"Let them know you're traveling with someone. They're not as likely to try anything if they know you aren't alone."

"I'll see how it plays. You may have noticed that there's no telephone in the room. So, if I need to call you, I'll have the front desk look for you. Let them know where you'll be."

"Okay." She looked at her key and said, "I'm in 304."

"I need to get some photocopies made."

"Post office. Buu dien."

"See you later."

She left with the bellboy, and I stayed on the balcony, looking at the sea.

It was hard to believe that not so many days ago, I was on the other side of that water and across a wide continent.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I think I always knew I would come back to Vietnam. And here I was.

The sleepy desk clerk called a taxi for me. I went outside and within a minute one pulled into the circular driveway. I got in and said, "Buu dien. Le Bureau de poste. Post office. Biet?"

He nodded and off we went to the buu dien in the center of town, about a ten-minute drive. I told the cab driver to wait, and I went inside. For a thousand dong, about ten cents, I had three copies each made of my pa.s.sport and visa, and three copies of Colonel Mang's note.

I got back into my taxi and told the driver, "Phong Quan Ly Nguoi Nuoc Ngoi." I guess I got that right because a few minutes later, we pulled up to the Immigration police station, instead of a bottled water vendor. The cabbie pantomimed that he'd wait down the block.

The police station was a modest stucco building with an open archway instead of a door. The waiting room was light and airy, and was populated with the usual suspects-backpackers and Viet-Kieus, trying to deal with bureaucratic stupidity and laziness.

This little police facility seemed a lot more informal than the forbidding Ministry of Public Security in Saigon, and there were bicycles in the waiting room as well as sand on the floor from the beach.

I presented photocopies of my visa and pa.s.sport to a bored-looking policeman sitting at a desk in a small alcove, and showed him a copy of my note from Colonel Mang. He read it, picked up his phone, and called someone. He said to me, "Sit."

I stood.

A minute later, another uniformed guy came into the room, ignored me, and took the note from the desk guy and read it. Then he looked at me, and said in pa.s.sable English, "Where you stay?"

"Grand Hotel."

He nodded, as though the Grand Hotel had already called and reported my presence, and most probably the presence of my traveling companion as well. I was also sure that Mang had alerted the Immigration Police to my expected visit.

The guy asked me, "You here with lady?"

"Meet lady on train. Not my lady."

"Yes?" He seemed to buy this, probably because of the separate rooms.

The cop said to me, "You stay one week."

"Maybe."

"Where you go leave Nha Trang?"

"Hue."

All this was going on in the waiting room with an interested audience of Aussies, Americans, and others.

The cop asked, "Lady go with you?"

"Maybe."

"Okay, you leave pa.s.sport and visa. Give you later."

I was prepared for this and knowing firsthand that cops don't like negative responses, I said, "Okay." I took the photocopy of my pa.s.sport and visa from the other cop's desk and gave them to him, along with a five-dollar bill, which he quickly pocketed.

I said, "Have a good day." I turned and headed for the door.

"Stop."

I looked back at the cop.

He asked, "How you go to Hue?"

"Bus or train."

"Yes? You come here and show ticket. You need travel stamp."

"Okay." I left.

The taxi was waiting down the block, and I got in. "Grand Hotel."

The taxi headed south along the beach road. I recalled spending a lot of time on the beach when I was here, along with the other two guys in my room, both of whom were combat vets, but not from my unit. All of us had done something really brave and stupid to get this three-day R&R, and all of us had varying degrees of jungle rot, which was helped by the sun and salt water.

There were maybe a hundred guys in the Grand Hotel, and the place resembled a home for burnouts during the day. We slept too much, and we drank too much beer on the beach.

At night, the walking wounded came alive, and we'd stay out until dawn, hitting every bar, wh.o.r.ehouse, and ma.s.sage parlor in town until the sun came up. Then we'd sleep on the beach or in the hotel, and do it all over again on night two, then again on the last night. Men came and went, and not everyone's three days coincided, but you could tell the first-day guys from the third-day guys: Day One was sort of culture shock-you couldn't believe you were here. Day Two, you drank and f.u.c.ked your brains out. Day Three, with what was left of your brain, you drank and f.u.c.ked even more because you were going back to h.e.l.l.

Aside from some improvement in my jungle sores, crotch rot, and immersion foot, I rejoined my unit in much worse shape than when I'd left. Everyone did, but that's what rest and recuperation is all about.

The taxi pulled into the driveway of the Grand and deposited me at the front steps.

Inside my room, I unpacked and showered in cold water. There was no soap or shampoo, but there was a towel, and I left the bathroom and dried off in the bedroom where there was some ventilation from the fan and the open balcony.

There was a knock at the door. I went to the door, but there was no peephole. I said, "Who is it?"

"Me."

"Okay..." I wrapped my towel around me and opened the door.

Susan said, "Oh... did I catch you at a bad moment?"

"Come in."

She came in and closed the door behind her. "How did it go?"

"It went fine." She was wearing white slacks, a gray T-shirt that said Q-Bar, Saigon Q-Bar, Saigon, and sandals. I said, "Don't peek, and I'll get dressed."

She went out on the balcony while I put on a pair of black chinos and a white golf shirt. As I dressed, I related my brief meeting with the Immigration Police, mentioning that they knew we'd checked in together. I said, "Okay. I'm decent."

