“Let me tell you something about graduate students, Mr.—uh—Long. By the way, are you in the legal profession?”
The answer was dry. “Not exactly.”
“Graduate students. They come and go. Very fast. MS is two years work. A doctorate… well, Elizabeth Macnamara was not headed for the doctoral program. She worked for me: grading papers, coding, handling technical correspondence. I’ve had two students—one per year—in that position since she graduated. No reason I should keep in touch. I’m sorry.”
The last two words alone were addressed to Martha Macnamara, who sat to one side of the two men, between a wooden table piled high with printouts and a neat glass case containing, among other objects of interest, a diploma from Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, a certificate of merit from Advanced Micro Devices, and a gold urn on a marble base with the words DENVER INVITATIONAL 1959 engraved upon the side. She burned with the desire to know what sort of invitation Dr. Peccolo had received from Denver in 1959. She heard his words only distantly.
Mayland Long did not allow the interview to slip from him. “Liz Macnamara was one of the more useful finds among this flowing river of students, was she not?”
Color deepened in the professors flat face and the muscles along his jaw gained sudden prominence. “Just how do you mean that?” he growled. His right hand plucked up a rapidograph pen and closed to a tight fist around it.
Mayland Long retained advantages of pigment and breeding. If this sudden confrontation roused him in any way it was not for the world to know. “I had heard that Miss Macnamara was quite an apt student. And diligent. Not all apprentices are like that, unless things have changed since I was young.”
‘^She was quite competent for the sort of work I had her doing,” admitted Dr. Peccolo, with no great grace. “Which was, as I told you, coding and correspondence. She had marketable skills—at least marketable today, in a society where demand has outstripped the supply of technical expertise, in a computer ghetto like the Santa Clara Valley… I helped her to develop these skills, and I paid her while I did so. I helped her find her first job, with Floyd Rasmussen at FSS, and I advised her against leaving it, when she came to me for advice. She has no cause for complaint.”
Mayland Long regarded him abstractly. “The young woman is not complaining,” he reminded the professor. “She is missing. So she came to you for advice, before leaving FSS?”
Dr. Peccolo nodded once. “It was the last time I heard from her. Over a year ago. She had this idea of going into consultant work. I told her you don’t consult until people are banging on your door. Until you have a reputation.”
“You consult, I imagine, professor.”
“I have a reputation.”
Mr. Long folded his hands amicably. “Her talents were nothing special, then?”
Dr. Peccolo stood up, nearly tipping his chair backwards. “I’m sure we are all rather special,” he stated. “To our mothers.”
Martha stood also, thrusting herself out of her chair with her arms. Slowly she raised her hands to her hips and faced him in this manner. She smiled at the professor who loomed over her. She began to laugh.
“I know how irritating Liz can be,” she said at last. “But you shouldn’t have let her get to you this way. Envy makes big men look so silly.”
Mr. Long was still seated, part of his face hidden by the church steeple of his fingertips touching together in front of his mouth. He watched with interest, perhaps with amusement, as Dr. Peccolo took two steps away from Martha Macnamara’s mirth and flailed behind to catch the falling chair.
As Martha sailed out the office door, Mayland Long rose sinuously to his feet, not touching the arms of the chair. His eyes were caught briefly by the angry glare of Peccolo’s, but slid off toward the diploma case. “Denver, 1959,” he mused. “Chess?”
The answer was grudging. “Softball.”
Mr. Long nodded, thanked the professor for his time, and closed the door quietly behind him.
“Isn’t this interesting?” Martha peered owlishly around her at the table of tinned biscuits, the hand painted linen clan map of Scotland, and the black maw of the fireplace, which emitted a pleasant cold draft into the room. “The London Tea House. Actually it reminds me more of Kent. What do you think?”
Mayland Long’s scrutiny was more circumspect. “I have no objections. Kent will do. Or Sussex. It might even pass for Cornwall. Any shire, borough, or city except London might have germinated such a flower as this.”
Outside the row of glass doors the California sun was shining on tiered pots of geraniums. A young woman passed, wearing a light cotton pinafore and sandals. An immaculate blond toddler clung to her hand. Light from the windows of the passing cars flashed and glinted on the walls in the tea shop. Observing the street outside, Martha thought not of England, but of the Italian Riviera, which she knew only through pictures. Her gaze slid to her companion.
His improbable hands were cupped in the air before him. They steamed. Martha Macnamara was not surprised, for she had seen the blue-patterned Royal Doulton teacup disappear into his clutch.
She was tired and a little depressed, and so felt it incumbent upon her to cheer up Mr. Long. She grasped her own bottle of stout around the neck and held it up. “See that?” She pointed at the tiny, intricate harp on the label. “The original is about 750 years old. It lives at Trinity College in Dublin.”
“I see.” Mr. Long spoke mildly, but his forehead pulled into faint wrinkles and his eyes hooded over. He sighed before he spoke.
