17 Adam
17 Adam
Hu ? , Vi ? t Nam
Adam is covered in a fine layer of yellow dust as he pulls up to Emperor T ? ?? c’s tomb in the late morning. While everyone else took the boats, he rented a motorbike to visit the tombs. He’d wanted to
see them far more than he wanted a kelp massage at the spa, but he needed time alone to process. Some space in the Hu ? countryside to collect himself.
And it is a balm for him, riding fast and unfettered down the narrow roads, pulled by the imposing green mountains, the dense
acacia forests with leaves that shudder gently as he passes. On his bike, he doesn’t have time to overanalyze every scenario;
run comparables and put together multipage RFPs. He just has to react to the landscape in front of him—the winding roads,
the crowding trees. It’s simpler and, somehow, more essential to drive by instinct.
At the tomb, he rides across the bridge, past the short stone statues of mandarins flanking the path, and through the ceramic-tiled
entrance. There’s no sign of Evie, and Adam tries not to dwell on the fact that he had most definitely been hoping for a glimpse
of her. More than a glimpse. He’d been so surprised by her text message that he pulled over to the side of the road to respond.
He grinned stupidly when her selfie came in, then proceeded to save it on his phone.
“Emperor T ? ?? c was the longest-reigning emperor of the Nguy ? n dynasty at thirty-six years. He was known to be an excessive and cruel man, though an indubitable patron of the arts. At least, of his own artistic practices.”
The guide lectures about the emperor’s 104 wives (and unnumbered concubines), along with the bloody coup that sprang up during
the construction of this very tomb. He points to a theater meant to host performances for the emperor and his considerable
family.
“And you can also wander to the Hoa Khi ê m Temple, where the emperor’s family worshipped, or the beautiful Xung Khi ê m Pavilion, where he liked to compose poetry.”
Bingo. Where to find a poet, except in a place built for an emperor poet?
The pavilion surrounding the tomb is a large, shaded wooden structure overlooking a golden-green lake dotted with lily pads.
When Adam strides in, his eyes immediately land on Evie, sitting on one of the steps leading into the water. She has her notebook
open on her lap as she looks out onto the rippling lake.
A flash of sunlight, and all at once, her dreamy expression changes. It brightens with sharp delight, eyes widening, lips
falling slightly open.
Inspiration , Adam thinks.
Her fingers reach up for the pen holding her bun upright. As she bends over her notebook, her freed hair dances along her
shoulders and down her back. He’s mesmerized by her. Unable to stop himself, he takes a photo. For the marketing materials,
of course.
Adam slowly tries to withdraw, but as he does, she glances back and sees him. She shuts her notebook and tucks the pen behind
her ear. Soon, she’s next to him, leaning on the rail.
“I didn’t mean to interrupt you,” he says.
“I was done,” she says, waving her hand. “Did you know that poets across every country and every age are bona fide assholes?
It is known.”
“You mean T ? ?? c’s hundred and four wives? Or the coup that he inspired by working his servants so hard they refused to lift another brick
for him?”
“I mean the fact that this buffoon arranged to have himself—and his vast treasure—buried somewhere else. As in, not in this tomb that took so much time and labor to produce. And before he died he ordered that all two hundred servants who
buried him be executed so that his treasure would never be found by grave robbers.”
“Couldn’t they just have... not done it? He was dead, after all. Who would have blamed them?”
She lifts her shoulder in a shrug. “Maybe they were afraid he’d haunt them beyond the grave.”
“I’d take that chance.”
“Me too. So where were you, anyway? Did you swim here underwater?”
“In that filth!”
She wrinkles her nose and looks at him pointedly. “Speaking of filth . Did you ride here on a mule?”
“Motorcycle. And I smell like a damn perfume river.”
She leans forward, inches from his face, and takes a playful sniff. Adam braces himself against the rail so he doesn’t pull
her forward, covering her mouth once again with his. He thanks his stars for expensive cologne and twenty-four-hour antiperspirant.
