R. MacAvoy - Tea with the Black Dragon

“Certainly. My schedule is not crowded; if I am not in my rooms, you can leave a message at the desk.”

His voice pulled at her once again as she turned to leave the table. “Mrs. Macnamara. Why so early? Why five o’clock?”

“I sit,” she called back. “Zazen.”

Mayland Long stood alone beside the empty cups. “Zazen?” he whispered to himself. His dark face was lit with an amusement which grew and deepened.

The bartender stopped her on the stair. “Mr. Trough,” she greeted him, and continued walking.

“Jerry,” he corrected. “Can you spare two minutes?”

“Just about,” Martha smiled, and putting the key to her door, she ushered the young man in.

Martha’s rooms were not the largest nor the most opulent in the James Herald Hotel. Had Martha herself made the reservations, they would have been the cheapest. As it was, she had a bed-sitting room with three chairs, all of which were too large and too soft to be comfortable and a canopy bed that dwarfed her.

Jerry Trough was still clutching a damp bar towel in one hand. He sought for a place to put it down, rejecting the walnut table, the quilted satin spread, the brocade seat of a side chair. At last he dropped it to the carpet, where it lay by an open suitcase which spilled over with white cotton underwear and paperback books. He cleared his throat.

“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.