R. MacAvoy - Tea with the Black Dragon

She turned from the window and yawned. Her thoughts returned to the man she had met tonight. What a wonderful voice. Impossible hands. And that strange hybrid face, falling in and out of shadow.

It was easier to think of this brief acquaintance than it was to think of her daughter. Easier and more fun.

She caught a glimpse of herself in the dresser mirror. One of her braids was falling over her ear. She shook her head dubiously at her image. She could not see herself a remarkable beauty.

Yet Mr. Long—she felt—liked her. He knew who she was. He was interested to know more. Her gaze searched the mirror.

So he has an old 78 and a good memory—the mirror told her. And he likes an audience. Her shoulders sagged as she kicked off her shoes.

But in five seconds this depression also vanished, swept away in the tides of Martha’s good humor. She threw off the tweed suit and stepped out of her underwear. Stark naked, she dialed the switchboard and asked for a wake-up call at five.

In darkness, leaning against a wall of red brocade, Mayland Long waited for the elevator. He smiled, and his teeth glinted in the greenish light of the control buttons.

Zen… to have come so far, to this stone city where the ocean was on the wrong side of the sun, to wait and watch himself age with cruel speed, foreign in form, in speech, in feeling… Here to find again the trace of his own interminable, floundering search. And in such unlikely shape as that of Martha Macnamara.

Ch’an.

There was that odor about her: not a sweetness, exactly, but a wildness suggesting breezes that have touched cold water and living wood. The air surrounding Martha Macnamara was charged with… reality. Unpronounceable reality: Long could feel her reality against his face like sunlight or rain. Her every gesture had spoken to him in certainty, yet she had expressed no opinions, leaving such pronouncements to him.

Martha had something which drew him to her, like a wondering beast to the fires of men. She had what he lacked, in her laughter, her simplicity, her quick passions, her certainty. It was the taste of existence—of being.

It was the Tao.

His breath escaped slowly between his teeth. He wanted to see her again, and feared chance would not allow it. Out of habit he tamped down that desire, attempting to snuff it before it could do him harm. He would see her or he would not; pain was irrelevant to the future.

The elevator shuddered open. It was bright inside, and empty. He stepped in and pressed the button for the seventh floor. Memories competed with the drum of the motor.

Old hands. The smell of rain—the smell of Ch’an. Quiet words in rough Cantonese. “I am not to be your master. Your master has to be stronger than you are—has to tell you you are a fool and make you to know it. And make you feel content in being a fool. How could I do that for you? I’m old. You are too strong for me; you are full of chi.” The old man had paused then, huddled against the wind while clouds thickened above them.

“I will tell you this. Long,” he continued. “Before you find yourself you will lose your chi. Also you will leave behind you all pride of body, pride of mind. You will be reduced. Like me.” The old man closed his eyes, and rain began to beat against his gray, crew-cut hair. He pulled his coat closer. Suddenly his eyes snapped open and he looked Long in the face.

“You must leave China. Go across the ocean. There you will meet your master.” He set down his teacup with a palsied hand. His voice rose, grew fierce.

“I tell you this, most honored and impressive visitor. You are a fool, yes, but you will find the very thing you seek. You will find truth!”

Mayland Long stepped out of the elevator. The words of the old man faded. They had been polished by repetition in his mind ’til they gleamed gray; links of iron, beads on a chain. They were a string of beads that Long told daily, while he waited and studied and thought.

He yawned and felt for his key. He didn’t want to think any more. He’d rather tell stories to Martha.

The James Herald Hotel stood on a high slope of Nob Hill. The sea wind broke upon it like the Pacific broke over the shore rocks that were visible from the hotel’s upper windows. It was built of brick, but its ground floor was encased with brass and varnished teak. All its myriad windows were shining. The James Herald was not the oldest of the great San Francisco hotels and it was not the largest. It was, however, old enough and large enough. In Martha Macnamara’s opinion, it was quite expensive enough, also.

The cut glass doors to the dining room stood open. An August evening light, admitted through the tall leaded windows beyond, filtered into the hallway where she stood. The angles in the glass doors cut the light sharply. The crystal chandeliers, too, sparkled painfully sharp and exact this evening. Tiny pendants emitted a spectrum of color. They would provide her no soft visions of snow tonight.

She sought around the room, among the glistening white circles of linen, looking for a man alone. There were few of those; the Crystal Room was not a place where one ate alone.

Yet he did. Mr. Long lived at the James Herald Hotel and took his meals in the dining room. Both these things were very strange. Martha could bring to mind places in San Francisco where she would rather eat—Henry Africa, where the window was gilt with the motto Vive la mort, vive la guerre, vive la legion etrangere, and young men, brittle and elegant, stood warily around the door, or the fast-food stall in Japantown, where the cookies were pressed in the shape of a fish. And Martha had only arrived in the city yesterday. Eating in the Crystal Room’s icy splendor every evening didn’t say much for Mr. Long. Where was he, anyway? Had she been stood up twice in one day?

As she passed between the glass doors, a dark shape welled out of the shadows. “Ah!” she began, but it was not Mayland Long, but the Maitre d’. “I’m just looking for someone,” she explained, as the man bowed stiffly from the waist, like a bird. She restrained an impulse to return the bow.

“Mrs. Macnamara?” he addressed her. “Please come with me.”

She followed, her eyebrows drawn down and together. Martha Macnamara did not like being known to people whom she did not know. It made her feel unpleasantly like a child. She contemplated asking the Maitre d’ his name, but if she did that she was certain he would give her his first name alone, and she would then have to insist he call her Martha. And she did not really want to be called Martha by this man, who would then continue to call all other customers by their surnames. She remained silent.

Mayland Long sat at a table beneath a window full of sky. It was a very good table, and its desirability impressed upon Martha that Mr. Long was a wealthy man.

He rose from his seat as he saw her approach, and he too bowed to her. Mrs. Macnamara lost all restraint. Placing her palms together she bowed in turn. The Maitre d’ held her chair.

She greeted him with a smile. “Wonderful weather, today,” she began. “Clear and crisp.”

Affably, he nodded. “Of course. The rainy season hasn’t started yet.”

“Did I scandalize the poor man with my gassho?” she asked, as soon as they were alone.

He responded slowly, as though she had broached a subject of some depth. “Scandalize? How can one scandalize a maitre d’hotel? Such a man has seen it all before. And if one did succeed in subjecting him to scandal, I don’t believe his face would express his condition. Did you intend to scandalize Jean-Pierre?”

The voice was the same. Her memory had not added quality. “No. But I can take only so much bowing before I bow back. Is he really Jean-Pierre?”