"MacAvoy,.R.A.-.Tea.With.The.Black.Dragon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dragon Stories)

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 westЧor
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 nowЧat 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

2 TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

like the James Herald Hotel. Oh, it was comfortable,
doubtless, and the only person she had spoken to in the
hotelЧa bartenderЧhad proven friendly; she had bent
his ear for forty minutes at lunchЧher dinner, what with
the time changeЧperched 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