Tea with the Black Dragon - Страница 4

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?”

He considered the question. “To the best of my knowledge he is. Jean-Pierre Burrell. Father of five. Canadian by birth. I believe he has managed the floor in the Crystal Room for over ten years.”

Mr. Long leaned back in his chair and regarded his dinner companion. Sunlight fell slanting across his face.

His eyes, she thought. Last night she had seen them as solid black-brown. Chinese eyes. Today they were not opaque. Light entered the iris and was trapped in it, glowing. Almost amber, like the sun through a beer bottle.

And he was letting her see him—hands, face and all. He did not court mystery. Martha was very glad of this; she had no patience with mystery.

“I am very sorry your daughter failed to show,” Mr. Long continued, as he looked in turn at Martha. She was wearing a plain blue dress and her eyes were blue. Sunlight or moonlight, Martha Macnamara’s eyes were always blue. “Is this something one can expect, with her?”

A frown imprinted itself on her round, innocent features. “No. Not at all. Liz is very—reliable. Almost too much so. She wants things done right. She keeps all her shoes in the pockets of a big plastic bag hanging in her closet. And she believes in independence for women.”

She stared at the menu with sightless eyes. “That’s why we don’t get along, I guess.”

Mr. Long smiled slowly. “You don’t approve of your daughters views, Mrs. Macnamara? I would have thought a lady of such independent spirit…”

She waved his words aside. “Oh, no. I approve of Liz. I wouldn’t dare do otherwise. It’s she who disapproves of me.”

His eyebrows drew together. “Then I am at a loss. Please explain.”

She drew a deep breath as her fingers played with her water glass. It was cut crystal, of course.

“Liz disapproved of my cutting off my—my musical career to raise a child.”

Delight etched Mr. Long’s lean face. “A child? Do you mean Elizabeth herself?”

“Exactly. She feels she is a sort of involuntary accomplice in my oppression. And, she feels I caved in, when I should have fought.”

“How should you have fought?” He leaned forward, hands wrapped together on the table.

He can’t be more than sixty, considered Mrs. Macnamara. Probably younger, though it’s so hard to tell with Eurasians. Too young to retire. Too young to live in a hotel and eat in the Crystal Room every night.

“I should have continued in the job I was educated for, playing Bach and Berlioz in long dresses. I should have left her with a nanny, or even had an abortion, though that was a very different story in those days.

“At any rate, she is sure I shouldn’t be wasting my time playing fiddle in an Irish band, touring about and sleeping in the living rooms of friends. Not at my age.”

“And what age is that?” he asked blandly. A challenge hid somewhere within the question, and his brown eyes hid within their creases.

Easily she answered, “I’m fifty. How old are you?”

Mayland Long threw back his head and laughed. His teeth were large and very white against his skin. “Older than you are, Mrs. Macnamara. And more vain. I won’t answer that question just now.”

Then he leaned forward again. His elongated fingers stretched across the menu he had not opened. He touched her pink hand for just a moment: “But I think it would be wonderful to fiddle with the Linnet’s Wings and sleep wherever one finds oneself. At any age.”

She found herself saying, “Then why not do it, Mr. Long. I know you’re not a musician. I don’t mean that. I mean… Why do you live here, in this beautiful, boring hotel? And why do you eat… here? In the Crystal Room. Every night. When you are…” she finished with quiet intensity “… who you are.”

He drew back, his two hands flat on the tablecloth. I have offended him, thought Martha. She watched.

“And who is that?” he asked softly, but he gave her no time to answer. “There is time,” he continued, in the same tone of voice: softly, very softly. “There is time for the James Herald, too, in a long life. Sometimes one must wait for things.”

Wait for what? she thought, but did not continue her attack. “Forgive me if I was out of line. I spoke on impulse.”

The light was failing outside. The chandeliers cast haloes against the beamed ceiling. Mr. Long nodded. “Impulse or instinct. I am not offended, Mrs. Macnamara.”

She did not quite understand. She opened her menu and stared, seeing nothing.

“There is something marvelous in formality,” she murmured. “Greetings. Bows. And surnames.” She gave up searching among the cuts of beef and lamb. She looked at him again. “But I’m a poor peasant, really. I can’t be Mrs. Macnamara for more than a half hour at a time before I get giddy.”

She found herself saying the words she had swallowed earlier in front of the Maitre d’. “Please call me Martha.” Then she quailed before his silence, realizing she could no more call this man by his first name than she could fly.

“I don’t ask the privilege in return,” she qualified. “Especially since you admit to being older than me.”

It was his turn to concern himself with a water glass.

He held it up to the last light of day “Why? Am I so stuffy, Martha?”

“No. Not stuffy,” Her forehead creased. She searched for the word. “Intimidating.”

“But not too intimidating to have my ear twisted for living in a comfortable hotel. For dining at the same place nightly.” He lowered the crystal to the table. The corners of his mouth turned upwards.

“There are very few people who call me by my given name. I don’t know why that should be, but it’s true.”

“Isn’t that the way you want it?”

He shook his head. The smile widened. “I… don’t have an opinion on the matter. And you…” He adopted the imperturbability of a stage Chinaman, “Must decide for me what I am to be called from this moment toward. And where I—,”

The waiter interrupted, letting Mrs. Macnamara blush in comparative privacy. She chose the lobster. Given the choice, she almost always picked the lobster. Mr. Long asked for rock cod. Rock cod was not on the menu, but the waiter merely nodded and inquired about the wine.

It was dark out now. The window was shiny black, and whatever crisis had been approaching had passed away with the waiter. Mr. long was eager to talk about Buddhism. Martha tried to listen, but her mind drifted back to Liz. She vacillated between being annoyed with her daughter for this cavalier treatment and being very anxious for her. Being annoyed was by far the most comfortable feeling.

“I used to have quite a collection of the commentaries of Nagarjuna,” he began. “Are you interested in the Indians?”

She shook her head and hurried to swallow a bite of romaine. “I have no head for philosophy. I get confused.”

He lay down his knife and fork neatly. Martha withstood five seconds of silent scrutiny. “I see,” he said finally. “Zen.”