Even as she’s sniffing him, he can smell her , a light orchid scent, mixed with something a little muskier. Her sweat and specific blend of body chemistry.
“You’ll do,” she admits with a smile, tucking her notebook back into her bag. “Let’s catch up to the rest of them before ol’
T ? ?? c’s ghost pulls you into the lake.”
Then she’s flounced off, practically skipping forward so that he has to run to catch up to her. It annoys him, this chasing
act. Why can’t this woman just stand still?
“So what were you working on?” he asks.
“Poetry stuff.”
“...Like?”
“Images. Feelings. Line breaks.”
He shoots her a deadpan look. “Yeah, I can see why you’re the poet laureate of Midland. So good with words.”
Her mouth falls open as she turns to him. Whoops. He revealed more than he meant to. “You were looking me up , Adam Quy ? n. What’s the Vietnamese equivalent of Google?”
“C ? c C ? c. And I wasn’t looking you up,” he fibs, with zero conviction.
During one of the sleepless nights since he kissed her outside her hut, he bought a digital copy of her book, read it (loved
it, truth be told), then searched through everything he could find, like a stalker. Never, not even with Lana, had he bothered
to do so much due diligence on a woman. But it is her fault, he thinks irritably, for not thoroughly filling out the dossier like the rest of the tour guests. He’ll die before
he admits how deep of a dive he really took. He even found a charming little poem about a one-legged pigeon that she wrote
for a kids’ literary magazine.
But she notices his flush right away and smirks. It would normally annoy him, but he’s distracted by the way her freckle seems
to dance when that animated face is moving. How she tucks a piece of her lower lip behind her teeth as if repressing her laugh.
“So what does being a poet laureate entail?” he demands.
“Of Midland? Well, it’s a very prestigious role that I take seriously. I visit the senior center once a year and recite poetry
while the octogenarians either tell me that nothing that isn’t in iambic pentameter is worth reading or try to set me up with
their grandsons.”
“You could have taken them up on it and avoided this tour altogether.”
“Unfortunately for me, their grandsons are still Boomer-adjacent.”
“What does that mean?”
“Mostly that they lecture me on quiet quitting and my stubborn lack of home ownership. One of them told me it was pointless
to become a writer, since we were all going to be replaced by AI in the next five years.”
Adam’s brow furrows. “Boomer-adjacent sounds like dimwit-adjacent.”
“Exactly!” Evie says brightly. “Anyway, as the poet laureate, I also once almost cut a ribbon at a bookstore for the unveiling
of their poetry section.”
He shakes with laughter. “How does one almost cut a ribbon?”
“It turns out that some kid got impatient and hacked the ribbon apart before I could, so I just had to pose with the scissors
like I did. I don’t think I fooled anyone,” she replies morosely. “Oh, and when that frozen yogurt place opened up, they put
a signed copy of my book by their best pint of vegan cherry swirl.”
“Wow. Those are... a lot of honors. Should I get your autograph now or later?”
“Probably never. My term as poet laureate is at an end. I’m sure they’ll pick Lancaster Small as the next one. You can ask
for his autograph, if you fight a line of young swains for it.”
“Did you just make up that name?”
“Sadly, no,” she says, a shadow of a smile in her voice. “Though I suspect he did. He’s my former student. Student-turned-way-more-accomplished-poet.
I’m the unemployed has-been struggling for her next big break. Doesn’t fit on a business card, though. Ugh; sorry about this
dumping. I’m in one of those career spirals. Have you ever been in one?”
Adam thinks. He supposes when he quit the bank that there was some relief in leaving that world behind. But he’d been satisfied
enough with the work. It appealed to his sense of order. Now working on marketing for Love Yêu Tours is uncharted territory.
He understands what he’s doing in the abstract but hasn’t gained enough confidence to know if he’s dropping something important. It’s like staring at a recipe, without
any inkling of how to combine the ingredients.
“I guess I sometimes doubt that I’ll be able to be everything my team needs. A good leader, a good coworker. I’m adept at
some of it, sure. I like messing with the data. But marketing is a lot more creative than what I’ve done in the past, and
I’m not naturally a creative person.”
