wearing a casual shirt and trousers, not his usual white uniform. He squeezed my hand tightly, and I felt him press a small piece of paper into my palm. I pulled my hand away discreetly, tucking it into my right trouser pocket.
“Let me pay this woman for the damage I caused,” Dat said, indicating the vendor.
“There’s no need,” I said, pasting a polite smile on my face. “I will buy her produce. But it’s kind of you to offer.”
He nodded and walked quickly away. I had not thought that of all the people we paid off that Pham Dat would prove to be the most useful, but of late, he was worth far more than the fifty piastres we gave him at the start of each month.
I purchased all the vegetables the woman had spread out, stuffing them into my straw bag and a bundle of cloth she gave me. Then I toted them to the far end of the market, where beggars were waiting for the day to end so they could salvage the food that had been trampled or had spoiled in the sun. I dropped my vegetables with a woman cradling a young boy, slipping some piastres into her fist as well.
“Eighty,” I whispered. “Don’t let them steal from you.”
Free of the heavy load, I hurried to the east side of the market, past the streetcar that ran through the middle of it, past coconut vendors with bright strips of blue and red cloth tied around their foreheads, toward a dozen young men wearing white sarongs. They were carrying boxes of live animals. I followed them to the cluster of meat sellers who came en masse on Sundays, past their rows of butchered and live animals to a man who was roasting a whole pig on a spit. The animal’s mouth was wide open as if still in shock from its untimely death. The flames had seared half the poor beast and were burning brightly, the edges tinged blue as a crisp fall breeze fanned them. The market was not devoid of French women—some of us liked to shop this way, among the locals—but I still stood out from the crowd. Trying to look as inconspicuous as possible, I stood near the people observing the fire, many of them children, and took out Dat’s note.
“Paul Adrien, the police officer, came in on the nine o’clock train,” it read. I scanned it again, then crumpled it in my hand, my nails nearly puncturing my skin before I let my muscles relax. I walked past the fire and dropped the small piece of paper in the flames, watching it turn to ash. Paul was in Hanoi now. Khoi had said he wanted to speak to him. To see what his eyes looked like when he mentioned Sinh. With the lure of a romantic engagement, and through a series of messengers, I had pulled Paul here.
Back at the perimeter of the market, my chauffeur was waiting. “The Aéro-club, please,” I said. I saw him hesitate a moment before he started the engine and pulled out into the street without a word. Membership in the Aéro-club was restricted to men, but I couldn’t let another moment pass before I told Khoi the news.
We pulled up to the handsome colonial-style building where men of Khoi’s position met to discuss their passion for flying machines, and I searched for Khoi’s black Bugatti.
“Circle around,” I directed my driver. It took four trips through the neighborhood, but I finally spotted the Bugatti on a narrow street, nearly hidden behind a delivery truck.
“Pull up alongside, please,” I said, lowering my window. Khoi’s driver, Trung, recognizing my car, lowered his as well.
“I’m not feeling well,” I told him. “I need Monsieur Khoi to return home. At once.”
“Oui, madame,” he said, quickly opening his door.
We sped off, passing the adjacent French Aéro-club, a space where white men met to talk about exactly the same things as the locals—just not with them.
Thirty minutes later, we were at Khoi’s house. I ignored the servants and headed straight to his bedroom, where I undressed, put on a silk dressing gown over my slip, and climbed between the covers.
Khoi would be worried about me, but that would make him move more quickly.
I shifted onto my left side and fluffed one of the green-silk-covered pillows. Above Khoi’s zebrawood dresser hung a family portrait. It wasn’t a formal gathering, just a group of Nguyens on a sojourn on one of the family’s junks, but