In the outdoor food court Dúc runs into a family from Haiphong, the sound of their speech slightly musical. Dúc bows deeply to the father and addresses him as uncle. The wife and two young sons stand patiently while Dúc and the man speak, all the while Dúc never making direct eye contact with the man. At one point Dúc holds his bags up in the air as if offering irrefutable proof of something. On cue the whole family reels around and looks baldly at you, the younger boy grunting derisively. Finally the man pats Dúc on the back. There are bows all around, and the family walks on, the boy looking back at you as though at a car crash, something the world shouldn’t allow.

“Did you catch any of that?” Dúc asks over his mango smoothie.

“Yes,” you lie.

Everyone I know gave me money for this trip,” he adds. “They say, ‘Dúc, buy me this, Dúc get me that.’ In our own socialist way, we will have what you have but without the mistakes.”

He shifts uncomfortably in his seat. “I am sorry,” he says, “but they would not understand.”

“Understand what?”

Dúc noses through one of his bags, pulls out a pair of hunter green Osh Kosh b’Gosh overalls, the things no bigger than a small roast. “This,” he says. He carefully refolds them, puts them back. “They are for my sister’s baby which is to be born in October.”

Suddenly a light comes on upstairs, something in the way the younger boy looked at you, like there was a hole where your face should be. “Did you tell that man,” you say, pointing at the mountain of stuff surrounding the table, “that all this is mine?”

Dúc pulls out his box of cigarettes, but you wave one off from the start. “I did,” he admits, a tiny whip of self-flagellation present in his voice. “That man was a party member sent to Milwaukee for a conference. He was only here in Freedom to show his family how the capitalist lives.” For a moment Dúc admires his new Sharper Image Zippo, the flame almost as long as his hand. “You know my government only allows certain people to travel abroad. I am only here because I swore my allegiance to the party and the things it stands for.” He takes a long drag on his cigarette. “But globalization,” he says, “the Internet. Who can resist?” He goes on to give you a brief history of private industry in Viet Nam, how in 1992 his mother opened her very own che stand on Hang Chieu in the Old Quarter and never looked back. How his country is changing, how you can even watch MTV Asia in most hotel bars, the VJs broadcasting from Kuala Lumpur, their long black hair shiny as silk. “It is a new day,” he concludes, “and English is the key to the future, to all this.” He throws his arms out in both directions, the stores a movie backdrop. “Everyone I know gave me money for this trip,” he adds. “They say, ‘Dúc, buy me this, Dúc get me that.’ In our own socialist way, we will have what you have but without the mistakes.”

“Yeah,” you say, thinking of that summer in Maine on Little Sebago when your family didn’t have a TV. How your brother built a ship in a bottle, how your parents started holding hands again in public. You look around your chair, the bags like tombstones at your feet. “What we have.”

“But without the mistakes,” he repeats.

“Without the mistakes,” you say, draining the last of your mocha frappuccino. Stranger things have happened, you think. Maybe it will be all right, maybe Viet Nam will make it. Yes. There should be one place on the face of the earth, one haven where man is both free and cared for by society. Let it come. “I want to go to one more store,” you say. “How about we call it quits after that?” Already the summer light is fading.

Dúc nods, grounds his cigarette out on the bottom of his left flip-flop. “Again, I am sorry,” he says. “For misleading those people about you.”

“Don’t worry about it,” you say, and wonder how he’ll get it all through customs, if he’s budgeted for the Vietnamese side of that.