Chapter 25

The rental block was rearranged again.

Every time someone new stepped in, the rental block had to curl in on itself again, like an old animal forced to lie on its side and make room. The granddaughter, the daughter, and Mr. Quan appeared one after another. Old Tu also came back. A rental block that had once seemed wide grew more and more stifling. Old rooms were cut with extra walls. Hallways were narrowed. The shared yard was eaten away bit by bit. Old Tu added more rooms again. The original fifteen rooms were squeezed smaller by five more partitions, and in the end only ten were left.

Ten rooms, but more people than before.

Van, Old Tu, and the granddaughter stayed on the ground floor. Mai was separated into her own room. Mr. Quan had one room. The rest found their own little breath of air inside narrow doorways, inside the slap of sandals, the sound of running water, children crying, the click-click of gas stoves in the afternoon. Just like that, the rental block that had seemed big slowly shrank. Tiny. It was no longer a place to live. It was like a box stuffed full of lives piled on top of one another, each person holding a secret, a debt, a shame, or a desire that had not yet found a name.

Thao was no longer there either.

In the end, the talk about her being a whore still became gossip. No one said it straight to her face, but the eyes in the rental block began to change. People lowered their voices when she passed. Some stopped talking halfway. Some looked at her like a stain stuck on the tile floor, not big enough to wipe up right away, but enough to make them uncomfortable.

One afternoon, Mrs. Ngoc called her over.

She spoke gently. Her voice was not cruel, and she did not force herself to sound kind. She said she had to take the room back. The house was too crowded now. Daughter, granddaughter, then all sorts of things. She did not mention Thao’s work, but both of them understood that the thing left unsaid was the real reason.

Thao listened and only nodded.

She did not argue. Did not ask more. She had lived long enough to know there were places where people did not chase you out with harsh words. They only had to change how they looked, how they stayed silent, how they avoided you. That was enough. She packed a few sets of clothes, some cheap cosmetics, a few packets of instant noodles she had not eaten yet, and moved away.

The rental block began taking on a new shape again.

There are things that, if they keep following the same order forever, everyone can pretend to be happy.

Old Tu had once hoped for that. He did not need wealth. He did not need anyone’s pity. He only needed each person to stand still in their own place. Minh by day was Ngoc’s husband. At night he was the student beside Quynh. Two parallel worlds, as long as they did not touch, could still be called peaceful. Ngoc had a husband to call husband. Quynh had a man to cling to through the night. Minh had both halves of life, guilty and necessary, selfish and pitiful.

Hoang had once hoped everything would stay that way too. By day business went smoothly. Earn money. Turn it over. Pay debt. Cover the things that could not be exposed. Then that money flowed back to the plot of land where Ma Hai was, where there were orphaned children, children with Down syndrome, autistic children, children born with no one waiting for them. He built more rooms. Hired teachers. Sent money to raise the children. One hand he placed on children’s heads. The other hand still held the dirty work out there. As long as the money kept moving, as long as no one asked too deeply, as long as those worlds did not crash into each other, everything could still be called order.

Old Tu now also had a new kind of order to hold on to.

He had a granddaughter in the house. Now and then he watched Lan’s two children for her. There was also his clever granddaughter Vy, her mouth never stopping, running back and forth across the yard like a small bird. Some afternoons, he sat outside the room and watched the children play, listened to pots and bowls knocking in the kitchen, listened to someone calling someone else near the water area, then told himself: fine, living like this is all right too.

Not exactly good.

But not so bad he could not live.

Sometimes people only need that little bit. A child to hold. A meal to cook. A plastic chair outside the door. A night when no one dies. A morning when you wake up and see yesterday’s things still in their old places. What people call peace, many times, is not happiness. It is only that everything agrees to stand still for one more day.

But two straight lines that our eyes judge to be parallel are not always that way. One day they will meet.

Quynh walked down into the rental block at noon.

Today she was not covered head to toe in her sun-protection skirt like usual. No big mask hiding half her face, no long coat covering from wrist to knee. She wore a black T-shirt, black trousers, her hair tied neatly at the back of her neck. Looking at her then, people could faintly see the shadow of the schoolgirl Quynh from back then. That thin figure, those slightly cold eyes, that face not yet old but worn down by life too early.

