The international agreements were signed and the French dragged their feet until ’56, when the last of the actors were to leave the theatre. And there I was in the coffee shop at the Continental watching it all happen. They had a parade that passed right in front of me. The drums of the Moroccan Sharpshooters’ Band made ripples in my café au lait. In their big hats and their snowy-white uniforms and their confident stride, you’d never have guessed the French were the losers. Some of the crowd even cheered them as they passed. With nothing really to show for a hundred years of occupation, it struck me as particularly arrogant that they should hold their heads so high; that they should still be taller and heavier than us.

I’d been there at the café for forty minutes still nursing my cup with no sign of Civilai. I wondered whether he’d been stopped at the border or shot trying to cross it. Those were oddly unpredictable days. It crossed my mind a few times that I was the enemy. The ’54 Geneva Agreement had sliced the country in half and we victors had been ordered to keep behind the line that divided a country we’d won. It was like the winner of the Tour de France being allowed to keep only the handles of the trophy.

I’m not sure we really wanted the south anyway. It had been flooded by Catholics escaping some imaginary genocide in the north. The suburban slums of Saigon continued to spread out like an ink blot. It was impossible to know who was from where or to police the mayhem. The South Vietnamese security forces had been trained hurriedly and indifferently by the fleeing French, and the task of supervising a city in transition was beyond them. For a while, anyway, anything was available and possible.

So, there I was, a Lao with no passport, undeniably an enemy agent, drinking coffee in the center of a city in denial. I could feel its incurable tumor. It still wore its foundation and its blush. Its pretty girls still cycled past in their beautiful silk ao dai, but you could see the bruises beneath the makeup. The men still strutted, but their heads turned often to look behind them. Saigon was keeping a brave face, but there was nothing holding the skin and bone together. A voice roused me from my thoughts.

“Anyone sitting there?”

I looked up and wasn’t at all surprised by what confronted me.

“Did you really travel all the way from Hue with that tennis racquet?” I asked.