R. MacAvoy - Tea with the Black Dragon

And it was this attitude, more than the fact that the sleeper had thrown off the sheet and lay naked in the light, which impelled Liz Macnamara to close the door again and knock.

“Thank you,” Mr. Long said, stepping out of the door fully clothed. “I’m surprised. I didn’t really expect to fall asleep on that contrivance.”

He glanced behind him at the digital clock, which shone its red numbers silently beside the bed. He felt in his pocket for keys. “Please do me one more favor. I need addresses for both Rasmussen and Threve.”

Her first attempt at a reply choked her. “Do you need to see them? Tonight?”

“I do. But it is not necessary for either of the gentlemen to see me. I want someone to lead me to your mother. Miss Macnamara. It has to be tonight.”

She took a step forwards. “I’ll come too.”

Long frowned. “It has taken me three days to find you, Elizabeth. If I lose you again…”

“You won’t. I want to go with you. I can’t take sitting here alone.” She was two inches taller than Long. Her frosty eyes bore a challenge. “Why should you go out and I stay here?”

“I think it likely Rasmussen or Threve will call to check up on you tonight. If you are not home they may think you have abandoned your mother and run off. Or they may believe you are out to work them mischief, as indeed you would be. Either way I think they will react by killing their hostage.”

Liz’s teeth ground together, but she made no answer. Instead she blundered about in a desk drawer for paper and pencil.

As she wrote she was speaking. “There. Rasmussen lives in Santa Clara. Big house: he used to be married. Threve has an apartment. I drew maps.”

He took the paper and looked at it for twenty seconds. Then he put it down. “Burn this,” he dictated. “And close your address book. Under no circumstances must your colleagues find out you’ve seen me.”

Liz Macnamara was staring at Long’s shirt. Her eyes held sudden doubt. “You’re going burgling like that?”

His left eyebrow rose. “What exactly do you mean, Elizabeth, ‘like that?’ ”

“That shirt almost glows in the dark.”

Inspiration hit Liz Macnamara. Inspiration and the memory of a very thin dark body on the bed. “Wait here,” she commanded. “Don’t go away.”

She returned in two minutes, to find Mr. Long sitting obediently where she had left him. Instead of jeans she was wearing a mint green satin dressing gown. Green was a color that suited her very well.

She carried a bundle. “Here,” she announced. “These are… more appropriate, I think. The sweatshirt is gray, and blue jeans don’t stand out in the dark.”

He rose and said “No.” He said it with great authority.

“Yes. It’s my mother,” she replied.

His face was unyielding.

“What if you have to climb a fence? What if you have to run? If Threve or Rasmussen catch up with you and shoot you, or hit you on the head or something—well that’s a pretty high price for both of us to pay for your vanity.”

“Vanity?” echoed Long. His eyes flashed yellow.

“Vanity,” she insisted, as the clothes slipped from her arms and tumbled to the floor. “Please. For my mother’s sake.”

Mayland Long folded before the urgency in her voice. “You are so much like your mother,” he sighed, stooping to retrieve the outfit. “And I… I am not at all what I was at the beginning of the week.

“They will not fit,” he predicted, as he vanished again into the bedroom.

“They do fit,” she crowed in triumph.

“I admit it,” replied Long. He was a very different seeming man, in faded jeans and a sweatshirt.

He did not look so old, since age generally follows on tailoring. He did not look so terribly well bred, since class follows the same rules. Most obviously, he did not look half as self-satisfied as he had before.

His left hand pulled at his right sleeve, which was too short for his arms.

“I think you look fine!” she stated, surveying all she had done to Mr. Long. “And now there’s nothing white about you.

“Oh! I’m sorry.”

He laughed. His teeth denied her words. “What would you have done had I had the coloring of Mr. Rasmussen? Or your own fairness,” he added, his gaze halted on the young woman’s face.

“Shoe polish,” she replied, smiling for the first time since he had met her.

He transferred his wallet to his jeans pocket. “Ah! While I remember, Elizabeth.”

“Liz.”

“Liz. Yes. You are supposed to surrender that letter tomorrow. Don’t. Create a copy and give Rasmussen that.”

“That can’t work. I thought of it already Rasmussen knows I wrote the letter on an 8080 text processor at RasTech. I can’t get back to copy it without being seen.”

He was stopped by this, and stood motionless for half a minute. “Then I have to return by dawn tomorrow. If I haven’t found your mother yet, I’ll have a copy of that letter for you to surrender.”

“How will you do that?”

“I’ll print one,” he replied confidently.

“You… know how to use the system?”

His gesture was reassuring. “That’s no problem. But if dawn comes and I fail to show…”

“No!” she cried out. Then she spoke more reasonably. “What do I do if you fail to show?”

“Go to the police.”

“But they’ll kill her! Threve said if the police showed up anywhere around…” She put her hand to her mouth and bit down, so that she would not start shaking again.

Mayland Long stepped closer. One hand against her yellow hair pulled her head gently to his shoulder. He could feel her body tremble. Slowly and clearly he whispered in her ear. “Elizabeth, these men intend to kill your mother. Only if there is no one left alive who knows, can they escape suspicion.”

The trembling died away. She mumbled something that was lost into the fabric of Long’s shirt.

“I didn’t hear that,” he whispered, suddenly conscious of her hair against his face and her warm, moist breath on his neck.

Liz Macnamara took one step back and stood alone. “I said I know. They intend to kill mother as soon as they can kill me. And they’ll do that as soon as they have the letter. I’m not even sure she’s alive now. I asked to hear her voice and Floyd said later.”

“She’s alive,” said Long. “I’m sure of it.”

She didn’t ask him to explain his certainty. “But what shall I do till you come back? To help, I mean.”

He smiled. “Sleep, if you can. If not, then drink Scotch. Or pray. Survive in your own way; I can’t know what’s best for you, Elizabeth.

“ ’Til morning,” he concluded, bowing slightly. He flicked off the light and pulled wide the courtyard window. Cold mist from the fountain blew in with the breeze. There was no sound from the gulls asleep in the grass.

Martha Macnamara awoke with a miserable aching nose. It felt as though it had been stuffed for two weeks straight. Her hands were cramped; she must have been lying on them. There was something else bothering her as well; it took her a few confused minutes to figure out what that was.

“Oh!” she cried out. “I have to go to the bathroom.” She opened her eyes, and the results were so unpleasant she closed them again. The ceiling had looked so ugly, and it swept by with unsettling speed. The spinning ceiling was mere dizziness, of course, like the time she had had her wisdom teeth pulled. And the ugliness must be a result of nausea; dizziness and nausea always went together.

But why was she nauseated? Why dizzy? And why couldn’t she place that ceiling she had glimpsed, with its acoustic tile and round fluorescent lights?

Where was she? Where should she be?