“I know we have only just met,” Dúc says in his slightly musical English, the strobe lights like lightning, “but I need a suitcase.” He pulls out a pack of Vietnamese cigarettes, the box dragon-red and elegant, private. On the dance floor people are wriggling to Madonna’s “Holiday.” Watching them, their liquored gyrations, you remember that in Vietnamese the word for dance is just one tone away from the word for puppets.

The strobe lights have turned the world into an old black and white movie — you’re Bette Davis, Myrna Loy, Dietrich in some hole-in-the-wall cabaret just one town over from the Western front, the smoke streaming from your lips. Now would be the time to do some fancy trick, French inhale, the smoke on a continuous loop in and out of your nose.

Dúc tamps a cigarette on the table filled with dirty glasses, lights it in his mouth, then offers it to you. The strobe lights have turned the world into an old black and white movie — you’re Bette Davis, Myrna Loy, Dietrich in some hole-in-the-wall cabaret just one town over from the Western front, the smoke streaming from your lips. Now would be the time to do some fancy trick, French inhale, the smoke on a continuous loop in and out of your nose. But you can’t so you don’t, your throat already burning from something in this Vietnamese cigarette, something bitter and foreign, something you never want to taste again. Dúc nods his head carefully to the music as though it were a cold bath, something he’s trying to get into. “Is it wrong for me to ask? Please say,” he says, his palms down flat on the table. You shake your head. “Good,” he says. “Let us meet in the parking lot by the student union. Say one o’clock tomorrow.”

Because the music has changed decades, the others float back to the table, their faces slightly shiny when the light hits. Eventually there are more drinks, things said in both English and Vietnamese, more cigarettes passed around that taste like wet newspaper. When you finally leave on the edge of last call, Huong, whose father is a party official in Nha Trang, grabs your arm, grins. “Rock and roll,” he says, which eight weeks into the summer semester has become the foreign students’ standard salutation and farewell. You flip him the peace sign and turn to Dúc, who is absent-mindedly sliding a quarter along the fingers of one of his long elegant hands.

“Mot gio,” you mouth, the music pounding.

He nods. “One o’clock.”

Outside the summer night is as clear as vodka. When you wake up in the morning, your head will throb softly like overripe fruit, the taste of this night’s rotten cigarettes still in your mouth.

Although it’s the first week of August, Dúc is standing in the parking lot looking slightly chilled, a denim jacket wrapped around his shoulders. When he sees you turn into the lot, he points repeatedly to the ground where he’s standing, the Vietnamese equivalent of waving your arms in the air and shouting, “I’m over here.”

“Chao em,” you say as he gets into your car, “em co khoe khong?” You wonder how he’ll take this, your using the pronoun meant for children, but he’s twenty-one in Asian years and technically at twenty-two you are his elder. Besides, the sky is blue, the birds are singing, and if he’s put out by your greeting, he doesn’t show it.

“I am fine,” he says, his English more formal here in the quiet of your car. He is wearing a yellow polo shirt and khaki shorts, on his feet a pair of cheap drugstore flip-flops. In his right hand he is carrying a small blue handbag embroidered with what look like large red stars which he immediately presents to you. “From my country,” he says, “for you.”

“Cam on,” you reply, thanking him and basically exhausting your knowledge of conversational Vietnamese despite the last eight weeks of “intensive” study.

He nods and pulls a pair of aviator sunglasses out of the front of his jacket, slides them on and points to the horizon. “Rock and roll,” he says.

“Yeah, rock and roll,” you say, and step on the gas.

“What happens if you do not vote?”

Highway 26 is a two-lane rural digression, the asphalt chewed up by winter chains, the road itself patient and winding. White farmhouses dot the landscape, the occasional satellite dish like an oversized birdbath cocked on a roof. There are silos here and there, fields sprinkled with bales of hay, herds of cows contentedly chewing, the methane gas billowing invisibly around them. This time of year the corn is shoulder-high.

The first thing you’d noticed about him the night before were his lips bee-stung and pouty, his physique small-boned, delicate, like a heron picking its way across a thin blue stream.

