“Yes. You’re the only game around, Eden. I couldn’t very well see myself asking your neighbor to use her bathroom. Open the door.”
“Oh.” She giggled. Her terror—God, she’d been paralyzed with terror and all he wanted was to go to the bathroom.
She opened the door and stood aside, pointing straight ahead. “Just beyond the bedroom.” Taylor gave her another long, very irritated look, then went to her bathroom.
She was standing in the same spot when he came out.
He stopped a good three feet away from her. “Talk to me.”
She stared at him instead.
“I’m also tired of standing. Come along and sit down. Talk to me.”
“I’m hungry.”
“I won’t eat another damned yogurt.”
“Chinese?”
“Are you going to duck out on me again?”
“No.”
“All right.” Taylor sighed. This was weird, the entire situation. “Let’s go to Chow Fang’s, down in Chinatown.”
“I like spicy Chinese.”
“It’s very spicy.”
To Lindsay’s surprise and relief, Taylor didn’t demand to know why she’d run out on him. She’d fully expected it, an attack, a show of anger, a man’s anger, all of it, maybe cold sarcasm like her father’s, but he didn’t say anything, not even a mention of how she’d endangered herself.
He ushered her into a Szechuan restaurant, old and needing a paint job, with dusty red lanterns hanging from a low ceiling. It was set in the midst of Chinatown and known, Taylor told her, for authentic and tasty dishes.
Lindsay ordered green-onion pancakes with peanut sauce.
“My favorite,” Taylor said, and doubled the order.
He spoke to her of the owner of the restaurant, a Mr. Chang, who’d come over in the early 1970’s from Taiwan. He spoke of Mr. Chang’s family, discussing each of the six children in great detail, until Lindsay finally said, “Stop it! You’re making that up!”
“It took you long enough. I was running out of descriptions. Another kid and he would have had to be a juvenile delinquent. Chinese Mafia maybe.”
She studied his face. No clues there. Open, kind. But as he’d said earlier, who really knew another person? She picked up a fortune cookie, vastly uncomfortable. She unfurled the narrow strip of paper and read: “You need a new environment. Wallpaper your bedroom.”
She laughed and handed it to Taylor. “Keep it,” he advised, cracked open his own fortune cookie. There were two slips of paper. The first said: “A woman who seeks to be equal with men lacks ambition.”
Taylor grinned and handed it to her. Her eyes lit up and she crowed. “Aha! You see, ancient Chinese wisdom still applies today. I see they believe you need a double dose. What’s the other one?”
He opened it and froze. “You have finally met the one love of your life. Tread carefully. You don’t want to lose her.”
He frowned. What utter nonsense. Bullshit. After the way Valerie had yelled at him, calling him a bastard and a liar? No way. He stilled. Oh, no, not this strange creature sitting opposite him, her eyes on his fortune, waiting for him to hand it to her. Her anticipation was endearing and he shied away from it. This was the woman who’d run out of his apartment with no thought to her own safety. With no reason for flight that he could see. Oh, no, that was crazy. Then he laughed. A damned silly fortune cookie. Produced in a factory in New Jersey by Italians, no doubt.
“What is it? You will take a trip around the world? Confucius says something?”
He merely smiled, shook his head, folded the paper, and stuck it in his wallet.
When they came out onto the street, the night was clear and cool. Chinatown had its own smells and sounds, and tonight, both were pleasant. “I love New York when it’s like this,” Lindsay said, breathing in deeply. “It feels so good in your lungs.”
Taylor was busily looking around. Nothing suspicious. Not a single nose seemingly interested in their business. When he turned back to her, she was still wrapped in the wonders of the night. He smiled at her, then hailed a cab.
“I’m seeing you home. I’ll see that you’re safe. I’ll see that you’re well locked in. I’ll come by tomorrow whenever you’re ready to go out.”
“Okay.”
“You’ll be there? You won’t do anything stupid? You won’t go out without me?”
“No.”
“Good.”
She turned on the seat to face him. “Look, it isn’t what you think. You don’t understand, really, but—”
“Just forget it. I wouldn’t care to finish that thought either.”
She fell silent.
“You won’t open your door to anybody you don’t know, all right?”
She nodded, but remained silent.
He checked through her apartment. Every bit of comfortable clutter was still in its place. Her bedroom was small and square, but light, with white-painted rattan headboard, dresser, chair, and several white carpets over polished oak parquet floors. He smiled at the panty hose and underwear strewn over a chair. One high-top running shoe was sitting on top of a pale-blue comforter, its mate tipped on its side on the floor beside the bed, a sock half stuck in it still. He remembered the small bathroom well enough. Taylor returned to her, instructing her like a child about her locks, of which she had four and already knew everything.
“Do you have an answering machine? Good. Don’t answer the phone, screen the calls first, be sure you know who it is before you pick up and speak yourself.”
When he left, finally, giving her one long look that she couldn’t decipher, she leaned against the front door and closed her eyes.
What had his second fortune cookie said?
Lindsay wanted to run. It was seven in the morning on a bright sunny Saturday and she was bored and antsy and she’d tried to get Demos twice already but he wasn’t there. Neither was Glen, evidently. Cowards, both of them. And Taylor wasn’t here, nor had she heard from him.
She wandered through her small apartment, absently drinking tea and chewing on an unbuttered slice of wheat toast.
Why the devil hadn’t she thought to get his phone number? Well, he’d forgotten as well. No one had called.
She kept looking toward the front door with all its myriad locks securely in place.
When the doorbell rang at precisely eight o’clock, she nearly dropped her teacup. She was fiddling with the locks, and when the last chain fell, she jerked open the door.
“I’ve been up for hours! Where have you been?”
“Good morning to you too. Why the hell didn’t you ask who it was? I could have been your friendly neighborhood rapist. I could have been Demos’ own personal devil.”
He saw she simply hadn’t thought about that. She was suddenly trembling, and he saw it, and he was sorry to have reminded her. But, dammit, she shouldn’t forget. Her teacup rattled.
“Come on, I didn’t mean to scare you, but you’ve got to be more careful.” He started to put out his hands to grasp her shoulders, then didn’t. No, she’d likely pull away from him as fast as she could.
“No, I’m not really scared. It’s just that I’d forgotten about the other. I’ve just been waiting and waiting, and your ring just startled me, that’s all. I want to go run and I didn’t know your number and I’d promised you that I wouldn’t leave the apartment. Is it safe for us to run?”
He would have preferred not to run, not out in the open like that, making them easy targets, but he saw the excitement in her eyes, so clear to him, and he grinned down at her from a distance of only three inches. “Safe enough, I think. We’ll just take a few extra precautions. And I came prepared.” He lifted a black canvas bag. “I’ve got lots of goodies in here, since I didn’t know what you normally do on a Saturday morning.” He paused a moment, a black eyebrow raised. “Can I change in your bedroom without you running away?”