“My dear lady,” he began. “I’m sorry our soundings this morning have not been… productive.”
Her eyes widened in opposition to his. “Speak the truth with me, please. They have been very productive. Merely not reassuring.”
“We haven’t found your daughter. In fact, we have run out of leads.”
“We have some history, Mayland! We know she intended to consult—go freelance. We have found two people who have been involved with Liz—one still involved enough to be touchy. In fact…” Here Martha raised her head to heaven. She was a vision in blue with rosy cheeks. “… if we only had Carlo Peccolo tied in that pig skin chair of his, and one hot poker apiece…”
Long grinned, showing his teeth. “Then how would we dispose of him? We couldn’t very well let him go, and I, for one, have lost my taste for long pig. Still, I agree that Dr. Peccolo is a well of information not wholly emptied.” He regarded his cup a while, as though it were the well in question.
“No matter. There are other ways to go about things.” He raised his hands to his mouth and drained the cup.
In this action, his eyes were lowered, his face half hidden. Martha watched and she saw the West melt away from him in the simple intentness of tea. She reminded herself that this man had no business to be here with her this day, engaged in tedious toil, fencing words with unamiable people, measuring miles of hot pavement in search of a young woman he probably had no interest to meet.
She remembered further, distantly, as though out of a story read in childhood, that Mayland Long was a rich man.
She shook her head in dismissal. He told wonderful stories in a wonderful voice. That was far more important. He tended to drowse in the light of the sun—she had seen that twice today: once by the window of his apartment, and once in the car. She recalled his words— “I have always respected warmth and the ability to keep still.” Perhaps he was drowsing now, behind the empty cup, as his elbows rested on the table and the quiet of mid-afternoon filled the shop. He was a man. He got tired. He could be hurt. She thought about that last one: he could be hurt.
Suddenly the specter of parting sprang up her mind, forbidding as the shadow of an axe. She started, and the brown eyes caught her motion. He had not been asleep.
Martha spoke. “I will be concerned when I can do something about this. When my concern will be useful. And I will reach that point. I’m going to find Liz.”
He nodded, accepting
her certainty. “Perhaps it’s time for the police to help.”
“No. Not yet. I don’t feel that.” She pursed her mouth, seeking the words for explanation. She raised her glass and took a long swallow of the black beer. “You see, Liz has never feared God or the devil. When she says she might be in trouble, well, I don’t know with whom. God or the devil.”
“Are the police one of the above?” he inquired, bringing one arm up to rest along the chair back. “Would she have called you into the mess if she were in trouble with the law?”
“I doubt it, Mayland. But I’ve got another reason for hesitating.” Martha frowned, trying to explain. “When Liz was nine she was picked up on Riverside Drive by a policeman who thought she looked lost. She wasn’t, of course; we lived in a building right around the corner on West 106th. But Liz didn’t tell him that. She thought it was none of his business. She spent three hours in the station and never told them who she was or where she lived. Complete stonewall, and just because she was angry. And she didn’t call me, either, though the officers would have been glad to let her use the phone—I only found out about it when she didn’t come home for dinner and I called the police. That’s the kind of person she is.
“Liz’s held a grudge against blue uniforms ever since. She wouldn’t thank me if I reported her missing.”
Long shrugged. His suit jacket rustled, dry as paper. “Then our next step must be to question Floyd Rasmussen of FSS. He may know something about this consultant work she planned.”
“I’m going to do that in the morning,” Martha said, rummaging in her purse. “Perhaps I can .arrange to meet him for lunch.”
“It might be easier if I call, arranging the meeting on some technical pretext.” He broached the subject warily.
The large floral purse shut with a snap. “No, Mayland. I think you’d better not go any deeper into this.”
The dark face drew back. The long hands flattened on the table. “I admit I have intruded into affairs which are not my business, my dear… Martha. But you’ve convinced me there’s an element of danger in this.”
Her head bobbed forcefully. The gray braid threatened to slide. “Yes. That’s exactly why I want you out of it.”
His expression went blank—as blank as it had been when she teased him about the word “Oolong.” Then Mayland Long laughed, a low rumble which ran along the walls of the room, echoed in corners and tangled among the legs of the wooden chairs. The cashier in the corner raised her head. When the laughter subsided, a wide smile remained.
“You are concerned about me? About my respectability perhaps? My personal safety?”
Martha Macnamara’s nostrils flared. She thumped her bag heavily. “Why not? Are you superman? Do you know everything?”
The smile faded. “No. I am not. I do not. I am only Mayland Long, and as I have said before you must tell me what I am to do, and how I am to live my life properly.”
She looked sideways at him, waiting for the punchline.
“Shall I go back to my rooms in the James Herald Hotel and sit there with the pot and the kettle, many books and a bronze dragon, stepping out only to visit Barnes and Noble, and to dine on white linen in the Crystal Room?”
She opened her mouth but did not speak.
