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

there in front of me. I looked up at the board and watched the flights bound for Honolulu and San Francisco ticking over one after the other.
    That was seven years ago, Papi said. You had your chance. You can’t go back. Connor’s a decent man and he loves you and right now he needs you to be there for him. You know what Reyes is like, he’s selfish and vain and there’ll always be one more woman.
    “You think I should go back and wait for him?”
    I think it’s the only thing you should do.
    I turned around, walked outside into the numbing heat of the afternoon and caught a taxi back to the Caravelle Hotel.
    I kept thinking about what he had said before he left: everyone believes in something. Do they? I really didn’t know what I believed in anymore.
     
     
     
     

Chapter 16 

     
    REYES
    Reyes met Walt at a sex show in Cholon, at a seedy cinema in the Chinese quarter, with a dissipated audience of American servicemen and middle-aged Chinese.
    Walt could have gotten the real thing on Tu Do for about the same price, but he said it was the occupational hazard of being a spy; he liked to watch. The other, better reason was that they could talk freely without being overheard. There were some things he didn’t like talking about even in his own office, he was pretty sure it was bugged.
    “Did you get the popcorn?” Walt said as they settled in their seats at the back.
    “The girl will be around in a minute with popsicles.”
    “Yes, but where will she put them?”
    The house lights dimmed. A tableau was lowered on a curtain behind the stage, a Vietnamese country idyll. A beautiful girl in a flowering ao dai stepped onto the stage. A Vietnamese flute played a haunting melody as she started to strip, preparing to bathe in an imitation pool. It was a classic Saigon fantasy, every man must have thought about this when he saw these ephemeral creatures along the Tu Do. They were sexier than any of the painted girls in the bars.
    Reyes was struck by the irony. The next time the Marines in the audience saw the Vietnamese countryside there would be no goddesses in ao dai ; there would be mines and Viet Cong snipers, and instead of flute music there would be the thud of rotors and the chatter of small arms fire.
    A few of the young crew-cut kids at the front were catcalling. He saw nothing erotic in it. Instead he thought about Magdalena, lying by the pool in his house on Mulholland all those years ago, the curve of her hip, the flash of her smile over her shoulder. When you find one goddess, there aren’t any others.
    “What was it you wanted to talk about, Walt?”
    “The other day I was thinking about our little island hideaway island in Africa.”
    “You ready to retire?”
    “Hell, no, not in the style I anticipate. But I got this idea.”
    “Yeah?” He guessed what was coming.
    A young man appeared from the back of the stage in traditional peasant trousers and a conical hat. He was bare to the waist and his lean torso gleamed with oil. He saw the girl and stopped to watch her bathe. He took off his conical hat and trousers and crept closer.
    “You’ve been out there once, remember? You needed to get your girlfriend out of town in a hurry. I set it up for you.”
    “I remember.”
    “I figure tourism is the coming thing. It will the business of the next decade, man.”
    “Your point?”
    “The shack next to Shofa’s place? We could buy it off him, the whole strip of land right along that beach. Build a resort there.”
    “A resort?”
    “We make it totally self-sustained. Like you don’t just sleep there, you have your whole damn vacation right there. We fly ‘em in there, we provide the best cooks, masseurs, dive instructors, and best of all, twenty luxury huts right next to this perfect lagoon.”
    “What about the sharks?
    “We build a shark net or some damned thing, don’t be so pessimistic.”
    “They have one airplane fly in and out every week.”
    “So we buy a bigger damn plane, get