Elin Hilderbrand - The Matchmaker

Hell, Dabney thought. Bomb. Had Elizabeth said hell of a bomb? Dabney swayed. She could feel herself losing her feet. She reached out to hold on to the back of Martha’s chair.

Old Man Armstrong shouted out, “How much does she want?”

“It’s not her,” Dabney said. “It’s me. I mean, I’m the one asking…for her. She doesn’t even know I’m asking. But she deserves a raise. I would like to see her get a raise. She’s doing her job, and…” Dabney nearly said, and she’s doing mine. But she realized at the last minute how bad that would sound. “And she’s doing it well.”

“We’d like to think all of you are doing your jobs well,” Elizabeth said. “That’s what we pay you for. To do your jobs well. You don’t get extra money for doing your job well.” Elizabeth was looking at Dabney now with piercing eyes. Elizabeth hated Dabney. But why? Dabney had never had an enemy before. There had been Jocelyn, at Yale, at the despicable tailgate. Jocelyn had been in love with Clen, or whatever the collegiate approximation of “in love” was. Now, Elizabeth was after Clen-and she knew, somehow, she knew, that Dabney was standing in her way. How did she know?

How did she know?

“Never mind,” Dabney said. She watched her hand do a slow-motion dance in front of her face, as if wiping away the idea of a raise for Nina Mobley. “Wait, let’s discuss this,” Jeffrey Jackson said. Jeffrey Jackson had a port-wine stain on his neck and the lower half of his face, and in elementary school, two other boys had been cruel about it, and Dabney had defended Jeffrey. Ever since, he had been Dabney’s devoted champion.

“There’s nothing to discuss,” Elizabeth said. “At least not right now. This room is an oven, and it’s nearly six o’clock, and I don’t know about the rest of you, but I have other plans for my evening. I think we should table the discussion of a raise for Ms. Mobley until the next meeting.”

“Agreed,” Karen the Realtor said.

Dabney blinked; sweat trickled down her back. She wanted to see how Vaughan Oglethorpe would handle this. He didn’t like other board members to overrule his authority, but when Dabney looked over, Vaughan’s face had turned to melting wax.

Dabney thought, I’m going to faint.

But thankfully, Vaughan adjourned the meeting. Martha stood to leave, and Dabney collapsed in Martha’s chair.

Elizabeth Jennings invited him for dinner at the Straight Wharf.

Clen said, “I have to tell you, Elizabeth, I’m not really one for the Nantucket restaurant scene.”

Elizabeth said, “Not a worry. Come to my house instead. Seven o’clock tomorrow night.”

She hung up without giving him a chance to say no.

He brought a six-pack of Singha beer, which he had miraculously been able to find at Hatch’s. This was the beer that he and Mingus and Elizabeth had drunk in Bangkok and Saigon years and years earlier.

Clendenin knocked on Elizabeth’s front door, feeling like an ass. What was he doing here? This felt like an exercise in pointless nostalgia.

She shrieked with joy at the sight of him. She appeared to be three sheets to the wind already. She shrieked again with the presentation of the beer. “Singha?” she said. “Am I really seeing this? Did you have it flown in? And it’s icy cold. Do you remember how good an icy cold Singha used to taste after running around in that godforsaken heat? You’re a genius!”

Elizabeth was wearing a seafoam-green cocktail dress with tiny sequins and her feet were bare. Elizabeth was an attractive woman-the cinnamon-colored hair, the long nails, the perfume-and Clen had never been able to shake a vision of her climbing out of the swimming pool at the resort in Nha Trang. That red bikini. But there had always been a desperate edge to Elizabeth, a part of her that was trying too hard-and then, too, she wasn’t Dabney.

On her deck a table was set for two, and candles burned in hurricane lamps. But first Elizabeth poured him a Glenfiddich and they gazed at the Sound below.

This was a date, Clen realized. She had asked him there on a date. He hadn’t considered this before. He supposed he had thought there would be other people there or that she’d asked him out of kindness or boredom. He was an old friend from another life.

Mingus and Clen had drunk like crazy at La Caravelle in Saigon, then piled onto a motorbike, which they’d crashed in front of the Reunification Palace. Mingus and Clen had drunk like crazy at the Majestic, and at the Continental as well. What did Clen remember specifically? Rattan ceiling fans, Singapore slings, peanut shells on the floor; he and Mingus used to smoke unfiltered Luckys, lighting one from the next. The cigarettes had killed Mingus, lung cancer at fifty-two.

Mingus had returned to the States when he was diagnosed. He had died in Washington; Clen hadn’t made it back for the funeral. He had, however, sent a long letter to Elizabeth, which was less sympathy than a prose poem of memories: Bangkok, Singapore, Mandalay, Rangoon, Siem Reap, Saigon, Hanoi, Hoi An-and the weeklong vacation in Nha Trang. They had stayed at a five-star resort that Elizabeth paid for. She had insisted that Clen come along, although he’d felt odd about crashing their romantic getaway. It had been a slice of heaven, though, and he had needed it-the infinity pool, the endless chilled bottles of Domaines Ott, a certain spicy green-papaya salad delivered right to his umbrella. There had been one night when Mingus retired early and Clen and Elizabeth had drifted from the dinner table to a spot in the sand. They were both quite drunk, Clen able to do little more than gaze at the moon’s reflection on the South China Sea. Something had happened, she had said something or he had, and Elizabeth had brought her face very close to his. He had thought kiss; it was impossible not to. That red bikini. But he had backed away, stood up, brushed himself off. She had said, “Was I wrong? I’ve seen you looking at me.”

Was she wrong? No, not wrong. This was before Clen had met Mi Linh, and he was lonely. He had been looking at Elizabeth, all week long. But he was not a man to betray his one true friend, and so he had bowed to her, then gone to bed.

