A Life Apart (38 page)

Ritwik stopped going for about a week or so. During that time, he stayed up sleepless, worried nights, imagining attacks, assault and other unthinkables. Besides, there was the big question of
market, supply and demand. Would anyone in his right mind go shopping for clothes at a grocery market? Where was the financial sense – and let there be no mistake, this is all and only about
money, about the need to buy food and clothes, not about the more elusive search during his student years in public toilets – in walking the streets here of all places? He would have been
better off walking Hampstead Heath or taking out an ad in
Boyz
or
Thud
.

Then, by that very logic, he decided in favour of the ‘Meat Mile’: surely, the only clothes shop in a grocery market would thrive and prosper. Monopoly, no competition, that sort of
thing. As if in annoyance at its unintelligent dilution, bad economics later took its revenge. Ritwik hadn’t done well so far: three clients in three weeks. Sixty pounds in total. The money
in the Kashmiri wooden box was dwindling; if things didn’t pick up, he was going to have to rethink everything.

The first was a dismal blow-job, his back against a dark wall on Gifford Street, his knees on wet grit, the man looking constantly over his shoulders and at one point even saying, ‘Hurry
the fuck up, will you?’, as if his tardy tumescence was all Ritwik’s fault. An occasional train or two rumbled past behind him somewhere, shaking the wall. Ritwik had pushed his head
back at the first signs of the man’s approaching orgasm and asked for the twenty pounds then. He had reasoned that if this infuriated the man, there was little he could do except zip up and
walk away. It was only because they were out in the open that Ritwik didn’t feel threatened by any potential violence. It was fortunate the man had complied for it could so easily have taken
another direction.

Then there was Frank, the man who looked like an insect with his fragile and overgrown head, wet mouth, and beady, non-human eyes, which reminded Ritwik of beetles; he couldn’t shake off
thoughts of Gregor Samsa. Frank who had wept afterwards in his car parked on Boadicea Street, with its lights off and reeking of poppers, because his wife had left him for his business partner
after twenty years of an impeccable marriage: he had come home and found them in bed together.

Ritwik felt bad taking the forty pounds from him and had tried to cover up both his hesitancy and shame by sniffing, coughing, rubbing the edges of his nostrils and saying, ‘God, those
poppers were powerful, I think I may have burnt my nose. I’m going to have an awful headache soon,’ and then, ‘Thank you,’ to the rustle of crisp notes. Ritwik hadn’t
known what to do, watching a grown-up man cry so helplessly with his trousers and boxer shorts still around his knees. He had asked an insensitive question – ‘Did you love her?’
– and then practically kicked himself for letting those words out when Frank had looked him in the eye and said simply, ‘Yes.’

Frank had asked for his number and, in relief and delight at the hope that at least one customer was possibly going to become a regular and save him that much trouble, Ritwik had given it him
and added, ‘Call me anytime you want to meet up.’

But nothing had prepared him for the encounter with the builder-type man who called himself Greg and carried a big carrier bag in the boot of his white Ford Mondeo. He had stopped the car in a
very ill-lit back street, got out and retrieved the bag from the boot. Ritwik had been so scared he had had trouble articulating the words, ‘What’s in that bag?’ Greg had asked
him to strip completely naked and when Ritwik had refused he had said tersely, ‘Don’t think you’re going to make any money like this.’ The menace in his voice thickened the
stale air in the car.

‘OK, but tell me first what’s in the bag.’

He brought out stilettos, a black nylon bra, transparent black panties and then gripped Ritwik’s hand. ‘I want you to take all your clothes off, put these on and walk
outside.’

‘Walk outside? In the street?’ Ritwik’s eyes opened wide at the sheer audacity of the request.

‘Yeah.’ As if this were the most natural request in the world.

‘You must be joking.’

‘You want the money or not?’

‘Not at this risk.’

‘All right then, get out of the car,’ he said, starting the car to life.

‘Wait, what if I do it in the car?’ He had no idea why he was bargaining with this man.

Greg appeared to think for a few seconds. ‘OK, but you’ll have to move from the front to the back seat.’

Once at the back, Ritwik started taking his clothes off. For a moment he forgot that this was not a sex pickup but a money one, so he asked, ‘Aren’t you going to take your clothes
off as well?’

