Paris are wearing them long again at night. I had this dress made with cocktails in mind rather than a seated dinner. It feels far too informal.”
“It is very hot here,” Trieu said, pointing out the obvious. “Until November, the French women dress like this, even for dinner. This is the right one,” she said firmly, and this time I nodded in agreement. I studied my reflection one more time, imagining what I’d be wearing if I were still in America, if I were being strangled by the poverty threatening to engulf the world. Victor and I had spoken often about how we were touched by the financial plague, but he’d reassured me that the family would never sink. The Michelins, like their tires, were hard to pop. The little that remained of my family in Blacksburg was certainly feeling the tidal wave of poverty. Even the recessions that only hit part of America had always sprinted toward us. An image of our farmhouse and the wild, wooded land around it flashed in my mind, sending a shudder down my spine. I never wanted to go back. Even Paris felt too close.
When Victor saw me descend the stairs to the landing, he whistled with approval. He raised his eyebrows at my hemline, but I repeated what Trieu had told me and he just nodded, leading me outside to the car. Lanh was already standing in front of it, his light gray uniform impeccably ironed and his hat set just so on his head. He did not need to ask Victor where we were going.
In the car, Victor put his strong arm around my bare shoulders and explained that we would be driving through a local neighborhood to get to the Officers’ Club. Together, we took in the narrow pink and yellow houses with ceramic tile roofs, small terraces, and big green shutters, all pushed together. Moving in front of these tight, colorful rows were Annamites, many of the men wearing white pith helmets and the women conical straw hats or large disk-shaped ones that they tied under their chins. Around them, children bustled about, most of them barefoot. A jumble of telephone wires and streetcar wires snaked above us; below them were many storefronts with pieces of long cloth hanging in place of a formal awning, some painted with Chinese characters. And around it all was steam coming from various makeshift food stands. It could not have been more different from Paris.
“I like these other streets just as much as rue de la Chaux,” I said, referencing our new street, in a neighborhood that had been reorganized by the French. As we turned south along the Red River, the sun was just starting to set in an orange-tinged haze above it.
“There’s a more direct way to go to the Officers’ Club,” Lanh noted. “But we are a bit early, and as Monsieur Lesage requested, this way you can see more of Hanoi. The French parts, and the not so French,” he added, braking gently to let a group of older Annamite women cross the busy road, their backs bent. I imagined it was less from age than from manual labor.
I turned to look at them, but Victor smiled and looked straight ahead as the group paused to ogle our big black car. Victor had purchased it from Delahaye and had it shipped to the colony six months earlier.
In Paris, Victor had managed a steel-frame construction business that André Michelin also owned. He was eventually allowed to transition to the central Michelin company, rather than André’s other holdings, but his work had very little to do with the day-to-day rubber manufacturing operations down in Clermont-Ferrand. Instead, Victor assisted with updating the entries in the Michelin guides, which the company had been producing since 1900 to help travelers find suitable accommodations and dining establishments. Victor had said that it wasn’t work for an engineer—he had earned a degree in engineering at École Centrale—but they had reminded him that thanks to years as a professional bon vivant in Paris in his early twenties, he knew all the best places in the capital city. It was a kind way of saying that his youthful antics were still keeping him from being trustworthy.
Eventually, Victor graduated from the guides and was allowed to work in advertising for some of the important Paris bicycle races that Michelin participated in, reminding the world that winning cyclists used Michelin tires, and that the company had, in fact, helped the