“I’ll tell you plainly, Martha, I came to San Francisco waiting for something to happen. Something that was— predicted—for me years ago in Taipei. A sign. An awakening. It is rank superstition on my part to believe in this, perhaps, but as a result of this prophecy I have changed my living, my language, my…” His words died away and his fingers drummed the table top. “I have changed in many ways.” His eyes met hers briefly, then slid away. “It is hard to change when one is old. It’s almost easier to give up and die. Almost.”
“Do you know how to give up?” asked Martha quietly.
“No.” He smiled ruefully and his eyebrows rose like wings. “Is that something I must learn?”
He gave her no time to reply. “But you mustn’t expect me to behave like a Westerner, Martha, just because I speak the language. Nor like a… man of the present.”
Martha leaned forward, peering left and right in conspiratorial fashion, wearing a small, round, Buddha smile. “My dear Mr. Long,” she whispered, “I expect everything and nothing of you. And I wouldn’t be surprised if you rose from this table and flew off among the hanging geraniums. I would assume you had a reason.
“And I assume you had a reason to come to San Francisco, and a reason to park yourself at the James Herald. If you came on the strength of a prophecy, well then, you’re working with clearer goals than most people.”
She drew back an inch, but her gaze didn’t waver. “What are you seeking?”
Mayland Long lifted his head and as he spoke the light struck his face, turning his eyes oak yellow. “Among other things—truth.”
“Among other things!” Martha folded her hands. “What else is there?”
He mimicked her gesture, laughing. “Don’t ask me such a question! I have never been good with paradox. Isn’t it enough for you that I’ve revealed the core of superstition that lies at the heart of this man in a business suit? But I will share with you a thing I have learned—that I am learning even now. I discover that waiting may be accomplished in divers ways. And stillness has many… appearances, as does warmth. Your own sort of stillness, for instance, Martha, can be full of movement, like a tree full of birds. Yet I see it as stillness. And your warmth… Well, that is marvelous, like the color of your eyes.”
She exclaimed involuntarily. “My eyes? Marvelous?”
“Certainly. Blue is a cold color, yet the brighter the sun shines, the more blue is the sky.” He paused, regarding her blue eyes, her blushing face.
“Martha, I am through sitting passive. Realization is not a dove to be coaxed to the hand. It will find one or it will not.
“Besides—what if my chance for understanding has come and gone, unrecognized? What if signs and events of all colors and meaning: joys, sorrows, wonderments— have passed by and are lost because I have been too busy looking for a box with the label ‘truth’ on it? I want to help you find Elizabeth—not because I am altruistic, but because I am curious and alone. I like puzzles and I enjoy your company I think I can be useful, if you will allow me to be.”
She put her hands to the sides of her round head. “I don’t understand half what you’re saying. And what can I answer? You’re using my own arguments against me!”
He shrugged, and the fabric of his suit jacket rustled dryly. It was silk. “You can agree to a collaboration. Together we will find your daughter.”
She touched his hand.
Martha parked in a lot a quarter mile away from the hotel, where the parking was cheaper. They began walking.
San Francisco was ten degrees cooler than the peninsula, though the same dry, Italianate sun shone. A large gull flew past them along Van Ness, strafing the cars. Having just crossed Turk Street, Mayland Long spied something on the sidewalk and bent to pick it up.
It was a red rose bud, its petals disarranged, the stem half torn through where a pin had pulled out. He grunted and smoothed it out as though it were wrinkled cloth. “The rose,” he announced. “Loveliest and most formidable of flowers. Arms of York and Lancaster. In medieval times, symbol of Jesus. Always, it has meant, beauty, love, peace…”
He presented the bud to Martha Macnamara. It lay resting on his long fingers until she scooped it up. She sniffed it and held it up in the light.
“Symbol? What’s a symbol? This is a rose.” She smiled and walked on.
The moment rang for Mayland Long—rang as though the entire sky had become a gong and Martha Macnamara had struck it. He stood still, while the gray stone city reeled about him.
The four words echoed in his head. “This is a rose.” The simple, dumb truth of them announced the universe.
And he stood there for an endless moment—perhaps two or three seconds by the clock—a thin man in a dark suit, rather old
, rather elegant, rather frail, rubbing his thumb along the length of his hand and feeling the memory of a rose.
Then he moved quickly, his eye fixed on the receding blue dress. She knew who he was. She had shown him his own face, reflected in all creation. But did she know who she was? Standing alone and perfect, or standing by him—did she know what she was to him? He snaked forward along the crowded street, burning with a desire to tell her.
Martha Macnamara reached the corner just as the walk sign lit. She did not seem to realize she had left her companion behind, nor that she had redeemed his life. She stepped into the street. A bus pulled into the crosswalk behind her, concealing her from Mayland Longs sight. A black Lincoln stopped at the corner parallel to her path, then turned right into the crosswalk.
Tea with the Black Dragon (v1.4) Page 5