“I don’t buy that.”
“It’s true. I tried to add a pie chart to the website, but Ruby made me cut it.”
“So why’re you doing it?” she asks curiously. “The marketing stuff?”
He shrugs. “I’m learning new things, and I like that. Plus, my sister asked.”
“If she jumped off a bridge—” she murmurs.
“What?”
“Huh?”
“You said ‘if she jumped off a bridge...’”
“American idiom. It’s what mothers say to their foolish kids who follow the crowd to peril. The saying goes: If your friends
jumped off a bridge, would you follow?”
“Are you calling me foolish?”
She winks. “If the shoe fits. Speaking of—do you know my shoe size? Did you find that in all your online stalking?”
“No.” He reddens.
“I’m just saying that you’re allowed to exist separately from your family. If you want. Many of us feel indebted to our parents,
but the truth is, parenthood is a choice they made. We can’t dedicate our lives to pleasing others. Love isn’t transactional like that.”
“That’s very American of you.”
Evie tosses her hair. “I think you mean, That’s very wise of you, Evie Nichole Lang, my new life coach and mentor.”
“Nichole’s your middle name?”
She scoffs. “As if you didn’t already know.”
“I’ll take the advice into consideration.”
Watching him closely, the way his eyes narrow just slightly, she changes the topic. “Anyway, you’ve found out a lot about
me . You probably discovered that time I got voted Most Likely to Get Lost in a Corn Maze in high school. It’s only fair that
you tell me something about you .”
“What’s a corn maze?”
“A Midwestern abomination that forces people to wander aimlessly around miles of corn for the sake of dubious leisure. Torture,
but sometimes you get apple cider at the end of it. Tick-tock, pal.”
She puts a hand on her waist, cocking her head expectantly.
“Okay! My real name is B ? o, as you know. My sister calls me Baby B ? o, which I hate.”
“ That’s where the BB comes from. I like it—B ? o, that is.”
“After an emperor, I’ll remind you.”
She smirks. “As if you needed any more air in that head of yours, B ? o.”
Truth be told, he doesn’t hate the way the name sounds in her mouth, her lips creating a tiny circle at the end of the vowel, like she’s forming a whistle.
Or puckering up for a kiss. When Ruby calls him B ? o, her tone makes it clear that she’s establishing a power dynamic. There’s an intimacy to the way Evie says his name that
makes him blink down at her appraisingly.
She goes on. “But it’s kinda weird, right? You’re a man in his forties—”
“Thirties,” he grits.
“And your sister treats you like either a baby brother or an employee. What’s with that?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” he says.
By now, it’s afternoon, and they’re facing the emperor’s twenty-ton stone stele lodged in a giant brick building. The huge
tablet is partially a confessional, carved with almost five thousand characters detailing all the emperor’s own mistakes and
regrets throughout his reign. To look at the imposing stele is to be transported back in time. Evie and Adam crane their heads
to take it all in.
“That is a lot of regret,” she says.
And suddenly, Adam doesn’t want to be surrounded by regret for a second longer. He wants to be on his bike again, coursing
through the countryside, taking in all the beauty around him without thinking about Ruby or his parents or his job. And he
wants to do it with her . Infuriating, unexpected, madcap Evie.
“Want to go for a ride?” he asks, holding out his hand.
She blinks. He can see her calculating the choice, and for a moment, he regrets saying anything. But a second later, her hand
is in his. Her eyes, trusting and excited. A new feeling swells inside him, bubbles and warmth, and he lets himself savor
it, like a perfect sip of champagne.
“If you harm a hair on this poet laureate’s head, the mayor of Midland will hunt you down,” she warns, fluffing the bottom of her hair for emphasis.
“I would expect no less.”
“Oh, who am I kidding. They have Lancaster Small on speed dial.”
