The girl in the silver sequined boob-tube was without doubt giving him the eye, up there on the bar again, precariously balanced, leather skirt barely clearing her crotch as her feet, divested of their trendy platform wedges, moved faster than a hummingbird’s wings. Through the fog of too many cigarettes, he watched with slanted eyes as he strummed, no longer infected by her near hysterical excitement, impervious to the lascivious glances she threw him each time she swung her enticing little bod his way.
“Lucky or what?” Greg had muttered, eyeing the long legs, the sinuous thighs, as he humped his bass up on to the improvised stage, but this particular circus has run its course. He was jaded by the unending testosterone challenge; weary of too much willing flesh. Time to move on.
Outside, even in the small hours, Hong Kong maintained its frenetic pace, a city that never sleeps. He jostled his way through unyielding, pleasure-seeking crowds and up the stairs of a narrow, jolting tram, inhaling the mix of garlic, sweat, and something intangibly Eastern that gave the place its exotic flavour. Two more weeks and the gig would be over, though it went unspoken that they could renew any time they liked. This traditional Irish music, with its jaunty rhythm and catchy beat, went down surprisingly well with the newly liberated island’s cosmopolitan mix. Bankers, brokers, market traders, airline personnel; an exciting hodgepodge of creeds and colours, all races and ages but predominantly young. Anything was available if you knew where to look for it in this pulse-spot of the immediate; no law was inflexible, if it existed at all.
But there comes a time when the juices flow more slowly and even the hardiest hedonist feels the need to come up for air. This is what he was feeling now. He’d been on the road for far too long and the time-scarred face he regularly eyed in the shaving-mirror belied the fact that he was actually still in his prime. It was time for a change of pace and some sober reappraisal. To quit running and turn and face up to things, things that had haunted him since early childhood. Memories that must inevitably be confronted before he could even think about a normal life. Time, in fact, to go home.
After he’d sorted out a few loose ends.