Lily and the Jack of Hearts

I was walking back to my hotel after visiting the Saigon River, thinking about the beggar lying on the sidewalk with sores and stick legs, and I began to sincerely pray to be guided to where I could do the most good. Suddenly a squat, middle-aged woman was beside me, asking where I was from. Thinking at first that she was just one of the many people trying to sell something—“Marijuana?” “Hotel?” “Step inside?”—I at first tried to ignore her. But she said she was a high school English teacher, and when I told her where I was from, Lily said that her sister would be moving to Florida next month. An older gentleman stepped forward. This was Lily's brother, and, if I was not too busy, perhaps I would be willing to come and talk with their sister? They lived not far, and said their sister needed help practicing English, and she was afraid of going someplace so far away, alone.

I wondered why we were climbing into a taxi. When I asked how far we were going, they repeated that it was close, “five minutes.” Lily sat beside me in the back seat, the afternoon river of motorbikes flowing around us, and she enunciated her questions with a hand on my arm or my knee, or poking me with a stubby finger. She said that she was 52, divorced, and that their mother was sick and in the hospital. She couldn’t understand why I would leave my job in the U.S. in order to go and study in New Zealand. She reminded me how hard it gets to find jobs as we get older. I squirmed against the far door, reminding myself that I had prayed for this.

After about twenty minutes, we got to their place, and they offered me a seat on a plastic sofa. Lily introduced me to her nephew, “Mel,” then disappeared into the kitchen. Her brother drifted upstairs, never to be seen again. Mel plopped down beside me, and, touching and prodding, asked if I liked gambling. He spoke without pausing, asked questions without waiting for answers, and explained that he was a croupier on board a cruise ship. Lily brought me a sandwich: white bread, a fried egg, stringy ham. I asked for hot sauce. Mel explained that because Lily's mother needed heart surgery, he had invited a rich European couple into their home the night before. He dealt cards all night, they spent thousands of dollars, but in the morning they had only tipped him less than five percent. He felt insulted, and said that he was ready to get revenge on their type. He asked what I knew about cards. I told him not much. He began to explain a “system” he’d worked out for blackjack, one that could make both of us rich. Lily suggested that he demonstrate what he was talking about.

We plodded upstairs, and Mel ushered us into a fluorescent room with a table set up, shiny cards and chips. I sat across from him, Lily sat beside me, and Mel drew diagrams and numbers, his rushing words like a radio ad for a monster truck pull. Lily, a bad actress, feigned interest. She held my elbow and stared at Mel’s sketch pad, nodding her head slowly, as though trying to work out what Mel was saying. He turned the sketch pad around and told me to explain it to Lily, just so he would know that I knew what he was talking about.

“Wait. I’m sorry, but what are we doing?”

They looked stunned, as if I’d just stood up and dropped my trousers.

“I am explaining to you how we can make a lot of money. Now if you just—”

“But I thought I came here to answer your sister’s questions about Florida, and so that she could practice her English. Where is she?”

“Oh. Yes. She had to go to the hospital. Our mother is very sick.”

“Yeah, you said that. But you also said you only lived five minutes away.”

It was now about 6:30pm. Dark outside. In the morning, I would take a five hour bus to the coastal town of Mui Ne. The ham and egg sandwich blended with the florescent light. The walls grew close. It felt like an emergency room.

“You have somewhere to be?”

Lily reluctantly agreed to drop me back off where she picked me up. In the backseat of the taxi, she tried to hold my hand. I gently pushed her away. When we stopped, she asked that I pay the fare. I told her I would not. She started to talk about her mother, and I opened the door and stepped out onto the sidewalk. On the way back to my hotel, I couldn’t help but wonder if God had wanted me to learn how to work a con at the blackjack table so that I could help buy Lily’s mother another few years of life. Had I turned my back on the very opportunity I'd prayed for? Was fast-talking Mel an heavenly emissary? Could I have found happiness holding Lily's hand, learning to cheat the casino while eating white bread sandwiches beneath buzzing blue florescent?

I woke before dawn, and readied for the coast.