'Roman Britain's my personal obsession.' He put down the glasses he was carrying and crossed to the pottery-laden shelves.
This is stuff I've collected over the years. I've never quite got over the thrill of handling objects that haven't seen the light of day for centuries. It's like plugging into history. You know what I mean?' 'Yeah.'
Reynolds picked a fragment of pottery off the shelf. 'Of course all the best finds are claimed by the major collections. But if one's canny, one manages to keep a few pieces back. They were an incredible influence, the Romans. Civil engineers, road-layers, bridge builders.'
Reynolds gave a sudden laugh at his burst of enthusiasm. 'Oh hell,' he said, 'Reynolds is lecturing again. Sorry. I get carried away.'
Replacing the pottery-shard in its niche on the shelf, he returned to the glasses, and started pouring drinks. With his back to Gavin, he managed to say: 'Are you expensive?'
Gavin hesitated. The man's nervousness was catching and the sudden tilt of the conversation from the Romans to the price of a blow-job took some adjustment. 'It depends,' he flannelled.
'Ah ...' said the other, still busying himself with the glasses, 'you mean what is the precise nature of my - er - requirement?'
'Yeah.'
'Of course.'
He turned and handed Gavin a healthy-sized glass of vodka. No ice.
'I won't be demanding of you,' he said. 'I don't come cheap.'
'I'm sure you don't,' Reynolds tried a smile, but it wouldn't stick to his face, 'and I'm prepared to pay you well. Will you be able to stay the night?'
'Do you want me to?'
Reynolds frowned into his glass.
'I suppose I do.'
Then yes.'
The host's mood seemed to change, suddenly: indecision was replaced by a spun of conviction.
'Cheers,' he said, clinking his whisky-filled glass against Gavin's. 'To love and life and anything else that's worth paying for.'
The double-edged remark didn't escape Gavin: the guy was obviously tied up in knots about what he was doing. I’ll drink to that,' said Gavin and took a gulp of the vodka. The drinks came fast after that, and just about his third vodka Gavin began to feel mellower than he'd felt in a hell of a long time, content to listen to Reynolds' talk of excavations and the glories of Rome with only one ear. His mind was drifting, an easy feeling. Obviously he was going to be here for the night, or at least until the early hours of the morning, so why not drink the punter's vodka and enjoy the experience for what it offered? Later, probably much later to judge by the way the guy was rambling, there'd be some drink-slurred sex in a darkened room, and that would be that. He'd had customers like this before. They were lonely, perhaps between lovers, and usually simple to please. It wasn't sex this guy was buying, it was company, another body to share his space awhile; easy money.
And then, the noise.
At first Gavin thought the beating sound was in his head, until Reynolds stood up, a twitch at his mouth. The air of well-being had disappeared.
'What's that?' asked Gavin, also getting up, dizzy with drink.
'It's all right - ' Reynolds, palms were pressing him down into his chair. 'Stay here - '
The sound intensified. A drummer in an oven, beating as he burned.
'Please, please stay here a moment. It's just somebody upstairs.'
Reynolds was lying, the racket wasn't coming from upstairs. It was from somewhere else in the flat, a rhythmical thumping, that speeded up and slowed and speeded again.
'Help yourself to a drink,' said Reynolds at the door, face flushed. 'Damn neighbours ...'
The summons, for that was surely what it was, was already subsiding.
'A moment only,' Reynolds promised, and closed the door behind him.
Gavin had experienced bad scenes before: tricks whose lovers appeared at inappropriate moments; guys who wanted to beat him up for a price - one who got bitten by guilt in a hotel room and smashed the place to smithereens. These things happened. But Reynolds was different: nothing about him said weird. At the back of his mind, at the very back, Gavin was quietly reminding himself that the other guys hadn't seemed bad at the beginning. Ah hell; he put the doubts away. If he started to get the jitters every time he went with a new face he'd soon stop working altogether. Somewhere along the line he had to trust to luck and his instinct, and his instinct told him that this punter was not given to throwing fits.
Taking a quick swipe from his glass, he refilled it, and waited.
The noise had stopped altogether, and it became increasingly easier to rearrange the facts: maybe it had been an upstairs neighbour after all. Certainly there was no sound of Reynolds moving around in the flat.
His attention wandered around the room looking for something to occupy it awhile, and came back to the tombstone on the wall.
Flavinus the Standard-Bearer.
There was something satisfying about the idea of having your likeness, however crude, carved in stone and put up on the spot where your bones lay, even if some historian was going to separate bones and stone in the fullness of time. Gavin's father had insisted on burial rather than cremation: How else, he'd always said, was he going to be remembered? Who'd ever go to an urn, in a wall, and cry? The irony was that nobody ever went to his grave either: Gavin had been perhaps twice in the years since his father's death. A plain stone bearing a name, a date, and a platitude. He couldn't even remember the year his father died. People remembered Flavinus though; people who'd never known him, or a life like his, knew him now. Gavin stood up and touched the standard-bearer's name, the crudely chased 'FLAVINVS' that was the second word of the inscription.
Suddenly, the noise again, more frenzied than ever. Gavin turned away from the tombstone and looked at the door, half-expecting Reynolds to be standing there with a word of explanation. Nobody appeared.
'Damn it.'
The noise continued, a tattoo. Somebody, somewhere, was very angry. And this time there could be no self-deception: the drummer was here, on this floor, a few yards away. Curiosity nibbled Gavin, a coaxing lover. He drained his glass and went out into the hall. The noise stopped as he closed the door behind him.
'Ken?' he ventured. The word seemed to die at his lips.
The hallway was in darkness, except for a wash of light from the far end. Perhaps an open door. Gavin found a switch to his right, but it didn't work.
'Ken?' he said again.
This time the enquiry met with a response. A moan, and the sound of a body rolling, or being rolled, over. Had Reynolds had an accident? Jesus, he could be lying incapacitated within spitting distance from where Gavin stood: he must help. Why were his feet so reluctant to move? He had the tingling in his balls that always came with nervous anticipation; it reminded him of childhood hide-and-seek: the thrill of the chase. It was almost pleasurable.
And pleasure apart, could he really leave now, without knowing what had become of the punter? He had to go down the corridor.
The first door was ajar; he pushed it open and the room beyond was a book-lined bedroom/study. Street lights through the curtainless window fell on a jumbled desk. No Reynolds, no thrasher. More confident now he'd made the first move Gavin explored further down the hallway. The next door - the kitchen -was also open. There was no light from inside. Gavin's hands had begun to sweat: he thought of Reynolds trying to pull his gloves off, though they stuck to his palm. What had he been afraid of? It was more than the pick-up: there was somebody else in the apartment: somebody with a violent temper.
Gavin's stomach turned as his eyes found the smeared handprint on the door; it was blood.
He pushed the door, but it wouldn't open any further. There was something behind it. He slid through the available space, and into the kitchen. An unemptied waste bin, or a neglected vegetable rack, fouled the air. Gavin smoothed the wall with his palm to find the light switch, and the fluorescent tube spasmed into life.