‘What for?’ Ritwik had never imagined that so much derision could be packed into those two words.

The bra and panty were about three to four sizes too big for Ritwik’s body; he couldn’t fasten the bra, which flopped like a loose sail on his chest, while the underwear was kept
only in place by Ritwik’s back pressed against the seat.

‘Now put the heels on.’ It was an order that had the glint of a knife blade hidden somewhere in the spaces between the words.

‘But you can’t see them like this, my feet will be . . .’

Before Ritwik could finish, he barked out, ‘Do as you’re told. Put them on, lean back and stretch out your legs over the gearbox.’

The shoes were too big as well. At least, Ritwik just had to put them on, not hobble around in them and possibly break his ankle. As he wriggled and manouevred in the cramped space, he was
suddenly seized by an intense curiosity to see himself in a mirror, wearing oversized women’s knickers and bra and wriggling around to stretch out his long, thin legs on to the front seat
through the narrow gap between the driver and the passenger seats. But there was no light anywhere and even if there had been, he would hardly have been able to see anything in the sliver of the
rearview mirror.

‘Turn around.’

‘What?’

‘Turn around. Lie on your tummy. Go on.’

Ritwik tried to do as he was ordered but the space was so limited that it was all awkward elbows, knees, shins, metal, leather. Without any warning, Greg got out of the car, moved into the back
seat and wrenched Ritwik’s legs from the front to try and bundle him into a recumbent position stretched out over the back seats. Food aid sacks were usually handled like this, Ritwik
thought. He let out a yelp as his arm got twisted in the process.

‘Shut up.’ There was an altogether different tone – saturated with hate – in Greg’s order now.

With one seamless movement of his strong arms, he had Ritwik crouching face down and knees bent on the seat. He unzipped his fly, bent down on his knees and attempted to mount Ritwik from
behind, all the while trying to clamp his hands over Ritwik’s mouth. Ritwik struggled furiously to free himself and Greg kept hissing, ‘Stay fucking down or I’ll really hurt
you.’ Ritwik managed to say, ‘No, no, condoms’, before turning himself on his back, using a split second’s let-up of pressure from the man’s arms. Greg was looming
over him, his face twisted with hate and rage. He hit Ritwik twice; the confinement and awkward positions took away some of the impact of the blows but he could taste the salt-metal tang in his
mouth immediately. As he lifted his arms to shield himself, his hands hit the glass of the window and caught the door lock. In a reflex action of survival, he pressed it and headbutted the door
open, pushing his head out of the car.

The inverted world swung for a few seconds, the dull reddish night sky rimmed around with the tops of buildings. He pushed with his feet and tried to get his shoulders and torso out of the car.
Once his hands were out in the open, he half turned on his waist, put his palms on the wet ground, and made an effort to crouch out. In the process, the stiletto heel caught Greg in his groin; with
a sharp, loud ‘Fuck, fuck’, he pushed Ritwik out of the car with such force that his whole body fell out, contorted and heaped, arse on gritty road, elbows scraped, the bra hitched up
on to his shoulders, and the lacy underwear now loosely tying his ankles.

All this took place so quickly that it surprises Ritwik now, more than three weeks after the event, that he had had the presence of mind to stand upright, naked except for a bra dangling from
his shoulders and a pair of knickers held to his groin with one hand, rush to the front of the car, one stiletto in hand, and shout, ‘I have your registration number. If you don’t throw
my clothes out, right now, I’m going to break your windscreen with this shoe.’

Greg threw out his clothes one by one. Jeans, T-shirt, jumper, no underwear, no socks and only one shoe. Before he had a chance to pick them off the road, Greg moved to the front seat and drove
off, his tyres screeching out his rage. What an utter waste of an evening, he had thought; not only did he not get any money, but he actually lost some in the form of a new pair of shoes he would
now be forced to buy.

Ritwik didn’t go back to King’s Cross for nearly a month.

