No Touch Monkey! by Ayun Halliday

Author:Ayun Halliday [Halliday, Ayun]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781580056021
Publisher: Basic Books

On Living Dangerously

Greg and I landed in Saigon just two weeks after President Clinton lifted the embargo. Budget travelers were beginning to pour in as the Vietnamese government eased restrictions on where foreigners could go, how long they could stay and how they could get there. The American War, as it’s referred to there, was a big draw. We took a room in an ugly, many-storied hotel, a relic of the R & R era, and took a spin through the large nearby market. Amidst stalls selling vegetables and pajama suits, vendors did a brisk trade in Zippo lighters etched with Snoopy, peace signs, and such sentiments as “If I had a shack in hell and a farm in Vietnam, I’d sell my farm and go home.” These items came with an oral assurance that they were the genuine article, the former property of luckless American GIs. Given the quantity of their stock, I estimated that every American killed in combat had dropped a minimum of five lighters. Even though I knew they were fake, I kind of wanted one, but Greg insisted on absolute purity. If we needed to set something on fire, we would use wooden matches like the Vietnamese. After the market, we retired to Kim’s Café.

Kim was an enterprising Korean woman in her early twenties. Sensing an imminent influx of young Westerners, she had opened a restaurant that featured banana pancakes, French fries, a message board, and other amenities that backpackers accustomed to Kathmandu and Kuta Beach expected. Long tables set up on the shady sidewalk accommodated hordes of travelers who spent hours over glasses of Vietnamese drip coffee, boasting about where they’d been and razzing anyone who lighted his cigarette with a genuine GI Zippo. A dozen urchins milled around, relentless in their attempts to sell postcard booklets, candy, and gum. Dirty and tough as hell, they squabbled amongst themselves as to who had dibs on a certain customer, somewhat like the pampered divorcées who staffed the tacky Michigan Avenue art gallery that had recently fired first Greg, then me. As we watched, a dust-colored eight-year-old with a scar on his forehead slammed one of his gang to the pavement and then went after an Irishman seated nearby. “Why you no buy from me?” he demanded darkly. The corners of his mouth turned down in a dead-on impersonation of a disappointed tot, causing much glee amongst the younger members of his crew. “You promise.”

“Piss off,” the disloyal customer growled, rather heartlessly I thought. The child grabbed his ragged crotch with one grubby paw, waved his middle finger at the Irishman and danced away spitting a string of oaths, among them “lính xiao,” which we were told is Vietnamese slang for “Soviet.”

“What’s he selling anyway?” I called, hoping to take things to a lighter plateau.

“Who, that little criminal? He’s got himself a shitload of grass rolled up in cigarette packets. Nice life he’s got for himself, eh?”

“Grass? You mean like—”

“Marijuana,” the Irishman drawled with a passable John Wayne accent.

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