There were other nights when I went with Donovan to La Porte Bleue to meet various contacts, and sometimes after sending me out to the bar he’d talk at length to Vien and Quyen and I’d hear the clink of glasses and occasionally laughter. I would sit at the bar and hope that Tuyen would find time to pause from her waitressing to talk with me, and there were intervals when she did. She liked to speak in French, saying she was glad to get a chance to practise, and I’d try to be witty, give my conversation as good an accent as hers as we engaged in small talk. At other times she was mostly out of sight or too busy to linger long. Once, when she was waitressing and Donovan was in the back room, a dispute over a bill broke out and in the mirror behind the bar I watched as two Americans who were with their Vietnamese girlfriends started giving her loud abuse about being ripped off and charged for what they hadn’t had. She stood calmly, speaking so quietly that I could hardly hear what she was saying even as around her the voices grew louder. In the mirror I saw hands waving and pointing and a glass went over and shattered on the floor. I knew I had to intervene, but while I hesitated Donovan came out of the back room, followed by Vien, and with one hand he gently eased Tuyen to the side of him then placed his other on the table in a way that looked as if he was merely steadying a rickety piece of furniture. I got off the bar stool and tried to give the impression I was ready to assist. There was an argumentative American voice and then Donovan leaned in close to him, almost whispering in his ear, and no one but the man he was talking to could have heard what was being said before money was thrown on the table and the Americans made a hurried exit, a chair knocked over as they went and their Vietnamese consorts tottering after them with high heels clicking on the tiled floor. Afterwards, when he was driving me back to my apartment, I asked him what he had said but he only laughed before saying, ‘On a need-to-know basis only, Mikey.’

We did a detour for some reason that wasn’t explained and when we were driving past Notre-Dame he asked me if I ever went to church.

‘Weddings and funerals mostly,’ I told him.

‘So you’re not a believer.’

‘I’m a believer but just not in all the things I used to.’

‘It’s a cold religion, Protestantism, anyway. Can’t even warm itself with a candle.’

‘Why do you say it’s cold?’

‘You’ve got all that burden of sin to carry on your shoulders.’

‘And Catholics don’t?’

‘We have a get-out-of-jail card that never expires. Our spiritual PX pass that allows you back in the store with money to spend,’ he said as he nosed the car through a phalanx of motorbikes. And when he saw that I didn’t understand, ‘Sin, confession, penance, followed by new sin. The joyous circle of life.’