Love Like Hate by Linh Dinh

rice and chow mien. Some of them were standing on the sidewalks, looking lost. Kim Lan remembered 1968, when there were so many reports out of Hue about civilians being shot by North Vietnamese troops or buried alive in mass graves.
    That night, lying in bed next to her son, Kim Lan felt that she had made a serious mistake in not leaving with Sen. There were only a few decisions in life that really mattered and she had certainly blown this one. Now she understood why Sen had always been so courteous and pleasant to her, why he had always smiled so brightly. With him loitering in the café each day, she had actually spent more time with Sen than with her own husband. Sen was always within her sight and often literally within her reach. To make such an arrangement permanent would not be unpleasant. Sen was a kind man who would probably make a good father. Unlike Hoang Long, who seemed strangely indifferent to his own son, Sen often joked around with Cun and gave him sweets. Kim Lan had never felt more lonely in her life. If it hadn’t been for the presence of Cun, she would have broken out in sobs.

11IS THAT YOU?
    A fter failing to persuade Kim Lan to go with him, Sen drove south, heading for Vinh Chau. He was afraid the highway would be clogged with fleeing refugees, but it wasn’t. There was a large crowd at Bac My Thuan and it took him three hours just to get on a ferry. On the dock, vendors were pushing the usual sugarcane cubes, pineapple chunks, mango and Coca-Colas, everything but lottery tickets. Regime change or no, poor people still had to make money that day. The man with the withered legs draped around his neck like a pretzel was also out begging. Sen had to pay a ridiculous price for the ferry, ten times the usual rate. Crossing the river, he noticed that the South Vietnamese flag had already been removed from the pilot boat.
    He slept that night in Soc Trang and continued early the next morning. All in all, things were going swimmingly until he reached the last ferry crossing, about forty miles from his destination. The ferry was not there for some reason. There were boats and boatmen willing to take him across, but how would he cover the last forty miles without his car? If only his sisters were waiting on the other side to carry him piggyback, tag-team fashion, the last forty miles, but no, they weren’t available just when they were most needed.
    He sat in a little shack of a café at the river’s edge and pondered his options. With the electric fan broken, the heat was insufferable. On a plywood wall, a dozen long-legged calendar babes, baring belly buttons, surrounded a piglike Buddha. Hungry, he ordered ricewith pork chops, but the meat turned out to be so old and dry, he flung it in the direction of a mangy, three-legged dog. Two flies suddenly collided in midair and landed in his fresh-brewed tea.
Were they making love?
he wondered. He had seen pigeons, snakes, monkeys, of course, and crocodiles doing the nasty, but never flies. He watched the flies drown before dumping the tea and pouring himself another cup. He noticed that all of the locals—five idling hoodlums and the hag owner of the café—were staring at him as if he were a man from Mars. He suddenly realized that there was no government left to prevent them from killing him and stealing his car.
Which side were they on during the war anyway? Probably neither. Some of them probably didn’t even know there was a war. It was because of stupid hicks like these that I had to escape to Saigon in the first place
.
    By sunset, the ferry still hadn’t turned up, so there was nothing for Sen to do but climb into his car and try to sleep. Tossing and turning all night in the backseat, he woke up at dawn groggy, thirsty and dreading what the café had on its breakfast menu. There was no ferry and there wouldn’t be a ferry. Sen approached a hick and bought a rusty bicycle from him—at a monstrous price. These hicks weren’t so stupid after all.