Elin Hilderbrand - The Matchmaker

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?

“Elizabeth,” he said.

She opened the door. “Thank you for coming,” she said, recovering. Ever the proper hostess. “It was a lovely evening.”

“Lovely,” he said, and he all but ran across the moonlit grass.

Miranda Gilbert and her fiancé, Dr. Christian Bartelby, were due to visit for the weekend, as they had the past three summers. But a few days before their arrival, Miranda called to say that Christian couldn’t make it. He had to work at the hospital.

“And I’m sure you don’t want just me by myself,” Miranda said.

“Of course we do,” Dabney said. She said this just to be polite. In reality, having Miranda cancel would be for the best. Dabney needed to tell Box about Clendenin and she could hardly do so while they had a house guest.

“Wonderful!” Miranda said. “I was facing the rather dreary prospect of going to the cinema alone, or spending too much money on Newbury Street. I’ll keep my flight, then.”

When Dabney hung up, she was filled with surprising relief. She was off the hook.

She didn’t want to tell Box about Clendenin. It would be too awful.

The lives we lead.

Miranda arrived on Friday afternoon, only a few minutes before Box flew in from Washington, so they all piled into Dabney’s Impala and headed to the house together. Dabney hadn’t informed Box that Dr. Bartelby was a no-show, and she could tell that he was thrown off by Miranda’s appearing alone. Miranda picked up on this, and the whole way home she thanked Dabney profusely for allowing her to come anyway. Boston was a cauldron this time of year, she said, as Box well knew.

Box said, “Mmmmm, yes.”

Once at the house, Miranda gushed to Dabney about how lovely the guest room was. Finer than the Four Seasons, she said. Miranda was a tall woman with strawberry-blond hair and porcelain skin and green eyes, her nose perhaps a bit sharp for true beauty. She wore a pale pink cotton sundress and a pair of flat sandals with complicated straps. Her hair was frizzy from the humidity, and her personality was warmer and far looser than Dabney remembered from previous summers. She seemed almost silly-but was that possible? Then Dabney realized that not only was Miranda’s sundress pink, her aura was as well. She emitted a color like that of New Dawn climbing roses on their finest day.

Miranda was pink.

Box?

Miranda Gilbert and Box, a perfect match? Dabney had always been a tiny bit jealous of Miranda, but she had never thought…there had never been any indication during Miranda’s previous visits…but of course Dr. Christian Bartelby had always been with her before…he had caused interference…Dabney hadn’t seen it.

Okay, Dabney thought. Wow.

“I’ll let you settle in,” Dabney said. “Can I bring you a drink? A glass of Shiraz? A gin and tonic?”

“Oh, a gin and tonic would be lovely!” Miranda said. She flopped back onto the bed. “I have to say, Dabney, this is a slice of heaven. I look forward to this weekend every year. But Christian…well, he’s quite wrapped up with his patients. He just wasn’t able to get the time off.”