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Автор R. A. MacAvoy
Annotation
Martha Macnamara knows that her daughter Elizabeth is in trouble, she just doesn’t know what kind. Mysterious phone calls from San Francisco at odd hours of the night are the only contact she has had with Elizabeth for years. Now, Elizabeth has sent her a plane ticket and reserved a room for her at San Francisco’s most luxurious hotel. Yet she has not tried to contact Martha since she arrived, leaving her lonely, confused and a little bit worried. Into the story steps Mayland Long, a distinguished-looking and wealthy Chinese man who lives at the hotel and is drawn to Martha’s good nature and ability to pinpoint the truth of a matter. Mayland and Martha become close in a short period of time and he promises to help her find Elizabeth, making small inroads in the mystery before Martha herself disappears. Now Mayland is struck by the realization, too late, that he is in love with Martha, and now he fears for her life. Determined to find her, he sets his prodigious philosopher’s mind to work on the problem, embarking on a potentially dangerous adventure.
Tea With the Black Dragon
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Tea With the Black Dragon
by R. A. MacAvoy
Chapter 1
Martha Macnamara stood at the Pacific, her toes digging into the froth. She had come the length of the country in one day’s flight, and she had trouble believing that this was a different ocean.
“Oh go on, admit it,” she grumbled, kicking the ivory scum from a pile of kelp. “You’re all the same water. ”
Perhaps not. She peered at the line where the iron blue of the sky hit the soft-colored water.
So bare a sky did not shine over Coney Island.A gull plunged, kissed the water and veered right and away, all ten yards from Mrs. Macnamara. Her head rose to follow its flight and her hands lifted, echoing the bird’s gesture. For a moment it seemed her prim figure, gray suited and graying, would fly away into the west—or north along the dirty beach toward the Bridge.
But that was just for a moment, and then the hands touched at the braids that coiled around her head, braids that threatened to slip over her ears.
“If you would know the Way,” she recited to herself, “observe the subtlety of water. ” Martha considered these words as she watched the waves fling themselves roaring onto the sand. What was subtle in such a display of power?
With her round blue eyes very calm in her small round face Mrs. Macnamara watched the ocean. Slowly she smiled.
Where was Liz now—at work? Should Martha try to call again, or wait for her daughter to make the move? After all, Elizabeth had set up the reservation. Martha Macnamara would never have chosen to stay in a place like the James Herald Hotel. Oh, it was comfortable, doubtless, and the only person she had spoken to in the hotel—a bartender—had proven friendly; she had bent his ear for forty minutes at lunch—her dinner, what with the time change—perched on a red leather stool amid black oak and brass, rattling on about airplanes racing the sun, and how the violin had evolved from the viola when Europeans were able to afford carpets and drapes… But with the price of a night’s lodging at the James Herald she could have bought that bass bow she’d wanted since June.
