Ed McBain - Three Blind Mice

If he made love to Mai Chim tonight, it would be rape.

Everything that goes around comes around.

They had reached the condo she lived in on Sabal Key. Zoning restrictions out here, since changed, had kept the condos at a maximum five-story height. You could actually see the ocean beyond them. He pulled into a space marked visitors and turned off the ignition and the lights.

“Will you come up for a night hat?” she asked.

This was not inebriation, this was merely an unfamiliarity with the language. And where there is no common language, she’d said, there is suspicion. And mistakes. Many mistakes. On both sides . He wondered if he was about to make a mistake now. But he thought of something else she’d said, the last time he’d seen her, Is that why you want to go to bed with me? Because I’m Asian? And he wondered about that, too, while the question hung between them in the silence of the rented car, Will you come up for a night hat? , and he thought. No, Mai Chim, I don’t think I’ll come up for a night hat, not tonight while you’re feeling all that booze and maybe not any night because yes, I think maybe that’s why I do want to go to bed with you, only because you’re Asian and I’ve never been to bed with an Asian. And that’s no reason to go to bed with anyone , not if I plan to look at myself in the mirror tomorrow morning.

“I have an early day tomorrow,” he said. “Can I take a rain check?”

A puzzled look crossed her face. She was unfamiliar with the expression.

“Rain check,” he said, and smiled. “That means some other time.”

She kept looking into his face.

“I’ll walk you up,” he said gently.

He came around to the other side of the car, opened the door for her, and then offered her his hand. She came out of the car unsteadily, looking a trifle disoriented and somewhat surprised to find herself home already. He put his arm around her to support her. She leaned into him.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

At the front door, she searched in her handbag for a key, inserted it in the lock, turned to him, looked up into his face again, and said, “Will there really be some other time, Matthew?”

“I hope so,” he said.

And wondered if he meant it.

Warren’s car was sitting at the curb outside his house. Warren was sitting behind the wheel, asleep. The window on the driver’s side was down. Matthew reached in and gently touched his shoulder. Warren jumped up with a start, his hand going under his jacket to a shoulder holster. A very large pistol suddenly appeared in his hand.

“Hey!” Matthew shouted, and backed off.

“Sorry, you scared me.”

“ I scared you , huh?”

Warren bolstered the pistol and got out of the car. They went up the front walk together. Matthew unlocked the door and snapped on the lights.

“Something to drink?” he asked.

“A little scotch, please, no ice,” Warren said. “Can I use your phone a minute?”

“Sure. On the wall there.”

Matthew looked at the clock. A quarter past ten. He wondered if he should call Mai Chim, apologize or something. But for what? At the kitchen counter, Warren was already dialing. Matthew went to the dropleaf bar, lowered the front panel, and poured some Black Label into a low glass. He wondered if he felt like a martini. He wondered if he’d done the right thing tonight. Warren was talking to someone named Fiona. Matthew wondered if she was black. Fiona? Could be Irish. Fiona was an Irish name, wasn’t it? He wondered if Warren was sleeping with her. If she was Irish, if she was white, was Warren sleeping with her only because she was white? He wondered. Back in Chicago…

Back in Chicago, in his high-school English class, there’d been a gloriously beautiful black girl named Ophelia Blair. And he’d taken her to the movies one night, and for ice-cream sodas later, and then he’d led her into his father’s multipurpose Oldsmobile, and he’d driven her to a deserted stretch of road near the football field and plied her with kisses, his hand fumbling under her skirt, pleading with her to let him “do it” because he’d never in his life “done it” with a black girl.

Never mind that at the age of seventeen he’d never done it with a white girl, either. His supreme argument was that she was black and he was white and oh what a glorious adventure awaited them if only she’d allow him, a latter-day Stanley exploring Africa, to lower her panties and spread her lovely legs. It never occurred to him that he was reducing her to anonymity, denying her very Ophelia-ness, equating her with any other black girl in the world, expressing desire for her only because she was black and not merely herself , whoever that might have been, the person he had not taken the slightest amount of trouble to know. He was baffled when she pulled down her skirt and tucked her breasts back into her brassiere and buttoned her blouse, and asked him very softly to take her home, please. He asked her out a dozen times after that, and she always refused politely.

Chicago.

A long time ago.

He had not made that same mistake tonight.

He had not denied Mai Chim her selfness.

But he wondered if she realized this.

“Whenever I’m done here, Fiona,” Warren said into the phone.

Fiona.

White? Black? Vietnamese?

Ophelia Blair had been very black, a truly beautiful girl. He wondered where she was now, what she was doing. He suspected she had grown up to be an extravagantly beautiful woman. He imagined her living in a luxurious home on Lake Shore Drive. She would be hostessing a formal dinner party, the men in tuxedos, the women in long, shimmering gowns. Ophelia Blair. Who, once upon a time, he’d hurt severely.

He turned his back toward the kitchen counter, where Warren was still on the telephone, and began mixing himself a martini. Had he similarly and stupidly and for exactly the opposite reason hurt Mai Chim tonight? Had he made yet another damn mistake? In trying to do the right thing, had he done the absolutely wrong thing? He dropped an olive into the glass. And another one.

“Warren,” he said, “are you almost finished there?”

“Right this second,” Warren said, and then, into the phone, “See you later,” and hung up.

“There’s one call I have to make,” Matthew said, and carried his martini to the telephone in the study. He took a sip of the drink, pulled the phone to him, and dialed Mai Chim’s number. She answered on the fourth ring.

“Hello?” she said.

“Mai Chim?”

“Yes?”

“It’s Matthew.”

“Oh, hello, Matthew.”

“Are you all right?”

“Yes,” she said. “But drunk.”

“Well, maybe a little tipsy.”

“What’s that? Tipsy?”

“Drunk,” he said.

They both laughed.

And suddenly the laughter stopped. And there was silence on the line.

“Thank you for not hurting me,” she said.

He wondered if she knew what she was saying. Wondered if the English word hurt meant to her what it meant to him. Because he felt he had hurt her. Stupidly and foolishly hurt her.

And where there is no common language, there is suspicion. And mistakes. Many mistakes. On both sides.

“Matthew, did someone pay the check?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said. “You did.”

“Oh, thank God , I couldn’t remember. I thought, oh boy, he’s my guest and I let him pay for it.”

Oh boy. So alien on her tongue. So completely charming.

“I drank too much,” she said. “I’m not used to drinking so much.”

“Please don’t worry about it,” he said.