She passed Minh’s room.

The door was closed.

Quynh stopped for a moment, looked at the silent door, then thought he must have gone to work. Thinking that, she kept walking down to the ground floor. The noon sun fell slantwise into the yard, making bright patches on the stained tiles. The smell of raw vegetables, dishwater, clothes hung before they had dried, and human bodies in the rental block mixed together into the familiar smell of places packed with too much living.

When she reached the yard, she saw Minh.

He was sitting on a low plastic stool, picking vegetables with Mrs. Ngoc, the new person in charge of the rental block. Old Tu lay in a hammock nearby, one hand over his forehead, eyes half shut but not really asleep. In front of Minh was a basket of water spinach still wet with water, a few stalks half broken in his hand.

Quynh froze.

“Oh.”

Only one tiny sound from her mouth.

But that sound made Minh jump.

The vegetable stalks in his hand fell to the tile floor. He looked up, his face turning pale very fast, as if someone had just drained all the blood out of him. For one moment, that face reminded Mrs. Ngoc of Minh’s old sickness from years ago. That stunned, panicked look, like someone about to have an attack and unable to fight himself.

Mrs. Ngoc quietly raised her eyes to him.

Minh sprang to his feet.

He ran over to Quynh, his steps clumsy like a man caught red-handed somewhere he should not be.

“Why ... why are you down here at this hour?” Minh asked, his voice dry. “I thought you were asleep.”

Quynh looked at him, then glanced into the yard.

“Oh, that’s your mom?”

Minh swallowed.

“Yeah ... yeah.”

Sweat began to break out on his forehead. Not sweat from the heat. It ran down both temples, stuck to his collar, made his face look paler and paler. Quynh looked at Minh with suspicion. She did not understand why he was reacting like that. In her head, everything could still be explained normally: Minh was home, his mother had come down to the rental block, he was helping pick vegetables. Only Minh’s face was not normal.

“I thought you had gone to work,” Quynh said. “Are you free now?”

That question put Minh right into the crack he had tried to avoid for so long.

The two parallel worlds he had created. One daytime world with Ngoc, with family, with the role of a gentle husband who helped with chores and knew how to lower his head. And another world with Quynh, with night, with the motorbike, with empty roads and secrets no one was allowed to know. They suddenly crashed into each other right in the middle of the rental yard.

They were no longer parallel.

They twisted together.

On one side was Ngoc sitting behind him, still holding a stalk of vegetable. On the other was Quynh standing in front of him, dressed in black, her cold face bright under the noon sun. Farther away was Old Tu lying in the hammock, his eyes opened at some point. A few people in the rental block had also started looking over.

Minh asked himself what he could do.

Could student Minh, Minh from the nights driving Quynh through the city, Minh of small words and nameless secrets, openly take Quynh on his bike and leave in front of the whole family?

What if he refused?

Just say he was busy today. Just say later. Just say go by yourself.

But Minh could not refuse Quynh.

He had never known how to refuse her.

“Wait for me a bit,” Minh said.

Quynh nodded.

She walked out to the yard and sat down on the edge of the old stone bench. She knew Old Tu and a few people in the rental block were looking at her. She also knew those eyes were not friendly. Her line of work was not clean, at least in the way other people named it. Girls who worked at night, wore nice clothes, put on heavy makeup, and came back to their rooms near dawn were always placed very low in other people’s imagination. Even if they did not know how she had lived, what she had lost, how many nights she had dragged herself through just to still be sitting here.

Minh hurried inside.

He looked like a man whose soul had just been snatched. His hand shook as he reached for the key. His shirt stuck to his back with sweat. Mrs. Ngoc looked at him, her gaze slower than before.

“You know that girl?” she asked.

Minh stopped for one beat.

Old Tu lay in the hammock and gave a soft snort.

“That girl is damn insolent. She’s a DJ.”

Minh looked at Old Tu, then at Ngoc. He knew if he stayed silent too long, that silence would turn into a confession by itself. But what could he say now? How could he make half a truth cover the other half?

