“Of course not,” said Civilai. “Look around, little brother. French all over the city are trying to sell off their household items before they jump on the boat home. And imagine all those wealthy Catholic refugees who were forced to leave their china collections in the north. They would love nothing more than to pick up a new set here in the south. But, goodness me, they don’t even have enough money to feed their fat children. They don’t even have a real roof over their heads.”

He waved his tennis racquet in the air.

“I picked up this beauty for almost nothing at a yard sale,” he said.

Only Civilai would scour the suburbs to set up a joke.

“Sit down before somebody challenges you to a game,” I said.

It was good to see him. We shook hands, and the nerves in our palms exchanged a familiar intimacy. We had kept in touch as much as an endless guerilla war allowed. He’d gone his way after Paris, organizing, activating, agitating. He was the only Lao on the central committee of the Workers Party of Vietnam. I’d seen him on the stage in Tuyen Quang when our Free Lao movement was hijacked by the Vietnamese-designed Pathet Lao movement. He was already a celebrity then, a visionary, a revolutionary, a genius but still an idiot. We’d reunited by chance at seminars and in bunkers. Whenever there was a lull in the fighting we’d go out of our ways to meet up and see a film or two. That war would never have been the same without Civilai. I was always glad he wasn’t dead and he assured me that the feeling was mutual.

The note that had brought me to Saigon had been written in Lao and was, wisely, cryptic. He knew I’d come. He ordered a pitcher of beer from the one nervous waiter. Cafés in Saigon were bombed from time to time just to keep the enemy on their toes. It would have been an ironic end to our relationship to be blasted by a North Vietnamese hand grenade. The waiter knew that thanks to the influx of refugees he could be replaced. We, on the other hand, could not.

We drank our long-dreamed-of cold beer and caught up on the previous four months. I told him about the delta. He told me about Hanoi. We followed the progress of the drug trade. The Golden Triangle was producing half the world’s opium, and the French, who had distributed the drug to fund their occupation, were now trafficking the product to pay for their withdrawal. As was our tradition, I asked him about his wife, Nong, who was teaching at Ai Quoc College, and he asked me about Boua. His marriage always seemed happier than mine, and I found myself inventing a perfect relationship to tell him about. I’m sure he knew I was lying.