forward to watching it with you.”
“Yes,” she says softly, turning toward me. “I imagined you up here looking out the window with me.” She looks into my eyes and I get that wheezy feeling again. “We can kiss now, if you still want to.”
I do, for a profoundly long time.
“Hi,” she breathes, when we finally separate.
“Back at yuh,” I manage. “You got to change your no kissing and hugging rule at the airport.”
“I knoooow, right? Some things are much better in America.” We’re embracing, our lips whispering against one another’s ears. “Like sushi. USA has good sushi. Vietnam, no sushi.”
“Technically, sushi really isn’t American,” I say, nipping her earlobe, making her inhale sharply. “It’s Japanese. In Portland, most sushi is made by Hispanics. My favorite sushi place is owned by a Korean guy who hires Hispanics to make the Japanese sushi.”
Mai chuckles. “Well, I will take you to a good phở street cart that is owned by a German man.”
“Sounds delicious. Will there be sauerkraut and mmrthmm—”
Mai’s lips smother my words. Seconds pass and I no longer remember what I was babbling about. Somewhere the Star Spangled Banner plays.
“Whoops,” Mai says against my lips. “That might be Father.”
Not again, I think, turning quickly toward the elevator. He was constantly walking in on us in Portland.
“The phone, silly,” she says, launching that dragon-slaying smile at me as she pries her cell out of her pants pocket. “It is. Hello, Father. Did I pick up Sam? Sam who?” She winks at me. She laughs at something he says. “Yes, I have him. He has put on about fifty pounds. He is very fat now.” She listens, laughs, and says, “I am sure you will. You want to talk to him? Okay. We will be there in a short while. I am showing him the view from Mister Troung’s building. Yes. Okay. Good bye.” She flips her phone shut. “He will talk to you at our house. He will explain to you why he could not come.”
“Sounds good. So I have gotten fat, eh?” I say with a chuckle.
“He says not to worry. He will work it off you. He is excited about training with you and introducing you to his teacher, Sifu Shen Lang Rui.”
“I am excited to see Samuel. And a little nervous.”
She smiles. “He can make people nervous. But you are his son. You should not be.” Mai takes my hand and we sit next to each other on the window ledge, our legs touching. “Have you thought much about him?”
“Not as much as I would have liked. I had to put important parts of my life into compartments so that I could deal with the grand jury for my… shooting. I wasn’t worried about shooting the abductor… but the…”
Mai takes my hand in both of hers. “You are not at fault. The ju… judgment says that it is not your fault. I know that does not make you feel better. But I think… what is the expression? Time… in time, yes. I think in time your mind will be fine. Healed.”
I called Mai the moment the grand jury came back with a No True Bill, meaning they didn’t hold me at fault for the accidental killing. My emotions were all over the place and I didn’t know if I wanted to stand, sit, lay down, or scream from the roof. I did know that I needed to hear her voice. I was blubbering so much that she couldn’t understand me, but she was kind enough and savvy enough to let me come down from my rush before asking me questions. I tried to explain that I was happy I was spared a trial, and all the horrific emotions and public persecution that would have come down on me. At the same time, I had this immense guilt because I was feeling good about the No True Bill. I had killed, and a nine-person jury decided that it was okay.
It wasn’t though. I thought I should be punished for it, punished severely. But I was happy that I wasn’t going to be. My head was on the verge of exploding and all I could think of was that I needed to hear Mai’s voice. I knew there wasn’t anything she could say from the other side of the globe to make it all go away or make me feel better, but I just wanted to hear her say hello.
As soon as she picked up, I began blubbering like a child. When I finally came up for air—I don’t know how long I’d been wailing in her ear—I could hear her sobbing. When I asked if she was crying with me, she said, “Who else? I’m sitting in a room by myself talking with you.” That made me laugh for some reason and then she started laughing. Then we cried again.
When I finally calmed, Mai asked if I remembered the meditation sessions that Samuel taught me. I said I had been doing it every other day. She suggested an increase to two or three times a day, to sit quietly and just follow my breath, in and out, in and out. Every time a stray thought came into my mind, I was to look at it for a second, then just let it float away and go back to following my breath. She added, “And kick the shit out of the heavy bag once a day. Then meditate again after the shit kicking.”
Like an obedient child, I did what she said, and it helped, like a Band-Aid sometimes makes a cut feel better. The extra meditating helped me get some control over my thoughts, and the extra hard bag work made me too tired to think at all, at least until morning came around again.
“You okay, Sam?” Mai asks looking into my eyes.
“I am now.”
She smiles. “I am happy for you to meet my mother and I want to show you so much about my life, but I am scared that you might not like it here. You might be bored.”
“Impossible. Like I said before, you and Samuel caught me during a bad week.” A shadow passes across Mai’s face before she looks away. “Sorry,” I say caressing her arm. “Bad joke. You know, we have yet to talk about Portland State, those deaths. I wanted to many times but I wasn’t sure how to bring it up.”
“I want to talk to you about it too, but not now. Now I want to just be happy to be near you,” she says, looking at me and then out the window.
I gently turn her head toward me and kiss her.
“I wish we had more time to spend here, but we need to go to see Father. Maybe in a few days when you are rested, we can talk then.”
“Just say the word.”
Mai nods. “Okay, I will say the word.” She scoots off the ledge, steps in front of me and slips between my parted legs. She takes both of my hands in hers, squeezes them and without an ounce of shyness, moves those gorgeous eyes to my shoulders, down my arms, across my chest, and all the way down to my shoes. Then slowly, caressingly, she moves them back up to my eyes. She exhales slowly with a little shake of her head. “Come on, Sam.” She steps aside so I can scoot off the ledge. “We better go, now. Before I… we just better go.”
I’ve gotten a couple of compliments in my day, but that one, without uttering a word, ranks at the top. I can even hear the electricity crackle between us as we walk hand in hand to the elevator.
“Sam, who was the boy at the airport, the one who made such a quiet entrance into Saigon?”
Good idea. Talk about something else since there is no cold shower available. She pokes the elevator button.
“Bobby
