Winning

Thursday was beautiful, our first full day in the beach town of Nha Trang. We had motorbikes, and we were going north, where the Book had promised a quieter stretch of white sand.

Our road was Vietnam’s answer to California’s Hwy 1, a languid collection of curves and climbs along the rocky southeast coast.

Sun was shining and once we left the city, photo opportunities abounded. Floating fishing villages in the shadow of an island; harbor towns you could smell before you saw: fermenting fish hanging in the sun, suspended in plastic bags. Long flat rice paddies are the next shade of green; their organic fertilizing machines the rust-colored shape of happy water buffaloes.

 

We played with a toddler who had never seen a white person before; our day was enriched by memories of why we travel.

I documented the day on my iPod. The multi-machine I use as a camera fit perfectly into the twin plastic recess built into my sexy Spiderman machine of a bike: a black and yellow Yamaha Nouvo. Equipped with a working speedometer!!

 

The pictures piled up around my avenues of enthusiasm, until, at 6 p.m. we meandered back into the beachside metropolis to return the bikes. Grabbing by bag with resonant vibrations running parallel through my meta carpals, the effects of sitting on a piece of rumbling rubber for four straight hours (we never did find the dream-white beach) made themselves known in the tightness of my ass and spine. Suddenly, all I could think of was lying down in the silence of my bed under the moldy fluorescent-lit ceiling.

Which felt wonderful. On the verge of passing out for an afternoon nap, I receded into my pocket to peruse the contents of my iPod’s visual memory database. Empty groping that quickly fell to franticness. Fondling the tiny pocket-within-a-pocket of my shorts. Instant awareness.

I spend a great deal of time mentally organizing the architecture and urban planning of my pocket’s contents. Always striving for a modernist blend of efficiency and protection. I only ever keep that rectangle of plastic and glass in my left pocket – above my cell phone – for easy one-handed access when performing tasks that command the attention of my dominant and steady right hand. It isn’t in its home.

“It’s still in the motorbike,” a news bulletin to the room. “We need to go back right now.”

Once we leave, my head and steps throb to the tune of priority and importance and the soul-filling taste of SPONTANEOUS PURPOSE; I construct the physical memory of my absentmindedness.

In third-person perspective I observe the past as a series of conditionals. I must have grabbed the bag from the pocket under the seat.  Knowing that I didn’t need to return the key or retrieve any collateral, I must have simply walked away – fulfilling, in a dejected inevitability, the prophecy I built, when, hours earlier, I had reminded myself to “not forget the iPod when you return the bike.”

It’s OK.  I assured myself in words and phrases like ‘friendly’… ‘affable’… ‘trustworthy local business’ – building up a mental description of my motobike renters. This part of the world runs on the polar twin pillars of honor and shame. They will – they must have it, waiting for me to return.

Our return, 15 minutes after dropping the bikes off, established a different reality – one grounded in economics and language barriers.

I get my message across all right in simple engrish and extravagant hand cues – exercising a windmill of non-verbal communication to accommodate each quick burst of a shrill clause.

—iPhone

—In bike

—I lose

—I look

The owner, a stout and stalwart looking man with droopy eyes and a square face reflected by a square flat-top of graying hair, pulls a long key out of the pocket of his Members Only jacket and brings me through a heavy gate into the back parking lot.

There was my supposedly faithful bike. Right in front, alone and empty.

Anger begins behind the eyes, a sort of clouding effect. I search the bike again in the standard repeated pawing fashion of Someone Who Has Lost Something. Next I ask the five men who work with The Boss; their job seems to lie somewhere in the multi-disciplinary realm of marketing, maintenance and security. They understand my conundrum, it is easy to see. Unfortunately, they look genuinely bewildered as to how to help.

They never saw it. They don’t know.  Maybe it bounced out?

I hear the words and my anxious anger wants to resist, accuse, demand. Especially of one particular younger guy who is either autistic or on drugs or just a little wacked. He keeps pointing to his own phone, saying, “How much money?” which is either a reference to how much I paid for it, or how much is on the SIM card he thinks is in it, or, maybe, probably, definitely, this is the beginning of a blackmail. Yes! I’m being blackmailed for my iPod by a 5-foot tall Vietnamese boy-man who keeps lifting up his shirt to reveal his pale chest while he shoves one hand into his jeans.

He empties his pockets when asked. And, as I sort of knew all along, they were empty.

At first, losing the iPod was almost a blessing in disguise, once I get over the feeling of naked violation – a child shivering in the forest under the pallid moonlight. Whether I wanted to or not, that small piece of equipment was what connected me to the outside world. The internet in my pocket – at any café the first thing I would do is look for open WiFi networks. Without the option, my only choice now is to take a breath and look at what’s in front of me. This is how I justify not being too angry at the situation.

Yet part of me knows that I can’t totally blame myself for this, and that part wasn’t satisfied with the Vietnamese response to the situation. A hand and accompanying human are necessary to remove something from those motobike pockets. The roll of photos from my entire trip was now sitting in that same someone’s pocket.

For the next two days I experienced Nha Trang with no camera, making preparations for how I could cheaply start taking pictures again.

Still the feeling lingered; the mystery must be solved before I leave this city forever. On our list of chores the day before departure is a trip to the bus office, the route to which conveniently passes by the motobike renter’s sidewalk station.

The little voices in my head urged me to keep an eye out, observe with a filter for shiftiness. Who in this bunch could have taken it?

A woman is lounging in a lawn chair, her feet propped up on the seat of a nearby bike. She wasn’t there during the last interrogation. She is heavily clothed, a large windbreaker hides the lower part of her face and a wide brimmed hat shields her eyes. Her attention is directed towards her lap, at something small in her hands.

Of course I look, but I don’t do much thinking in the next half a second.

Some part of me – the part that does its thinking in my testicles and colon and stomach – that part of me is the one that reacted and grabbed from her hand while screaming “That’s mine you Bitch!”

What had caught my eye was the metallic gleam on the corner of the thing in her hand. A rectangular thing. A rectangular thing with the same carbon-grey coloring as my iPod’s case, with the same eroded, shiny corner. In an instant it was in my hand, and she was looking at me passively, calmly, almost expectantly.

All I can do is yell. Jubilantly at first, then a furious interrogation directed at the chunky impish demon woman in front of me.

“You stole this!”

“This is mine!”

Her first response? I’m not sure if it was an impulse or she thought about it, but she held out her hand, palm skyward and said. “Money,” followed by what could only be her justification, “You leave here,” pointing at the parked bikes. 

“You want me to pay you for what you stole from me. FuckYouYouStupidWhore!” I am screaming with my middle finger as a microphone. I hope that symbol is international.

But BOOOM does that feel good. The fury and violation are dwarfed by my karmic glee. Vindication for my suspicions. The little people whispering to me to not trust too easily, to demand more demandingly, they were correct.

Today is a good day.

P.S. This is what she looks like.