Death Match

“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 thi

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, sca

“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.”