On the bike, she tucks her body behind him, resting her helmeted head on his back. Her knees squeeze against his hips, and
he can feel her fingertips clenched against his stomach in a death grip. He’s about to call her out on it, but then the words
die on his lips. He likes her clinging to him like this. He starts the motor and lets them fly.
Adam wouldn’t have necessarily chosen to spend the day with Evie at a series of tombs, but sometimes, you take what you can
get. Honestly, he likes that she’s prone to wandering away from the crowd. It speaks to her rampant curiosity, so oversized
and insistent that even Ruby’s rigid tour structure can’t contain her. He wouldn’t have predicted it, but he enjoys wandering
too. The world has opened in a way that feels utterly thrilling and confusing. For once, he’s asking himself what he actually
wants, digging through the layers of expectation to find his way to a tentative—and true—answer.
What he wants is more of this . Adventure. Being near Evie. Forgetting the rest of the world.
The Imperial Tomb of ?? ng Khánh, their next stop, is only three kilometers away by the road hugging the Perfume River, but Adam stretches the trip,
taking dips and turns where he can. He points out the open-air coffee shops with drop ceilings of woven grass, porches lined
with bright, dangling lanterns and handwritten signs on slabs of wood. Thin lines of trees snake toward the river, which is
now a golden thread in the distance, warmed by the afternoon sun. They can’t speak much over the roar of the bike, but Adam
feels Evie squeeze her fingers in excitement, wriggling behind him in that thoroughly distracting way.
“Stop it,” he says through clenched teeth.
She doesn’t, only wiggles more forcibly, causing the blood to rush to places it really shouldn’t while he’s driving. She says, a laugh deep in her voice, “Just pay attention to the road, Chú.”
He growls. “If you call me that again, I will drop you off in the nearest corn maze and let you fend for yourself.”
She releases an outraged sound behind him. “That was not meant to be ammunition. Ah, well, at least I didn’t internet stalk you like a damn creepo.”
He only shakes his head, unable to deny it. The smirk ticks up the corners of his mouth anyway. The Evie effect. Confusing.
Stimulating. More distracting than any beautiful scenery in the Vietnamese countryside.
When they approach V ? ng C ? nh Hill, a summit known for its epic views, Adam idles the engine. Once used as a strategic military site, the forty-three-meter-high
hill is now a favorite gathering place for families and lovers. Everything shines green, like the heart of an emerald. It’s
enough to make anyone stop in their tracks.
“Can we go to the top?” Evie shouts, already slinging her leg out from behind him, lifting her helmet off her head. He mourns
the loss of her warmth.
He’s about to scowl at her for descending from the bike without waiting for him to fully stop, but as he watches her shake
out her hair, glancing back at him with that mischievous, slightly daring smile, he doesn’t say a word. He just follows.
I’m so fucking lost , he tells himself. He doesn’t mean the path, of course. She leads him to places without a clear destination, and he is helpless
to resist. A student of her whims. He can’t decide how he feels about this.
They walk the steady slope of the road to the top of the hill. Looking out between the pines, they can see the vista stretching
for miles and miles, revealing the languid flow of the river, the shadowy crests of mountains. Above them, sparse clouds dot
the clear blue sky, like dandelion puffs that they can reach up and grab.
“This is a prime make-out spot,” Evie says.
Adam turns to her, marking the way her smile flashes, brighter than the summer sun, and how she leans lazily against a tree. She’s not batting her eyelashes, exactly, but there’s definitely some significant blinking. A teasing air around her, a kind of invitation. He steps forward, ready to say—do—something. Ready to accept the invitation she’s extending.
He feels himself tensing, reaching for her. Can he do it? Talk to her like a human, revealing everything he really feels about
her, without all the jokes, all the carefully laid booby traps? He could release the barriers and find her somewhere on the
other side of the stone walls. He could ask for a chance.
And if he’s brave enough to ask for what he wants, maybe he can get it this time. The glimmer in her eye makes him think that
anything is possible.
But then his phone buzzes. He tries to ignore it, but there it is again and again. Ruby.
BB—come back to the hotel.
I mean it. NOW.
The police are here.