Jack turned to Helen. “So, should we have come here in the first place, lass?”

“To this restaurant?” She smiled. Laughter. “In the briefing today they said eighteen hundred men have died so far. Eighteen hundred, including my brother.”

“It’s never too late, Prom Queen. Get out while the gettin’s good,” Darrow said.

“So what about a country’s manifest destiny? What woulda happened if America had never come?” Jack said.

“We might all end up speaking Vietnamese someday?” Robert said. Laughter.

“ Vietnam ’s destiny has not been her own for a long time. What about the French?” Ed asked.

“The French were on their way out,” Robert said.

“Only because Ho found something stronger than them,” Darrow said. “If the French had never been in Vietnam, maybe he wouldn’t have needed to unleash the genie from the bottle.”

“And what a genie she is.”

“Well, geniuses, we’ve figured out world politics for one night. I say we adjourn.”

“Fine.”

“Sounds good. Sports Club or the Pink?”

Outside on the sidewalk, the men formed a large, boisterous circle, but Linh stood off to the side. He said his good nights and walked away alone. Helen watched his slight, solitary figure move away. No matter how they patted him on the back and bought him drinks, he would always be on the outside of this good-old-boys’ club.

Robert turned to Helen. “I need to go to the office. Is it all right if Jack takes you back to the hotel? I’ll meet you back there in an hour or so for a nightcap?”

“Sure,” Helen said, disappointed the night for her was already over, conscious that she, too, was now being excluded from the boys’ club.

“I’ll take her,” Darrow said. He walked up and stood next to Robert, hands dug in his pockets, head hung down studying something on the sidewalk.

“No, it’s out of your way, I’m sure,” Robert said.

“Actually, I was… going that way.”

Robert looked straight at him, his usual deference blown. “Where?” he said. “You don’t even know where she’s staying.”

Darrow smiled. Everyone waited. “Everyone new stays at the Continental.”

“Jack said he would take her,” Robert said.

“I have a room there, too. Remember?”

“I’ll go with Sam,” Helen said. She gave Robert a shrugging, apologetic look, as if the choice were out of her control. “Maybe I can win a few arguments by the time we reach the hotel.”

The men, entertained, realized the sparring match was over with a clear winner. Ed grabbed at his heart in mock agony and staggered on the sidewalk. Robert bit his lips together; his face reddened. Jack clapped him on the back. “Come on, we’ll drop you off, laddie.”

Two jeeps with drivers pulled up, and they piled in like frat boys going out on the town.

“You two be careful now. The streets can be dangerous late at night.” From inside one jeep, they heard, “Easy come, easy go, huh, Robert?” Laughter as the jeeps sped off.

“Well, I’ve put us in the middle of a little scandal, I’m afraid,” Darrow said.

“We haven’t done anything.”

“But we will.”

“We won’t.” Helen stood in front of the restaurant and looked up into his face. A paper lantern behind her cast a gold light on the edge of his high cheekbone, on his glasses so she couldn’t see his eyes. “That was sudden,” she said.

“That’s one of the keys to life here. Sudden and sublime. Sudden and awful. Everything distilled to its most intense. That’s why we’re all hooked.”

“You don’t scare me. Tell me, does the great Sam Darrow always get the girl?”

“He never got the girl. Why would he be here otherwise? The boy who can’t talk learns to take pictures. Did you know you have blood on your dress?”

Helen looked down and saw the spatters along the hem that hadn’t been visible when the fabric was wet. Her face tightened at the memory. “The ducks… and a dog running by with a body in his mouth.”

Darrow bent and wiped at the fabric with a handkerchief but the blood had dried. “Can you walk in those things?” he said, pointing to her heels.

“Sure.”

“I’d like to show you something. It isn’t far.”

“I don’t know… we should be getting back.” She didn’t feel nearly as bold alone with him as she had in front of the group. She was too lonely and homesick to trust herself being attracted to someone.

“Come on. I don’t bite.”

They walked down the narrow, crooked streets. Storekeepers had pulled down signs, mostly ones in French, a few in Vietnamese, and were replacing them with ones written in English. Skirting around vendors on the sidewalk, Helen and Darrow occasionally brushed shoulders.

She didn’t know if she liked him, but she saw a passion for the work and for the country that was missing in the others. “My presence wasn’t appreciated to night,” she said.

“The boys?” Darrow said. “They’re okay.”

“They don’t want women here.”

“Wrong. They think you’re a novelty. A fun toy. Wait and see what they act like when they consider you a threat.”

She felt his hand at the small of her back as she stepped around some packing crates. He hesitated, then asked what had happened to her brother.

“The letter said he died a hero in a firefight. Sacrificed himself for his buddies. I loved my brother, but that doesn’t sound like him.”

“That would be enough reason for most to stay away,” Darrow said.

“I took care of Michael while my mother worked. After Dad died. When he broke a toy, I’d glue it. Whenever he got in fights with the other boys, I’d defend him.” She laughed. “I even gave him advice about the girl he had a crush on in junior high. I told him whenever he needed me, I’d always be there. And, of course, I wasn’t. For the most important thing, I was nowhere near.”

Helen looked down at the bloody marks on her dress, frowning. “How could I bear to live out this small life of mine back home?”

“You came too late. The good old days are all over.”

As they left the main thoroughfares, they turned left, then right, then left again. They doubled back and went forward, circled, until it seemed they had gone a very long way but not traveled far at all. Darrow leading her until she was so disoriented that her only compass was his arm in front of her. A new world, or an old world hidden, only half the stores lit by electricity, and then usually no more than a bare lightbulb swinging high on the ceiling, the rest dimly illuminated by kerosene lamps that flickered and made the rooms look alive. Many of the stores barely larger than closets, a mystery to figure out what they put up for sale in their crowded interiors. One sold paper-newspaper, writing paper, butcher paper. Another store sold twine. Still another, only scissors and knives. Food vendors crowded in portable stalls. The smells of spices she could not name blended with the sweet incense burning in the stores, all of it cloying the smell of diesel and sewage and the ever-present river.

They came to the moon-shaped entrance of an alley that was flooded across from the rain. It narrowed to the dark throat of a path.

“The streets are known by the guilds on them-noodle street, sail street, cotton street, coffin street. So if you want a driver to bring you here, say you want to go to the meeting place of silk street and lacquered bowl street.”

“Why would I want to come here?”

“It’s this way,” he said, ignoring her.

Helen looked down at the oily, pitch-black water doubtfully as Darrow stepped into it. It covered his ankles.

“They don’t get around to fixing the dips and the potholes very often.”

“Maybe we should do this another time. Curfew is only an hour away,” she said.

Without warning he scooped her up in his arms and carried her through the puddle. Chinese and Vietnamese crowded the wide mouth of the alley, the women giggling and pointing. Helen heard men barking out comments she couldn’t understand. On the other side of the puddle, Darrow kept holding her.