‘Why?’ Zafar knits his brows.
‘I’m. . I’m not dressed for. . for such a place. I think they’ll stop me at the entrance. That’s going to be embarrassing.’
‘You’re going as my guest. It’ll be fine. Don’t worry.’ His voice and answers are calm, reassuring and supremely confident.
It has been decided for him, not so much by Zafar’s authority as by the accumulated nudge the car, the hotel, Zafar’s clothes, all give to Ritwik’s greed: he could probably get away by asking for an unthought of sum from this man.
Zafar leaves his car to be valet-parked and gently ushers him into the lobby of the Dorchester, bowed to by doormen in regalia. Ritwik feels so out of place that he registers this opulence — the crimson carpet, the light fittings, the floral arrangements, the depersonalized friendliness and judiciously measured fawning of the staff, the gleam and polish of perfect maintenance — only as something that shines by in the margins of his field of vision.
‘Do you want a drink in the bar?’ Zafar asks him solicitously.
‘No. . no. . I’m fine. Thanks.’ He feels intimidated and tyrannized by the interior and his knees wobble slightly as Zafar leads him to the lift.
He has a whole suite to himself: the John James Audubon suite on the sixth floor. The bird prints comfort him somewhat but not enough for him to feel that he wouldn’t soil anything he touched or sat on. He tries very hard to concentrate on Virginian partridge, Louisiana tanager and scarlet tanager, black-bellied darter and a remarkably amusing solitary trumpeter swan, craning its neck backwards and contemplating an insect very close to its parted beak: the swan itself looks tickled by the proximity of this silly insect.
‘A drink now?’ Zafar has moved to the bar.
‘No, thanks. Do the windows on the other end look out on to Park Lane?’
‘Yes. Do you want to have a look?’
‘Yes, please’.
Zafar draws the curtains. Hyde Park stretches outside like a landscaped parkland in an eighteenth-century print. The traffic below moves by in complete silence. Zafar stands beside him, taking in the sweep, tinkling the ice cubes in his tumbler of whisky.
Ritwik decides to make the first move. He bends down to untie his shoelaces. The business of unmentioned money is bothering him intensely: what if Zafar thinks this is just a casual pick-up and sends him away unpaid? Did he have any inkling in the first place?
‘Take your clothes off, everything, and then walk up and down. I want to see you.’ It is clearly a command from someone at ease with issuing them yet, at the same time as it is impossible not to recognize it as such and act accordingly, it lacks both urgency and firmness. Ritwik does as told.
‘Come into the bedroom.’
Ritwik follows. Zafar sits down on the four-poster bed and takes his shoes, socks and trousers off.
‘What about the rest?’ Ritwik asks. ‘I want to see all of you as well.’
‘Come here.’
Ritwik joins him in bed. Zafar pushes him down and pinches his nipples really hard. He winces in pain and tries to push the man’s hand away. His breath is hot on his face. Onions, overlaid with whisky. And then before he can move or touch Zafar, the man rises on his knees and pushes his crotch on to Ritwik’s head propped up on the oversize pillows. He does what is expected; in less than ten seconds Zafar comes in a bloom of hot, salty liquid in his mouth, rolls off him and subsides on the softly billowing mattress, his hairy legs splayed, his arms akimbo. Ritwik discreetly takes a tissue from the bedside table and silently spits into it, hoping Zafar doesn’t notice.
He lies staring at the ceiling for a few minutes, worrying about his next move. Zafar solves it by saying, ‘Stay for a bit. I’ll drive you home.’
Ritwik instantly relaxes. He turns on his side to face Zafar and tentatively puts an arm and a leg around him. He pushes Ritwik’s head on to his chest — the shirt is silk, he notices — and runs his fingers through his curls.
‘Even your hair is like my son’s,’ he says.
Determined not to let the words throw him, he asks in a high, bright voice, ‘Oh, I didn’t know you had a son. How old is he?’
‘Your age, or slightly younger. Seventeen.’
Ritwik leaves Zafar’s illusion about his age unpricked. ‘Only one son?’
‘No, three daughters. All younger.’
‘Where are they?’
‘Riyadh. Saudi Arabia.’
‘Is that where you’re from?’
‘Yes. But I spent many years in this country.’
‘I can tell from your English. Were you educated here?’
‘Partly. But tell me, where are you from?’
‘India.’
‘Ahhh. I was thinking Algeria, Turkey, Jordan, those areas.’ Pause. ‘So you’re. . . Hindi?’
Ritwik doesn’t correct the mistake. ‘Nothing, actually.’ He quickly fires off another question in order to avoid becoming the focus. ‘Are you an oil man?’
‘What do you mean, oil man?’
‘Well, you’re from Saudi Arabia’ — and you appear to be loaded — ‘so I thought you had something to do with oil.’
Zafar gives a dry laugh.
Ritwik is well into this familiarity game now. ‘Just tell me if you come from one of the Saudi oil families.’
He can feel Zafar smiling. ‘You’re asking the wrong questions. But, to use your terms, no, I don’t come from an “oil family”, but yes, I have some dealings with that industry.’
‘What do you do?’
‘Oh, just bits and bobs. Nothing very much.’
‘I would very much like to do the nothing very much that pays for such a lifestyle.’
Zafar laughs briefly again. Ritwik starts playing with himself and Zafar; he doesn’t want a single spare second in which to think of the easy link this man has made involving his teenage son. This time the sex is slightly more prolonged but Zafar remains resolutely locked in his own, limited needs. The taking type, rather than the giving, Ritwik thinks as he concentrates on timing and almost botches it up. He can’t push away from his head deep-etched prejudices about the unenlightened sexual habits and attitudes of the Arab male. Zafar plays into this conveniently.
The issue of money has now become enormous: because he has not mentioned it right at the outset, he doesn’t know how to broach the subject now and is consumed by thinking of moves and countermoves that would bring it up not too egregiously or offensively. He tries to play for more time. ‘Look,’ he says, ‘I’ll have a shower, then I need to get going.’
Zafar doesn’t reply. Ritwik looks at him and catches him on the verge of dozing off. He touches the man’s face and says, ‘Do you want to come and have a shower with me?’
The shower is an exercise in awkwardness and unsynchronized movements. Ritwik steps out of the black marble bath a few minutes before Zafar, who leans against the tiles and shuts his eyes with pleasure. Or exhaustion. As he dries himself with a red towel big enough to wrap all of himself in several times over, he tries not to look at Zafar’s extraordinarily hirsute body, his growing paunch, and his dangling testicles, which look like used teabags.
Then he notices a thin line of blood stretching along one side of his glans and cries out, ‘Oh my god, blood.’
Zafar turns off the taps and steps out onto the bathmat. He asks, ‘Really? Where?’, peering down, the fear just beginning to form, when Ritwik realizes it is just a stray red thread from his towel.
‘No, it’s all right, it’s just a piece of thread,’ he says, grinning in relief, and holds it up for Zafar to see.
‘Are you sure?’ His face still bears traces of the dissolving fear.
‘Yes, take a look.’
Instead of looking at the thread, Zafar inspects his cock, turning it around in order to leave no doubts hanging. He dries himself in silence then disappears into one of the rooms in the suite, presumably to dress. Ritwik has the sense of some unnamed reverie being broken. When Zafar emerges, in a silk dressing gown, it is obvious that he is not going to drive Ritwik home. Before he can ask, Zafar says, ‘Why don’t I call a taxi for you?’ He reaches into a pocket and adds, ‘Here, here’s some money for the taxi.’ He hands Ritwik four crisp fifty-pound notes. ‘Keep the rest.’