Read Online Naked in Saigon by Colin Falconer - Free Book Online Page A

can get you out of here, we’ll go home, okay?”
    He lay quiet for a while staring at the strip light in the ceiling.
    “Okay?”
    “Okay,” he said.
     

     
    But a week later when they discharged him, he announced that he had changed his mind. It’s hard to pack a kit bag with a handful of broken fingers but somehow he managed it. He even used his elbows and his teeth. I had never seen a more determined, or more stupid, man.
    “I’m going to see this through,” he said. He still had a plaster across his nose and his eye sockets were yellow and purple. He looked hideous. One of the waitresses in the coffee shop had screamed when she saw him at breakfast.
    “Are you insane?”
    “Probably.”
    “How will you take notes? How can you even look after yourself in the most basic ways with just one hand? Dios mio! ”
    “I can’t leave this story now, let some other journalist get all the credit.”
    “You mean let some other hack die instead of you?”
    “I’m not a hack.”
    “It doesn’t matter what you are if you’re dead. Where are you going?”
    “Vientiane.”
    “Where the hell is that?”
    “It’s in Laos. The guy I met in the bar that night, he gave me some names, people who know what’s going on in the government there, he said even the CIA are running dope in their own planes. No one’s going to believe it. This is one hell of a story, honey.”
    “The only thing I don’t believe is that you are even thinking of going there when you’ve only just got out of hospital.”
    “I’m Boston Irish, I’m unbreakable.”
    “Yeah? Well you look pretty broken up to me.”
    He held up his hand. “If this happened in a college game they wouldn’t even sub me out of the game.”
    “You can’t write! How will you take notes?”
    “I have a great memory and I’ll tape the interviews.” Somehow he hefted the kit bag under his arm.
    I stood in the doorway. “You can’t do this.”
    “I’m doing it. I’ll be back in three days, four at the most.”
    “And if you’re not?”
    “You can collect on the life insurance.”
    “You walk out of here now and you walk out on our marriage.”
    Did I say that to save his life or to save myself? I wondered. I wasn’t even sure of my own motives anymore.
    He shoved past, then turned back and tried to kiss me. I twisted away. “Wait for me. Please.”
    “I’ve told you. I’m leaving.”
    “If I don’t do this, I’m not me anymore. I love you, honey, but I can’t give up me just to be with you. Besides, everyone has to believe in something.”
    He pushed past me. I could have stopped him, I guess, if I’d been willing to break his fingers again. But that would have been the only way. When Connor O’Loughlin made up his mind about something there was no power on earth that could change his mind.
     

     
    That same afternoon I took a taxi out to Tan Son Nhut, intending to buy a ticket on a commercial airliner back to the United States. I battled my way inside through the crowds; American servicemen, military police in white helmets, families of Vietnamese carrying their entire possessions in boxes tied with string, women in conical hats swirling ao dai .
    I stopped halfway across the terminal. There was a man standing there in a white linen suit and a Panama hat, long black hair straggling across his collar. He had his back to me, staring at the departures board.
    “Papi?” I said.
    He turned around. He was holding a cardboard suitcase and he had a gold tooth and a white beard. He flashed a grin and took off his Panama.
    “Madame?”
    “I’m sorry,” I said. “I thought you were someone else.”
    He gave me a bow and turned and walked way.
    Papi, what am I going to do?
    I heard his voice as clear as if he was standing next to me: You want to go back to Reyes? You’re a married woman now. What has Connor done to deserve that? He loves you, no matter his faults.
    “But I’m not in love with him,” I said.
    The Pan-Am counter was right