Dragon House by John Shors Read Free Book Online Page A

corner of a busy intersection. Buildings no more than fifteen feet wide rose up almost ten stories. A train rumbled across the street and their taxi stopped. Scores of scooters eased around the taxi, moving so slowly that drivers and passengers were able to reach out and touch the car, using it to balance their overloaded vehicles. The dozens of people who were no more than an arm’s length from the taxi were clad in traditional dresses, suits, fashionable club attire, and collared shirts.
    After the train lumbered past, the scooters surged forward and a haze of exhaust enveloped the taxi. The grit seeped into the car and Iris instinctively held her breath. She saw Noah flinch as the taxi bounced over the tracks and wondered if he’d forever think about roadside bombs.
    As they approached the heart of Ho Chi Minh City, the buildings changed from mold-ridden, teetering piles of concrete to gleaming glass structures and steel high-rises. The streets were wider, the potholes a memory. To Iris’s surprise, she saw dozens of uniformed workers hanging strands of Christmas lights on trees and building facades. From her research, she recognized the broad, white building that was Reunification Palace, and she imagined the famous North Vietnamese tank that smashed through its iron gates during the fall of Saigon. Somewhere nearby was the U.S. Embassy, which at the time was inundated with desperate South Vietnamese and Americans who were being rescued by helicopter from its rooftop.
    Though Iris had traveled around the world through the thousands of books she’d read, she had never physically been abroad, had never felt her pulse race at the sight of her surroundings. She looked for comforting sights but saw none. Squares and parks were filled with statues of a triumphant Ho Chi Minh. Rivers were lined with shanties and bore what looked to be floating shacks. Nothing made sense, and despite her best efforts, she felt panic rise within her. Was coming to Vietnam a mistake? she wondered. How can I possibly hope to open his center when I’ve never even been overseas?
    Needing to talk, she turned to Noah. “What do you think of it all?”
    Noah watched a man chop off the top of a coconut and put a straw into the hole he’d made. Though also surprised by the sights around him, Noah felt numb to this new world. He was tired from the long flight, the seven beers he’d consumed, and a series of near-sleepless nights. A part of him recognized that these streets were vastly different from those of Baghdad, that here people seemed happy, eager to explore the night. But he didn’t care. He felt dead, and even though the world around him teemed with life, no sight could pull him from the depths of his own misery. His mother had been wrong to send him here. Nothing could cure his pain.
    “Why did your father start the center?” he asked, noting that a glaze of tropical sweat already covered her forehead.
    “I don’t really know,” she replied over the wails of a woman on the radio. “He never talked much about what happened in the war. But I think something bad . . . something terrible happened with some children. I think maybe he saw some die. And . . . as impossible as it sounds . . . he wanted to try to make up for that.”
    The taxi pulled against the curb and the driver said, “We at Rex Hotel.”
    Iris paid the man, ensured that a porter found their bags, and followed Noah into the lobby. The walls were covered with intricate bamboo renderings of birds and flowers. Iris had read that the CIA operated out of the Rex during the war and wondered about all that had occurred within its walls. After speaking with the receptionist, she handed over their passports and followed the porter to their room. He opened a door, stuck their key into a specialized slot in the wall, and the lights and air conditioner turned on. The room’s interior looked to have been made entirely of thin slices of bamboo. Intricate bamboo lamps and chairs,