Chapter 12
“It’s kind of late. Do you have to head home soon?” Bé dropped the dreaded question.
“I don’t know,” Hà was being honest.
“Well, how are you feeling, then?”
“I think I’m less drunk now.”
“Good, good, me too.”
“But you’ll have to go back, right? What time are you flying tomorrow?”
“Early afternoon-ish?” Bé said, drawing out her speech, as if to stall. “But you know what? I won’t even sleep. I don’t think I’m going back to the hotel anytime soon.”
“Oh? But what will you do this time at night?” Hà asked, but Bé kept silent. The Viet girl only asked out of courtesy, because she already knew what Bé had in mind. By this time, the other patrons have all gone home, and the duo haven’t moved from their spots on the cold tile, behind the porcelain and palms. Music was still playing, but the volume had turned down noticeably. The venue was about to close.
“Nah, you’re right. I’m just being silly. Listen, let me see you home, OK?” The American said after a long pause, stood up, and extended a hand; Hà was immediately reminded of how tall this girl was.
They stood here in front of each other. For a moment, none of them moved, save for the subtle swaying motion due to wind. Bé broke from thought and expressed that she wanted to stand at the railing for a minute. So, Hà slid into her oversized jacket and followed. Leaning against the sculpted concrete barrier, they leaned down to witness the tangled web of powerlines obstructing sighs of closed shops and their steely storm door. Everything was colored in black and orange. Hà’s mind raced to find things to say. What once came so naturally now felt impossible. She imagined them staying here throughout the night, in this static position, like a frozen memory. Savoring the image, the Viet girl wondered yet again if her daughter had school tomorrow, and whether she had anyone chaperoning her. The husband crossed her thoughts once, flashes of him being sulky that she if she was gone for the whole night. Then, her mind returned to her daughter. Even though she knew it wasn’t true, these thoughts felt no different from abandoning the child for life. Once more, they had let the silence grow thick. This timeless island shrunk more and more, approaching the end.
“Will I meet you again?” Bé finally asked.
“Yes. At least I hope so.”
“Me too. Hope that when I come for another visit, you would still be here.”
“When are you coming back here?”
“That’s the problem, isn’t it? I can’t really say. When I’m back in the US, it’s production season for me. Then, my fiancé is planning a retreat somewhere with his pals, and he wants me to be there. So I’m guessing, not for a while.”
“Oh,” Hà didn’t continue much more than that.
“Honey.”
“Hm?”
“Don’t be like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like this,” Bé’s hands scanned around Hà’s pointed face, thin lips, and wide eyes, which were unconsciously drooped in disappointment. “Hà, I’ll try to visit as soon as possible! Maybe I can convince my fiancé to put Vietnam in our itinerary, so… so,” her voice cracked. The redhead feigned a happy smile, but then glanced upward, blinking. She wiped her eyes.
“Listen, it’s OK. I can wait. Besides, I’ve had a great night,” this time, Hà initiated. She wrapped an arm around her friend’s waist.
“It’s more than great to me. I mean, I’ve got good friends back home and and in school and stuff, but with you, it’s different. I think you know what I mean.”
“Yeah, it feels like we’ve kno-”
“Please don’t say it,” pleaded Bé.
“Why?”
“Because it’s too corny,” they tittered at, then with each other.
“I learned it from you, Bé,” they were in a teary uproar now.
The American girl was slapping the concrete railing while tilting against her friend; her wild red locks were willows dangling on top. Hà was laboring and failing to suppress her snickers. She grew lightheaded from holding it in. By the end of it, Bé’s arms were around the Viet girl. Hà tensed up and was intoxicated. Yet, she remained still, watching Bé’s flowy sundress wavered in the chill wind. The fabric was thin and soft to the touch, and she could feel the redhead trembling a bit. Deep breath, Hà gathered up her resolve,
“Let’s stay up all night.”
...
They were on a taxi so old, the cushions smelled of mold and stale cigarettes. Hà had asked the driver to roll the windows down, to which the over large man drowsily complied. Bé was leaning onto Hà’s shoulder, taking a shut-eye. The Viet girl sat up straight with her hands on her knees, a support beam for the younger, but towering girl. She looked outside as they passed through the sleeping city; most of the street lights were gone, and a blue shade has enveloped everything. The monsoon air blasting through the windows and filtering through each other’s hair. She imagined herself being the one leaning, but stopped short and instead, simply closed her eyes.