Now, Elizabeth asked him a question, but Clen didn’t hear what it was. Something with the word east.

“I’m sorry?” he said.

“Do you miss the East?”

“Oh,” he said. “I don’t know. Sometimes. Certain things. The food in Thailand, the monks in Cambodia, the hotel bars in Vietnam. But not really. Not as much as I thought I would. How about you?”

She cupped her chin. “It was a time in my life that I cherish,” she said. “But it’s over. I’ll never go back. Will you?”

“Only if Singapore calls,” Clen said. But then he realized that he was so attached to Dabney that even if a job did materialize in Singapore, he would turn it down. He would not leave her again.

Dinner was served by caterers. Other men might have been impressed, but it just made Clen sad. To be invited over for dinner and then have the meal cooked by other people?

And to make matters worse, it was grilled sirloin. Clen stared at his plate helplessly. He couldn’t cut a steak. And this was one of the reasons why he didn’t accept invitations out. He lifted his fork and tried a bite of potato gratin, then set his fork down with a ching!

“Oh my goodness,” Elizabeth said. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t…think.”

“It’s okay,” Clen said. “It’s fine.”

Elizabeth looked around for one of the catering staff, but the three of them were sequestered in the kitchen. Elizabeth stood. “Here, let me cut it for you.”

Clen grimaced. It was mortifying for them both, Elizabeth cutting his steak, like he was a child.

Elizabeth said, “I don’t think I ever got the lowdown on that.”

“On that?” Clen repeated.

“Your arm,” she said. “What happened?”

Khmer Rouge, he thought. Machete. Boring story.

But to alleviate the humiliation of the moment, he told her the truth. He had been writing a story about girls being bought in the countryside and sold into prostitution in Bangkok. He had a source, a woman all of thirty years old whose thirteen-year-old daughter had disappeared, and was purportedly working on Khao San Road. Clen had gone to all the reputable brothels and requested the girl-Bet, her name was. Bet had light skin and freckles, her grandfather had been an Irishman named O’Brien, and because of her unusual coloring, people remembered her. Clen had been led further and further into the underbelly of the city. Girls, younger and younger, were produced until Clen was offered the services of a girl who couldn’t have been more than nine years old. He told Elizabeth it was like his spirit was a dry twig that just snapped in half. He picked the girl up and tried to carry her out of the establishment. She started screaming. She didn’t want to go with Clen. She didn’t know him, she didn’t realize he was trying to save her, and he didn’t have the language skills to reassure her. He knew the Thai word for police, tarwc, but that served only to terrify her further.

Clen didn’t make it fifty yards down the alley before the girl was taken from him by the goons of the establishment. The goons were smaller than Clen-every man in Southeast Asia was smaller-but there were four or five of them and they all seemed to be trained in nine martial arts. They beat Clen to a pulp, and they broke his arm in four places, one a compound fracture through the skin, and the only way the doctors at the hospital he eventually landed in knew how to deal with it was by amputation just below the shoulder.

Clen pushed away his plate. It was a story that killed the appetite.

Elizabeth was breathless. “Oh,” she said. She reached across the table to take his right hand.

“And is that why you left?”

“That was one reason,” Clen said. “I also realized I was never going to get assigned to the Singapore desk.” He reclaimed his hand. “I pissed off the wrong person when I was there covering the caning story.”

“Who?” Elizabeth said.

“Jack Elitsky.”

“I knew Jack,” Elizabeth said. “Mingus helped him out once, with a thing, can’t remember what now, it’s like it all evaporated once I came back.”

“Jack is fine,” Clen said. “I was a pompous ass. I’ve always had a problem with authority.”

“Rebellious,” Elizabeth said.

“Something like that,” Clen said.

There was an awkward moment at the door when they said goodbye. Clen had hurried the evening along to this point, refusing dessert and port and another scotch, wanting only to get home and text Dabney. He hadn’t heard from her since the Fourth, when he had summarily ignored her after the scuffle with the economist. But now Clen ached for her.

Quick peck on the cheek, he thought. Thank you for dinner.

Elizabeth leaned against the closed front door, blocking his way. She gazed up at him through her cinnamon bangs, a siren’s look; it must have worked with other men.

She said, “At my party on the Fourth…when you were in the living room with the Beeches…? What was going on? Was there a fight? I didn’t even realize you knew the Beeches.”

“I don’t,” he said. Then he self-edited. “Well, I don’t know the professor. Dabney and I dated in high school.”

“Did you?” Elizabeth said. “That’s interesting.”

“I don’t know how interesting it is,” Clen said quickly. The last thing he needed was Elizabeth believing that anything between him and Dabney was “interesting.” “It was aeons ago. Ancient history.”

“I saw her a few days ago at our Chamber board meeting,” Elizabeth said. “I don’t think she looks well. Her skin is quite sallow, and she’s so thin. It looks like a case of hep C to me, though I’m no doctor.”

Dabney had told Clen that she’d almost fainted. She had said that the room was a hundred degrees and she’d been so anxious about the meeting that she’d skipped lunch. But, with Elizabeth’s words, Clen realized that Dabney did look sallow-her skin had a lemony tinge-and she was quite thin. The other day, he had been able to count the individual knobs of her spine. He doubted that she had anything close to as serious as hepatitis C, but he would gently suggest that she go see a doctor.

He cleared his throat. “Thank you for dinner.” He bent in for Elizabeth’s cheek, but she reached up with both hands and met him full on the lips.

Clen pulled back. Elizabeth’s expression was one of instant mortification, reminiscent of that other, long-ago night on the South China Sea. Oh shit, he thought. Had he led her to believe this was what he wanted? Had she assumed he would be receptive now that Mingus was dead?