Freedom is still a good ten miles away past the turn off to Beaver Dam. One by one a line of cars waits their turn to make a dash past a semi hauling portable toilets; to make matters worse, there’s a farmer riding a tractor on the side of the road. You turn the radio down, slide off your sandals. “What do you mean what happens if you don’t vote?” you ask.

Dúc looks straight ahead, his skin pale and clear. There’s something slightly feminine about him, his glossy black hair tousled stylishly, his cheekbones like cliffs cut into his face. The first thing you’d noticed about him the night before were his lips bee-stung and pouty, his physique small-boned, delicate, like a heron picking its way across a thin blue stream. “I mean if you do not vote,” he says, taking his sunglasses off, “what does the government do to you?”

The car in front of you makes a break for it, the Porta Johns wobbling uncertainly as the car speeds by the semi. “Nothing happens,” you say. “Hell, most people don’t vote.” A sign reads passing lane, 1/2 mile. Already you begin to accelerate, wonder if you can wait that long.

He repeats this fact, trying to hide the incredulousness in his voice. “Most people in America do not vote.” Despite his clinical tone, you can sense his confusion.

“See, only half of the people who are eligible to vote are even registered,” you explain, “and of that half, only half turn out.” The passing lane comes up suddenly. In the right lane a Winnebago lumbers up the steep incline, forcing the semi to stay left with you on his tail. You remember last year’s local midterm election, how at 6:30 p.m. on your way to buy an eggplant you finally remembered the polls but it was too late. “Yeah, you don’t have to vote here,” you say, then add resignedly as if discussing a lover who leaves the toilet seat up, “that’s America.”

Dúc stares at the Winnebago as you crawl by. The thing is probably bigger than his house. “Everyone votes in Viet Nam,” he says. “The hamlet with the highest percent voting gets an award.”

On the way home you’ll stop and take a picture of him by the sign in the opposite direction, his face unsmiling like the first pioneers. In the viewfinder he’ll become a small figure standing under the shadow of a highway sign in the fading summer light.

Obviously not everyone votes if one hamlet can have the best turn out, you think, but you don’t say this. “Naturally,” you say instead. “Everyone’s a party member.” The semi finally pulls right, but by now, the passing lane has come to an end.

“I am a member,” Dúc says, “but only thirty percent of the population are official members of the Communist Party.” Now it’s your turn to be confused. “Oh yes,” he says, his dark eyes almond-shaped. “In Viet Nam not everyone is a Communist.”

“Really,” you say. The semi turns its blinker on, slows down to make a left on County Q. “Guess you learn something new every day.”

“There.” Dúc points at a green sign. “Freedom, eight miles,” he reads. On the way home you’ll stop and take a picture of him by the sign in the opposite direction, his face unsmiling like the first pioneers. In the viewfinder he’ll become a small figure standing under the shadow of a highway sign in the fading summer light. But in the here and now the semi makes its turn. You give it some gas, flip down your visor, surge ahead. There’s nothing in between you and Freedom but eight miles of America’s Dairyland.

Dúc has type AB blood and is studying to be a translator. By the time you pull into Freedom, he has told you many things, such as the Communist Party bought his ticket to the United States and that in order to save money, the party flew him from Hanoi to Bangkok to Osaka to LAX to O’Hare to Madison; he also claims that during his ten-hour layover in Los Angeles, he was given exactly six #2 pencils by blind people. Although his English is almost perfect, Dúc says he has trouble converting Vietnamese into English on the spot. Once, last year in Hanoi, at a conference of ASEAN leaders, he told the Malaysian economic minister that the Vietnamese foreign deputy couldn’t wait to discuss how Malaysia’s pubic works functioned.

Dúc says he has spent most of his summer watching cable TV. He says he now understands forty percent of American slang, but such knowledge won’t help him with his work despite the fact that he’s almost mastered in what spaces one can use the word motherfucker. “If I get good enough,” he says, “maybe the party will send me to Washington, D.C. later this fall.” He puts his sunglasses back on, adjusts them in the side mirror. “It is only a matter of time,” he adds. “Soon, relations between America and Viet Nam will be normalized and we will have an embassy in your country.” He gets his glasses just the way he wants and turns to you smiling — you can almost see the montage of his future plans flashing before his eyes.

