Hard Rain Read Free

the other passengers as he moved along the aisle, trying to tell who was older, who was younger, who was the same age. He walked up and down the aisle several times until he noticed eyes peeking at him and the driver’s eyes darting up in the rearview mirror. He went back to the toilet, locked the door, took off all his clothes and stared at the figure in the mirror until he realized the bus was no longer moving.
    Bao Dai walked along a country road.
    What was that song, he wondered as he walked. “Changes”? “Sit by my side, come as close as …” As what? He didn’t remember. He remembered the chord progression though—C, D, G, E minor. His left hand made barring motions in the air.
    It was a country road he knew well, glare or no glare. Rain was falling now, and he kept his head down, not because he felt the wet or the cold, but because he didn’t like the hazy glare around every raindrop. He didn’t need to see where he was going; he knew the road like the back of his hand. Bao Dai looked at the backs of his hands.
    They were strange hands.
    He didn’t know them at all.
    He kept walking, glancing down at his hands from time to time to see if they were beginning to look familiar. They never did, but at least he knew the road.
    Bao Dai came to a mailbox: a normal rural mailbox, except it had been painted. He knew that; he remembered the smell of the wet paint, remembered how hard it had been to get the blue flowers just right and how he had copied the black symbol—a circle with an airplane shape inside—from somebody’s button. It might have been yesterday. But it wasn’t, because the paint had faded away, almost completely. He had to look very closely to make out the forms of one or two flowers, the outline of the symbol.
    Bao Dai turned onto a dirt road. He saw the farm. He heard voices, laughter, guitars. His heart raced. He began to run, a clumsy, sliding run along the muddy road, in the tropical suit and the brogues, two sizes too big. He ran, but no one was there—no talkers, no laughers, no players.
    There was only a middle-aged woman, scattering birdseed in the yard. She looked up. The glare was very bad. It took him a long time to recognize her, a very long time.
    She didn’t recognize him at all.
    He had to tell her who he was.
    And then what should have happened? What had he expected? What had he dreamed? He didn’t know. All he knew was that his arms were lifting from his sides, all on their own. But she didn’t step forward; she was still staring at his face. He didn’t like the way she stared, didn’t like the wrinkles on her skin.
    He lowered his arms, stepped back.
    At that moment, she opened her arms to him in a hesitant sort of way. He took another step back. She lowered her arms, bit her lip.
    Their timing was off.
    They went inside. She made him a meal. Fried chicken. Yellow wax beans. Banana bread.
    It was sickening.
    Night fell but the glare didn’t go away. She made a fire in the fireplace, rolled a cigarette, lit it, sucked in smoke, held it out.
    â€œNo,” he said.
    â€œNo?” She was surprised. “It’s Colombian.”
    â€œNo.” The smoke scared him.
    She turned on the radio. Music played. Rock music, he supposed, but he hated it. It was boring. Boring rock music was hateful. She was tapping her foot. He noticed that his hands were fists. He straightened them out.
    A man rolled up in a wheelchair. “Company?” he said. The man in the wheelchair couldn’t see.
    â€œBusiness,” said the woman. “No one you know.”
    The man rolled away. There was something familiar about him. Bao Dai was about to ask her when another question occurred to him, a far more important question.
    She wouldn’t answer. At first. He had to ask a few more times, and get up, and cross the room, and stand in front of her. It was then that they finally touched—when he took her hand