Tea with the Black Dragon (v1.4)

by R. A. MacAvoy

  “I saw you leave the dining room and wanted to catch you before you turned in. It’s about the man I introduced to you tonight.”

  She turned quickly, leaning her hip against the Chippendale reproduction dresser. “Mr. Long? Yes, we talked an hour away. What about him?”

  “What did you think of him?” She smiled at the impudence of the question. “I found him informative and entertaining. Not to mention exotic. I may have supper with him tomorrow.”

  “Watch out,” mumbled the bartender. “I know. He can be a real—actor, and all. Loads of fun. He’s a friend of mine, too, in a way.” Trough shifted from foot to foot.

  “Just ‘in a way?’ “ Her eyebrows lifted interrogatively.

  Trough shrugged. “Okay. He is a friend. But I ask you to be careful, Martha. I don’t think he’s quite all there.”

  “Mr. Long?” Her voice rose in consternation. “I’ve rarely met anyone more—more there. More present, I mean.” She glared at the bartender. “If the man is schizophrenic or something like that, why did you introduce me to him?”

  As though Martha’s outrage had shaken the starch out of him. Jerry Trough sat down on the edge of the bed. His eyes darted about the room and he laced his hands together. “I told you why Because of the violin. And because you’re a lot alike in other ways.”

  “Oh. I’m a nut too?” Martha’s eyes went even wider, and she put her hands on her hips.

  The young man sighed and ran his fingers through his curly black hair. “Of course not. You take me wrong. What I mean is that you both seem to like… conversation. Have large vocabularies. And you’re both alone —you because you just got here, and he because… he just is.

  “And when I see you get excited about little things. Like the way you talked about racing the sun in the airplane and almost winning except you had to stop at the end of the country Well, Mr. Long’s like that too; he’s got these old, falling apart books of Chinese poetry he says nobody’s ever translated before, and he brings them to the bar and sets them down and scribbles in little notebooks. He gets excited about it, but I never hear about his translations getting printed anywhere, so I don’t know…

  “I used to think he was really stuffy until I noticed that half of everything he said was a pun or a joke. You’re somewhere around the same age… I think…” Here Trough’s words faded. He knew himself to be treading shaky ground on the subject of age.

  “So I thought he’d interest you—to talk to for a few minutes. But Mr. Long… I want you to know if you get him drunk,” Trough said, “Old Mr. Long will tell you that he used to be a dragon. And he’s not joking around when he says it.”

  Martha pushed off from the dresser and came to stand beside the awkward young man. On her face a triumphant smile was blossoming.

  Trough regarded his own feet as he continued. “He told” me he used to be ten yards long and solid black, with a head like a chrysanthemum. Not any other flower—he insisted it was a chrysanthemum. He also thought it was important I knew that he had had five toes on each foot. As a dragon, that is.”

  The worry had cleared from Martha’s brow. “Oh!” she breathed. “I see. Well, Jerry, me boy. This night he told me that he was personally acquainted with Thomas Rhymer.”

  “Or at least knew his son,” truth compelled her to add.

  Trough stared blankly. “And he doesn’t?”

  “Not likely. But don’t you see where his head is at, when he says things like that?”

  “No. Where?” She gestured in the air above her head, as though calling all available Muses to her aid. “Why he’s… exercising a scholarly imagination. He’s smashing the world, to recreate it in his own pattern. That man is an artist, and conversation is his medium. If he appears a bit crazy it’s only because he’s too much alone,” she concluded. “I understand him. Or I think I do. I can’t explain any better than that.” Her blue eyes stared at the carpet, the pile of books, the wet bar towel…

  The bartender stood up. “Still, be careful, Martha. They found a body in the hall last year, in front of his door.”

  Martha Macnamara took Trough’s place on the bed. It bounced. “What? A body? Whose?”

  “The dead guy was a junkie, I heard. Police record long as your arm. No loss to San Francisco, I guess, but that was just a freaky way to end him, you know? No marks, no blood, just his neck bone snapped. Coroner decided he fell, but why he was there in the first place, and why he should fall so hard he broke his neck…” Here the bartender stopped portentously.

  “So you think poor Mr. Long is a secret killer, do you? He’s part Chinese—perhaps he knows some deadly Oriental way to kill a man from behind a wooden door. Perhaps he’s the head of a Tong!” Eyes flashing, Martha rose to her feet.

  “I rather like old Mr. Long,” she stated. “He may tell me that he used to be a dragon, or will be a dragon come Tuesday next, or that he actually is a dragon underneath his suit jacket and white shirt-front. I will try to receive such a confidence in the spirit in which it is given.”

  She paused for breath, and her bright outrage flowed away from her. She regarded the bartender more calmly. “And I doubt very much that you’ll find me in the hallway outside his door, dead with no marks of violence.”

  Mr. Trough shrugged an ineloquent shrug. “Sure. You’re safe, I guess. Besides, he never drinks much with dinner.” Martha’s irritated frown sent Trough out the door.

