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“Where is it?” It’s not on his arms or his upper body. I know because I saw him with his shirt off. I shudder slightly remembering the old bullet hole scars all over his chest and the long-healed whip marks on his back.
“On my leg,” he says, standing. He moves over next to a ground light and, without a moment’s hesitation or an ounce of modesty, drops trou. With his slacks bunched up around his ankles—thankfully he’s wearing boxers, white ones with little red hearts—he pivots his right leg, revealing muscles that aren’t large but are quite defined. The tat has faded some but the myriad colors are still breathtaking. The fat, red- and black-scaled koi, its body curved in mid-zig, covers Samuel’s entire calf, its tail overlaps his Achilles tendon, its open-mouthed head just below the bend of his knee. Circling the koi is a ghostly serpentine body of a lightly tinted red- and green-scaled dragon. “The dragon is emerging, you see?”
“Beautiful. Makes the black belt seem rather drab.”
“No, no,” he says pulling up his pants. “By the way, Kim bought these boxers for me.”
“Suuure.”
He sits back down next to me. “The black belt and my tattoo are both about struggle and conquering it. Facing weaknesses and overcoming them. Learning about ourselves and fixing what needs to be fixed.”
What a pleasure it is to listen to him. The week we spent together in Portland was insane and didn’t allow for much time to get to know each other. Fate dropped us back into each other’s lives and then all hell broke loose. Before we had a chance for a sit-down, he and Mai had to fly home. When I thought about him here, I imagined something like we are doing right now: talking, listening, being together. It’s also how I imagined that he lived, not the opulence of this house, although Mai told me that they owned a number of jewelry stores, but rather him surrounded by family and enjoying his life.
“Do you like this?” Samuel asks, gesturing at the yard.
“It’s such a peaceful place,” I say. “I can barely hear the traffic. You no doubt meditate out here?”
“At least once a day, usually two times. I sometimes work out over there behind that far grove of bamboo.”
“That a heavy bag?” I say squinting toward a part of the yard where there are fewer ground lights. “It’s huge.”
“Yes, three hundred pounds. We will play on it when you are rested. When I train with Sifu, we often go to a nearby cemetery. We have trained in many of them over the years. He likes cemeteries because they are usually shaded and quiet. He also says that they are convenient because if he kills me by mistake, he doesn’t have to carry me anywhere. That is his idea of humor.”
I laugh. “Fun guy.”
“Well, sometimes not so much.” Samuel stands. “Let us walk a little.”
He clasps his hands behind his back and looks around the yard, his face relaxed, at peace. I start to mimic his posture, but stuff my hands into my pants pockets instead. He moves along the side of the pond and hesitates when he reaches the end. He looks at the swirling creatures, frowns, and studies them for a moment.
“Peace starts within, does it not? Even when it is hard to find externally, in the world I mean, there is always one quiet place to seek refuge.” He taps his chest. “That place is inside of us.” He smiles. “I am touching my fingers to my heart, but in reality, the peaceful place is here.” He taps his head. “Sometimes we need help to reach that quiet place. I have found that this small backyard helps me get there. I have also found it sitting on a river bank, resting under a tree and, a few times, I have found it sitting in the middle of a traffic jam.”
“I don’t know if I’m ready to seek it in one of your traffic jams, but I can see how it would work in this garden. Palm trees, even. I never thought of them in Vietnam.”
“Oh yes,” Samuel says looking up at the closest one. “And these are particularly interesting, they grow video cameras.”
He points toward the top of a lofty palm that reigns over the yard a few paces in front of us. “Look between the two lowest limbs there on the right. It is hard to see in the dark.”
“I see it. Video security?”
“It is one of twelve cameras. Come.” He leads me around the hedge, and onto a cobblestone pathway, toward the beige building. Each of the three doors is illuminated by a yellow bug light. “The structure is somewhat like a triplex, you see. You will stay in the center one. We will move your luggage in there shortly. Tex stays in the first one. It is the last cottage I want to show you right now.”
“Chào Samuel,” a short, stout man says opening the door before Samuel knocks. He looks to be older than Samuel, wearing tan shorts, sandals, and a white tank top. The skin on his left forearm is lighter colored and smooth in some places, darker and heavily wrinkled in others—scars of a severe burn. Tucked into his waistband, a Glock 9.
“Chào Lam,” Samuel says returning a bow. “This is my son Sam. Sam, this is Lam. He works the day shift but he is working a few extra hours tonight. He’s an old soldier.”
Bet that’s where he got the burn. Lam extends his hand.
“Please meet you,” he says with a nod. I say the same.
“Lam is my main security man.” Samuel jerks his head toward the room. “He set this up for us.”
“Beaucoup monitor, number one,” Lam says, with a smile that reveals only a couple of teeth. He steps aside and gestures toward all the screens. “Plenty monitor. No muther fuck get inside.”
“Fuck-er,” Samuel corrects.
Lam nods, embarrassed. “Fuck-er. Sorry, English bad.”
I fight a smile. “No, no. Your English is very good. My Vietnamese is nonexistent.”
Lam frowns and looks at Samuel who says something in Vietnamese, probably translating. Lam smiles and shakes my hand again. “No sweat. I help you.”
“Okay,” I say. “Cám ơn.”
“Yes, yes,” Lam says, nodding. “You say ‘thank you.’ Very good.” He turns to the large flat screen monitors, six of them evenly spaced around a long semicircular desk. He gestures for me to follow him to the other side to see the screens. “See everything,” he says, pointing at them. He sits and centers himself on the six screens.
“Each screen is split vertically to show two locations,” Samuel says. “For example, the one on the right shows the outside gate where you came in. When one of us walks or drives up, we just show our face and the man in here opens the gate. The next one shows the outside doors to the living room. Each of these other screens show various locations around the backyard, and the other three show different angles on the outside wall. We have cameras mounted on four outside buildings, you see.” The screen changes to another view. “We get a new angle every fifteen seconds, and we can freeze a shot for as long as we want. There, that is the gate you and Mai came through earlier. Watch.” He clicks the mouse and the camera zooms in so tight that I can see the bumps in the black paint.
“Very impressive,” I say. “What happens if Lam sees someone trying to get in somewhere? Do you call the police?”
“It depends. I’ll explain more about that later. I do have people on the outside of the walls.”
“Will your people confront intruders?”
Samuel smiles. “You are always the policeman.” He steps over next to Lam and touches his shoulder with affection. “We are all getting old, but we are still soldiers. Lam served in the same unit as Tex. Both worked with my Green Berets near Cambodia.” Samuel turns toward me, his face chiseled, eyes like those in a stuffed deer. “If someone comes onto this property to hurt my family or my friends, that person’s heart will cease to beat where we find him.”
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