The Beauty of Humanity Movement (55 page)

T
nudges Ph
ng’s foot, which is hanging over the end of his bed.

“Mmm?” Ph
ng moans, raising his head. He immediately collapses back onto the mattress.

“Ph
ng,” T
says, lifting the headphones off his friend’s ears. “What’s wrong?” He sits down on the edge of the mattress. “What are you listening to?”

“Sex Pistols,” says Ph
ng.

“What does that mean?”

Ph
ng shrugs. Even if he knows, he’s not in the mood to talk. He wants to get high.

They climb up the stairs to the third floor and, with a quick nod to the ancestors’ altar, ascend the metal stairs to the roof. Two of Ph
ng’s father’s shirts have been left to dry on the line, the chickens are quietly clucking in their cages and the dog they are fattening up for Tet is licking his balls. The smells of kerosene and cooking oil float up from the street.

Ph
ng uses the light that spills from the neighbour’s roof to help him roll a joint. The man they always use for cyclo tours in the Old Quarter supplies him. T
is not one for this mood-altering practice himself; he prefers the predictability of good and cheap old-fashioned
bia hoi
at happy hour, which can sometimes make you tired or fill your stomach too much to eat dinner and make your mother angry, but most times it just makes you happy with an urge to sing karaoke.

It is wrong to be smoking marijuana overtop of the ancestors, you certainly wouldn’t swear or have sex on top of them either, but it does at least get Ph
ng talking.

“Have you ever noticed how many promises foreigners seem to make?” he says, exhaling to the clouds.

“What are you talking about, Ph
ng?”

“How many times has some tourist said to you, Give me your e-mail address, let’s stay in touch. There’s a CD or a DVD or a book I’m going to send to you when I get home. Or even, Hey, you should really come and visit me in New York or Berlin or wherever.”

Sometimes there is a brief exchange of e-mails in the first month, but when that stops, as it inevitably does, T
no longer really takes it personally.