On the outskirts of Freedom Dúc tells you he can’t believe some of the things he’s seen in America. “On State Street, I saw a man sitting barefoot and dirty on the curb asking people for money.” He shakes his head. “I even saw some kids with rings in their faces and blue hair. They also asked me for money. Is this common?” Last night in the Cardinal you heard him ask other Americans the same question, another about the income gap and why so few are allowed to own so much.

“We’re here,” you say, trying to hide your relief.

The road into Freedom is littered with hardware stores and beauty shops. In its entirety the downtown consists of a court house, a Presbyterian church, and a Culver’s. You follow the long line of cars heading to the same place. School starts in two weeks, which means the outlets will be full of back-to-school shoppers. Two nights ago the local ten o’clock news ran a story about Freedom. On-camera the manager of The Limited claimed back-to-school was second only to Christmas in volume moved. You remember being surprised by this, but here waiting in line behind what feels like a thousand minivans, you believe.

Dúc takes a piece of paper out of his jacket and irons it out over his knee. You glance at it and realize it’s an internet print out of the outlets, which stores are where. He taps his long slender finger like a cigarette on store D12. “Samsonite,” he says. You wonder how he ever got here without a suitcase, why he needs one so badly, but decide not to ask. “Make a right,” he says. You do, and the overwhelmingness of it all hits you.

It’s like an oversized maze, the stucco buildings sand-colored and sprawling, cosmic. One hundred and sixty three outlet stores, everything from Talbot Kids to Bed, Bath & Beyond, the parking lot alone the size of a small town, cars in long serpentine lines waiting for someone to leave in the hopes of snagging that spot next to the handicap space in front of Kitchens Etc. And the people! People on cell phones, people with ice cream, people waiting for the open-air trolley that will take them to stores N-Z. You wonder if Dúc notices how many of these people are pear-shaped, sedentary, their vowels as flat as the landscape.

Dúc practically has his head hanging out the window like a dog out on a drive. You’ve seen such looks before, mostly in black and white photos of the sun-stunned crowd of runners just before they loose the bulls in Pamplona. It’s a look of anticipation, temptation, arousal. All this for a suitcase, you think, and pull into a spot far away from D12, the store a tiny temple shimmering in the distance. “Let’s do this motherfucker,” you say.

Dúc swings his denim jacket over his shoulders like a cape. He pulls out his blood-red box of cigarettes, and much to your chagrin, lights two and hands you one. Because smokers’ etiquette says you can’t refuse a cigarette once it’s lit, you take it, try not to inhale too deeply, and start off toward D12, the sun scorching overhead. By now Dúc has recomposed his face into one that’s above this capitalist spectacle. Like a Buddha with his thick-lidded eyes gazing impassively on the millions doomed to be born again, he sighs, and sets off on his martyrdom. In his polo and khakis, from a distance he looks like everyone else — a man out to spend some money.

In Hanoi it costs $0.50 to have a baby.

Of the hundred and seventy-eight countries in the United Nations, Viet Nam’s per capita income ranks one hundred and forty-sixth. The average salary in Ho Chi Minh City is approximately $700 US a year, while in Hanoi, Joe Nguyen takes home just under six million dong or $400. According to Lonely Planet, the foreigners’ guide to such places, four people can eat a five-star French meal at Hoa Sua for $35 including tip. In Dalat, you can stay in a three-star hotel for $12 a night, a full-size replica of the Eiffel Tower lighting the sky outside your window. In the major cities you can go anywhere on a motorbike for less than a buck. Outside Danang, you can rent a car and a driver to take you for four hours to My Lai and back for $25. In Hoi An, you can have a Chinese silk dress custom made for less than ten.

According to Lonely Planet, the foreigners’ guide to such places, four people can eat a five-star French meal at Hoa Sua for $35 including tip. In Dalat, you can stay in a three-star hotel for $12 a night, a full-size replica of the Eiffel Tower lighting the sky outside your window. In the major cities you can go anywhere on a motorbike for less than a buck.

