Free Fake House by Linh Dinh Page B

elbow,and took a swig from my fourth can of, by now, piss-warm Rolling Rock.
    “Is that it?”
    “No,” I said, easing myself back down. “As soon as the conductor left them alone, the girl started to take off her blouse, and Koestler said, ‘No, no, you don’t have to do that,’ and the girl got all pissed off and said, ‘I’m sure the gentleman is used to finer ladies!’ ”
    I let out a loud guffaw at this point, but Deborah did not laugh with me.
    “And then what happened?”
    “Nothing. The girl left the compartment because she was pissed off. Nothing happened.” I glared at Deborah, a little annoyed. “The girl was a prostitute, get it? What Koestler thought was a simple peasant turned out to be a prostitute!”
    Deborah rolled on top of me suddenly. “Bui,” she said, “am I ugly?”
    I hesitated, unwisely of course, but answered, “Of course you’re not ugly.”
    I flipped her over so that I was now on top of her.
    “Am I beautiful?” she asked, continuing her interrogation.
    I hesitated, again unwisely, but said, “You’re not ugly!”
    “Of course I’m ugly,” Deborah said. “That’s why that Japanese guy slammed the door in my face!”
    “You’re not ugly,” I said again, with more conviction this time, and gave her a full kiss on the mouth, which tasted, to my dismay, like an open can of Skoal chewing tobacco. “You’re beautiful,” I blurted. “You’ve always been beautiful.” I was becoming delirious with my own momentum. “That Japanese guy is ugly. You’re beautiful! Maybe he’s used to finer ladies. Ha! ha!”

I N THE V EIN
    I was hesitating in front of the Holiday Lounge, a place I had been a thousand times. I took out my cash and counted it again. Twenty-seven dollars—five cents a day for 540 days. I started to walk away but thought,
Fuck it
, turned around, and walked right into the Holiday Lounge.
    I had forgotten how stale the air was, like tuberculosis, like the air on a Greyhound bus. Everything else was familiar: the drop ceiling like a vast Mondrian; the mural fragment of a waterfall, showing a pair of female legs dipping into a green pool; the Tiffany lamps dangling over the bar, with yellow tinsel garlanded between them; the portrait of a crying clown; the painting of a stag; the curving red-velvet wall, rubbed raw in spots, behind the small stage. I strode straight for the end of the bar and found myself a seat. There were maybe eight customers in the whole place: an old man in his late seventies, arthritic and trembling; two tittering Bolivians; a black queer on a recon mission.… A chubby girl was dancing on stage. Norman was behind bar.
    “Remember me?”
    Norman squinted behind his bifocals. “Steve?”
    “No, Tony.”
    “Did you move away?”
    “I moved to Holmesburg, Norman, for eighteen months!”
    “What did you do, mug somebody?”
    “Possession.”
    Norman looked skeptical. “How long did you serve?”
    “Eighteen months.”
    “Only eighteen months?”
    The guy next to me leaned over: “Hey, I was in Nam for eleven months. I’d rather go to jail for eighteen months than go to Nam for even a fuckin’ day.”
    The vet looked a little too young to be a Vietnam vet. His face was smooth, his eyes smiling. Maybe they had sent him in as the NVA tanks were rolling into Saigon. “Both of you guys are losers,” Norman said. Then, to me, finally: “What would you like?”
    “A Bud and a double Stoli.”
    The chubby girl wasn’t so chubby after all. Her thighs were chubby but not her breasts. She had dyed-black hair, black lips, and black nails, a Gothic chick. Her bra and panties were still on and she was prancing around not doing much, someone you’d see at the beach. I tilted my Bud toward my lips but managed to miss them, spilling beer on my shirt. The vet laughed. “It’s a two-dog night tonight. The other one ain’t so hot either.”
    “She’s all right,” I said.
    “No, she’s not.” The vet laughed.
    The other one, a