The car is so ludicrously classy that it brings out the skeletal girls – underdressed children, really, all gangly arms and bones and the shadow of night under their eyes
– the fat ladies and the lost, indeterminate ones in between, one by one, like victims of famine emerging from bushes and rocks and clumps of scrub. Something in the way these creatures
appear, as if from nowhere, and take their positions along the pavement with such premeditated casualness at the smell of possible business, brings to his mind pictures of starving people weakly
emerging from behind a crag until what was barren ground becomes magically populated with the remnants of human beings. This could be business, although he assumes, from the car and its obviously
unseasoned driver (who else would cruise these streets so brazenly, and in such a car, if not someone utterly unfamiliar with the area?), it is probably not going to be for him.

So he decides to get out of the competition by making his way through to another, darker sidestreet. The car moves in his general direction. Ritwik takes a right and then a left. He succeeds in
shaking off the car only to find, a minute later, that it is directly in front, moving slowly towards him. He turns 180 degrees and reenters the street he emerged from minutes ago. The car follows
him into All Saints Street. By now, there is no doubt the driver is tailing him. His heart lifts – money, at last – at the same time as there is the old, familiar grip in his
bowels.

He stands against a postbox, staring insolently at the car. It moves past him – it is too dark to make out the person inside – takes a right turn at the end of the street and
disappears.

Everything inside him deflates.

He moves in the opposite direction, towards York Way. He toys with the idea of going to Central Station and picking up the sad leftovers at closing time.

And then the car is right ahead of him. He pretends he hasn’t seen it and walks past it. The passenger door opens, the driver bends down, cranes his neck and gestures with his hand for
Ritwik to climb in.

The man is probably of Middle Eastern origin, Ritwik takes a guess as he belts up. Late thirties to mid forties, spreading middle, moustache, salt and pepper hair, and the twilight of a
stereotypical Arab handsomeness dying with a final flourish. His first words, in his flawless English accent, are impossibly absurd, ‘What’s a nice guy like you doing in a place like
this?’

Ritwik, incredulous, looks at him to figure out whether this is self-conscious parody. There are no clues to read. His laugh, which would have been open had he been able to ascertain the nature
of the chat-up line, is slightly guarded and nervous. He says, ‘I could ask you the same question.’

‘Well . . .’ he shrugs.

‘Where are we going?’

‘Aren’t you going to take me some place?’ This time, the man’s eyes are smiling.

Ritwik is thrown by the question. He stammers out, ‘I . . . I live some distance away, and . . . and . . . it’s not really . . . suitable.’

‘Then we can go back to mine. Is that all right?’

Ritwik nods. This is going all wrong, certainly not according to the interactions he has been used to or expecting. Since when did clients ask him his opinion? Since when did they behave like
polite and gentle pick-ups in a somewhat fast-tracked dating scene? As the car – a Bentley, he learns later – negotiates its way south through Gray’s Inn Road, he regrets having
said yes to the stranger’s offer of taking him back to his place. The familiar fears and misgivings of getting into a stranger’s car darken his thoughts again. At least in the back
streets of King’s Cross, he is on his own territory, more or less. But now . . .

‘Penny for your thoughts.’

Ritwik notes the archaism; presumably, the man was brought up in a former colony, like he was, on staples such as Enid Blyton, P.G. Wodehouse and Jennings, Biggles and Billy Bunter.

Before he can reply, the man throws him again by extending his left hand sideways to him. ‘Zafar. Nice to meet you.’

Ritwik shakes his hand and adds his name.

‘Say that again?’

‘Rit-wik.’ It hasn’t occurred to him to use something concocted, something easier, less unfamiliar.

The next few predictable questions are avoided by a tricky traffic move. Once past that, Zafar says, ‘I’m taking you to my hotel.’

‘Oh. Which one?’

‘The Dorchester. Do you know it?’

‘No, I don’t.’ It sounds as if he should know it, that single word thrown so nonchalantly. ‘Where is it?’

‘Park Lane.’ Pause. ‘Do you live in London?’

‘Yes. In Brixton.’

‘Ahh.’ It could have meant anything.

Ritwik is getting more and more nervous with every passing minute. This interim conversation between first sight and business is a great dampener: the rules of this game do not include
superficial familiarity.

Zafar seems to be intimate with London streets and traffic. As the car gently glides into Park Lane, Ritwik realizes with a sharp intake of breath which part of the world he is in.