ONE
I was bent over the bed in a second-floor hotel room, stark naked, with my seven o’clock appointment balls-deep in my arse when the roof fell in.
Literally.
He was putting his all into it, thrusting as if it were an Olympic sport, and panting so loudly that, at first, I thought the creaking sound was coming from him. The rooms in the Haven Hotel weren’t soundproofed, but the clients could usually be as loud as they liked. The properties on either side were empty at this late hour, and we were far off the tourist track, in a dimly lit side street in Earls Court. Basically, London had better things to do on a Tuesday night, with Christmas still six weeks away. No one else was listening—or cared.
“You’re hot. Fuck, it’s so hot,” he grunted. He wasn’t a bad lover, as it happened. We were playing some kind of boss/PA scenario, which he’d asked for in advance. So, I’d had time to buy a pair of nerdy reading glasses and borrow a necktie off Liam. I wasn’t an actor of West End standard, believe me, but I could clutch a notepad and strip off a pair of decent trousers as well as any paid escort.
“You like this, boy?” he growled, and gave an exceptionally hard shove. His cologne was strong, and his sweaty palms slid along my skin, but I couldn’t fault his stamina. He had to be in his late fifties.
“Oh, yeah,” I said breathlessly—more breathlessly than I actually was, but the shy persona came with the rules of the game. Though ‘boy’ always made me wince. I was twenty-six, but I suppose I was grateful for good bone structure that made me look younger. “Give it to me harder, sir!”
The room was chilly and damp: the heating never worked properly in number 4. Snow had been falling all day, it was the coldest November in London since records began, and the Haven was struggling to keep up.
The creaking was getting louder. It was more than Mr Seven O’clock’s enthusiasm, or even the complaint from my left knee’s old rugby injury. It came from above my head, a cracking, groaning noise. Outside, the snow clothed the city in a kind of breathless hush, covering roofs with a pale lustre, and deadening the sound of traffic and pedestrians passing by. The unexpected quiet meant the creaking noise was even more pronounced.
I realised the real threat when a lump of sodden plaster fell with a splatter on the mattress beside me. Mr Seven O’clock was still thundering away, but it caught the edge of my arm. Moments later, the second lump landed on my head in a spray of wet snowflakes, clogged dust, and debris.
“What the hell?” Mr Seven O’clock yanked out of me—ouch—and leaped away from the bed. “Christ, the whole place is collapsing!” Belatedly, he thought to ask, “Are you okay, kid?”
I shook the stuff out of my hair and peered up. There was a four-foot wide patch of bald ceiling above me, a dark wet stain that crept across the gap, and further cracks spiralling out from the centre, alarmingly quickly. The whole damn thing was going to fall any minute. I pulled myself upright and grabbed for my trousers.
“Let’s get the hell out of here.” I heard sudden activity on the landing. Someone yelled for everyone to vacate the rooms—probably my pal Arne—and someone else laughed hysterically. Right. Whatever the crisis, that would be the new boy, Tom.
To my amusement, Mr Seven O’clock hesitated. “Look. I mean, what about the sex? I paid for the full four hours.”
“You want to keep fucking while the bloody house falls down around you?” I rolled my eyes, dropping the young naïf look in the face of a genuine, grown-up crisis.
He flinched. “No need to take that attitude, mate.”
I relented. He’d only come once tonight so far, and now he’d have to travel home on the Tube with blue balls. “Look, I’ll refund half your money, okay? Can’t say fairer than that.”
As if to seal the deal, another lump of wet ceiling chose that exact moment to thump onto the mattress and splatter debris everywhere. With a curse, he stumbled backwards to the door.
I followed a little more slowly, but also cursing. Because in stuffing my feet hurriedly into my boots, I discovered they were now full of the bloody stuff.
Snowflakes and building dust between your toes? It was a crap look by anyone’s standards.
TWO
We gathered downstairs in a cold and bleak Reception. The four of us regulars—me, Liam, Arne and Pyotr—and Tom and Micah, who’d only just started renting rooms. Every client had left, with or without refunds.
“What happens now?” I asked.
We were on dodgy ground, and I didn’t just mean the ceiling falling in. The Haven Hotel was currently unoccupied—apart from us—ever since the owner had gone into hospital six months ago. Technically, we were squatters. We paid the basic utility bills, but none of us had any legal rights.
And why we were here at all? Well, it had just sort of happened. We’d each drifted here, friends of one or the other, finding a deserted building that still had some amenities, and using the last few habitable bedrooms for our escorting. Back alleyways and cars get boring, uncomfortable, often dangerous, and at this time of year? They’re bloody freezing, too.
“There’s snow in the bath in Room 2!” Liam hopped from one foot to another, dressed in just his pyjama pants, upper body tattoos on full view.
“There’s a leak in the kitchen now as well. It’s the last bloody straw for that roof.” Arne had hurried from the kitchen a moment ago, carrying a couple of empty buckets. They now perched on the battered old desk, and we shivered together to the accompaniment of plops and pings from the water dripping into them.
Arne had been the hotel chef, at least when the place was open for normal business. Now he slept in a small room off the kitchen that he’d made his own, and cooked us meals according to when we could afford to pay for the ingredients.
“How many rooms are left?” he asked.
“That we can use?” Liam frowned. “Fucking none!”
We stood around and glared at each other, though none of us was at fault. The Haven had been left untended for a long time. We’d kept the rooms we used clean and serviceable, but maybe this harsh winter had delivered its final death knell.
“What can we do?” Pyotr hovered at Arne’s side.
“Pray it stops snowing,” Arne grumbled. “Or get more buckets.”
“The forecast said it could continue into next week,” Liam announced.
“Will there be snow for Christmas?” Tom’s shrewd little eyes lit up at that. He looked as excited as a kid, despite the man’s tuxedo jacket and woman’s skirt combo he was wearing, his wardrobe as bizarre as always.
“No, it should have stopped by then. It has to stop.” Arne looked desperately at me, but I couldn’t offer much comfort. I had a one-room flat I could escape to, small and bleak, but good for a dry, relatively warm night’s sleep. But Pyotr was sharing Arne’s cramped room, at least during this ‘on’ stage of their on/off relationship, Liam was camping on his brother’s couch, and Tom and Micah shared four rooms with five other guys, at the top of a house in Shepherd’s Bush.
“Dante, what do you think?” Arne asked me. “Do we shut the hotel completely? I suppose it was always gonna happen, some time. I don’t like to leave it in this state. A couple of days of this weather and the whole place will be ruined.”