Chapter 42

Arif's head was spinning. Maybe it was the half-dozen pints of draught beer he'd put away. More likely, it was all the intoxicating insights Lena had been revealing to him. That, and her sheer physical presence, which itself was enough to make him feel a little drunk, sexually speaking.

He held up a finger, making her pause in mid-sentence. "Hold on a second here. Let me just recap what you've told me so far."

She smiled that bitchy, sarky smile of her's and finished off her fourth Screwdriver. Or was it her fifth?

He fought to keep his voice from slurring: "You and AP Singh founded this cult or commune or whatever you call it. Based on The Hellfire Club and TES and some other such places you were members of in the US. You went about it very discreetly, recruiting only the creme de la creme of Indian society. People who wanted to explore their sexuality without getting AIDS, arrested, or worse. You called this The Perfumed Garden, after a famous ancient book of Persian erotica, sort of like the Arabian Kamasutra. The Garden bloomed, as you put it, growing a rich harvest of members. How am I doing so far?"

"You should be a reporter," she said.

He ignored the sarcasm, and took a second to gulp some more brew before going on.

"But then, at some point, you and AP lost control of the organisation. Someone called Myanmar played politics behind your back. Convinced the other members that you and AP were too high profile, too commercial. That your plans to open the Sin City enterprise would draw undue public and media attention to your group, that you would be exposed and shut down, ridiculed and reviled. This Myanmar also insinuated himself into the other members' confidence by claiming that The Perfumed Garden was a means of spiritual salvation, a kind of Tantric sex cult through which they could purify their bodies and attain nirvana?"

"He's a religious nut. Thinks he's a prophet of sex."

The flash of anger in her eyes told him how much she hated this Myanmar guy. It also made her more attractive, exploding an image of her lying naked on a massive four-poster bed and Arif pinning her down while taking her hard. He blinked and tried to make the image go away. It was hard.

He made a mental note to find out later if there had been anything major between them -- that might explain her intense hatred of Myanmar. Hell hath no fury, and all that. He went on.

"Which brings us to the present day. You and AP split away from The Perfumed Garden, set up your own singles organisation. Sin City. Which is already on its way to becoming the biggest thing since the Kamasutra. Now, you want revenge on Myanmar. Want to shut down The Garden. Expose it as a fake."

"No," she said. "Not expose it. I don't want the other members to suffer for his stupidity. Exposure would ruin their lives, they're all important, influential people."

A sly smile appeared on Arif's face.

"Translated, that means you don't want to antagonise all those valuable customers. You want to get them over to your side! And cut Myanmar off at the short hairs."

She sat back and looked at him with a strange expression on her face.

"You know, you're finally using those beautiful brains I knew you had. Now keep those brain cells firing at the same light-speed and get to the point. I've told you too much already. You're already in over your head." She gestured around at the crowded bar with a fetching twirl of her wrist. "And this is no place to talk stuff like this."

"Is that the same as 'If I tell you any more, I'm going to have to kill you'?"

She crossed her legs, revealing a flash of thigh, then uncrossed them again. "Something like that. Except that killing wasn't exactly what I had in mind."

"So what did you have in mind?"

She looked around. The bar was packed. A flight had been delayed indefinitely, and the airline, a national carrier, had dropped the passengers off at this hotel for the duration of the wait. It was noisy, smoky and very unromantic now.

"Why don't we check into a room upstairs, and I'll show you."

Before he could answer, she was already waving to the waiter, flashing her Platinum Visa Card.

Arif upended his last mug of draught, licked the flecks of foam off his lips, and was ready to go.