The Frangipani Hotel: Fiction by Violet Kupersmith Read Free Book Online

whistle. “You sure know how to pick ’em, Phi.”
    I turn around. She is standing at the foot of the stairs, her hand resting lightly on the banister. The edges of her black and silver ao dai undulate gently, as if there were a breeze in the lobby, and her hair falls over her shoulders, so dark it almost looks blue.
    “Oh no,” I say. “This isn’t—”
    Her high, clear voice cuts me off: “Hello,” she says in halting English. “I will be escorting you this evening.”
    The American shoulders past me and walks over to her with his hand outstretched. “A real pleasure to meet you,” he says. When he reaches her, she looks down at his hand with an amused expression but does not shake it. The American recovers, sweeping his arm out and making a funny bow. “What is your name?” he asks her.
    With a sudden jolt I realize that it hasn’t once occurred to me to ask her this myself. She appears to be giving the matter some consideration. After a pause, she says, “You may call me Tien.”
    “Well, Miss Tien,” the American says, butchering the pronunciation, “shall we?” He starts to offer her his arm, then thinks better of it and makes a flourish in the direction of thedoor instead. She smiles and walks across the lobby—I’ve never seen her walk before, and oh, can she walk, swaying slightly, her little heels making no sound on the tile, as if she’s drifting above it. Without giving me so much as a glance, she sashays out the door to where the shiny black car is waiting, the American close behind.
    For a moment I stand there, stunned, until I hear Loi’s clomping footsteps on the stairs. “If Candy from the massage parlor ever shows up, she’s all yours!” I call to him, and nip out the door in time to hear the American saying:
    “I hope you’re hungry!”
    And her reply: “You can’t even imagine.”
    The driver is waiting for me with the door open. I duck inside the automobile, running my fingertips over the buttery leather of the seats and inhaling its scent deeply. Then the door closes with a soft click, and we pull away into the sea of motorbike headlights drowning the streets of the city.
    T ONIGHT, THE A MERICAN HAS abandoned his pursuit of the Real Vietnamese Experience and is clearly trying to impress “Tien” instead. His car delivers us to a restaurant behind the opera house that has no name, just a gold sign above the glass door with the engraved image of a lotus. We enter the foyer and—as I obviously don’t belong and will never set foot in the place again—I gawk at the surroundings without shame. Giant orchids line the walls and dangle from wires, while live orange-and-blue butterflies float around the room or rest onthe flowers. I look down: Marble tiles gleam beneath the unevenly worn-down heels of my cheap shoes. The dining area is through another glass door, and it is dominated by a cascade of water at the center of the room, which falls from some unseen source in the ceiling into a circular pool in the ground. I hope that Tien isn’t in one of her thirsty moods.
    The waiter who seats us looks familiar—I’m pretty sure his mother runs a beauty salon on Hàng Quạt. He may be wearing a suit that costs more than the Frangi’s yearly electrical bill, but he’s still a plebe like me underneath it. Our boy suavely pulls out Tien’s chair for her, simpers at the American, and gives me a very special sneer. There is no menu. The American asks for a certain kind of wine, our boy nods, fetches it, pops it, and pours, and then the food just begins arriving—food I’ve never even dreamed of: a cool, creamy soup, pink slivers of tuna that melt on the tongue, a duck on a bed of dainty greens, oysters still trembling in their shells, a faintly musty cheese … the plates keep on coming.
    I glance around the room at the other diners and am not surprised to see that it’s mostly middle-aged Western businessmen and ambassador-types with younger Vietnamese women. I am the only