Helen looked at him coolly. She had long suspected that Gary cared more than he let on, yet it was in the nature of the business that they all wanted to please him, that he created, subtly, the competitive drive and risk-taking that produced the pictures. “We were on our own time.”
“Do it again, you’re fired.”
“And get five better offers the next day.” She was beyond the point where he could make demands, unspoken that she would take the same risks anyway and simply sell to another magazine if need be. The pictures didn’t matter anymore.
“Don’t make me go through losing another photographer,” he said. And with that, she was chastened.
“The pictures all go under a dual byline, okay? No one else in the darkroom till we finish. No one touches the negatives.”
“Let me have a peek, okay? At least the first contacts.”
“We’ll see.” She worried about the quality of the exposures, the dim light and the lack of aperture adjustment.
“You’re my top paid feature person now. Tell Linh I’m putting him on staff full-time.”
Helen nodded her head and gently closed the darkroom door behind her.
Linh began with test clips. As Helen feared, the light had been too dim. Linh left the negatives in the developer longer to increase the contrast and sharpen the edges. His first test got better and better, but at the moment both of them thought the exposure perfect, fog developed over the shadows. “Too long,” he said. “We’ll shorten the next one.”
Helen sat on a stool in the dark, the red light on Linh as he moved back and forth. “What do you think?”
He studied the next test negative, then turned the overhead light on. He handed it to Helen, and the air went out of her when she saw the poor range of tone and the weak edge markings on the film. “It’s not going to work. These are terrible.”
“We can fix it. We’ll leave it in developer longer. Use two baths. I’ll make it work.”
Helen chewed her nail. “How’d you learn to do all this?”
“This is nothing. I used to work in the forest at night with only stars. I rinsed negatives by letting water run over the strips in the stream. Dried them by hanging them along small leaves.”
“Gary is making you staff photographer.”
Linh bowed his head a moment before he reached for the printing trays. “That’s a great honor.”
“Honor, BS. He’s afraid to lose you to a competitor. It means that they can transfer you out of the country if you want.”
“Yes.”
“Thank you for taking me out there. To see that. It was a dream. After doing this for me… I’m keeping my word. I’m going home.”
“Yes.”
“Come with me.”
Linh said nothing.
“Robert will give you a good job.”
“I cannot.”
“Not even for me…” Helen said, more statement than question.
“It is too much to ask.”
Hours later they printed the closeup shot of the boy soldier. Linh burned in highlights, and as he promised, the picture was decent in quality, extraordinary in subject. They handed the print to Gary, who stood at the door like a nurse waiting to carry off a newborn, forgetting Helen and Linh as soon as he collected his prize. They sat in the darkroom, door open, the red safelight a dull star. Both were tired and heavy-eyed but unwilling to leave.
“We make a good team,” she said.
Linh smiled.
“Will they hurt the boy when they see his picture? Will they think he’s a traitor?”
“No,” Linh said. “He’ll think fast like he did with us. He’ll survive.”
“I felt good out there.”
“Go to California. It will be better there for you.”
She was hurt by his constant dismissal. “What about you?”
“Nothing to worry about. With you gone, I will be the best photographer in Vietnam. Maybe I will marry Mai’s sister. She need a husband for her children.” He kept thinking of his debt to Darrow, how Helen’s safety would have mattered to him more than anything else.
Helen’s back stiffened. “I had no idea.”
“It’s a Vietnam tradition. To care for family,” Linh said.
“Darrow wanted you to be happy. Have a good life for him.” Helen scrambled to her feet and turned on the overhead light. “I’m going to grab a couple of hours on the cot.”
“We got good pictures.”
“How can I top this? Go out on top, right?”
Helen moved out of the apartment in Cholon, handing the keys over to Linh, and went back to the Continental, where she had started. The next morning, she made arrangements to fly home. She did not feel more or less grieved than before she went out with Linh in the field, but something had changed. She knew it and suspected that Linh knew it, and they did not speak of it but instead acted as if nothing had shifted between them.
Late at night Helen stayed awake in her hotel room, sleep no longer a thing to be counted on, and she lay in bed, propped up by pillows, staring into darkness until she could see the patterns of the tiles on the wall, the blades of the fan above as they pushed against the heavy air. She stored a bottle of bourbon on her bedside table, and it slackened the thirst and loneliness she felt during those long hours, sure that there would be no knock on the door. Helen slowly trained herself to believe in Darrow’s death. He had been her guide and mentor, as well as her lover, and she did not feel up to the challenge of the war without him.
Was it the same for others? Like children, did they all wait for the reappearance of a loved one, death simply a word, the lack of a knock on a door? She knew better, had seen the two bags on top of the steep ravine, had watched them sway on poles on the shoulders of the living.
And yet. The sight of the pale NVA soldiers had changed everything for her. Just when she thought there was nothing more but repeating herself, a whole other world, formerly invisible, appeared. No American had yet photographed the other side. As thrilling as exploring an unknown continent on a map. No one could understand except Darrow and MacCrae, who were gone. Only Linh, who now was determined to send her home. Frequently she dreamed of the boy soldier who had held their fate in his hands, who saved them and himself for another day, and how the Lurps sat, tensed, how one wet his index finger and marked it in the air, one down, like a sports score.
Helen woke groggy in the morning, her room too hot, mouth sour with alcohol. Her room boy served her Vietnamese coffee, thick and sweet with condensed milk, out of a silver pot, laid down fresh rolls on a china plate with three small pots of jam-marmalade, strawberry, and guava-both knowing she used only marmalade. She slathered the bread with butter but used the orange sparingly so that the boy could take the two unused pots home with him each day. Why, just as she was leaving, did she finally feel at home?
When Helen expressed the desire to see the crooked apartment one last time, Linh told her Thao had already moved in, that the whole building shook from the running of children up and down the stairs.
“Good,” Helen said. “Something to break the bad luck.”
After the remains from the crash site had been identified, Gary brought out Darrow’s will stating he wished to be cremated in Vietnam, but his wife made an official complaint to the magazine, and they gave in to her wishes, shipping the body back to New York for burial.
Helen, ready to fly out, felt all the original grief renew itself. She was nothing to Darrow. She begged Gary to read Darrow’s letter over the phone to the wife, but the woman remained unswayed, convinced that
