Thai Horse

exchange, back and forth, and when it was over, Hatcher bowed, kissed her hand and left. He strolled back to Cohen, smiling.

‘Lunch tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Just the two of us. Wait here, I’ll bring you a drink. Scotch, a dash of water, no ice, right?’ And he was gone again.

Daphne followed a few seconds later, glaring at him as she drew to within inches of him.

‘Why didn’t you tell me he was Hatcher?’ she said.

‘I have no excuse whatsoever,’ Cohen stammered.

She stared after Hatcher as he edged through the crowd.

‘Are you really having lunch with him?’ Cohen asked.

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘What did he say to you out there?’ Cohen asked.

She smiled vaguely, stared at him for a second and said, ‘Ask him.’ And then she too was gone.

‘What did you say to her?’ Cohen asked when he returned with the drinks.

Hatcher shook his head. ‘I’ll never tell,’ he said.

Now Cohen sensed a different Hatcher. The hair trigger seemed to be on safety. The hard, brash edge seemed softer, more contemplative. It was not that he felt Hatcher was getting soft, but rather that the two sides were slightly out of balance. And while Cohen liked that new side, it also worried him. If Hatcher was going upriver, he could not afford to lose that old edge. In the land of the Ts’e K’am Men Ti, instinct precluded provocation. ‘Shoot first’ was the law of survival.

The doorbell ended his ruminations.

The woman in the doorway was the color of cafe au lait and she stared down at Cohen through almond-shaped green eyes. She was tall and elegant, dressed in a pale pink shantung silk jacket over a ruby-red silk sheath, an outfit that was sexy, yet in good taste. As she entered the house she kicked off her shoes with long, cocoa-colored legs.

‘Hello, China,’ she purred softly and kissed him on the forehead. Then without hesitation, she asked, ‘where is he?’

‘Out on the balcony.’

‘Has he changed?’

‘He’s a little older, like all of us. Picked up a few more scars.’ But he didn’t go on. She was already on her way to the deck.

‘I never thought I would see you again,’ she said, standing in the doorway. ‘You look like the same old Hatcher.’

Daphne’s ch’uang tzu-chi was also stimulated by the sight of him, alive, after all the years. For the year after they met, Hatcher had lived with Daphne whenever he was in Hong Kong. He left without warning and returned the same way, never discussing his business. She had heard of him before they met — Hatcher, the daring Yankee river pirate, the lone wolf feared even by the mighty Sam-Sam Sam himself. It was only after he was gone that new rumors started. That he was a paid assassin. That he worked for the CIA. That he nurtured friendships and then double- crossed those closest to him. That he was a member of a secret section of the Army called Ying bing, shadow warriors.

Having known him for a year, they were rumors Daphne dismissed, for she had seen both sides of him—the cold side that went off in the night to do whatever deeds he had to do and the other side, the caring lover, t whom sex was fun, not a conquest, for whom it was open, and slow, sometimes agonizing play that ended in what he called ‘the purest feeling,’ the small death, the orgasm that was his one positive, total escape from reality, as momentary as it might be.

She knew also in her heart and from her experience with him that any or all of the stories could be true,

But it didn’t matter. He was alive and he was here and, like Cohen, she remembered the night she had met Hatcher, a night she would never forget.