “The other half out of ambition. Of course it’s not the excitement that draws us. We’re in the business of war. The cool thing for us is that when this one’s done, there’s always another one-Middle East, Africa, Cambodia, Laos, Suez, Congo, Lebanon, Algeria. The war doesn’t ever have to end for us.”

“You’re just a starry-eyed mercenary, huh, Darrow?”

A long silence followed, time enough for plates to be cleared and drinks poured, while Helen and Darrow stared at each other, then looked away, then looked back. The most arrogant man she had ever met; her face burned with anger.

“Wrong. I was prom queen four years ago.”

Chortles and some hand claps. “Here, here.”

“Where you from?”

“Raised in Southern California.”

Robert coughed, wanting to divert what ever was happening across the table. “What do you all think of the army’s estimate that the war will be over in a year?”

Darrow sipped at yet another drink. “It’ll be over if we quit. Isn’t anyone reading Uncle Ho and Uncle Giap? ‘We’ll keep on fighting if it takes a hundred years.’ ”

“You don’t believe that? No one fights a hundred years.”

“I absolutely believe that. You would, too, Ed, if you ever left your air-conditioned hotel room and slogged out in the jungle with us.”

“I’ll leave the heroics for you. Framed your Pulitzer over your desk yet?”

Darrow smirked, a shamed, lopsided smile. “Actually it was sent to my wife, so I’ve never seen it. I believe she hung it up in the john. She feels the check was the best part of the deal. Making up for my piddling salary.”

Chuckles around the table. “Cry me a river, Darrow.”

As curfew approached, the restaurant emptied; people hurried away with full glasses and bottles, promising to return them in the morning. The waiters pointedly stripped off tablecloths, turned over chairs. A bucket and a mop were propped at the door to the kitchen.