Finding Moon

“Or something done to it,” Moon said, rubbing his hand across what was left of his.

She laughed. “I think you found Nguyen’s barber,” she said, and sat in the chair across from him.

“Someone told me that time cures bad haircuts. Probably it was Mr. Lee.”

“Not tattoos, though,” she said. “I worry about that. What will Nguyen do about that awful tattoo when he has to go back to Vietnam?”

“Nguyen will be all right,” Moon said. “The navy takes care of its own.” Nguyen had been lucky. In fact, they’d all been lucky. Their only really tense moment had come at the Cambodian border checkpoint. The tanks were still there, and now so were the Khmer Rouge. But they had expected no trouble from their rear. He’d kept the APC in normal speed and rolled it right down the trail with Khmer Rouge troopers staring and Nguyen waving happily. He’d held his breath until they were past the tanks. He’d doubted Pol Pot’s citizen soldiers would know how to operate them, and he’d drained their fuel tanks onto the ground, but just seeing them there made him nervous.

Needless nerves. By the time the Khmers realized they weren’t stopping and the shouting and shooting began, they were out of range of anything that could dent the APC. The rest of it was travel through a public celebration. The only armed men they saw were Vietcong jubilantly returning Nguyen’s flag-waving. The only explosions they heard were fireworks.

The PBR had made it down the Mekong, mingling with such a swarm of refugee boats that the country’s new rulers had not a hope of stopping the flood even if they’d wanted to. They made it out past the brown water and into the choppy blue of the Gulf of Siam, hoping the Glory of the Sea might have arrived a day early. Instead they’d seen the little frigate Pillsbury, patrolling the river mouth for lives to save. The red-haired lieutenant peering down into their boat had shouted, “Hey, Gwen. You too damn mean to die?” And Nguyen had shouted something which included “son-a-bitch” and provoked some more yelling and laughter.

The lieutenant’s name was Eldon, and Nguyen had been his gu

“But how about a job?” she said. “I taught him some more English on the ship and he learned fast. But still-”

“Don’t worry about it,” Moon said. “He’ll have a job.”

He told her about the office Ricky had opened at Caloocan City, and about the potential business. “I talked to Tom Brock this morning. We already have two copters in the hangar there. The general Ricky was dealing with told him to mark them off as unrepairable and keep them instead of paying the repair bills.”

Osa had no comment.

“Does that sound sort of dishonest to you?”

“It sounds like Asia. How about you?” Osa said. “Did your embassy get all the paperwork done for Lila?”

“Yeah,” Moon said. “Less hassle than I expected.”

“Good,” Osa said.

“There’ll be more of it when I get her back to the States, though. All kinds of forms to fill out. Getting a birth certificate. So forth.”

“I can imagine,” Osa said. “Where’s Lila now?”

“This hotel has a nursery service, complete with na

“Fine,” Osa said.

“You have dual citizenship, don’t you? Didn’t you tell me you had a Dutch passport as well as the Federation of Malaysia?”

Osa looked surprised. “Yes,” she said. “Why are you asking?”

“There are too many important things I don’t know,” Moon said. “Like whether you enjoy walking.”

“I do,” Osa said.

“Then I think we should take a walk.”

“In the dark?” Osa asked. But she got up.

“The moon will be up,” Moon said. “And I will take you on the only walk I know in Manila-down past the yacht basin and along the waterfront. And if we keep walking long enough there’s a restaurant I passed called My Father’s Mustache. We could have di

The moon was indeed up, but barely and far from full.

“Did you call your mother again? Is she-”

“She was asleep. But the nurse said everything was fine. Her leg is sore where they took the vein for the bypass surgery, but that’s usually the worst of it. They said they could discharge her tomorrow, but I asked them to wait until I can be there to take her back to Florida.”

“She’ll be so happy to see you,” Osa said.

“Fu

“What did she say?”

“She said something like, ‘Well, you already told me the baby didn’t get to Manila and you thought maybe she’d still be in Vietnam.’ So she had known it would take me a little longer.” He shrugged, made a wry face. “Can you believe that? ‘Take me a little longer!’”

He waited for Osa’s surprised response, but Osa was walking along beside him. He glanced at her. She looked amused.

Moon shrugged again. He didn’t seem to understand anyone anymore.

“What else did she say?”

“Oh, was I all right? And all about the baby. Is she healthy? Does she look like Ricky? How old is she? What does she weigh? How many words can she say?”

“What did you expect her to say?”

“I don’t know,” Moon said. “I just thought she’d be-you know, amazed that I actually got the job done.”

Osa put her hand on his hand. “Why? Ricky wouldn’t have been surprised either. Ricky’s friends wouldn’t have been surprised. I had just heard about you from other people, but I wasn’t surprised. Remember, I came to you with my trouble because I had heard about the kind of man you are.”

Moon felt himself flushing. “Oh, sure,” he said. “All that brotherly stuff from Ricky.”

“You think your brother didn’t know you? Your mother certainly knew you.”

“She knows me all too well. That’s why I thought she’d be amazed.”

Osa removed her hand from his hand. “Why do you say that?” she said. “Why do you always have bad things to say about yourself?”

Time to change the subject. “Since we’re getting personal,” Moon said, “I have a question for you. In fact, two questions.”

“Answer mine first. And then I have another one. Does what you told me at the hotel just now about Caloocan City mean you are going to run the business?”

“I’m going to try,” Moon said. “But there’s been too much talking about me already. Listen carefully.

Question one: Mr. Lee told me that when he called you this morning to say good-bye you seemed very sad. He thought it was because of Damon. And you said it was another loss.”

Moon stopped, swallowed. There was no way to say it that wasn’t rude, intrusive, presumptuous. Osa was looking at him, attentive, waiting, lips slightly parted, amusement fading into something very serious. Beautiful. Waiting. For what, the Moon of Durance to chicken out or the super-Moon of Ricky’s legend to demand a solution to this little oddity?

“I remember,” Osa said.

“He asked me if I understood what you meant. I said I didn’t.” He hesitated again. But to hell with it. Otherwise he was losing her anyway. “But I hoped I did understand. I hoped you meant me.”

Osa looked at him, biting her lip. Looked away.

“I have that hope because when we were in the delta you seemed so sure he was dead. You didn’t want to go into Cambodia. When I said I had to go anyway, you insisted you’d go along. But when we got there and found he was actually dead, you were genuinely surprised. Shocked.”