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Tea with the Black Dragon

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Liz scowled, tearing skin from the bone of the wing. “Sorry if my language bothers you. I can’t think straight.”

“No sort of language bothers me,” he answered, “unless it’s dull. But you looked quite frightened. Miss Macnamara, the first time I saw you.”

“In the kitchen? Well you spooked the sh—you really startled me, there.”

“No. I first saw you outside Rasmussen’s office, about an hour ago. I followed you home.”

She stared a moment. “What were you doing at RasTech?”

His answer came slowly, as finger by finger, he toweled the grease from his hands. “I was standing in the shrubbery, waiting for events. I expected the evening would produce Floyd Rasmussen. Instead, it has produced you. That was a change for the better, Elizabeth.”

“Liz. And if I looked bad, the reason was that Floyd had just told me Threve had picked up my mother, and if I didn’t go with him to the bank tomorrow morning”

Liz paused and took a deep breath. Her hands clenched together, blotched salmon and white. “They’d kill her.”

Long’s brown face remained impassive. He looked down at the remains of the meal. “Tomorrow morning,” he said, and sighed. “I didn’t know we had so little time.”

“How did you think your mother’s presence would neutralize a major felony, not to mention two major felons?” His words were mild—merely curious, and he did not look at Liz Macnamara as he spoke.

“If you knew my mother you wouldn’t ask that question. But I didn’t expect her to… neutralize the crime. I just wanted her to know all about it before I gave up and went to the police. I knew she’d stand by me. At first I was going to fly to New York and talk to her, but I had a hunch that my leaving town would put the wind up Floyd and Doug, and they’d be gone when I went to the police. That would have taken a lot of the impact out of a voluntary confession, you see. If it was found that my partners had already run out on me.” The young woman shivered. “When I called Mother last week I didn’t know what—monsters—those two were.”

“Not monsters, Elizabeth,” he murmured. “Merely thugs.”

“Anyway, I decided that if I were going to dump the bad news on Mother, I’d treat her as well as I could in the process. It was kind of silly, really, because my mother doesn’t care whether she sleeps on satin pillows or gunny sacks. Maybe I did it for my own sake, to salve my conscience, but I sent Mother two thousand dollars and told her to fly out first class. I made a week’s reservation at the fanciest hotel I could find. In the City, I mean, not down here. I didn’t want her too close to Floyd or Doug. I told her that I had to talk to her. I didn’t tell her I was afraid.”

“You didn’t have to,” said Mayland Long. The gentleness of his words caught her attention and she stared at him.

Food and drink had worked their magic on Mr. Long. His face flushed gold. His eyes glistened with lights of the same color. His left hand arced out in an involuted gesture, as though he followed threads in a tapestry only he could see. She followed his motion.

“Your mother can read signs in the air,” he said. “The winds talk to her. She knew there was something very wrong with you and that is why she… let me help her find you.” He let his gesture hang in the air. His eyes saw memories: a blue dress, a blue eye.

Liz Macnamara’s eyes perceived an odd and unexpected beauty in the man’s words and in the man. She blinked away the tears that terror alone had not brought forth.

He rose with boneless grace. His eyes were narrowed. He was thinking, Liz Macnamara stared up at him. “Where did she find you?”

“On a shelf,” he answered, preoccupied. “I owe my involvement in your trouble to that gift you sent Marth—your mother.”

She shook her head, not comprehending how a few thousand dollars could command the man before her. “Just get Mother away from those two and I’ll work the rest of my life to pay you. I’ll give anything. Do anything.”

He became aware she was speaking. His gold eyes searched her face, puzzled, not following her words. A huge yawn caught him unaware. He shot a glare at the bottle, and he leaned one elbow on the refrigerator door.

“All I need,” he said, “is a dark corner. And I only need it for a few hours.”

“You need what? Why?”

He yawned again. “Because I’m tired. Too tired to think properly. It has taken a number of days to find you, Elizabeth, and I haven’t slept much in that time. I have work to do tonight. It is a task important to our purpose, and best accomplished after nightfall. Between then and now…”He stepped forward, resting his hand on the back other chair, “I must sleep. And since I haven’t the time to drive to my rooms in San Francisco, I am asking you to put up with me.”

“Of course.” Liz Macnamara pushed herself away from the table. “But not in a corner. Please. Give me a minute to straighten up the bedroom.” Dropping a rumpled paper towel into the wastebasket, she left the room.

He stared at the bed in horrified fascination. “I… I have heard of them, of course, but…”

Elizabeth dropped a hand to the undulating mattress, as though quieting a huge beast. “It’s just a waterbed. It’s really comfortable. Not cold at all.” Seeing his expression unchanged, she half-smiled. “Don’t be afraid.” She left him, closing the door behind her.

He was dubious but also very weary. Mr. Long undressed, folded his clothes, and gave himself to the embrace of the waves.

Liz spent the next two hours seated at the kitchen table. Her mind raced wildly, without traction. At nine she cracked the bedroom door to wake Mr. Long. The vertical thread of light happened to fall over the form on the sheets. He was bronze, like a statue, and his skin appeared as tight to the body and as hard as the finish of a bronze statue. He lay sprawled with the dramatic indifference of a statue, also. One arm was tossed up in line with the lean torso, and the back-tilted head repeated the angle. The other arm, the left arm, was flung outward, and the fingers grasped air. There was passion in the pose: passion and a quality of abandonment quite foreign to the presence who had shared her meager dinner.

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.