She had regained some of the weight she had lost out in the field. She slept long hours, a deep and dreamless sleep fed by the rich life around her.

Twice a week Helen and Darrow went to the USAID house quartered in an old French colonial building in the neighboring town, for both the American food and the conversation. Nichols had just retired from active military duty and now thrived on projects to increase agricultural productivity. He was in charge of building storage houses for fertilizers, pesticides, and improved grain for planting. Rumors were that he loved the lifestyle, including his young Vietnamese mistress, too much to leave.

The longer Helen stayed in the village, the more she made excuses to not visit the USAID house. She felt awkward in front of the Vietnamese servants, who were treated poorly by the American men. Darrow seemed oblivious; or rather, he chose not to notice. He happily listened to music and drank scotch while scouring the magazines and newspapers.

Nichols and Sanders were loud, both in their conversation and the music they played. Helen shivered in the cold gale of air-conditioning. The platesize steaks grilled on the barbecue and the endless cocktails made Helen feel dull. At first, she brought a towel with her for the civilizing effect of a hot shower, but as weeks passed, she found she preferred the river.

During the long evenings, she watched Nichols’s mistress in the background, the one whom the village women gossiped about. Only fifteen, the girl’s family had disowned her because of the liaison but had just bought another parcel of land with money she sent. She received more spending money in a week from Nichols than her father could earn from farming in a year. Nichols didn’t include her during the meal-like a stray, the girl stayed in the background, along the edge of their evening.

“Why don’t you ask her to join us?” Helen asked, poking at a baked russet potato imported from the States.

Nichols turned and eyed the girl walking down the hallway in her unstable high heels. “Khue? She’s happier on her own. Getting some time off.”

“I bet.” Helen cut at her meat with a large saw of a steak knife.

Nichols squinted, his skin flushing a darker red. “You said she had a sharp tongue.”

“Actually,” said Darrow, “what I said was that she was too sharp for you.”

Nichols looked at him for a moment, weighing things, and then deciding to take it as a joke, broke into a barking laugh. “That’s it. That’s what you said, all right.” He puddled ketchup and A.1 on his plate.

The room fell silent. Sanders, his food untouched, cleared his throat. He had lost a lot of weight since Helen and Darrow arrived in the village. They guessed he had developed a pipe habit. “You must be dying to get back to the life in Saigon.”

“Not really,” Helen answered.

“I’m ready to test this arm,” Darrow said. “Send someone down as soon as a message comes from my assistant.”

“You contacted Linh?” She felt betrayed not only that Darrow had been plotting his return all along, but also at her own feelings of panic at the prospect of going back. Why had he chosen this public setting to announce his intentions?

Nichols smiled. “Oh, boy, did I cause trouble?”

“They’ve already replaced me on a couple of assignments,” Darrow said. “Pretty soon I’ll be taking pictures of supermarket openings in Amarillo.”

“What I wouldn’t give to be in Saigon,” Nichols said, swallowing a small bite of meat and daintily licking his lips.

“Looks like you’re doing fine here,” Darrow said, nodding his head in the direction the girl had gone. He intended the jab at Helen, his declaration at her possessiveness.

“Sanders gets the pipes, and I get the poon.” Nichols looked in the direction the girl had gone. “But there would be so many more goodies to choose from in Saigon.”

Helen excused herself and went down the hallway. She hated these men and hated Darrow when he was with them. This was her last visit. She applied her lipstick in the mirror, readying her excuse to leave.

When Khue came out of a room, she was startled, as if caught. Up close, the girl looked even younger. Pointing at the lipstick, she smiled, revealing a front tooth with a large chip. Helen motioned for her to try it. Self-consciously, Khue closed her lips and applied the color.

Why didn’t Nichols take her to get the tooth fixed? Infuriated, Helen decided to take the girl to a dentist herself. Khue studied the rose sheen on her lips with great seriousness; too sad and wise for such a young girl. Forget the dentist, the girl needed to be taken away from there, put into a school. How would Helen manage that?

Khue handed back the lipstick, but Helen patted the girl’s fingers around the tube. “For you.” When the two of them entered the living room, Nichols was sprawled out on a lounge, drunk. He took one look at Khue and yelled, “Come over here! Come now!”

A small, throbbing vein appeared along Khue’s temple, visible as she stepped forward.

“Leave her be-” Darrow said, noticing that Helen had not come to sit next to him but remained standing.

Nichols grabbed Khue by the hip and pulled her down on his lap, wiping her mouth with his sleeve. “You look like a whore, honey. No good. Look like a little whore with that stuff on.” He patted her cheek. “That’s my girl. My good, clean girl.”

Helen turned around and walked out.

“What’s wrong? I just don’t want you showing her bad ways,” Nichols yelled.

Outside on the dirt driveway, Darrow stumbled getting his shoes back on. “We walking home?”

Helen marched down the road without a word. The darkness and the warm air were a relief.

“You mad at me?”

“Not at you. No… Yes. Why didn’t you say anything?”

“If you’re choosy, you’re not going to have too many friends out here.”

“I’m never going back there.”

“Fine. But you’re punishing the girl, too.”

Helen slowed, shaking pebbles from her sandals. Darrow laughed and grabbed her arm. “What’s funny?” she asked.

“What a puritan you were, how self-righteous. How outraged. I had no idea.”

Helen said nothing.

“I lost that capacity some time back. But I admire it.”

“You’re ridiculing me. And you didn’t tell me your plans to go back to work.” As she said it she knew her outrage on Khue’s behalf had also been for herself.

“That’s the thing, I didn’t want it official,” Darrow said, suddenly serious. “All good things and all bad things come to an end.”

Preparations for the summer festival frenzied the village, and Helen and Darrow were invited to take part. Ho Tung knew their plans to leave but insisted they stay through the celebrations.

Helen had been thrown out of her stillness. All she could think was that she was losing something she wanted. But she couldn’t tell Darrow what it came down to-them or the war, no longer both. Apparent to her that she could no longer go through a village from the outside, as before. Impossible to cover the war with such conflicting loyalties. Was that what had happened to MacCrae, she wondered, too many angles of loyalty?

Pigs were butchered, the cries of slaughter haunting her till she escaped to the river. When she returned, the communal house had been hung with lanterns. They were seated in a place of honor next to the chief. He talked about how expensive it must be to send a letter from America, especially St. Louis, and Helen didn’t know what else to do but agree. “I know young girls get distracted,” Ho Tung said, “but how can she forget where she comes from?”

Women swayed under trays of food, delicacies such as glutinous rice, sweet boiled rice cakes, shredded pork with bamboo shoots. Toasts were drunk with fermented rice alcohol. Darrow spent long hours with a translator to figure out what they should contribute. Finally it was decided beer for the adults and ice cream for the children.