R. MacAvoy - Tea with the Black Dragon

“Are you badly hurt?” Her hands blundered through the darkness. Found him.

“It’s bandaged,” said Mr. Long. One slim hand touched his injured shoulder. He enclosed it in his own hand and put it gently aside. “We have other things to worry about, now.”

“I’m sorry,” Elizabeth repeated helplessly. “If I had not gotten involved with Rasmussen in the first place…”

“If any one of an infinite number of events had not happened in their sequence, the present would be a different place.” He yawned. The trunk was getting warmer.

“Elizabeth, blame is a useless gesture. Regret is worse. Yet I regret that I am so weak and weary I may not be able to break the lock of the boot.”

As he spoke his fingers tapped against metal, seeking the point of attachment.

“Break the lock? Of course you can’t. It’s steel.”

“I can do a few parlor tricks,” Long said drily. “Even against steel. But now…” He flattened his hand against the top of the rear wall of their prison.

“Ugh! I have nothing to brace against.”

“Here.” She put her back to the far wall and her hands pushed against the middle of his back.

“I think your bones would give before the steel lock,” said Long, and at that moment the car turned right, rising onto two wheels, and the two of them were flung sideways and into one another’s arms.

The intimacy was involuntary, and lasted only as long as the turn that caused it. When it was over the dark air was filled with silence. Then Long began to laugh.

It was a heavy, deep, spontaneous laughter, incongruous in a man so slight and lean, impossible from a man so injured. Mr. Long’s laughter was like the cool thunder of a summers afternoon and Liz Macnamara found herself smiling in the middle of her dread.

“Ah! Elizabeth. It’s a very odd thing, to be a man.”

His words challenged her and she found herself replying, “I’ve often thought so myself, but of course my knowledge is secondhand.”

Without warning Long slammed the palm of his hand against the trunk lid. The lock snapped and a crack of light penetrated their prison. “Easier than I expected,” he said.

Elizabeth wasted no time in compliments. She peered through the crack. “We’re on 280,” she stated. “Going north.”

“Where is the Caroline docked?”

“North Beach. The marinas down here couldn’t accommodate her.” She settled back. “What are we going to do?”

Pushing with his feet against the trunk wall. Long edged closer. “We wait for an opportunity to jump.”

“Out of a moving car?”

“When it stops, preferably.” She saw a gleam of teeth in the darkness.

“You’ve never driven with Floyd Rasmussen,” she retorted, feeling stung. Remembering the earlier interchange, she added, “What did you mean—when you said wasn’t it funny to be a man?”

For a moment he did not respond, but rolled from his side to his back and lay staring at the metal ceiling. “I was referring to the species, not the sex. A man is an unusual being. He is capable of tremendous precision of thought. What is more, he creates—languages, philosophies, poetry… In short, he is the paragon of the animals. Yet he is so eminently—what is the right word?—distractable. During the most concentrated moments he may—no he will—float off like a butterfly and scatter all he has gained. Yet this is not a flaw in man, I think. This is what makes him man. And I must believe there is a value in that.”

“Are you talking about me, or mankind in general?” she asked in a small, hurt voice.

He turned toward her. “I am talking about myself, Elizabeth.” Seeing doubt in her face he continued, “You see, I have always been a collector—a hoarder of other people’s ideas. I was not creative by nature. Not— distractable. It wasn’t in me. But lately I have learned what it is to be human. Learned, but not understood. It seems to involve a great deal of misery crammed into a very short lifetime.”

His voice was urgent, almost demanding, as he looked into Liz’s eyes. “Why is that?” he asked.

“You’re asking me?”

“Why not you, Elizabeth? You are human. Also, you may be the last person I will be able to ask.”

She smiled and touched his face. “You should have asked my mother. I think she knew the answer to that.”

“Ah, but I wasted my time in lesser matters. Though perhaps she told me after all.” He shook his head. “I wish I could think more clearly.”

“Your eyes,” she whispered suddenly. “They glow in the dark.”

“I wouldn’t know about that.”

She kissed him. “They do. How did Mother find you?”

Slowly he drew his head back. “We were introduced by a bartender at the James Herald Hotel—the fancy place you yourself paid for, Elizabeth. I live there.”

“Is that how you find clients? Through the bartender?”

He stared a moment, uncomprehending. “Elizabeth. Do you also think I’m a professional detective?”

“You’re not?” Liz Macnamara hit her head against the trunk lid. “Then what are you?”

Mayland Long sighed and smiled. “I am a friend of your mother’s. I have no profession at all, merely sufficient money to live in comfort.”

Being the person she was, Liz Macnamara cried, “To live in comfort! That’s all I’ve ever wanted! How’d you get it?”

He hesitated. The tiny space echoed with road noise. “Out of a hole in the ground,” he said finally.

“Oil?”

“No, Elizabeth. Gold.”

“Oh! How free you must be.”

She heard her own words. “I’m sorry. More sorry than I can say The finest thing in my life was Mother, and because of me she’s dead.” Long shot a glance at her, frowning, hut he held his tongue. “And you…”

“I am not dead yet,” he replied, with a touch of acid. “And in no case do I wish to be added to your list of guilts. I have lived a long time, Elizabeth—longer than any creature on this earth can expect to live. These last years I have spent waiting for the fulfillment of a prophecy.”

“A what?”

“A prophecy And it has been fulfilled. I don’t understand the sense of it, but then it was never said that I would understand—only that I would meet one who could show me the truth, and by that all I possessed I would lose.”

Liz’s eyebrows drew together. “What? Who was that, who could show you the truth, and take everything away…”

“Martha Macnamara showed me a rose.” His words were quiet, almost drowned in the rumble of the engine. His face was turned slightly away.

She stared. “Are—were you in love with my mother?” Elizabeth whispered.

The word struck Long by surprise. “In love?” He considered it.

“Yes,” he answered. “Your mother was the end of my waiting. But even had she not been a master of truth, had she only been the musician, the person she was…”He shook his head vainly “But that’s all one. Yes, I am in love with your mother, Elizabeth. Even now.” His hands laced together over his face, concealing all but his black unreadable eyes.

“I…”

“And if you say you are sorry once more I may throw you out of the car.” He turned his attention to the passing scenery.

“He’s running the lights,” observed Mr. Long.

“That’s what I meant, about Floyd’s driving. He never obeys the rules if he thinks he can get away with it. And he always speeds.”

“We’re now on Nineteenth Avenue, Elizabeth. Perhaps if I prop the boot open you can roll out at a corner.”

“He’ll see!”

“All the better. In order to prevent us, he would have to stop the car, and I am confident I could delay him while you run.”

“My legs are both asleep. To the knees.”