"I lied." She laughed. "I'm Vietnamese. Of course I love fish."

At least the rice looked somewhat edible and smelled okay.

The owner mentioned something to Bian, who said something back. Bian said to me, "She says there is no beer on the menu because she doesn't have a liquor license. But she keeps a hidden stock for favored customers in her fridge in the back. She'll bring it out in a moment."

Things were looking up.

I smiled at the woman, then at Bian. "Please thank her from the bottom of my heart for her hospitality. Tell her she is most gracious."

Bian translated this, and the woman bowed. I added, "Also, please tell her she has a lovely and very deceitful daughter."

Bian looked away for a moment. Then she looked back at me. "You're very observant."

"And you have your mother's beauty."

"Well… thank you."

Her mother said something to her, and Bian patted her arm and said something in reply. Her mother looked at me a moment, then returned to the kitchen.

"What was that about?"

"Because she thinks you are a good man, she says she has a special surprise for you." She added, smiling, "I told her she's a terrible judge of men. She should poison your food."

Bian's mother returned a moment later, carrying a dish upon which sat two Big Macs, still hot and steaming in their boxes. She set the plate in front of me, and two cans of holy water blessed by Pope Budweiser.

I stood and hugged her. She giggled, saying something to her daughter that probably translated as, "Tell this round-eyed idiot to let go of me before I knee him in the nuts."

I sat, and Bian's mother left us. Bian sliced off a piece of fish and, holding it up on her fork, said, "Try a little of this. It's very good."

"No… thank you."

"You're sure? It's a freshwater fish. It tastes different."

"Did it swim in scotch?"

She laughed.

We ate in silence for a few moments. She asked, "How much do you remember about Vietnam? Not the country, the war."

"For me, it was a TV war. You know what I mean, right?"

"No. Tell me about that."

"It was the first war piped into America's living rooms. Somebody described that as like seeing a hologram of a war. But for one year of my life-the year of my father's second tour-I was glued to it. I wanted to see him on TV, but I really didn't. You know?"

"I don't know. All I had to do was step out in the backyard and watch the artillery flashes."

"I had a friend who was watching CBS news one night. He actually saw his own father get shot."

"Dead?"

"Wounded. They were in the middle of dinner, though. His mother actually vomited. But for most Americans it was-just as this war is- that moment on the evening news between the trial of the month and the weather forecast."

"Did TV and the media make it unpopular?"

"Wars are never popular."

"You know what I'm talking about. I read in a history book that Walter Cronkite did more damage in one night than the entire Tet offensive."

"I think the media and TV exposed a truth-an unwelcome truth, an unhappy one, but an important one. They were biased and irresponsible in many ways… but I also think they did more good than harm, told more truth than lies. On the big truth, they nailed it."

"What big truth?"

"We had become involved in a war we didn't intend to win. Like sex with neither partner able to orgasm-eventually, somebody has to call it quits."

"That's a very… unique explanation."

"I'm thinking of writing a political science textbook."

"They come wrapped in brown paper?" She took a bite of her fish, then reached across the table, grabbed my beer, and took a long swig.

"I can get you your own beer," I told her. "The owner has a big crush on me."

She laughed. And then we found ourselves staring into each other's eyes.

I broke eye contact first-somebody had to before this turned complicated.

Obviously, she and I, somehow, were becoming intimate. There was a natural sensuality to this woman, an unconscious sexuality that I was very conscious of.

The Army, unique institution that it is, has managed, through bureaucratic dictates and brute legal force, to quell or repress nearly all of the flawed human compulsions and quirks, from social inequalities, to racial and religious intolerance, to the inbred American inclinations toward indiscipline, laziness, and disobedience. Send us your bigots, your snobs, your slovenly punks; we will unkink their screwed-up heads and return to you a model citizen, an individual of tolerance, good citizenship, and self-discipline-or a fairly convincing fake.

Yet the attraction between the sexes has eluded even the Army's most Orwellian programs and mind games. Here we are, some thirty years after the congressional order imposing the integration of the sexes, and there still is rutting within the ranks, affairs between married officers and their spouses, sexual favoritism, sexual blackmail, voyeurism, rape, and every other imaginative act two or more horny people can conceive of. The modern battle dress uniform, baggy and shapeless as it is, is as aphrodisiacal as a knee in the groin; yet the fevered male imagination fills in the blanks and primitive impulses take over.

Not to put too fine a point on it, I knew I was attracted to her; for some reason, I think she found me attractive as well. Of course, I don't like to make a move on somebody else's lady. Relationships are hard enough without complications. That's not an ironclad thing, though.

I draw the line, however, when her beau is serving our country, in uniform, overseas, battling our enemies in a theater of war. I do this as a patriotic gesture. After all, the least the home front can do is keep our hands out of their ladies' undies. Also, the fiance has a gun, and knows how to use it.

Apparently Bian also recognized we were on thin ice, because she immediately shifted the conversation back to safer ground. She broke eye contact for a moment, then said, "Why did America lose the will to keep fighting in Vietnam? Fifty-eight thousand Americans dead. Hundreds of thousands horribly wounded."

"Because somebody finally asked, why make it fifty-nine thousand dead?"

"Still… that's a large down payment. How could you walk away from it?"

"That's a question we're still trying to answer. I think you know that."

"The answer is important."

"For you, maybe. For most of us, the war ended thirty years ago. The dead are mourned and buried, and the survivors have their monument." I added, "For most Americans, it's a brief and confusing chapter in a long history book."

"That's a shallow answer."

"Good. I'm a shallow person."

She put down her fork and stared at me. "You are not. I've known you only one day, but… you're deeper and more perceptive than you act."

"Eat your fish."

She smiled. "Hey, I didn't call you sensitive."

"That's why you're still alive."

She finished off my beer. I popped the second can.

She said, "I was on the other end of that decision. It cost my father his life. It nearly killed my mother. Look around you-see what it meant for her future."

"Is she happy?"

Bian repeated my question, and then seemed to contemplate this for a long moment. "She opened a Vietnamese restaurant, and after nearly thirty years she barely speaks English. What does that tell you?"

"She doesn't want to die here."

"She misses her own people. Her sister runs an orphanage outside Ho Chi Minh City. My mother and I send every penny we can spare. The boy… the one who's helping her, that's where he's from."

"And are you bitter?"

"I… no. I'm the good immigrant story. I've adapted to America, and America adopted me." Apparently enough said about this, because she changed the subject again and asked, "About Iraq, though. Could history repeat itself?"