She came back into the room, and I slipped into a pair of docksiders and said, "Let's go have a drink."

We got down to the lobby, walked through the empty dining room that had a service bar in the corner, and went out onto the veranda.

Only about half the cafe tables were filled, and we seated ourselves near the railing.

The sun was behind the hotel now, and the veranda was in the shade. A sea breeze blew across the lawn and rustled the palms.

The other guests were all Westerners, mostly middle-aged. The Grand Hotel was a bit upscale for backpackers, not quaint or charming to j.a.panese and Koreans who had money, and absolutely unacceptable to any cla.s.s of middle-aged Americans, except maybe schoolteachers. I concluded that everyone there, except us, were Europeans.

It was very nice on this old-fashioned white stucco veranda with paddle fans overhead, the smell of salt water, the wide lawn, and the turquoise waters stretching out to the green islands. It would have been perfect if I had a drink, but there were no serving people around. I said, "I think we have to get our own drinks."

"I'll go. What do you want?"

"I'll go," I said, as I sat on my a.s.s. Women understand that this is total bulls.h.i.t, and Susan stood. "What do you want?"

"A cold beer. And see if they have any snacks. I'm starving. Thanks."

She went through the French doors into the dining room.

I recalled sitting here almost thirty years ago, and I remembered when the female staff were plentiful and very attentive, thrilled out of their minds to be working here for the Americans while out there, their country was disintegrating, and their fathers, brothers, and husbands were bleeding and dying alongside the Americans who were so far from home; but here in Nha Trang, there was a sign outside the barbed wire that said Off-Limits to Death Off-Limits to Death. Not a literal sign, of course, but an unspoken understanding that you were not going to meet a violent end in this place.

And for the infantrymen and the helicopter door gunners and the chopper pilots and the long-range patrol guys and the tunnel rats and the combat medics, and for all the guys who had seen what the insides of people looked like, Nha Trang was more than a haven; it was a reaffirmation that somewhere amid all this shooting and dying, a place existed where people didn't carry guns, and where the day ended with a sunset that you knew you'd live to see, and the night held no terror, and the morning sun rose over the South China Sea and illuminated a beach of sleeping, not dead, bodies.

Susan came back without the drinks and said, "The waitress will bring our drinks." She sat. "You're in luck. The waitress is Lucy."

"Great."

An elderly woman came through the French doors carrying a tray. She looked about eighty, with a weathered face and betel-nut-stained teeth and lips, but she was probably closer to my age.

Susan said, "Paul, this is your old friend, Lucy."

The woman cackled and put down the tray.

Susan said something to the woman, and they chatted. Susan turned to me and said, "She was a chambermaid here when she was a young girl, and this place was a resort for the French plantation owners. She stayed on when the Americans took it over as an R&R hotel, then in 1975 it became a Communist Party hotel, and now that it's a public hotel again." Susan added, "In 1968, she was a young c.o.c.ktail waitress, and she says she remembers an American who looks like you who used to chase her around the tables, trying to pinch her a.s.s."

The old lady cackled again.

I suspected the last part of Susan's story was not true. But to be a sport, I said, "Tell her she's still beautiful-co-dep. And I'd still like to pinch her a.s.s."

The old lady laughed at co-dep before Susan could translate the English, and when Susan got to the a.s.s-pinching part, the woman broke into a girlish laugh, said something, smacked me on the shoulder playfully, and trotted off.

Susan smiled and said, "She says you're an old goat." She added, "She also said, 'Welcome back.' "

I nodded. Welcome back, indeed.

Nha Trang and the Grand Hotel and the old woman had escaped most of the war, but in the end, nothing escaped.

Susan had a gin and tonic, and I poured a bottle of Tiger beer into a plastic cup. There was a bowl of something on the table that looked like trail mix, but I couldn't identify what trail it came from.

I raised my gla.s.s and said, "Thanks for your help and your company."

We touched gla.s.ses, and she said, "Thanks for inviting me."

We both got a laugh out of that.

We sipped our drinks and watched the sea. It was one of those perfect times when sun, sea, and wind were just right, the beer is cold, the hard day's journey has ended, and the woman is beautiful.

Susan asked me, "What did you do when you were here besides get drunk?"

"Mostly lay in the sun and had some good food." I added, "A lot of the guys were stressed out, of course, so we played a lot of cards, and most of us had jungle sores, so the sun and sea were good for the skin."

She lit a cigarette and asked, "How about women?"

I replied, "Women, except for employees, were not allowed in the hotel."

"Were you allowed out out of the hotel?" of the hotel?"

"Yes."

"Ah, ha. And were you involved with anyone from home when you were here?"

"I was. Her name was Peggy, a good Irish Catholic Southie."

She drew on her cigarette and looked out to sea. "And how about in '72? Were you involved with anyone then?"

"I was married. It was a brief marriage, and it ended when I returned. In fact, before I returned."

She thought about that awhile and asked, "And since then?"

"Since then I made two promises to myself-never go back to Vietnam and never get married again."

She smiled. "Which was worse? Combat or marriage?"

"They were both fun in their own way." I asked her, "And how about you? You're on."

She sipped her drink, lit another cigarette, and said, "I've never been married."

"That's it?"

"That's it. Do you want a s.e.xual history?"

I wanted to get to dinner before eight, so I said, "No."