Emma Who Saved My Life by Wilton Barnhardt Page B

evacuation of troops and civilians and anyone who could pay anything to get out before the Vietcong made it to the city and meted out justice. People hanging from helicopters as they took off, their suitcases tumbling to the ground …
    â€œKim Li has wealthy parents and they all got out in time,” Emma went on, now going to the kitchen. “I invited her over for penance, Gil. I’m American, I wanted to say, yell at me, hate me, throw things at me, trash our apartment—I’m so sorry what we did to your country.”
    Did you get your way?
    â€œNah, she was all for the war, ruling class and all. And you’d think someone from Vietnam could at least be interesting, but she’s not. She wanted to know where to shop in New York. I mean, me, Emma Gennaro, fashion consultant. Gil, where are the Fritos?”
    I didn’t buy them because I didn’t have any money. I stood transfixed before the TV and the rioting crowds, the desperate push to get to the roof of the US Embassy and possibly away by helicopter. If I’d been born a few years earlier, I’d be over there helping them pack, I mentioned.
    Emma stood in the kitchen doorway, arms crossed. “Your death would have been a tragedy but not nearly on the scale of my NOT GETTING TO EAT MY FRITOS after a hard day at temping.”
    I stared mindlessly at the TV and shook my head. What a mess. Another sterling, incomparable first-class job done by that long-running comedy act, the American Military Community After World War II. No good, I said, was going to come out of this fiasco.
    â€œTake-out Vietnamese restaurants,” Emma suggested.
    I flopped on the sofa and went into brooding-actor mode: I have no money. I have a stupid job which pays next to no money. I am a failure in the theater. I have no career. I will take out an insurance policy, kill myself, and leave the money to Emma so she can eat Fritos for a month.
    â€œGil, you know how I am about nutrition.” Emma went over to the TV and gave Saigon a last glance before turning off the set: “I guess this means goodbye.”
    You can eat all my cereal, I suggest—finish out the box of Fruit Loops. I’ll just quietly waste away here on the sofa.
    Emma sat on the arm of the sofa. “Gil, Fritos are important to me. It is important in the daily diet to have one representative from each of the Four Food Groups. A caffeine, a sugar, a booze and a grease. Now I had coffee and a doughnut this morning, and I’m going to drink cheap beer tonight. That leaves a grease. I haven’t had my grease today—I was counting on it. You said you’d buy some Fritos since it was your turn.”
    I groaned unmoved into the sofa pillow.
    â€œGil,” she said after a moment. “New York doesn’t get much better than this, I hate to tell you. You know where I temped this morning? Excellence Products, Inc. Do you know what they make?”
    I silently shook my head.
    â€œThose little plastic guns you can fire candy BBs into your mouth with? They make those. Lisa’s part-time job is Xeroxing other people’s drawings for the new 1975 image for Little Milkmaid condensed milk. This is how we get by.”
    Yeah, but you can write poetry, Emma, when you get home, and Lisa can paint. I can’t act without being up on a stage.
    Emma thought about this. “All right, I wasn’t going to do this unless things got desperate…” They’re desperate, they’re desperate. “… But I know this, this COW, Rachel Dennis. She was at my last temp agency. Her husband is a casting director at some off-Broadway theater.”
    I sat up. Call him, pay him off, sleep with him! I suggested.
    â€œGil, this is going to cost me…” She winced. “Before I left the agency I reported her to the president for being utterly worthless and incompetent. I called her a cow to her face. I’d have to grovel, to abase