For the Vietnamese, life is cheaper. On the street a meal costs around $0.07, a ride on a motorbike about the same. People work each and every day from sun up until they literally can’t see, even the children out in the fields transplanting rice. Outside Tay Ninh a woman might spend fifteen hours at a stretch feeding rice husks into an oven, all the while cooking gruel into thin sheets of paper, and make a dollar for the whole day. Those lucky enough to work in the Nike factory in Lao Cai will probably make twice that, though at times the carcinogens visibly speckle the air. The life of a government employee is marginally better. A cop might take home $10 a week, double that if he accepts things on the side. An unmarried government translator earns $35 a month, while the one-room apartment where he lives with his parents is the size of your average American two-car garage.

For the Viet Kieu, the price scale is vastly different. When they come back, the Overseas Vietnamese pay through the nose, often forking over 75% more than everyone else. The local Vietnamese, the ones who stayed, say the Viet Kieu are paying for their sins, namely for leaving. Reportedly at Tan Son Nhat International Airport it can cost the Viet Kieu $50 US per person just to get through customs.

The air conditioning inside the Samsonite store feels arctic. You’re afraid of what might happen if you stop moving, how your blood will congeal right there in your veins. The store staff is bundled up accordingly, the woman behind the register dressed like Julie Christie in the Russian tundra scenes in Doctor Zhivago. “If you need any help,” she says, “just ask,” her words practically visible in the August air.

Unlike any other luggage store you’ve ever been in, this one has a theme — Wonders of the World, each hulking display reminiscent of a high school prom. Along one wall there’s the Pyramids at Giza, the ancient structures composed entirely of luggage, even the Nile made out of cornflower blue fanny packs snaking along the floor. Against another wall, the Golden Gate Bridge — in the midnight blue computer case ocean, Alcatraz is just three forest green handbags. An instrumental version of “We Are the Champions” is lilting through the winterized air, the violins like helium. People are taking the song to heart, yes, no time for losers, and grab everything they can, the garment bag turrets in the Great Wall of China suffering horribly.

Dúc pulls a page from a weekly circular out of his pocket. “Do you see this anywhere?” he asks, pointing at a hard-sided yellow suitcase in the ad. You nod toward the Times Square display, the canary-yellow suitcases supposedly taxis motoring down 42nd Street. Dúc walks over and eyes things, unsure of which one to pull out for fear of toppling the whole New York skyline. Finally he settles on one, a suitcase near the Port Authority, and coaxes it out, rolls it back and forth for a while like it’s a pound puppy he’s considering adopting. “What do you think?” he says.

“Looks good,” you say, hoping he’ll buy it and that’ll be that. But instead, he rolls it around some more, then lays it flat, pops it open, inspects the space, visualizing where his flip-flops will go, his toiletries. He pulls out a thin wire bar, holds it up.

“What’s this?”

You examine it briefly, tap it on the ground. “You hang your clothes on it, then fold them in half,” you say, though you’re not totally sure.

Dúc puts the bar back and closes the suitcase, kicks it a few times. He flips the price tag over, his eye practically popping out of his head. He rechecks the circular, then the tag again. “Look,” he whispers, his teeth glistening, “it was supposed to be $124 and now it’s priced at $86. I could almost buy two.” Like a bad magician he turns his back to you and lifts his shirt, unzips his money belt. Finally he turns around, shaking his head. “I could buy two,” he says, “but there are some other things I would like to look for while we are here in Freedom. Do you mind?”

“No,” you say, in a voice a native speaker would realize means yes.

“Good,” he says, rolling his way to the counter. “Besides, maybe you would also like to purchase things.” For a moment you think you detect something in his voice, a gauntlet being thrown down, for the briefest of instants his words corporeal in the refrigerated air.

