Death Match

THIRTY-THREE

Change of plans,” Lash said, leaning forward to speak with the driver. “Just let me off here, please.”

He waited for the taxi to clear Columbus Circle and nose to the curb, then he paid the fare and got out. He watched the cab lose itself in a sea of identical yellow vehicles, then put his hands in his coat pockets and began walking slowly up Central Park West.

He wasn’t sure, exactly, why he’d decided to get out several blocks short of the restaurant. Something about not wanting to bump into her outside. And what exactly did that mean? It had to do with controlling the situation: he wanted to see her first, establish his own space before they met. It had to do with nervousness.

In a different mood, he might have smiled at this piece of self-analysis. But there was no mistaking his rapid breathing, his elevated heart rate. Here he was, Christopher Lash, eminent psychologist and veteran of a hundred crime scenes — nervous as a teenager on his first date.

It had begun slowly, that morning, when — instinctively — he’d picked up the phone to call Tavern on the Green. Eden had already made the reservation, but he wanted to choose the dining room personally. As quickly as he’d picked up the phone, he put it down again. What should it be: the Crystal Room, with its glittering array of chandeliers? Or the woodsy ambiance of the Rafters Room? It had taken him ten minutes to decide, then another fifteen on the phone, name-dropping and cajoling the best possible table out of the reservationist.

This wasn’t like him. He rarely ate out anymore, and when he did he was indifferent to seating. But it was equally unusual to pause beside a bus stop and scrutinize his image in the glass, as he was doing now. Or to worry that the tie he’d chosen was too passé, or too gauche, or maybe a little of both.

No doubt Eden had anticipated such reactions. No doubt, in the normal course of things, he’d have been briefed, given a reassuring pep talk. But this was not the normal course of things. Somehow, the company that never made a mistake had made one. And he was now walking up Central Park West, the time was 8 p.m. precisely, and for the first time in several days his thoughts were not preoccupied with the deaths of the Thorpes and the Wilners.

Ahead, where West Sixty-seventh Street emptied into Central Park, he could see countless white lights twinkling among the trees. He maneuvered his way past the clutter of limousines, then passed through the restaurant’s outer doors. He smoothed his jacket, making sure the small pin Eden had sent was still in place. Even that little detail had been fussed over for several minutes: adjusting its placement on his lapel, making sure it was clearly visible yet not too obvious. His mouth was dry, his palms sweaty. Annoyed, Lash wiped his hands against the back of his trousers and moved with determined strides toward the bar.

It all comes down to this, he thought. Funny — all the time he’d spent undergoing his own evaluation, studying Eden and the two supercouples, he’d never stopped to think about what it must feel like: waiting, wondering how that perfect person would look. Until today. Today, he’d thought of little else. He’d learned, from painful experience, what his perfect woman wasn’t like. She wasn’t like Shirley, his ex-wife, with her inability to forgive human weakness, accept tragedy. Would his perfect woman be a blend of earlier girlfriends, some composite generated by his subconscious? Would she be an amalgam of the actresses he most admired: the poised limbs of Myrna Loy, the heart-shaped face of Claudette Colbert?

He stopped in the entrance of the bar, looking around. There were groups of twos and threes scattered around the tables, chatting boisterously. Other, single people were seated at the bar…

And there she was. At least, he thought it must be her. Because a small pin identical to his own was fixed to her dress; because she was looking directly at him; because she was rising from her seat and approaching with a smile.

And yet it could not be her. Because this woman looked nothing like what he expected. This was not willowy, slight, brunette Myrna Loy: this woman was tall and raven-haired. Mid-thirties, perhaps, with mischievous hazel eyes. Lash couldn’t remember ever going out with anybody almost a head taller than himself.

“Christopher, right?” she said, shaking his hand. She nodded toward his pin. “I recognize the fashion accessory.”

“Yes,” he replied. “And you’re Diana.”

“Diana Mirren.” Her accent was unexpected, too: a smooth contralto with a distinct Southern lilt.

Lash had always felt a completely unreasonable scorn for the intellect of Southern women; something about the accent set his teeth on edge. He began to wonder if, perhaps, the same mistake that had sent his avatar into the Tank had carried over to the matchmaking process itself.

“Shall we go in?” he said.

Diana slung her purse over her shoulder and together they approached the reservationist.

“Lash and Mirren, eight o’clock,” Lash said.

