The Beauty of Humanity Movement (124 page)

“We can’t get rid of them!” T
yells. One of the drunks burps and slumps to the ground. The other two collapse in a laughing heap beside him.

“Ph
ng,” says Maggie, “that was beautiful.” Ph
ng snorts. “I thought you didn’t like my singing. You said it was like a disease.”

“What?”

“That day in the van. You said my rap was ‘infectious.’” “But I meant it in a good way,” she says. “Like something that takes you over, possesses you. Honestly, I could listen to you for hours.”

“Huh,” says Ph
ng, sneering at T
.

“What was that song?” Maggie asks.

“The one I’m doing for my audition.”

“What audition?” asks T
.

“For
Vietnam Idol
.”

How could T
not have known about this? He hadn’t realized just how far apart he and Ph
ng had grown in recent weeks. “But what about Hanoi Poison?”

“Dead for the time being. Got to make it past the censors. But after that? Once everyone’s listening? Hanoi Poison will be back,” he says with a wicked laugh.

They all turn their heads at the sound of footsteps. T
’s father is running toward them. Out of breath, he stops, bends at the waist and clutches his kneecaps.

“We found him,” he says, pressing a fist into his lower back as he straightens up. “He’s not far, but he’s been hurt. He can’t walk. Anh is with him. Who are these guys?” he asks of the drunks in a heap. “Oh, who cares. Can they help?”

H
ng’s leg is throbbing as if his heart has decided to relocate; his throat feels as if he has just drunk a bucketful of sand. He opens his eyes and blinks at the blur of lights out a window. It would appear he is lying in the back seat of a taxi, his head in Bình’s lap as if he were a child, though not any child he remembers being.

What the hell is happening? he wonders. Please tell me I haven’t
been in another accident. He remembers heading over to the Metropole with news for Maggie a couple of days ago, the rain so torrential that he abandoned his cart by Hàng Da Market, paying the bird seller a good amount of đ
ng to keep an eye on it. After that he remembers very little: a great wave of water rolling over his shoulder, the sound of skidding cars, being bounced against a fender, flying through fog, the great pain in his body from the waist down as he lay twisted in a muddy ditch, one of his feet facing an improbable direction, drifting in and out of sleep.

Bình is saying something about going to the hospital, which causes a surge of panic in H
ng’s chest. “No no,” he cries out, “not the hospital. It’s full of dead people.”