The lady in black heels rested her back against a tree. She crossed her arms and stared at the man who was sitting on an Airblade holding a guitar. He had on a pair of leather slippers and a white button-up that was one size too tight. When we arrived, the lady was humming the melody of a folk song, and the man was picking random strings. It wasn’t until our food came that they began to walk around and sing.
From where my family and I were sitting, I could smell the disinfectant whenever someone opened the door to the Bitexco tower and stir-fried shallots and green onions at the same time. In my defense, I didn’t have my glasses on, and the TikTok filter that widens my face still pissed me off. And noticing a guy that you think is attractive wasn’t loneliness. It was boredom — my youngest cousin and mother were talking about what he wanted to do in college, while I wanted to talk about maid cafes. Not that anyone would need to know.
Besides the fact that he was wearing sweat shorts, I could tell that he wasn’t Vietnamese because he was sitting alone. Not that we don’t, but eating phở alone on Nguyễn Huệ at 9 pm outside when the restaurant had AC was uncommon, especially when someone was hollering in a language that you couldn’t understand.
By the time I ordered a fresh coconut, the buskers had set the guitar aside and chewed on their stir-fries. I took sips instead of gulps from my coconut because I wanted to pee but didn’t want to walk, all while stealing glances from the guy sitting alone and scrolling. For a while, chatter became ambient, and people sometimes shiver from the revs of motorbike engines.
We paid when the buskers were singing Viet ballads from the 60s for the guy eating alone. He recorded them with his phone and smiled while doing it. The buskers gestured for him to sing with them, but he shook his head. When we were in our Grab home, the melody was still fresh in my head. I knew that melody from one of the Cantonese TV shows I used to watch as a child with my nanny. I wondered if he was Cantonese.