The woman behind the desk consulted an oversized book. “Ah, yes. In the Terrace Room. This way, please.”

Lash had chosen the Terrace Room because it seemed the most intimate setting, with its hand-carved ceiling and tall windows giving out onto a private garden. A waiter seated them, then filled their water glasses and slipped two menus onto the table before stepping back with a bow.

For a moment, there was silence. Lash glanced at the woman, noticed she was looking back at him. And then, Diana laughed.

“What?” he asked.

She shook her head, reached for her water glass. “I don’t know. You — you’re not what I expected.”

“I’m probably older, and thinner, and paler.”

She laughed again, and flushed slightly.

“Sorry about that,” he added.

“Well, they told us not to have preconceptions. Right?”

Lash, who hadn’t been told anything, simply nodded.

The sommelier approached, silver tastevin dangling around his neck. “Something from the wine list, sir?”

Lash glanced at Diana, who nodded enthusiastically. “Go on. I love French wine but know practically nothing about it.”

“Bordeaux okay?”

“Naturelement.”

Lash picked up the list, scanned it. “We’ll have the Pichon— Longueville, please.”

“Pichon-Longueville?” Diana asked as the sommelier walked away. “The Pauillac super-second? Should be fantastic.”

“Super-second?”

“You know. All the qualities of a premier cru without the price.”

Lash put the list to one side. “I thought you didn’t know anything about wine.”

Diana took another sip of water. “Well, I don’t know nearly as much as I should.”

“And how’s that?”

“Last year I went with a group on a six-week tour of France. Spent an entire week in the wine country.”

Lash whistled.

“But it’s embarrassing, what I retained and what I didn’t. For example, I remember that Château Beychevelle was the prettiest of the châteaux. But ask me for the best vintages and I’m hopeless.”

“Still, I think maybe you should be the official taster for this table.”

“No objections.” And Diana laughed again.

Normally, Lash disliked people who laughed out loud frequently. Too often it substituted for punctuation, or something that could be better expressed in words. But Diana’s laugh was infectious. Lash found himself smiling as he heard it.

When the sommelier returned with the bottle, Lash directed him to Diana. She peered at the label, swirled the wine, brought the glass to her mouth, all with a great show of mock gravity. Their waiter came by again and recited a long list of the evening’s special dishes. The sommelier filled the glasses and departed. Now Diana raised hers in Lash’s direction.

“What shall we drink to?” Lash asked. She’ll say, “To us.” That’s the way these things always work.

“How about transvestites?” Diana replied in a buttery drawl.

Lash almost dropped his glass. “Huh?”

“You mean, you didn’t look into it?”

“Into what?”

“Into that statue. You know, in the fountain, outside the Eden building. That ancient, ancient figure, surrounded by birds and angels? When I first saw it, it seemed the strangest thing in the world. Couldn’t tell if it was male or female.”

Lash shook his head.

“Well, it’s a good thing one of us did. It’s Tiresias.”

“Who?”

“From Greek mythology. See, Tiresias was this man who got turned into a woman. And then turned back into a man.”

“What? Why?”

“Why? You don’t ask why. This was Thebes. Stuff happens. Anyway, Zeus and Hera were having an argument about who enjoyed sex more: men or women. Since this Tiresias was the only person who’d tried it both ways, they called him in to settle the argument.”

“Go on.”

“Hera didn’t like what Tiresias had to say. So she blinded him.”

“Typical.”

“Zeus felt bad, so he gave Tiresias the gift of prophecy.”

“Big of him. But there’s something you left out.”

“What’s that?”

“What Tiresias said to make Hera so mad.”

“He said women enjoy sex more than men.”

“Really?”

“Really. Nine times more.”

We’ll get back to that later, Lash thought to himself. He lifted his glass. “By all means, let’s drink a toast. But shouldn’t we be drinking to hermaphrodites?”

Diana considered this. “Right you are. To hermaphrodites, then.” And she raised her glass to his.

Lash took a deep sip, found it excellent. He decided he was glad Diana didn’t have the looks of Claudette Colbert. If she had, he’d have been intimidated. “Where did you find this particular nugget of information?” he asked.

“Actually, I knew it already.”

“Let me guess. You read Bulfinch’s Mythology on your trip across France.”

“Nice try, but wrong. You could say it’s part of my job.”

“Really? And what job is that?”

“I teach English literature at Columbia.”

