Seeds of Fear

Gil felt the front of his pants shrink another size.

She was young and beautiful. Her black hair gleaming under the relentless sun. Her eyes clear and bright.

And watching him.

Gil's fingers dug into the bag, striking plastic wrap.

'You wan me suckee you good, GI?' she asked again as if he hadn't heard.

While she waited for his answer, she tossed a thick black braid over the shoulder of her blue ao dai. A bright blue ao dai. . the 'Devil with a Blue Dress' brought to life.

Halfway around the world from where they first met in the backseat of his dad's car. But this time she wasn't blond.

And this time what was between her legs could kill him as surely as a VC's bullet.

Not as quickly.

Not as cleanly.

But just as dead.

One more grunt for Charlie's body count.

One less grunt to watch.

'You have girlfriend Vietnam?' she asked when it became apparent Gil wasn't going to answer.

Her skin, without the usual scabbed-over lesions and pustules he'd seen on some of the camp's other 'girlfriends,' was stretched tightly over her heart- shaped skull; and Gil could see the sharp edge of one collarbone as she fingered the high silken collar.

In fifteen months he hadn't seen one fat dink whore.

Hell, he hadn't seen one fat dink anything.

'I be your girlfriend Vietnam,' she said, and gave one case closed, end of discussion nod.

The Regulation Hustle: as STANDARD as the two tags hanging around his neck; and as obvious as the NONSTANDARD tag.

Gil shook his head, usually all the discouragement they needed, and checked the Seiko he'd picked up his first week in country. Frowned. The dubbing/screw 'em if you can «party» wouldn't start until the evening's torrential rainstorm, around seven.

That left him twelve full hours before he had to become Gil the Geek — master deejay and part-time voyeur.

watching

Twelve hours to kill.

Gil could feel her eyes on him. Leeches. But hungrier than the rest.

'I be your girlfriend Vietnam.' Stepping closer, she laced one blue-draped arm though his and began pulling him away from the still-babbling fruit seller. 'You buy me tea, then I suckee you good.'

Gil put a stranglehold on the bag containing the imaginary devil while he followed the real one, the one wearing the blue dress, through Centertown's semicir cular heart toward the «bars» on Plantation Road.

And kept following her even as they began passing the plywood-and-pressed-beer-can establishments. When an even thinner whore in a bright red miniskirt and UCLA T-shirt darted out of the San Francisco and made a snatch at Gil's hat, the Blue Devil at his side made her own snatch and came back with a tiny fist full of greasy black hair.

'I know beddah place,' the Blue Devil said, ignoring the screeching, scalped whore behind them. 'More beddah this place, for sure. No worry. We go.'

Gil knew the «place» wasn't any «beddah» than any of the other prefab bars they were passing, but he went — following after her like a dog after a bitch, listening to her jabber away in a fast-forward version of pidgin English Vietnamese and trying to negotiate cobblestones thick with liquified human waste.

'You see,' she said, turning to look into his eyes as she stopped and began pulling him through a doorway hung with blue and crystal plastic beads. 'Much beddah place. You see.'

you see

But he hadn't. Didn't see the door until the beads clicker-clacked behind him. And by then he was too late.

The verbal horseshoe ambush caught him from all sides as floor-to-ceiling curtains were pulled aside, bamboo rings chattering, and the tiny «outer» room was suddenly filled with smiling, ao dai-clad whores.

But his was the only one wearing blue, Gil noticed. He had the only blue devil.

Four pair of dark eyes locked onto his as lips smiled and heads nodded. Gil felt his balls pucker up into his belly. Felt their stares latch on to his flesh and start feeding.

felt Charlie watching

When the mammasan in black pajamas shuffled out from behind a painted bamboo screen, his little Blue Devil raced forward, arms outstretched, jibbering like a monkey.

One of the curtains fluttered in her wake, exposing the cramped interior. An American GI, his sweat-slick Afro pressing into the filigreed back of a bamboo papasan chair, eyes rolling white, groaned while a half-naked woman kneeled between his spread legs, her shining black head nodding slowly.

Gil could still see their images, in reverse color — the man white, the woman's silken pants dull green — superimposed on the curtain as it fell back into place.

could still see

It wasn't much different than the (few) parties he had attended his last year in high school. back when free love was, and Vietnam was just something you heard your parents talk about in hushed tones and Canada was still just a plane ticket away.

Back when he thought he'd live forever.

Gil looked down at the soggy bundle in his hand. One plastic-sheathed corner had worked its way through the rice paper. Beads of condensation, like sweat, gathered and disappeared beneath the matted paper. He could almost feel the LP getting softer in his hands. If he didn't get back to base and start transferring Mitch Ryder to cassette tapes, he might lose the «Devil» for another God-knows-how-long.

Except that there wasn't any real danger of that happening. Not now. Not really. Not in real time.

Gil looked up as the living Devil rushed back toward him, the ancient mammasan in tow. Smiling, nodding,

watching

'This be numbah one GI, Ba,' the girl said as she laid a surprisingly cool hand against Gil's chest. He shivered under its pressure. 'I be his girlfriend Vietnam.'

The old woman nodded her sparsely covered head and smiled. Worn, betel-stained teeth gleamed at Gil in the murky half-light.

'You like, you like,' she hissed at him, 'you see, she numbah one suckee girl. How old you, GI? How old you?'

'What?' Was there an AGE requirement? 'Nineteen. And a half.'

The mammasan hooked a gnarled finger under the whore's chin and lifted the perfectly heart-shaped face.

'She eighteen, GI. an' half, like you, GI. She no do this so much like other girls. I keep her special for you, GI. I keep her clean. Just for you, GI.'

And it's not even my birthday.

'An' she virgin. just like all girls here. She suckee you good, GI, but no fuckee. She virgin.'

That must have been a major problem, Gil thought, considering that every woman he'd met in Nam was — by her own admissions or those of her pimp — a virgin. Gil wondered if Uncle Sam knew he was waging a war against