  She put her face between the panels of the drape and rested her forehead against cool glass. Outside the city swept twinkling north and west to the sea. No snow. Also no fog.

  That little interview had almost ruined her mood. She decided she wouldn’t let it. After all, she was in San Francisco neither to fight nor frolic, but to talk to Liz, who evidently had problems and wanted her advice. Martha had been able to give her daughter little enough as a child—surely she could now spare a week and a little maternal concern. Regardless of impudent bartenders. Regardless of fascinating men.

  Where was Liz’s apartment? San Mateo. That was south. Behind the hotel. She could not play the game of pretending to locate her daughter among the lights below.

  Was Liz nervous also? Sleepless? Afraid of the interview for which she’d called her mother clear across the continent? That would be unlike Liz. She was probably sleeping soundly, believing her mother was getting in on a late flight. Or she could be out on a date, or what was most likely of all, at work amid a clatter of computers. Liz would get in touch.

  She turned from the window and yawned. Her thoughts returned to the man she had met tonight. What a wonderful voice. Impossible hands. And that strange hybrid face, falling in and out of shadow.

  It was easier to think of this brief acquaintance than it was to think of her daughter. Easier and more fun.

  She caught a glimpse of herself in the dresser mirror. One of her braids was falling over her ear. She shook her head dubiously at her image. She could not see herself a remarkable beauty.

  Yet Mr. Long—she felt—liked her. He knew who she was. He was interested to know more. Her gaze searched the mirror.

  So he has an old 78 and a good memory—the mirror told her. And he likes an audience. Her shoulders sagged as she kicked off her shoes.

  But in five seconds this depression also vanished, swept away in the tides of Martha’s good humor. She threw off the tweed suit and stepped out of her underwear. Stark naked, she dialed the switchboard and asked for a wake-up call at five.

  In darkness, leaning against a wall of red brocade, Mayland Long waited for the elevator. He smiled, and his teeth glinted in the greenish light of the control buttons.

  Zen… to have come so far, to this stone city where the ocean was on the wrong side of the sun, to wait and watch himself age with cruel speed, foreign in form, in speech, in feeling… Here to find again the trace of his own interminable, floundering search. And in such unlikely shape as that of Martha Macnamara.

  Ch’an.

  There was that odor about her: not a
sweetness, exactly, but a wildness suggesting breezes that have touched cold water and living wood. The air surrounding Martha Macnamara was charged with… reality. Unpronounceable reality: Long could feel her reality against his face like sunlight or rain. Her every gesture had spoken to him in certainty, yet she had expressed no opinions, leaving such pronouncements to him.

  Martha had something which drew him to her, like a wondering beast to the fires of men. She had what he lacked, in her laughter, her simplicity, her quick passions, her certainty. It was the taste of existence—of being.

  It was the Tao.

  His breath escaped slowly between his teeth. He wanted to see her again, and feared chance would not allow it. Out of habit he tamped down that desire, attempting to snuff it before it could do him harm. He would see her or he would not; pain was irrelevant to the future.

  The elevator shuddered open. It was bright inside, and empty. He stepped in and pressed the button for the seventh floor. Memories competed with the drum of the motor.

  Old hands. The smell of rain—the smell of Ch’an. Quiet words in rough Cantonese. “I am not to be your master. Your master has to be stronger than you are—has to tell you you are a fool and make you to know it. And make you feel content in being a fool. How could I do that for you? I’m old. You are too strong for me; you are full of chi.” The old man had paused then, huddled against the wind while clouds thickened above them.

  “I will tell you this. Long,” he continued. “Before you find yourself you will lose your chi. Also you will leave behind you all pride of body, pride of mind. You will be reduced. Like me.” The old man closed his eyes, and rain began to beat against his gray, crew-cut hair. He pulled his coat closer. Suddenly his eyes snapped open and he looked Long in the face.

  “You must leave China. Go across the ocean. There you will meet your master.” He set down his teacup with a palsied hand. His voice rose, grew fierce.

  “I tell you this, most honored and impressive visitor. You are a fool, yes, but you will find the very thing you seek. You will find truth!”

  Mayland Long stepped out of the elevator. The words of the old man faded. They had been polished by repetition in his mind ‘til they gleamed gray; links of iron, beads on a chain. They were a string of beads that

  Long told daily, while he waited and studied and thought.

  He yawned and felt for his key. He didn’t want to think any more. He’d rather tell stories to Martha.

  Chapter 2

  The James Herald Hotel stood on a high slope of Nob Hill. The sea wind broke upon it like the Pacific broke over the shore rocks that were visible from the hotel’s upper windows. It was built of brick, but its ground floor was encased with brass and varnished teak. All its myriad windows were shining. The James Herald was not the oldest of the great San Francisco hotels and it was not the largest. It was, however, old enough and large enough. In Martha Macnamara’s opinion, it was quite expensive enough, also.