It all happened so fast. Bé’s elated embrace, the schoolgirl-esque squealing, sneaking downstairs, cab hailing. All of it a blur of excitement. They had found the bodyguard passed out on his table, scattered were around 5 bottles and a pint, which who knew how many times it had been refilled. Bé snuck towards him and stole away her bag, which he was still clutching. Only the short, comic looking producer named Henry was around. He was completely flushed, slumping against the cushion of his booth, not minding a giant busboy clearing out his table. There was change on his table, but he seemed to have forgotten that it existed. Seeing the two girls, he greeted with unhindered enthusiasm. He had told the bodyguard that the girls were upstairs, and that they needed space. Bé pecked the drunken man on his cheek in appreciation; his appreciation was greater. She then went to look for paper to leave a note to the snoring man, saying that she was OK and wasn’t kidnapped. Hà used that time to call home, informing her husband that she would be sleeping over at a friend’s place. He replied in hums and grunts before prematurely slamming the receiver, unable to fight sleep any more. After splitting the bill, the duo stepped outside, hand in hand. They knocked on the door of the cab to wake the driver up. Hà had decided that she would pick up her bike at the bar the next morning. When the car made its way out of the lot and onto the road, Hà and Bé realized that they had no idea where they were going.
...
It was an hour past midnight. The cab dropped them off at the old Catholic cathedral on one of the hills around Hà’s apartment complex. Hà had chosen this place, last-minute, for their nighttime adventure to be the most memorable. Train tracks ran along the incline, culminating with the Vatican’s most prominent foothold in the area. Its courtyard was meticulously cared for in order to maintain that wild, overgrown yet inarguably deliberate look. The building itself has seen numerous permutations over its decade-long tenure in Huế, from Gothic to Modernist, all had preserved its familiar silhouette: two towers grasping at the heavens, standing on a jewel field of stained glass. It was a stone crown upon a monarch’s brows. Indeed, Hà had gone with the surest option.
The two snuck into church grounds, where the fence had a few missing iron posts. A large part of the fence was rusted away after years of rain and mismanagement. The American girl sat down on a marble bench underneath a white statue of a sword-wielding, book-sporting saint. Hà took her place on the cobblestone walkway, right underneath redhead’s feet. They took turn drinking from a water bottle from the Bé’s bag while gazing up to the two monolithic black shadows that blocked out the faintly reddish sky. Placing the water bottle back into her bag, she commented with thrill,
“Wow, OK. I can’t believe we’re doing this.”
“Doing what?”
“Sneaking into church!”
“It’s just the garden, not that special. I do it all the time,” Hà played it off cool.
“Try being raised with Catholic guilt; sacred ground and all that. But really, all the time?”
“Some of the time. Often. At least me and my husband used to do this back in university, every week. This was our favorite place to go on dates. I didn’t always have money for the movie theatre. He offered to buy us tickets, but, uh, I don’t like people paying for me.”
“It’s nice, though, isn’t it? To have your gallant, dashing date pay for you. I love making people pay for everything, being the parasite that I am. Not with you though, haha, though that’s a first. Oh honey, you haven’t said a thing about your husband, and here I am, talking non-stop about myself!”
“Maybe I wanted things that way,” Hà was timid, picking at the weed that has sprouted between cracks in the masonry.
“Oh my stars! It’s quite alright, dearie, no pressure. I did not mean to pry or be insensitive,” Bé was putting on her singsong drama act again, which reminded Hà of how the ladies talked in the Gone with the Wind tape her husband had rented. She shushed the redhead, for risk of waking up the entire regional priesthood (the understudies stayed at the dorm adjacent to the main building). The younger girl looked around with a mischievous grin. The little performance made Hà smile and forget her troubles.
They sat around, got up and walked around the garden, then sat down again. They chatted, then enjoyed each other’s silence, then chatted again. They talked about life in Vietnam, life in America, stories from their sweet girlhood. Hà told of her big family and how she had to work odd jobs to get her siblings through school. Bé mulled over her lonesome single child existence, learning to stand by herself with parents who were more concerned with ripping each other apart. Hà reminisced on being a bully in middle school to build up a carapace against the boys’ unwanted attention. Bé admitted to being the pariah. Soon enough, they had memorized the entirety of the courtyard.