He answered very softly:

“She was Thai’s girlfriend. The one who died in the accident years ago.”

Both Ngoc and Old Tu went, “Ah.”

The air in the yard changed color at once. The name Thai was like an old key. The moment it entered the lock, it opened another drawer of memory. That accident. That death. Things people thought had passed, but really still lay somewhere inside this rental block, under the thin dust of time.

Old Tu propped himself up a little.

“That so,” he said. “This world sure is round.”

Mrs. Ngoc looked outside, where Quynh sat alone in the sun.

“Let me go invite her in.”

Minh said quickly:

“No, don’t.”

He said it a little too fast. Fast enough that he noticed it himself.

Then he lowered his voice:

“She asked me to take her to visit Thai’s grave. I’ll probably go for a bit.”

Ngoc looked at Minh in silence.

“Go then,” she said.

Her voice was still normal. No suspicion. No questioning. But her eyes had changed. She was not startled by the story Minh had just told. Dead people, living people, old lovers coming back to visit graves. None of that was hard to understand. What made her feel strange was Minh’s expression. He was sweating too much. His face had gone pale too fast. His hands shook as if he had just lied in front of some invisible court.

That was not the usual Minh.

Is he hiding something?

That question passed through Ngoc’s mind, very light, but it did not disappear.

Minh wheeled the motorbike out.

The kickstand snapped up with a dry sound in the noon yard. Quynh stood and walked over. She did not ask anything more. Did not look inside for long. She only lightly climbed onto the back seat, one hand resting loosely on Minh’s shoulder, the movement so natural it almost did not need thought.

The engine started.

Old Tu watched them go and shook his head.

“Everything really is fate and debt.”

Only Ngoc said nothing.

She stood in the yard, still holding the stalk of vegetable she had not finished picking, eyes following the motorbike as it left the rental block. In that moment, she noticed one very small thing.

The way Quynh got onto Minh’s bike was too light.

Too familiar.

As if it was not the first time.

.

.

.

Minh lied to Ngoc and said he was taking Quynh to visit Thai’s grave.

But that lie was partly true. Only today’s grave was not in a cemetery, had no stone marker, no incense smoke, no name carved anywhere for the living to look at and believe the dead still had a place to stay in this world.

Quynh told Minh to take her to a small stretch of river.

It was a hidden section of river behind a few narrow roads, where the water ran slow and muddy. Leaves, bits of trash, a few plastic bags caught on the bridge supports floated in it. Along the bank were messy clumps of grass, a small drink stall closed for the day, an upside-down plastic chair under a tin roof. At noon it was empty there. The city was still noisy somewhere very close, but when you stood by the water’s edge, the traffic suddenly sounded far away, like it came from another world.

Quynh bought a bunch of white chrysanthemums from a roadside shop.

She did not light incense. Did not pray. She only sat down by the bank, quietly plucked the petals one by one, and let them fall onto the water. The small white petals dropped into the river, turned once, then were pulled away by the current. Minh stood behind her, not knowing what to do with his hands. He looked at the petals drifting away, looked at the back of Quynh’s black shirt, looked at her hair tied low behind her neck.

After a while, Quynh said:

“That’s my mother.”

Minh looked at her.

Quynh still looked down at the river.

“I scattered my mother’s ashes here. I come once every year.”

Minh nodded.

He wanted to say something. But inside his head there was not one sentence that felt right enough. Everyday comforting words suddenly sounded strangely cheap. People could say, “I’m sorry for your loss.” They could say, “Everything will pass.” They could say, “The dead would want us to live well.” But those sentences, placed in front of a river that held the ashes of a woman’s mother, became weightless, like wet paper.

Minh wanted to hug Quynh.

The thought came very clearly. Not from lust. Not from pity. Only because, in that moment, he found her too lonely. A girl in a black shirt sitting beside muddy water, dropping petals into the place where her mother had dissolved into mud, into trash, into a current that never stood still. If he could, Minh would step forward, put a hand on her shoulder, pull her into his arms, so at least for a few seconds she would not have to stand alone in this world.