As they walked along, Fang Yu led Remo into a narrow alley.
"What's this?" Remo asked.
"You will see."
They came to a red door in a blank wall. Fang Yu took a key from her purse and opened the lock. She pushed open the door and Remo stepped in carefully.
Sensing no presence inside, he reached out for a light switch. A finger brushed one.
Light flooded a cramped, feminine, but Spartan living room.
"Where are we?" Remo asked as Fang Yu secured the door behind her.
"This is my place," she said shyly. "I have three rooms. I am very lucky to have them."
Except for the Asian-style decoration, the apartment looked like one of the smaller New York City apartments. There was a portable Silver Mudan TV set on a wheeled cart. A beaded curtain made a poor substitute for a divider between living room and bedroom. Beyond the first beaded curtain was a second, and the sound of a refrigerator motor straining.
"Nice," Remo said.
"Is your apartment in America as nice?"
"Not as well-furnished as this," Remo said with a straight face.
"Perhaps I will see it someday," Fang Yu said, going to a tabletop cassette deck. It looked like a fifteen-dollar Times Square special, but it occupied a place of honor on the table and looked as if it was religiously washed clean every day.
"You like disco?" Fang Yu asked, inserting a cassette.
"No," Remo said quickly. Polite was one thing, but disco another.
Fang Yu turned. "No?" she asked. "I was hoping you would show me the latest disco dance."
"It's called the lambada and it's not at all like disco. You dance close together."
"You show me how to do it?"
"Really, really close," Remo added. "I don't think I know you well enough for the lambada yet."
Fang Yu looked confused. "You do not want to dance with me?" she asked unhappily.
"Actually, I'm a terrible dancer," Remo said. "Honest."
"You not dance at all?"
"Never."
"Oh," said Fang Yu. "When you take American girl out on date, what do you usually do with her after you have eaten in an excellent restaurant as we have?"
Remo had to think about that one.
"Actually," he admitted, "I don't date much these days. My work usually gets in the way of my social life."
"How about your sex life?"
"My what?"
"Is that not what they call it in America, or is there new phrase? I wish to know the most modern American phrases so that when I go to America, I will not sound foolish."
" 'Sex life' is still in vogue," Remo said. "Except maybe for me," he added wistfully.
Fang Yu came over and took one of Remo hands in both of hers. Her hands were warm to the touch and Remo inhaled her delicate rose-petal scent once more.
"My work for Chinese tourist bureau too gets in the way of my sex life," she said sadly. "For I have none."
"I have an idea," Remo said suddenly. "Let's take a break from work."
"But I do not know what to do next," Fang Yu said, coloring modestly.
"Leave everything to me," Remo returned.
He drew her through the beaded curtain and to the bed.
Chapter 16
Remo Williams awoke to an empty bed.
He missed Fang Yu immediately.
Remo shot bolt upright, taking in all sounds around him like a human sensory sponge.
"Yu?" he said, even though he knew she was not in the modest apartment. There was no other heartbeat. Beyond the walls, yes. Other heartbeats, other sounds of sleeping apartment occupants. But not Fang Yu.
Remo threw back the thin covers. He felt great. He had not had sex like that in a long, long time. It made him feel refreshed, cleansed of subtle poisons.
Their lovemaking had started the way it usually began for Remo with a woman.
Fang Yu had been shy at first. Remo liked that. That, too, was refreshing. He wondered if the Chinese woman were a virgin. He decided not to ask. Better to be surprised. It had been a long time since sex had held any surprises for him.
Fang Yu had looked upward when she asked, "How does it begin with you and American women?"
"Like this," Remo had replied, taking up her left hand. He held it with one of his, aware of a faint trembling in her wrist. Remo began tapping with his right index finger, in the prescribed way of Sinanju. Step one.
It was designed to bring a woman to watery-kneed climax just standing there. This facilitated two ultimate Sinanju purposes--to bind a woman to a man by brute sexuality. Whether she wanted to or not, she would lie open to him within moments.
Or, when applied to a female enemy, it was an excellent interrogation technique. Simply stop tapping at a crucial moment, and the subject would beg, plead, even grovel for the withheld finger. Remo had known American women subjected to step one to become sexually aroused at the sight of male index fingers forever after.
"What is this?" Fang Yu had asked uncertainly.
"Step one," Remo replied. "Collect them all."
Fang Yu's eyebrows drew together in pretty perplexity as Remo continued tapping. Her trembling quickened. She looked up, and her ivory-hued face in the dimness was so appealing Remo said, "The hell with step one. Let's go directly to thirty-seven. Maybe we'll get lucky and land on Boardwalk. "
He withdrew his finger and began undressing her.
They fell into bed together, naked and tentative. Soon there was nothing tentative in the work they plunged into or the sounds they made.
It was not Sinanju. It was something even older and more powerful.
Remo enjoyed Fang Yu's responsive thrusts and matched them with his own. They climaxed together, shivering and passionate, and after a few tasty butterfly kisses, returned to the fray.
Remo remembered that they had fallen asleep in one another's arms, sweating, spent but satisfied.
Now he was alone. So where was Fang Yu?
As the delicious memories faded, Remo's training reasserted itself. Was this a trap? Remo went to the door. Locked. He flicked on the light and began going through the apartment, looking for something, anything, that would tell him if this really was Fang Yu's apartment.
Unfortunately, except for a cassette of the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, several Madonna tapes, and a dog-eared copy of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, every bit of writing in the apartment was in Chinese.
"Damn!" Remo said. He wished Chiun were here. Chiun could read Chinese. He returned to the bed and drew on his clothes.
"When in doubt," he muttered to himself, "seek escape. So spake Chiun the Wise."
Remo slipped out into the night. The cold made the flesh of his bare forearms tighten, the hair lifting. He sucked in the cold distasteful air and blew it into every cell of his body. It was like firing up a zillion tiny subcutaneous heaters.
Remo walked, feeling warmer than if he were swathed in an electric blanket.
Having no idea where he was, Remo simply oriented himself by his inner compass. Tiananmen Square and his hotel lay to the southeast, he remembered, so he walked southeast.
The only foot traffic he encountered were stooped workmen shoveling waste from public lavatories into wheelbarrows. Remo remembered that they called it "night soil," and used it to fertilize their fields during the warm months. Probably it went into storage during the winter.
Beijing was honeycombed with narrow alleys called hutongs, so it was simple enough to avoid the nearly identical PLA soldiers and People's Armed Police. They walked the streets like an occupying army, always in pairs. Occasionally one would fly by astride a bicycle, bundled up against the cold and pumping the pedals like mad. They made Remo think of the Wicked Witch of the West in greatcoats and fur-trimmed hats.
As Remo approached Tiananmen Square, they became as numerous as bluebottle flies around a horse.