When Bé started yawning, Hà took her friend uphill, tracing close around the outside of the cathedral walls. They climbed as the asphalt turned to gravel then dirt under their shoes. The city lights were twenty minutes behind them now, a halo in the distance. The rain clouds parted, and the stars reveal themselves from behind the curtain. The duo found themselves among a congregation of conifers, standing tall and serene, collectively watching the half-moon play peek-a-boo through the migrating monsoon clouds. Winds weaved through the canopies, and somewhere, pinecones fell, making soft sounds on the stacks of dead, needly leaves. If Bé was thrilled about sneaking into church grounds, that excitement has turned into a content exhilaration when the pine forest surrounded her.
Hà found her way to the familiar dull-grey concrete statue of a horse, slightly larger than the real life counterpart. She climbed on its back and was immediately thankful for her thick jeans. Bé stood by and felt the rough surface of the “saddle”, frowning. Noticing that her friend was bare at the skin of her thighs, Hà zipped her windbreaker off and draped it over the horse. She took Bé’s hand and helped the younger girl up. Saddled up behind, her tall legs encased the Viet girl’s. Bé brushed her hair to one shoulder, all with a smirk, which reminded Hà of the way models would in shampoo ads. Then, the redhead slipped her slender hands around Hà’s belly the way a motorbike passenger would. Smirk still on her face, she whispered closely in one ear,
“Thank you, my gallant, dashing knight.”
“Knights aren’t this short,” Hà redirected. She felt her mind going blank when her whole back was pressing against the American girl.
“Not all knights use their physical might. Some use their heads. Some win with their courage,” Bé spoke slowly, purposeful in her delivery, like reciting an old fable around a campfire. “Some conquer with love.”
“Oh. my. god., now that is corny!” Hà broke out in laughter, and so did Bé, but none of them made any sound other than wheezing, gasping for air.
“You can learn from the master, but you’ll never be as good,” Bé wiped at a tear that had welled up, still coming down from her giggles.
“So, what kind of knight am I?”
“Hm, know that I think about it, I think you’re a queen, or an empress. That’s way more badass. Like, leading whole nations and stuff. That suits you more.”
“Yeah, I think that suits me. Does that make you the princess?”
“I’ve been a princess my whole life. I’m bored of it now. I want to be a queen too.”
“Is two queens too many?”
“Why?”
“Who’s going to be the king?” Hà asked, cheekily.
“Well, I guess, for you, your husband’s not a candidate (Hà nods). I’m engaged, so… I don’t know. I don’t think he’s really kingly material though. More of a prince. Don’t know if having a king is a good idea though; I do get quite jealous.”
“That’s simple then. No king. We’ll just be two single queens.”
“Think about it though. If we’re together, does that really make us ‘single’?”
“That depends on what ‘together’ means, doesn’t it?”
“It can be whatever you want it to mean,” Bé crooned. With arms already around Hà, she lightly pulled the petite girl into her bosom. Hà was burning with a fever now.
“Listen, Bé ơi.”
“Hmm? Yes, my queen?”
“You remember when I asked why you were doing this to me?”
“At DMZ? Again, I apologize for coming off angry like that.”
“It’s OK. But I wasn’t talking about you being angry. When I said ‘this’, I meant ‘this’,” Hà tapped on the arms around her waist. “I’m not used to this, you, um, being close. Touching my face, hugging me-”
“Oh gosh, I am so, so sorry,” Bé flinched, made a motion to pull away, and backed off. However, Hà had already caught her by the forearm. Hà gently tugged back and wrapped those arms around her own slender body again.
“Don’t stop,” Hà commanded in the warmest voice, but no less a command.
“Honey, listen, it’s alright, you don’t have to, you know?”
“Uh huh.”
“It’s me being pushy, and that’s not right. I shouldn’t have. I mean, my god, I didn’t even ask if you were comfortable.”
“Uh huh.”
“Hey, come on now. You really don’t have to be OK with it. Believe me, it’s all good. My opinion of you wouldn’t change, either way. There is zero pressure on you, and I want you to know that, mkay?”
“Uh huh.”
“You’re gonna keep saying that, aren’t you?”
“Uh huh.”
“OK, I’m going crazy here. Would you at least say something else?”
“Bé.”
“Yeah?”
“Can you shut up and let me enjoy myself?”
“... Fine,” The redhead resigned and laid her face on the back of Hà’s neck, arms hugging tenderly. The older girl had a fulfilled look on her face. She listened to the autumn wind, the trees, the city, and her own beating heart.
