Little Richard, and Roy Orbison.
    At a stoplight in Laguna Beach, he pulled beside a classic Corvette: a silver 1963 
Sting Ray with boat-tail rear end and split rear window. The driver, an aging surfer type 
with blond hair and a walrus moustache, looked at the new aqua ‘vette and then at Tommy. 
Tommy made a circle of his thumb and forefinger, letting the stranger know that the Sting 
Ray was a fine machine, and the guy replied with a smile and a thumbs-up sign, which made 
Tommy feel like part of a secret club.
    As the end of the century approached, some people said that the American dream was 
almost extinguished and that the California dream was ashes. Nevertheless, for Tommy Phan 
on this wonderful autumn afternoon, the promise of his country and the promise of the 
coast were burning bright.
    The sudden swooping shadow and the inexplicable chill were all but forgotten.
    He drove through Laguna Beach and Dana Point to San Clemente, where at last he turned 
and, as twilight fell, headed north again. Cruising aimlessly. He was getting a feel for 
the way the Corvette handled. Weighing three thousand two hundred and ninety-eight 
pounds, it hugged the pavement, low and solid, providing sports car intimacy with the 
road and incomparable responsive-ness. He wove through a number of tree-lined residential 
streets merely to confirm that the Corvette’s curb-to-curb turning diameter was forty 
feet, as promised.
    Entering Dana Point from the south this time, he switched off the radio, picked up 
his cellular phone, and called his mother in Huntington Beach. She answered on the second 
ring, speaking Vietnamese, although she had immigrated to the United States twenty-two 
years ago, shortly before the fall of Saigon, when Tommy had been only eight years old. 
He loved her, but sometimes she made him crazy.
    ‘Hi, Mom.’
    ‘Tuong?’ she said.
    ‘Tommy,’ he reminded her, for he had not used his Vietnamese name for many years. 
Phan Tran Tuong had long ago become Tommy Phan. He meant no disrespect for his family, 
but he was far more American now than Vietnamese.
    His mother issued a long-suffering sigh because she would have to use English. A year 
after they arrived from Vietnam, Tommy had insisted that he would speak only English; 
even as a little kid, he had been determined to pass eventually for a native-born 
American.
    ‘You sound funny,’ she said with a heavy accent.
    ‘It’s the cellular phone.’
    ‘Whose phone?’
    ‘The car phone.’
    ‘Why you need car phone, Tuong?’
    ‘Tommy. They’re really handy, couldn’t get along without one. Listen, Mom, guess 
what-’
    ‘Car phones for big shots.’
    ‘Not anymore. Everybody’s got one.’
    ‘I don’t. Phone and drive too dangerous.’ Tommy sighed - and was slightly rattled by 
the reali-zation that his sigh sounded exactly like his mother’s. ‘I’ve never had an 
accident, Mom.’
    ‘You will,’ she said firmly.
    Even with one hand, he was able to handle the Corvette with ease on the long 
straightaways and wide sweeps of the Coast Highway. Rack and pinion steering with power 
assist. Rear-wheel drive. Four-speed automatic transmission with torque converter. He was 
gliding.
    His mother changed the subject: ‘Tuong, haven’t seen you in weeks.’
    ‘We spent Sunday together, Mom. This is only Thurs-day.’
    They had gone to church together on Sunday. His father was born a Roman Catholic, and 
his mother converted before marriage, back in Vietnam, but she also kept a small Buddhist 
shrine in one corner of their living room. There was usually fresh fruit on the red 
altar, and sticks of incense bristled from ceramic holders.
    ‘You come to dinner?’ she asked.
    ‘Tonight? Gee, no, I can’t. See, I just-’
    ‘We have com tay cam.’
    ‘-just bought-’
    ‘You remember what is com tay cam - or maybe forget all about your mother’s cooking?’
    ‘Of course, I know what it is, Mom. Chicken and rice in a clay pot. It’s delicious.’
    ‘Also having shrimp and watercress soup. You remem-ber shrimp and watercress soup?’
    ‘I remember, Mom.’
    Night was creeping over the coast. Above the rising land to the east, the heavens 
were black and stippled with stars. To the west, the ocean was inky near the shore, 
striped with the silvery foam of incoming breakers, but indigo toward the horizon, where 
a final blade of bloody sunlight still cleaved the sea from the sky.
    Cruising through the falling darkness, Tommy did feel a little bit like a god, as Jim 
Shine had promised. But he was unable to enjoy it because, at the same time, he felt too 
much like a thoughtless and ungrate-ful son.
    His mother said, ‘Also having stir fry celery, carrots, cabbage, some peanuts - very 
good. My Nuoc Mam sauce.’
    ‘You make the best Nuoc Mam in the world, and the best com tay cam, but I-’
    ‘Maybe you got wok there in car with phone, you can drive and cook at same time?’
    In desperation he blurted, ‘Mom, I bought a new Corvette!’
    ‘You bought phone and Corvette?’
    ‘No, I’ve had the phone for years. The-’
    ‘What’s this Corvette?’
    ‘You know, Mom. A car. A sports car.’
    ‘You bought sports car?’
    ‘Remember, I always said if I was a big success some day-’
    ‘What sport?’
    ‘Huh?’
    ‘Football?’
    His mother was stubborn, more of a traditionalist than was the Queen of England, and 
set in her ways, but she was not thick-headed or uninformed. She knew perfectly well what 
a sports car was, and she knew what a Corvette was, because Tommy’s bedroom walls had 
been papered with pictures of them when he was a kid. She also knew what a Corvette meant 
to Tommy, what it symbolized; she sensed that, in the Corvette, he was moving still 
farther away from his ethnic roots, and she disapproved. She wasn’t a screamer, however, 
and she wasn’t given to scolding, so the best way she could find to register her 
disapproval was to pretend that his car and his behaviour in general were so bizarre as 
to be virtually beyond her understanding.
    ‘Baseball?’ she asked.
    ‘They call the colour “bright aqua metallic.” It’s beauti-ful, Mom, a lot like the 
colour of that vase on your living-room mantel. It’s got-’
    ‘Expensive?’
    ‘Huh? Well, yeah, it’s a really good car. I mean, it doesn’t cost what a Mercedes-’
    ‘Reporters all drive Corvettes?’