Bumping Uglies

Chapter Eleven

I had heard the very faint hum and whir of the small camera tracking until it had me in its view, then focusing. It was fixed above the heavy metal door that was, for its part, devoid of signage and seemed pretty forbidding now in daylight.

Several minutes had passed; long enough for me to wonder whether anyone was actually inside, but not long enough for the embarrassment of standing outside of a locked door on a seemingly abandoned industrial estate to force me to leave.

Just as I was beginning to realise that this was almost certainly a terrible mistake, I heard the heavy clank and thud of locks and bolts being disengaged and the door swung open.

The figure who opened the door took me aback. He was tall and toned, with clearly defined muscles visible beneath a skin-tight T-shirt. He wore contrastingly loose-fitting cargo trousers with pockets that seemed to bulge with a variety of angular objects and a bright orange baseball cap was scrunched low on his head. What alarmed me the most, however, were the empty leather shoulder-holster strapped across his torso and the black lycra half-face mask that went from nose to neck and was emblazoned with a fiendishly grinning skull motif in brilliant white.

"Ah..." I was about to say that I was in the wrong place, spooked into an attempt to abort, when the man stood aside, still holding the door open.

"Welcome, member," he said, his voice muffled through the skull mask. It was a terse message delivered in a tone that did not suggest any room for me to fake ignorance.

He must have recognised me somehow, which perturbed me considerably.

I entered The Tunnel of Love and was led by my ghoulish guide to the same plush waiting area that I had seen before. The scarred barman nodded to me in recognition and immediately began to pour me a beer.

I sat and the big guy with the mask glided silently away. He must, I surmised, be one of the bouncers employed to make sure that none of the clients stepped out of line. It had worked on me; he looked like he could handle pretty much any trouble with one lean-muscled arm tied to a lamp post.

The barman placed a half of lager on the table top in front of me with a click and I sipped it, turning my back pointedly on the large screen above the bar that was showing a garish carnival of flesh and fluids.

After a few minutes, the door on the left of the lobby area opened and out shuffled Madam Poon. She had wedged herself into a royal blue silk dress with a strident motif of bamboo and birds of paradise. With every step part of her bulged beneath the silk, threatening to breach the material like an un-pricked sausage in a pan. She looked more like a sofa in an oriental-themed brothel than the object I was sitting on.

She placed the now-familiar ring binder folder in front of me and lowered herself into a chair.

"Welcome back, honoured member. We glad you return to our humble family so soon."

I pushed the folder back across the table to her.

"I'd like to see Elira please," I said faintly, my voice croaking with nerves served with a dollop of embarrassment.

Madam Poon's expression changed and, for a moment, she regarded me with a face like a Pekingese licking piss off a nettle.

"You sure you not want to see someone else? Variety spice of life!" She forced the rolls of her face back into a rictus smile.

I'm not sure that Cowper had in mind that a gentleman should vary his choice of sex worker when he first penned that phrase, but I let it go.

"No, thank you. Elira will do just fine," I replied. I didn't mention that I just wanted to talk, that seemed somehow even more embarrassing.