  The cut glass doors to the dining room stood open. An August evening light, admitted through the tall leaded windows beyond, filtered into the hallway where she stood. The angles in the glass doors cut the light sharply. The crystal chandeliers, too, sparkled painfully sharp and exact this evening. Tiny pendants emitted a spectrum of color. They would provide her no soft visions of snow tonight.

  She sought around the room, among the glistening white circles of linen, looking for a man alone. There were few of those; the Crystal Room was not a place where one ate alone.

  Yet he did. Mr. Long lived at the James Herald Hotel and took his meals in the dining room. Both these things were very strange. Martha could bring to mind places in San Francisco where she would rather eat—Henry

  Africa, where the window was gilt with the motto Vive la mort, vive la guerre, vive la legion etrangere, and young men, brittle and elegant, stood warily around the door, or the fast-food stall in Japantown, where the cookies were pressed in the shape of a fish. And Martha had only arrived in the city yesterday. Eating in the Crystal Room’s icy splendor every evening didn’t say much for Mr. Long. Where was he, anyway? Had she been stood up twice in one day?

  As she passed between the glass doors, a dark shape welled out of the shadows. “Ah!” she began, but it was not Mayland Long, but the Maitre d’. “I’m just looking for someone,” she explained, as the man bowed stiffly from the waist, like a bird. She restrained an impulse to return the bow.

  “Mrs. Macnamara?” he addressed her. “Please come with me.”

  She followed, her eyebrows drawn down and together. Martha Macnamara did not like being known to people whom she did not know. It made her feel unpleasantly like a child. She contemplated asking the Maitre d’ his name, but if she did that she was certain he would give her his first name alone, and she would then have to insist he call her Martha. And she did not really want to be called Martha by this man, who would then continue to call all other customers by their surnames. She remained silent.

  Mayland Long sat at a table beneath a window full of sky. It was a very good table, and its desirability impressed upon Martha that Mr. Long was a wealthy man.

  He rose from his seat as he saw her approach, and he too bowed to her. Mrs. Macnamara lost all restraint. Placing her palms together she bowed in turn. The Maitre d’ held her chair.

  She greeted him with a smile. “Wonderful weather, today,” she began. “Clear and crisp.”

  Affably, he nodded. “Of course. The rainy season hasn’t started yet.”

  “Did I scandalize the poor man with my gassho?” she asked, as soon as they were alone.

  He responded slowly, as though she had broached a subject of some depth. “Scandalize? How can one scandalize a maitre d’hotel? Such a man has seen it all before. And if one did succeed in subjecting him to scandal, I don’t believe his face would express his condition. Did you intend to scandalize Jean-Pierre?”

  The voice was the same. Her memory had not added quality. “No. But I can take only so much bowing before I bow back. Is he really Jean-Pierre?”

  He considered the question. “To the best of my knowledge he is. Jean-Pierre Burrell. Father of five. Canadian by birth. I believe he has managed the floor in the Crystal Room for over ten years.”

  Mr. Long leaned back in his chair and regarded his dinner companion. Sunlight fell slanting across his face.

  His eyes, she thought. Last night she had seen them as solid black-brown. Chinese eyes. Today they were not opaque. Light entered the iris and was trapped in it, glowing. Almost amber, like the sun through a beer bottle.

  And he was letting her see him—hands, face and all. He did not court mystery. Martha was very glad of this; she had no patience with mystery.

  “I am very sorry your daughter failed to show,” Mr. Long continued, as he looked in turn at Martha. She was wearing a plain blue dress and her eyes were blue. Sunlight or moonlight, Martha Macnamara’s eyes were always blue. “Is this something one can expect, with her?”

  A frown imprinted itself on her round, innocent features. “No. Not at all. Liz is very—reliable. Almost too much so. She wants things done right. She keeps all her shoes in the pockets of a big plastic bag hanging in her closet. And she believes in independence for women.”

  She stared at the menu with sightless eyes. “That’s why we don’t get along, I guess.”

  Mr. Long smiled slowly. “You don’t approve of your daughters views, Mrs. Macnamara? I would have thought a lady of such independent spirit…”

  She waved his words aside. “Oh, no. I approve of Liz. I wouldn’t dare do otherwise. It’s she who disapproves of me.”

  His eyebrows drew together. “Then I am at a loss. Please explain.”

  She drew a deep breath as her fingers played with her water glass. It was cut crystal, of course.

  “Liz disapproved of my cutting off my—my musical career to raise a child.”

  Delight etched Mr. Long’s lean face. “A child? Do you mean Elizabeth herself?”

&nbs
p; “Exactly. She feels she is a sort of involuntary accomplice in my oppression. And, she feels I caved in, when I should have fought.”

  “How should you have fought?” He leaned forward, hands wrapped together on the table.

  He can’t be more than sixty, considered Mrs. Macnamara. Probably younger, though it’s so hard to tell with Eurasians. Too young to retire. Too young to live in a hotel and eat in the Crystal Room every night.

  “I should have continued in the job I was educated for, playing Bach and Berlioz in long dresses. I should have left her with a nanny, or even had an abortion, though that was a very different story in those days.