yustyoking

            “If a tree falls in the forest, how many thousands will be without electricity?”            

                                                  – Angelo Mineo

            Hurricane Irene threatens the northeast. My mom, whose fave TV show is Everybody Loves Raymond, prepares for this event by buying an additional 30 pounds of groceries, jamming them into an already overstuffed refrigerator, and announcing, “Let’s hope the power doesn’t go out!”

            Funny? Not funny? Pathetic?

            “We have to go out to dinner,” she tells me. “If the hurricane hits tomorrow, I’ll be homebound. I’m not cooking three nights in a row.”

            We just took some friends to dinner last night, to celebrate a wedding anniversary. But mom refuses to be a slave to the kitchen on Friday, Saturday and Sunday night. So we go to our usual Vietnamese restaurant. Surprised by the new linen tablecloths and fancy cutlery, we ask the owner if it’s a holiday.

            “A group visiting from Vietnam,” he explains in his flamboyant English. Named Thieu, born in Saigon, he grew up in the food trade. Here in the U.S.A., he wears khaki slacks, brown loafers and white pilgrim shirts reminiscent of the French Colonial period. With his short hair and round, clean-shaven face, he looks more American than I do. “They flew in from Vietnam. Sixty of them. Large group. They come at 8:15.”

            I know there’s a lot of family traffic under the current regime. People use international phone cards to make calls home, every third shop in the shopping center sells them. They list the prices in dong. I have young Vietnamese men friends who have traveled home to Vietnam to get married.

            The proprietor seats us at a small, square table at the back, just mom and me. At the adjacent table, a young lady dressed up and painted to resemble a Saigon bar girl is eating dinner with a young Viet man who also looks like something out of a magazine.

            “… because a high turnover in inventory will gives us a large gross income, but that doesn’t mean a large profit until we can establish an adequate pricing model,” she remarks to her table companion in high-pitched, sing-song English as thick as soup.

            His answer, mercifully, is lost in the din, as the Friday night regulars celebrate neighbor Chou’s birthday, men at one table, women at another, children at a third. Ten people to a table, friends come in, toast with a glass of burgundy, and leave. I recognize Chou, a peasant from the delta, twenty years younger than me but with similar features. Every time his cohorts call his name, he crinkles his eyes and looks down at the tablecloth, embarrassed. I feel this lack of hubris shows that he, basically, is a good person. Their party drags on for hours. The waitresses serve quail; a half-hour later, crab; a half-hour after that, they’ll serve a beef dish. Meanwhile, the bar girl in retail sales and her gigolo boyfriend finish eating and depart.

            Thieu, aware of my predilection for exciting women, seats a Han Chinese lady executive type on a smartphone in exactly the same chair previously occupied by the bar girl. Mom and I have polished off crispy spring rolls and are busy devouring a Vietnamese fried pancake containing shrimp, pork and beef. The lady executive speaks impeccable English, almost getting in a fight with the poor waitress whose language aptitude fits the locale: a Vietnamese restaurant in a Vietnamese shopping center.

            They know me here. Attending Vietnamese New Year celebrations, I have established my bona fides as a sincere practitioner of Buddhism. Since I look Mongolian— at least to them— they treat me as an equal. They know I’m Caucasian, but suspect, rightly, that I am a “graybeard,” a religious scholar. They respect me. I love them.

            Eventually, the Han Chinese woman, who has been looking me over as discreetly as I her, manages to connect by cellphone with her party. They were waiting at another Vietnamese restaurant. “I’m treating Roy and his son to dinner to celebrate signing this year’s contract,” she confides in a breezy whisper. “I’m the regional salesperson for a major brand athletic shoe manufacturer. Roy is the district manager for a chain of sporting goods stores. We go together like peas and onions. What do you do?”

            “I run political campaigns,” I hear myself bragging. “Twice divorced, I live with my mom.” I’m still trying to digest the fact that an Asian woman, any Asian woman in America, would show an interest in me. Even one hustling shoes.

            Roy and his son come into the restaurant, as pink-skinned and boyish as Cub Scouts.

            At 8:15, the sixty guests arrive, flooding the doorway. You couldn’t leave if your life depended on it. I’d assumed we’re talking members of the Politboro, but it’s all one enormous, extended family, twenty adults and 40 children, dressed in sports clothes: sweat shirts, shorts and slacks. They wear their hair longer than people in America. I expected the noise to be deafening, but once seated, they are virtually inaudible.

            “I guess we’ll have to leave soon,” the Han Chinese lady teases me, “this place is filling up fast!” Roy looks confused. Why is she talking to me?

            I explain the deal, all sixty flying in from Vietnam. She’s impressed.

            As mom and I are leaving, we pass a tiny square table amidst the Viet nationals. The three uncles sit at this table, long-haired, unshaven, as burly and dangerous as bears. Dressed in flannel shirts and jeans. They see me, first one, then the next, then the third, and shift in their chairs, hands moving to back pockets, reaching for a weapon. I give them my two-handed bow and they return the salutation. Using the “thumbs up” gesture, I point to my white-haired mom following in my wake. Once they make the connection, middle-aged tough, old woman, they smile and relax.

            “We ought to gas up the car if there’s going to be a hurricane,” says mom. This is not a suggestion. I drive to a gas station.

            It’s a steamy summer Friday night, people pumping gas at every pump. A perky high school girl in a yellow Jeep and her mom— incredibly pretty party girls, foxy, with faces like Avril Lavigne, one young, one older— are playing damsels in distress. They wave their hands this way and that, standing so, no, standing so, calling out to men at other pumps, “Hi! How do you get these things to give ya gas, anyway? We wanna pay cash. Can we use your credit card?!” No takers. Frustrated, they hop in their yellow Jeep and drive off with a roar. Life’s unfair.

            “Why are we doing this?” I wonder, but that’s what Washingtonians do when faced with inclement weather: stock up on food and put gas in the car.

            “Now it’s just a question of whether we get flooded out,” mom says. “The radio announced they were handing out sandbags and evacuating people living by the Potomac. But they’ve run out of sandbags. They said a few hours ago that they only had 120 left.”

            I find everything she says, every single word, to be silly and inane. I’m sorry, but she comes across as doddering and clueless. I explain to her the disadvantage of fighting this hurricane at night: the pull of the moon, the higher wind velocity than during the day, the heavier downpour, everything done in artificial illumination. “No sun and no respite.” She is as unimpressed with my explanation as I am with hers.

            When I was growing up, the water used to leak through the joints of the house like a sieve. The hurricane hasn’t even arrived and I am fed up with Irene! I don’t need a hurricane right this minute, thank you very much. I just finished a political campaign and a few movie scripts. Trying to clean my basement and catch up with my life, Irene is just one more impediment. When we had the big hurricane in 2003, a neighbor’s oak toppled in his backyard, pulling down the electric line the length of the block. And that hurricane struck in the middle of the afternoon.

            Fucked again, dear hearts.

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