or just about anything.”
Silence. “No. Winjgaarden is my family name. Only the Mrs. isn’t really mine. I never married.”
“Oh,” Moon said.
“In my work I have to travel a lot. All over. In Asia, a woman traveling alone attracts attention- the wrong kind of attention. So I use the Mrs. and I bought myself the wedding ring.”
“Does it work?”
“It seems to be effective.” And she laughed. “Or maybe I just flatter myself with this. Maybe I just
Moon thought about that. And about her. Remembering how he had first seen her walking into the hotel restaurant. A handsome woman, really. Graceful. Feminine. The sort of woman one saw in Cadillac commercials, escorted by a man in a tux. Not the sort of woman Moon would even think of approaching. But he knew a lot of men who would.
She glanced at him now, and away. It occurred to Moon that her remark wasn’t one to be left hanging. Silence would seem a confirmation.
“No,” he said. “I think you need the ring and the Mrs. I’m surprised they keep the wolves at bay.”
“Wolves at bay?”
“Wolves,” Moon said. “American slang for men who go around trying to connect with unattached women. I’m surprised you don’t attract them even with the ring and the title.”
“Oh,” Mrs. van Winjgaarden said. “Thank you.” And in an obvious effort to change the subject, added, “Have you noticed the constellation just above the horizon? The Southern Cross. I don’t think you see that in the United States. Aren’t you too far north of the equator?”
“We are in Colorado,” Moon said. “Can I ask where you are going with your suitcase?”
“To the new hotel. The one in the town was much cheaper, and I thought- Well, when I was here once before, the little hotel in the town wasn’t so bad. The ships’ officers stayed in it, and I guess the tourists stopped there when there were any, and a few businesspeople who came here. So they made the plumbing work and it was clean. Well, so-so. And the screens kept the mosquitoes out. But that was four years ago, and now the businesspeople come out to this new hotel, and the old one-” She shuddered. “The old one is awful. The smell. The roaches.”
“The new one is pretty good,” Moon said. It didn’t seem the time to mention the lack of refrigerated air.
“And of course I couldn’t get a taxi.” She laughed. “Puerto Princesa has only four with motors and then some pedicabs. But they all seem to quit at night.”
“No place much to go,” Moon said. “But weren’t you nervous? I mean, walking all the way out here in the dark. Alone.”
“No,” she said. “No tigers out there. But I was thinking of other things and when your voice came out of the dark, calling my name, then I was surprised.”
“What did you buy in Puerto Princesa? When you came four years ago?”
“Let me remember,” she said. “Yes. I bought ten dozen bamboo blowguns with pigskin quivers, four bamboo darts in each quiver. And one hundred fetish figures, carved out of bamboo, and some little things made out of shark bones, and-” She stopped. “Things like that. Then we sell them to exporters who resell them to importers, and someday they end their travels on the wall of someone’s parlor in Tokyo or Bonn or New York.”
“Could you buy poison for the darts if you wanted it?”
“I never asked,” she said. “But I think they still hunt with blowguns back in the hills, so they’d have to make the poison. It would be trouble for the importers, though.”
“Just imagine. You could carry one of those right through the metal detectors at airport security and then hijack the airliner,” said Moon, who found he was enjoying this conversation. “I wonder why the terrorists haven’t thought of it.”
The frogs had become used to them by now and reassured by their silences. Now there was frog song all around them, and from somewhere near, a whistling, and from somewhere far away, the sound of something huffing and grunting.
“We don’t have many night sounds in the mountains,” Moon said. “Just silence in the winter. In the summer, sometimes you hear the coyotes, and that starts the dogs barking.”
“You’re a long way from home,” she said. “Halfway around the world.”
Moon thought about that. This was like a totally different planet.
“Did you hear any news today?”
“No,” Moon said.
“There was a radio-shortwave I think-playing at the hotel in town. It said ARVN troops had commandeered two evacuation planes at one of the big airports. They threw off the civilians. Running away.”
“Urn,” Moon said.
“They said Vietcong and North Viet troops had captured the provincial capital just north of Saigon. And the airport north of Saigon had been hit by rockets.”
Moon could think of nothing to say.
“And they had a report from Bangkok. Refugees from Cambodia were saying that the Khmer Rouge were forcing city people out into the country. That whole towns were being totally emptied and the Khmer Rouge were killing those who looked professional.”
“It doesn’t sound reasonable,” Moon said. “It sounds like propaganda. Don’t you think so?”
She sat looking out through the sound of the frogs, across the road, across the rice paddy, into the jungle. The moonlight illuminated her face, but the jungle was dark.
She said, “Are you ever afraid?”
She was looking at him now and Moon studied her expression, not sure exactly what she meant. She was hunched forward, hugging herself.
“I’m afraid sometimes,” she added. “When I let myself think of going into Cambodia, I’m terrified.”
Moon had parted his lips, beginning the standard
reassurance, which was something like, There’s nothing to be afraid of. But he bit that off. There was a hell of a lot to be afraid of.
“I don’t blame you,” he said. “I don’t think you should go. Surely your brother will come out.”
“No,” she said. “He won’t. So I am also terrified that I won’t be able to get to him there. And then I am terrified that I will be able to get there, and the Khmer Rouge will get me. Afraid of what they would do to me. Afraid that Damon already is dead.” She paused. “Just scared. Of everything. Of failing. Of being alone. Of being alive. Of dying. I really doubt if you can understand this business of being afraid.”
“I can,” Moon said. He saw she was shivering.
“Did you ever wish you could be little again? Just a child with somebody taking care of you?”
“Yes,” Moon said.
“Really?”
“Sure,” Moon said. “To tell the truth, I’m afraid too. Right now.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“I don’t know what I’m getting into. I don’t know who I can trust. It’s like-” He tried to think of an analogy. “Like walking around with a blindfold on.”
She laughed. “You’re trying to make me feel better. To make me cheerful. I can’t imagine you being afraid. Ricky told me too much about you.”
“Ricky didn’t know what he was talking about,” Moon said.
The faintest hint of a breeze stirred the palm fronds somewhere behind them. Moon smelled dampness, the yeasty smell of decaying vegetation, and the perfume of flowers. The frogs were totally reassured now; their calls rose to full volume.
“I should go and see if they have a room for me,” Mrs. van Winjgaarden said. She pushed herself, wearily, up from the palm trunk.
Of course, Moon thought. She would be exhausted. He’d taken a shower, rested awhile, had a drink. She’d spent the time inspecting cockroaches, trying to get a cab, and making the long dark trek through the darkness up the potholed road.
He carried her bag. She explained that the whistling was the mating signal of the male of a species of tree