Lash nodded, impressed. “Great school.”

“I’m still just an instructor, but it’s a position with a tenure track.”

“What’s your specialty?”

“The Romantics, I guess. Lyric poetry.”

Lash felt a strange tremor, as if something deep inside had just slid home. He’d enjoyed Romantic poetry in college, until psychology and the demands of graduate school pushed it to one side. “That’s interesting. As it happens, I’ve been reading Bash — o recently. Not exactly Romantic, of course.”

“In his own way, very much so. The greatest haiku poet of Japan.”

“I don’t know about that. But his poems have stuck in my mind.”

“Haiku’s like that. It’s nefarious. It seems so simple. But then it sneaks up on you from a hundred different directions.”

Lash thought of Lewis Thorpe. He took another sip of wine, then quoted:

As he spoke, Diana’s smile faded and the look on her face grew intent. “Again, please,” she said quietly.

Lash obliged. When he finished, a silence fell over the table. But it was not an awkward silence. They merely sat, enjoying a moment of contemplation. Lash glanced at the surrounding tables, at the rich evening colors that lay over the park beyond. Without his realizing it, the nervousness he’d felt entering the restaurant had faded away.

“It’s beautiful,” Diana said at last. “I’ve had moments like that.” She paused a moment. “It reminds me of another haiku, written by Kobayashi Issa more than a century later.” And she quoted in turn:

Their waiter reappeared. “Have you decided what you’d like this evening?”

“We haven’t even cracked the menu,” Lash said.

“Very good.” The man bowed again and walked away.

Lash turned back to Diana. “The thing is, beautiful as they are, I don’t really understand them.”

“No?”

“Oh, I guess I do on a superficial level. But they’re like riddles, with some deeper meaning that escapes me.”

“That’s the problem right there. I hear it all the time from my students.”

“Enlighten me.”

“You’re thinking of them like epigrams. But haiku aren’t little puzzles that need to be solved. To my mind, they’re just the opposite. They hint at things; they leave a lot to the imagination; they imply more than they say. Don’t search for an answer. Think, instead, of opening doors.”

“Opening doors,” Lash echoed.

“You mentioned Bash — o. Did you know he wrote the most famous haiku of all? ‘One Hundred Frogs.’ It consists of only seventeen sounds — all traditional haiku does. But guess what? It’s been translated into English more than fifty different ways. Each translation utterly different from the rest.”

Lash shook his head. “Amazing.”

Diana’s smile returned. “That’s what I mean about opening doors.”

There was another, briefer silence as an under-waiter crept up and refilled Lash’s glass. “You know, it’s funny,” Lash said as the man left.

“What’s funny?”

“Here we’ve been talking about French wine and Greek mythology and Japanese poetry, and you still haven’t asked what I do.”

“I know I haven’t.”

Once again, he was surprised by her directness. “Well, isn’t that usually the first topic that comes up? On first dates, I mean.”

Diana leaned forward. “Exactly. And that’s what makes this so special.”

Lash hesitated, considering. Then, suddenly, he understood. There was no need to ask the usual questions. Eden had taken care of all that. The tiresome introductory baggage, the blind date checks-and-balances, weren’t important here. Instead, a journey of discovery lay ahead.

This hadn’t occurred to him before. It was a tremendously liberating thought.

The waiter returned, noticed the menus remained untouched, bowed yet again, and turned away.

“Poor guy,” Diana said. “He’s hoping for a second seating.”

“You know what?” Lash replied. “I think this table’s booked for the rest of the evening.”

Smiling, Diana raised her empty hand in imitation of a toast. “In that case, here’s to the rest of the evening.”

Lash nodded. Then he did something unexpected, even to himself: he took Diana’s fingers in his own and raised them gently to his lips. Over the curve of her knuckles, he saw her eyes widen slightly; her smile deepen.

As he released her hand, he became aware of the faintest of scents. It wasn’t soap or perfume, but something of Diana herself: a hint of cinnamon, of copper, of something else that resisted identification. It was subtly intoxicating. Lash thought back to what Mauchly had said in Eden’s genetics lab: about mice and their unusual method for sniffing out the most radically different gene pool for potential mates. Abruptly, he laughed aloud.

Diana said nothing, merely raising her eyebrows in question.

In response, Lash lifted his own hand, filled this time with his wine glass. “And here’s to a universe of diversity,” he said.