Chapter 67

Merlyn was deep in a conversation with a gay activist leader, an architect, and the Conductor of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra when Steven touched her bare shoulder and whispered in her ear: "Come on, there's someone I'd like you to meet."

Steven and she made polite apologies to the people they'd been talking to, and he escorted her across the room. It was a huge ballroom, beautifully designed and maintained, like something out of a French historical film. Massive crystal chandeliers, burnished brass lamps, wrought-iron statuary, deep-pile Persian carpeting, exquisite artwork on the lacquered walls ... almost museum-like in its perfection and stateliness.

The room was filled with the brightest and best of Frisco's "alternative" culture. This was Steven's word for describing the sexually liberated. Even though, in a place like Frisco, sexual innovation was the mainstream, not an alternative. But then, Steven was from an older, more conservative generation.

"Who is it?" she asked as he led her past equine masks and china-doll masks, teddy bears and dead American presidents, a Geisha and a Julius Caesar deathmask, past a Kathikali mask (with a very un-Indian pale white person behind it) and African tribal masks. Merlyn had never been to a masked ball before. It was much more colourful and exotic than anything she'd ever imagined. A mela of exotic faces and fashions.

Without answering her question, Steven led her to the far end of the room, to a large mahogany door before which two unmasked young Chinese men stood. From the holstered guns visible beneath their jackets, Merlyn knew they were security, not guests. They looked sleek and deadly, like characters out of a Jet Li Hongkong action film.

Steven said something to one of the men and he spoke into a lapel mike. After listening to the reply over a tiny earphone plugged into his left ear, the security guard nodded and opened the door. The moment Steven and she had passed through, the door was shut and locked behind them.

After the gaudy, brilliant lighting of the ballroom, this inner room seemed pitch dark at first. For one suffocating moment, Merlyn was struck by the illogical feeling that she just been imprisoned. Then her eyes began to adjust to the very dim illumination and she breathed again.

The air was redolent with the musky fragrance of agarbattis. Joss sticks, as the Americans called them. There was some other odour mixed with the agarbatti scent, something smokier, thicker. She felt it in her throat rather than in her nostrils. It smelled vaguely familiar, and brought back memories. Before she could focus on the associations, a voice spoke from the darkness.