The Lotus Eaters. Tatjana Soli

looked up from his plate. “I think this rice is very good.” The table burst out in laughter and when it died down, he continued as if he had not noticed the interruption. “Many people in this country haven’t had such good rice in years.”

      “Our Marxist Confucian mascot. ‘Let them eat rice,’” Jack said.

      “I’m sorry, but what do you know about Korea?” Darrow asked. “You’re just a baby now. You could have been prom queen last year in high school.”

      Maybe, after all, she would not escape the night unscathed. “My father died there. Nineteen fifty Chosin. My brother was in Special Forces. He died in the Plain of Reeds last year.”

      Darrow refused to offer sympathy. “Half of this table is probably here out of curiosity,” Darrow said. “The other half out of ambition. Of course it’s not the excitement that draws us. We’re in the business of war. The cool thing for us is that when this one’s done, there’s always another one—Middle East, Africa, Cambodia, Laos, Suez, Congo, Lebanon, Algeria. The war doesn’t ever have to end for us.”

      “You’re just a starry-eyed mercenary, huh, Darrow?”

      A long silence followed, time enough for plates to be cleared and drinks poured, while Helen and Darrow stared at each other, then looked away, then looked back. The most arrogant man she had ever met; her face burned with anger.

      “Wrong. I was prom queen four years ago.”

      Chortles and some hand claps. “Here, here.”

      “Where you from?”

      “Raised in Southern California.”

      Robert coughed, wanting to divert whatever was happening across the table. “What do you all think of the army’s estimate that the war will be over in a year?”

      Darrow sipped at yet another drink. “It’ll be over if we quit. Isn’t anyone reading Uncle Ho and Uncle Giap? ‘We’ll keep on fighting if it takes a hundred years.’”

      “You don’t believe that? No one fights a hundred years.”

      “I absolutely believe that. You would, too, Ed, if you ever left your air-conditioned hotel room and slogged out in the jungle with us.”

      “I’ll leave the heroics for you. Framed your Pulitzer over your desk yet?”

      Darrow smirked, a shamed, lopsided smile. “Actually it was sent to my wife, so I’ve never seen it. I believe she hung it up in the john. She feels the check was the best part of the deal. Making up for my piddling salary.”

      Chuckles around the table. “Cry me a river, Darrow.”

      As curfew approached, the restaurant emptied; people hurried away with full glasses and bottles, promising to return them in the morning. The waiters pointedly stripped off tablecloths, turned over chairs. A bucket and a mop were propped at the door to the kitchen.

      Jack turned to Helen. “So, should we have come here in the first place, lass?”

      “To this restaurant?” She smiled. Laughter. “In the briefing today they said eighteen hundred men have died so far. Eighteen hundred, including my brother.”

      “It’s never too late, Prom Queen. Get out while the gettin’s good,” Darrow said.

      “So what about a country’s manifest destiny? What woulda happened if America had never come?” Jack said.

      “We might all end up speaking Vietnamese someday?” Robert said. Laughter.

      “Vietnam’s destiny has not been her own for a long time. What about the French?” Ed asked.

      “The French were on their way out,” Robert said.

      “Only because Ho found something stronger than them,” Darrow said. “If the French had never been in Vietnam, maybe he wouldn’t have needed to unleash the genie from the bottle.”

      “And what a genie she is.”

      “Well, geniuses, we’ve figured out world politics for one night. I say we adjourn.”

      “Fine.”

      “Sounds good. Sports Club or the Pink?”

      Outside on the sidewalk, the men formed a large, boisterous circle, but Linh stood off to the side. He said his good nights and walked away alone. Helen watched his slight, solitary figure move away. No matter how they patted him on the back and bought him drinks, he would always be on the outside of this good-old-boys’ club.

      Robert turned to Helen. “I need to go to the office. Is it all right if Jack takes you back to the hotel? I’ll meet you back there in an hour or so for a nightcap?”

      “Sure,” Helen said, disappointed the night for her was already over, conscious that she, too, was now being excluded from the boys’ club.

      “I’ll take her,” Darrow said. He walked up and stood next to Robert, hands dug in his pockets, head hung down studying something on the sidewalk.

      “No, it’s out of your way, I’m sure,” Robert said.

      “Actually, I was…going that way.”

      Robert looked straight at him, his usual deference blown. “Where?” he said. “You don’t even know where she’s staying.”

      Darrow smiled. Everyone waited. “Everyone new stays at the Continental.”

      “Jack said he would take her,” Robert said.

      “I have a room there, too. Remember?”

      “I’ll go with Sam,” Helen said. She gave Robert a shrugging, apologetic look, as if the choice were out of her control. “Maybe I can win a few arguments by the time we reach the hotel.”

      The men, entertained, realized the sparring match was over with a clear winner. Ed grabbed at his heart in mock agony and staggered on the sidewalk. Robert bit his lips together; his face reddened. Jack clapped him on the back. “Come on, we’ll drop you off, laddie.”

      Two jeeps with drivers pulled up, and they piled in like frat boys going out on the town.

      “You two be careful now. The streets can be dangerous late at night.” From inside one jeep, they heard, “Easy come, easy go, huh, Robert?” Laughter as the jeeps sped off.

      “Well, I’ve put us in the middle of a little scandal, I’m afraid,” Darrow said.

      “We haven’t done anything.”

      “But we will.”

      “We won’t.” Helen stood in front of the restaurant and looked up into his face. A paper lantern behind her cast a gold light on the edge of his high cheekbone, on his glasses so she couldn’t see his eyes. “That was sudden,” she said.

      “That’s one of the keys to life here. Sudden and sublime. Sudden and awful. Everything distilled to its most intense. That’s why we’re all hooked.”

      “You don’t scare me. Tell me, does the great Sam Darrow always get the girl?”

      “He never got the girl. Why would he be here otherwise? The boy who can’t talk learns to take pictures. Did you know you have blood on your dress?”

      Helen looked down and saw the spatters along the hem that hadn’t been visible when the fabric was wet. Her face tightened at the memory. “The ducks…and a dog running by with a body in his mouth.”

      Darrow bent and wiped at the fabric with a handkerchief but the blood had dried. “Can you walk in those things?” he said, pointing to her heels.

      “Sure.”

      “I’d like to show you something. It isn’t far.”

      “I don’t know…we should be getting back.” She didn’t feel nearly as bold alone