encircled her breasts, never quite touching them, but tracing the outline of each through the thin gauze. She leaned back on her arms and looked down at her body and she rose slightly so the older man’s hand could slide low on her belly and he turned the hand so the fingers pointed downward and slid his hand lightly between her legs.
She moaned and the audience reacted immediately. A murmur of whispers flooded the room.
Gruber was hooked. Kei, standing nearby in the darkness, studied his reaction, his dry lips, the sweat on his face, his eyes, gleaming as he watched the performance.
She moved in unison with the hand of the older man, sliding forward on it, rising slightly, letting him taunt her with his palm just barely touching her hair. The younger man finally brushed a hand across one of her nipples, then the other, and finally she reached up and pulled the straps of her tunic loose and it fell away. And then she straightened up and began stroking both her lovers and they grew under her touch.
Kei touched Gruber’s elbow and whispered, ‘We must go now. Show over soon.’
‘Rate dey are going, dey vill be up dere for weeks,’ Gruber said. His blood was pounding in unison with the music.
‘We can come back later, see another show. Maybe tomorrow night.’
‘A minute more,’ Gruber whispered with irritation.
‘Okay, pal, it’s your grave.’
‘The expression,’ said Gruber without moving his eyes from the disk, ‘iss funeral. it iss your funeral, dat iss the expression.’
All three of the performers had become extremely vocal. The woman put her hand on the older man’s land, guiding it deeper and deeper.
Kei was not watching the show. He stared off across the room somewhere into a dark corner, waiting.
The disk was now below the line of sight of the people in the top row. The young woman’s moves were becoming spastic. Her tight jaw line was etched in the spotlights. Every muscle in her body was taut. Suddenly she tore the older man’s loin cloth away and he sprang free and she began stroking him and both men eased her down and they lay down beside her and began kissing her breasts, her stomach, her thighs, and a tight scream burst from her clenched teeth.
‘Pretty soon too late,’ Kei whispered
‘Au right, all right,’ the German growled, and Kei led him to a doorway at the side of the arena. They entered what appeared to be a large closet with a single blue light in the ceiling. A second door faced them.
‘Vait a minute,’ Gruber whispered. ‘Vere are you taking me?’
‘It’s okay,’ Kei said. ‘Health club right there, other side of door. Don’t want light in the club, okay.’
He pulled the door shut. The music continued achingly in Gruber’s mind, although the door was thick and he could really only feel the beat of the drum now. But his concentration was shattered and he was having difficulty making the transition from fantasy back to reality. Kei opened the other door and light flooded the small room. A half-dozen steps led down to a narrow hallway which was painted a dazzling white. Its indirect lighting was so bright it was hard to tell where walls and floors joined. Now even the beat of the music was a memory. But the scene was etched in Gruber’s brain and he could not dismiss the fantasy that continued to play out in his mind.
Kei led the big German to one of the doors and ushered him into an immaculate dressing room with six teakwood lockers and a long teak bench. Kei pointed to a door directly across the hail. ‘Steam bath. Door on other side of steam room leads to massage room, okay?’
Gruber was getting nervous again.
‘Vere are you going?’ he demanded.
‘When you finish, Suji will show you exit door. I will wait for you there,’ Kei said and was gone.
The little son of a bitch, Gruber thought, he is probably going back up to see the end of the show.
Gruber took off his clothes, hanging them neatly in the locker, and draped his shoulder holster over a hook in its side and wrapped a towel around his middle and tucked it in place. His body was hard and his skin tight and there were two round scars in his side, .38-caliber scars, constant reminders that once, in another time and place, he had become dangerously reckless.
He stared at himself in the mirror for a few moments and then looked down at the scars. His mind was like the blip in an electronic game, bouncing back and forth, from the arena above, to the woman on the other side of the steam bath who supposedly would lead him to Chameleon.
Almost as an afterthought, he took the .25-caliber Beretta from the shoulder holster, held the small gun in the palm of his hand, and checked the clip, then tucked it into the towel at his waist. He draped a second towel over his shoulders, letting it fall at his side to conceal the pistol. He entered the steam room.
It was like being lost in a cloud. He had never seen steam so thick. Gruber groped his way along the wall to the benches on one side and sat down. Driblets of sweat trickled down and began to gather at his waist in the tuck of the towel. He took the Beretta and laid it on the bench beside him.
The room was larger than Gruber had expected. He could vaguely make out its perimeters from the haloed glow of the lights recessed in the walls.
God, he thought, it must be a hundred and twenty degrees in here. I’ll give it two or three minutes and then get the hell out.
He took the towel from his shoulders and dipped it in a bucket of ice that sat melting on the floor near the wall and wiped his face with it.
The sound of a sudden shower of water, followed immediately by a harsh burst of steam, jolted him. It came from across the room. Someone had just pulled the cord and released a water shower on the hot coals that wore obviously over there somewhere on the other side of the room.
The mist swirled and grew thicker.
