"Megan." The way she thought before saying it told Fortunato she was lying.
"What part of England are you from?"
"I'm not, actually." She casually crumpled the napkin and threw it under the bar. "I'm from Nepal." She gave him the brittle smile again and walked away.
He'd looked at every bar in the district, most of them twice. At least it seemed that way. Hiram could, of course, have been half a block farther on in the wrong direction, or Fortunato could simply have missed it. By four A. M. he was too tired to look anymore, too tired even to go home.
He saw a love hotel on the other side of the Roppongi Crossing. The hourly rates were on the high, windowless walls by the entrance. After midnight it was actually something of a bargain. Fortunato went in past the darkened garden and slipped his money through a blind slot in the wall. A hand slid him out a key.
The hall was full of size-ten foreign men's shoes paired off with tiny zori or doll-sized spike heels. Fortunato found his room and locked the door behind him. The bed was freshly made with pink satin sheets. There were mirrors and a video camera on the ceiling, feeding a big-screen TV in the corner., By love hotel standards the room was pretty tame. Some eatured jungles or desert islands, beds shaped like boats or cars or helicopters, light shows and sound effects.
He turned out the light and undressed. All around him his oversensitive hearing picked up tiny cries and shrill, stifled laughter. He folded the pillow over his head and lay with his eyes open to the darkness.
He was forty-seven years old. For twenty of those years he'd lived inside a cocoon of power and never noticed himself aging. Then the last six months had begun to teach him what he'd missed. The dreadful fatigue after a long night like this one. Mornings when his joints hurt so badly it was hard to get up. Important memories beginning to fade, trivia haunting him obsessively. Lately there were the headaches, and indigestion and muscle cramps. The constant awareness of being human, being mortal, being weak.
Nothing was as addictive as power. Heroin was a glass of flat beer in comparison. There had been nights, watching an endless throng of beautiful women move down the Ginza or the Shinjuku, virtually all of them for sale, when he'd thought he couldn't go on without feeling that power again. He'd talked to himself like an alcoholic, promising himself he'd wait just one more day. And somehow he'd held oui. Partly because the memories of his last night in New York, of his final battle with the Astronomer, were still too fresh, reminding him of the pain the power had cost him. Partly because he was no longer sure the power was there, whether Kundalini, the great serpent, was dead or just asleep.
Tonight he'd watched helplessly as a hundred or more Japanese lied to him, ignored him, even humiliated themselves rather than tell him what they so obviously knew. He'd started to see himself through their eyes: huge, clumsy, sweaty, loud, and uncivilized, a pathetic barbarian giant, a kind of oversized monkey who couldn't even be held accountable for common politeness.
A little tantric magick would change all that. Tomorrow, he told himself. If you still feel this way tomorrow then you can go ahead, try to get it back.
He closed his eyes and finally fell asleep.
He woke up with an erection for the first time in months. It was fate, he told himself. Fate that brought Peregrine to him, that provided the need for him to use his power again.
Was that the truth? Or did he just want an excuse to make love to her again, an outlet for six months of sexual frustration?
He dressed and took a cab to the Imperial Hotel. The tour took up an entire floor of the new thirty-one-story tower, and everything inside was scaled up for Europeans. The halls and the insides of the elevators seemed huge to Fortunato now. By the time he got off on the thirtieth floor his hands were shaking. He leaned against Peregrine's door and knocked quietly. A few seconds later he knocked again, harder.
She answered the door in a loose nightgown that touched the floor. Her feathers were ruffled and she could hardly open her eyes. Then she saw him.
She took the chain off the door and stood aside. He shut the door behind him and took her in his arms. He could feel the tiny creature in her belly moving as he held her. He kissed her. Sparks seemed to be crackling around them, but it could have been just the strength of his desire, breaking out of the chains he'd kept it in for so long.
He pulled the straps of her nightgown down along her arms. It fell to her waist and revealed her breasts, their nipples dark and puffy. He touched one with his tongue and tasted the chalky sweetness of her milk. She put her arms around his head and moaned. Her skin was soft and fragrant as the silk of an antique kimono. She pulled him toward the unmade bed and he broke away from her long enough to take off his clothes.
She lay on her back. The pregnancy was the summit of her body, where all the curves ended. Fortunato knelt next to her and kissed her face and throat and shoulders and breasts. He couldn't seem to get his breath. He turned her on her side, facing away from him, and kissed the small of her back. Then he reached up between her legs and held her there, feeling the warmth and wetness against his palm, moving his fingers slowly through the tangle of her pubic hair. She undulated slowly, clutching a pillow in both hands.
He lay down behind her and went into her from behind. The soft flesh of her buttocks pressed into his stomach and his eyes went out of focus. "Oh, God," he said. He began to move slowly inside her, his left arm under her and cupping one breast, his right hand lightly touching the curve of her stomach. She moved with him, both of them in slow motion, her breath coming harder and faster until she cried out and ground her hips against him.
At the last possible moment he reached down and blocked his ejaculation at the perineum. The hot fluid flooded back into his groin and lights seemed to flash around him. He relaxed, ready to feel his astral body come loose from his flesh.
It didn't happen.
He put his arms around Peregrine and held onto her fiercely. He buried his face in her neck, let her long hair cover his head.
Now he knew. The power was gone.
He had a single bright moment of panic, then exhaustion carried him on into sleep.
He slept for an hour or so and woke up tired. Peregrine was on her back, watching him.
"You okay?" she said. "Yeah. Fine."
"You're not glowing."
"No," he said. He looked at his hands. "It didn't work. It was wonderful. But the power didn't come back. There's nothing there."
She turned on her side, facing him. "Oh, no." She stroked his cheek. "I'm sorry"
"It's okay," he said. "Really. I've spent the last six months going back and forth, afraid the power would come back, then afraid it wouldn't. At least now I know" He kissed her neck. "Listen. We need to talk about the baby."
"We can talk. But it's not like I expect anything from you, okay? I mean, there's some things I should probably have told you. There's a guy on the tour name of McCoy. He's the cameraman for this documentary we're doing. It looks like it could get serious with us. He knows about the baby and he doesn't care."
"Oh," Fortunato said. "I didn't know."
"We had a big fight a couple of days ago. And seeing you again-well, that really was something, that night back in New York. You're quite a guy. But you know there couldn't ever be anything permanent between us."
"No," Fortunato said. "I guess not." His hand moved reflexivelv to stroke her swollen stomach, tracing blue veins against the pale skin. "It's weird. I never wanted kids. But now that it's happened, it's not like I thought it would be. It's like it doesn't really matter what I want. I'm responsible. Even if I never see the kid, I'm still responsible, and I always will be."
"Don't make this harder than it has to be. Don't make me wish I hadn't come to you with this."
"No. I just want to know that you're going to be okay. You and the baby both."