He saw Dan gazing off, looked over and caught the exotic features.
He set his glass down and shrugged. “Go for it, Romeo. You’ll forget Project Management Kelvin in all of two seconds.”
“Who?”
“My sentiments exactly.”
They moved at the same time. Dan caught a gymnast’s sleekness in the other’s even stride.
“My name is Ren Hao,” said the vision limned in white linen.
He held out a hand. There was no ring in the usual place, but there was a tan line suggesting it had been there recently. Dan suspected he was one of those beautiful Taiwanese businessmen on loan from their domestic lives, having a night out that the wife and kids would never have to know about, so far across the waves and on vacation from conventional morality.
“I’m Dan Sharp.”
They shook hands, the desire for physical gratification only intensified by the contact.
Dan thought of his options: a long, boring conversation that might eventually lead nowhere or else taking charge of the situation, here and now. He recalled Donny’s dismissive comment regarding the long road to consummation. Besides, he told himself, this one was definitely not a wait-until-later type. If you find a diamond on the road, you pick it up and put it in your pocket. Otherwise, it won’t be there tomorrow when you return. Shiny things had a tendency to disappear quickly in the gay world.
Ren beat him to it. “My hotel is nearby,” he said.
“Sounds good to me,” Dan said, thinking it would turn out to be the Delta Chelsea or maybe the Towne Inn, both quietly functional accommodations that had hosted their share of late-night get-togethers of the vicarious sort.
Not so.
Four
Dangerous Liaisons
They left the strip club and caught a cab down to the financial district, dense and brooding, just a few blocks north of the harbour. A hub of traffic and commuter activity overlying fifteen tangled kilometres of underground shopping by day, it is eerily deserted at night. Walking alone here after dark has proved dangerous, but mostly to the unwary. Fog can crowd in unexpectedly. Footsteps echo on pavement in imitation of Jack the Ripper’s London, silently admonishing: Beware! Beware! Those too drunk or naive to register the warning have ended up mugged or worse. Clubbers trip home in pairs and trios here. Your mother was right: there’s safety in numbers.
Dan gazed out the window as the taxi slid along, sleek and predatory, a lone wolf cut loose from the pack. They paused at the intersection of Richmond and Peter Streets. Ren slipped the driver a few bills from a wad of cash as they exited.
There was no hotel in sight.
“It is nice to walk at night,” he said, to Dan’s questioning look as they stood together on the curb.
They came upon a cabal of kids at the next intersection. The smell of weed drifted toward them, the air rich with the fug-heavy sweetness. The group skeedaddled as the pair approached, two mature men looking very out of place in after-hours clubland.
Dan followed Ren’s lead. Their talk was desultory. Ren’s English was better than acceptable, Dan’s Mandarin negligible. On the whole the silence between them felt comfortable, not awkward. Dan put it down to the fact they both had something other than conversation in mind. That was all right, as far as he was concerned. No need for pretence. It was far too long since he’d spent time with a man with nothing more than pleasure on the agenda. Ren fit the bill perfectly.
Dan was just beginning to think he’d misunderstood their destination when they rounded a darkened corner near the Air Canada Centre. He was momentarily surprised to see where they’d ended up. Long before lending his name to a highly successful hotel chain, Saint Germain was a penurious, sixth-century bishop known for his work with the poor. Canonized two centuries after his death, he was said to be as virtuous and austere as they came, a tireless reformer of peasants and royalty alike, setting all and sundry on the path of righteousness. So hardworking and generous was he that his monks once rebelled for fear he might give away everything he owned. The boutique hotels that bore his name, while equally fastidious, would never have welcomed the poor within their hallowed halls where a penthouse might cost upwards of a thousand dollars a throw. Dan had never spent the night here, but he knew this was fancy stuff. He was just starting to wonder what his pick-up did for a living, about to upgrade Ren from successful Taiwanese businessman to visiting Thai royalty, or even absconding drug lord, when they turned in at the demure, understated entrance.
A neatly dressed concierge glanced up discreetly. Dan caught the man’s discerning gaze, registering them as Guest and Riffraff. Too late, he thought of his black jeans and chequered-shirt street wear. A second later, the man’s face was a cipher. Whether he approved of early-morning trysts of the homosexual variety, or of any tryst at all, whether he was a proponent of the mixing of the races or an ardent admirer of Himmler’s Final Solution was impossible to discern from his expression. No doubt, stashed somewhere deep in the vaults of the hotel was a mission statement dispensed to the staff in foreboding tones, outlining inappropriate fraternizing with the clientele and duly signed in blood. He’d probably been trained to memorize the face of each guest and admonished never to disturb them, no matter the hour, their states of dress or sobriety or, least of all, the company they kept. Anyone who could afford to stay at the Hôtel Le Saint-Germain could well afford the price of discretion.
Ren gave the man a curt nod then headed for the elevators, producing a pass card that made the doors whoosh open and shut again with minimal noise and maximal ease. The elevator gleamed like the inside of a diamond, mirrors positioned above and below, a self-referential little world designed with the professional voyeur or narcissist in mind. The ride was silent and smooth, as though nothing existed outside those walls. They could have been aboard a shuttle heading into deep space. It should have prepared Dan for the ostentation lying ahead. In fact, it was deceptive.
The doors opened onto a hallway that glowed quietly in a low light. Everything spoke of elegant understatement rather than flashy opulence. It was as if Germain’s saintly austerity had rubbed off on the hotel’s designers. Narrow rosewood shelves lined the walls at discreet intervals, with polished green apples set into slots in groupings of sixes and sevens. Real-life design motifs, each perfect and unblemished. Waxy tropical flowers, newly opened, thronged on side tables, spotlit in slender shafts of radiance like captive moonlight. All was hushed, solemn, and serene.
Dan followed Ren to room 1101. A binary code. In mathematicians’ lingo, that was akin to a religious experience. Another swipe of the passkey and they entered what seemed a church’s velvety interior. A more impressionable man might have knelt and genuflected. A wall of windows overlooking the lake resembled a giant mural where a freighter moved slowly, inexorably in the distance, passing out of the harbour and on to its destiny.
A final slicing of the passkey activated a relay of overhead pin-spots. The room was immaculate, a monk’s cell designed for maximum comfort and efficiency. A wide bed had been tucked into a corner, like a ship at berth. An imposing black-and-white photo, oversized and mounted above, showed an athlete straining to achieve, biceps pumping and legs piston-like as he strove for glory or perfection.
The glass cubicle rising like a decompression airlock at the room’s centre was its most surprising feature. Transparent on three of four sides, the shower’s blackout blinds could be operated from within for decency or raised to allow the voyeur pleasure from without. Your partner could lie in bed observing, waiting for the pivotal moment to strip down and join in, both of you watching the city go about its to-ings and fro-ings as you washed away your cares, your sins, or just the dirt of everyday living. All of this designed to bring you one step closer to the immaculate state of a sixth-century monk who wanted nothing more than to give away everything he owned, divesting himself of the constraints of the material world. Not too shabby, Dan thought.
He turned. Ren stood behind him, watching Dan watching the harbour. They moved slowly, like ships attempting a coupling for ease of boarding, Ren’s body tight