“I don’t think so,” you say, but after standing fifteen minutes with him in line you spot a silver thermal lunch bag, the hand strap tomato red, the bag stylish and sharp, pleasing to the eye. You think of how cold it will keep your chicken salad sandwiches, how your Pepsis will start sweating as soon as you pull them out, and although you don’t really need it at the moment, you might need it some day. No time for losers, you think, grabbing it, and when there are just two people ahead of you in line, you zip back to Times Square and roll out a policeman, a blue carry-on airplane bag, and jump back in line just as Dúc hits the counter.

This is how the poorly planned trajectory of your afternoon unfolds: E6, K11, B2, G14, A9, bingo! namely Banana Republic, the Gap, Old Navy, Baby Gap, Ralph Lauren, each one progressively colder, more crowded than the one before. By J. Crew’s L8 your arms are tired, with each passing store your haul growing exponentially like fruit flies. Actually, when Dúc first proposed this adventure the night before, you hadn’t intended to buy anything at all, but somehow here you are.

In Pier 1 Dúc picks up a ceramic ashtray lined with mother-of-pearl accents. “For Professor Kimball,” he says, and drops it in his basket, the question of whether or not his vegan fifth-year English teacher has a two-pack a day habit seemingly never entering his mind.

“Nice,” you say, but how to explain what’s come over you, your need to match him purchase for purchase? In Sam Goody Dúc buys a Schumann CD, so you buy Johnny Cash. In Tommy Hilfiger Dúc buys a fleece coat, so you buy Gortex pants. Now stalking the shelves of Pier 1’s bric-a-brac, you spot two copper-green frogs holding hands, a small hole for a candle directly between them, and add it to the rest of your finds. Dúc smiles approvingly and moves off into bedding. For a moment you think, do I really need two copper green frogs holding hands, but the question is gone almost as soon as it’s formed, and so you goose-step off into bedding.

Soon Dúc winds his way back to the counter, works his magic, turns his back, a quick zip and voila! cold hard cash. After he’s done you check out too, though your magic is not quite as spectacular. “Cash, check, or charge?” the young woman asks. In the refrigerated August air she wears a white ski parka and knit cap.

“Charge,” you say, your Visa card deceptively light in your hand.

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.

The B. Dalton’s is a sad excuse for a bookstore, the shelves filled with celebrity bios and true crime. Even the air is second-rate — unrefrigerated, humidity-heavy, the one lone employee standing behind the counter panting like a dog in a wife beater. Dúc runs his finger along a shelf on his way to the magazines. Something in the way his hand lingers among the books’ spines — already you can see he’s taking leave of this day, wanting to remember everything about it — the heaviness of the bags in his arms, the feeling of unfettered control, of walking around a free man among free men.

Unsurprisingly the store is empty, giant fans revving in the aisles. Eventually you find yourself in the tiny photography section, a stack of haute couture fashion books knee-high. When you see it, the thing you were hoping against hope to find, you can’t believe your luck. At the register, you ask the sweating boy to giftwrap it and he does, the paper patterned with a sepia map of ancient lands, the whole known world unsuffering and flat, simple. Something in the way his hand lingers among the books’ spines — already you can see he’s taking leave of this day, wanting to remember everything about it — the heaviness of the bags in his arms, the feeling of unfettered control, of walking around a free man among free men. Later in front of his dorm, as you’re helping Dúc unload, you’ll slip this gift into one of his bags, and in ten days he’ll pack it in his new taxi-yellow suitcase along with everything else. Though you won’t know how it happens, in two weeks, as his friends and family are gathered for dinner at 217 Pho Cua Dong to celebrate his return, after it’s all been handed out — the clothes, the dishes, the lavender body cream, the electronics, everything, he’ll finally see this faded map of the world, notice the small green gift card that says for Dúc, Chúc em tram nam hanh phúc (I wish you one hundred years of happiness). All night long half a world away they’ll sit and study the pictures of a people poor but proud, James Agee’s Depression-era classic Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, how the photo of the woman and her seven children in their one-room shack will come to haunt Dúc’s ninety-three year old bà, something in the mother’s eyes a look the grandmother has known herself, all night long Dúc translating the text perfectly, retelling the story of an America of have-nots, all night long at 217 Pho Cua Dong, people will see people like themselves beat down but dreaming.

The next day it takes you more than five hours including driving to return it all.