Golden Lies - Barbara Freethy [12]
Wednesday afternoon had come too quickly, David Hathaway thought as he walked purposefully across town, the strap of the heavy canvas bag clenched tightly in one hand. There was still much to do, but the hour was growing late. The air had cooled, the traffic had grown noisy with the early evening commute, and the sun was falling lower in the sky, sometimes completely blocked by the tall skyscrapers of San Francisco. It was almost four o'clock. Mrs. Delaney and her grandson would be arriving at the House of Hathaway in one short hour. They would expect to receive the dragon or an offer of purchase. While he might be able to stall Mrs. Delaney, her grandson was another story.
David paused on the corner, wondering if he shouldn't have put off this visit until after they'd purchased the dragon. But he had to show Jasmine—to be sure. He would have liked to come earlier, but Jasmine had been out all day. When he had finally reached her, she had told him not to come, but she always said that. And this was too important.
Crossing the street, he walked under the concrete foo dogs guarding Chinatown's main gate and past a red-faced deity protecting a local herbal shop from atop a rosewood shrine. He was only a few blocks from San Francisco's financial district, but the atmosphere, the neighborhood, had completely changed. Leaving Grant Avenue, the main thoroughfare through Chinatown, David headed down a narrow side street, past Salt Fish Alley, where the odors of fish and shrimp being cured in large vats of salt was overwhelming, past Ross Alley, once notorious for gambling, and past the Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Factory, where women still filled hot cookies with Chinese fortunes.
This wasn't his Chinatown, this tourist-attraction that played to the interests of tourists and locals who wanted to experience a little of the Orient in their hometown. His Chinatown was a continent away, in the streets of Shanghai. Veering away from the commercial avenues, he entered a residential neighborhood where apartment buildings were crowded together, one after another, hugging each other as tightly as the large, close-knit families that lived inside the small rooms. Jasmine's building was at the end of a lane. He used the back stairs leading up from the garden to her apartment. Three short knocks, and he waited.
For a moment he thought she wouldn't answer. His uncertainty was uncomfortable, unthinkable, an emotion he didn't know how to handle. Jasmine would come. She would let him in; she always had before. She had loved him like no one else. She had said she always would.
He hadn't treated her well. He knew that deep in his soul, in a place he never chose to visit. There were too many painful emotions there, feelings he kept hidden away. Sometimes he wished he could change, but as Jasmine once told him, it was easier to move a mountain than to change a person's character. For better or worse, he was who he was. It was too late for regrets. In his hand was something special. A thrill of excitement ran through him as he considered the possibilities.
The door slowly opened. Jasmine stood in the doorway, looking far older than her forty-eight years. She wore a black dress that was but a variation of her usual black pants. He remembered a time when she had dressed in colors as bright as those she used in her paintings, when her face had lit up with joy and wonder. Now there was nothing but darkness—in her eyes, her face, her voice, her apartment. The heavy incense she burned made it difficult to breathe. He sometimes wondered what she was mourning, but he had a feeling he already knew. So he didn't ask questions, and she didn't offer explanations.
"You shouldn't have come. I asked you not to," she said in a somewhat hoarse voice. He wondered how often she spoke to anyone. Had her voice grown raspy from disuse? A twinge of guilt stabbed his soul. Had he done this to her? If they had never met, would she have ended up here?
"I had to come," he said slowly, forcing himself to focus on the subject at hand.
"It is always this way in