Laura pulled him up and led him around to meet a few people, rock singers, TV presenters, radio show hosts, one or two stalwarts of the tabloids and celebrity magazines, all faces and names that Jim recognised, one or two that he had met before at media parties, gigs, concerts, backstage areas at festivals where the memory had been drug-fuddled and, of course, photoshoots undertaken for Man. One or two could place him, others tried to remember who was he but failed. 'Oh yeah, man, that's right,' they said when he finally told him, so they shook his hand, kissed his cheek or slapped him on the shoulder in some sort of kinship ritual. He was a friend of Laura's so he got a look-in and maybe they would remember his name, his face, where they met him, the next time their paths crossed in the ever-shrinking world in which they lived.

When a number of introductions had been done and small talk endured, Laura dragged Jim over to a corner and handed him a glass of wine. They stood in their own little world, a space within Laura's space, sipping the wine. Groups of people stood in twos and three around the room, islands of conversation in a sea of bustling roomspace. Cheeks were touched, arms were caressed, backs were given brief brushes by fingers, hands and arms. Everything was so tactile, everyone was so into being touched and stroked and excited.

Jim and Laura clinked glasses.

'So,' Jim asked, 'do you always have the shiny happy people around at your place, or is this just something special?'

'Do you always use your penis to ring the doorbell?'

'Well,' Jim said with a grin, 'when the opportunity presents itself...'

'Well, yes to your question too, Mr McCarthy. I often have people around. Mainly to watch. People, celebrity people, happening people, amuse me. And it's not as though we have jobs to go to first thing, so we don't have to hit the sack and hide away when the sun goes down. We often have these get-togethers, they keep life interesting, keep it different. After all we are a different kind of people.'

'You have a lot of friends, a lot of well-known friends.'

'Of course, I am famous, this is what happens. When you're moving in circles of celebrity, the famous get caught in your gravitational field. It's like a golf club, but with well-known, well-connect people and once you're in the clubhouse it's hard to break out of it. Not that anyone ever wants to.'

'Have you broken out of the group?'

'I don't know, maybe I've just added you to the circle.'

'The circle?'

'Later, maybe I'll tell you later.'

She leaned over and kissed him, a crisp caress of the lips, the kind that fired the circulation up. When they peeled apart, Jim opened his eyes and noticed that no one was looking at them, no one was taking the slightest interest in what they are doing. Here he was in a passionate clinch with someone most people would only ever see in a magazine or on the television, and no one cared. Around the room, people talked, drank, took drugs, smoked cigarettes, chatted on sofas, held up the walls, sat on the floor, kissed, caressed, touched. Some stared at their hands, running their fingers through others' hair, loved-up waves of ecstasy coursing through their veins, some smoked joints, passed from friend to friend, inhaled after drinks were sipped from cocktail and wine-filled glasses.

'This is like a little love-in you have here.'

'Oh Jim, you haven't seen the half of it,' Laura giggled. She brushed the tips of her fingers over his lips as he tried to capture their fleeting passage.

'You're not easily shocked are you?' she asked.

'I can be surprised, not shocked.'

'Good,' Laura said. 'I like to surprise people.'

She emptied her glass and dragged him away from the chattering, sensual gathering to the kitchen where she promised him more wine. This kitchen was large, a spacious area with lots of worktop space, a gleaming steel sink, immaculately designed gadgets and gizmos lined along clean-tiled walls, a huge double-doored fridge filled with beers, spirits, wine and snacks of many varieties, cookbooks written by big-name chefs sat on an eye-level shelf from which hung gleaming steel cooking utensils untainted by use. Flowers blossomed and sprayed in uncut crystal vases and in the centre of the room stood a square breakfast bar around which three people sat on stools, drinking, smoking and playing cards.

Laura made some over-the-shoulder introductions while she looked in the fridge for a suitable wine. Around the table were: a record producer that Jim knew from the old days when he had scraped a living as a designer of posters, flyers and sleeves for failed Britpop bands; a perfume designer who created sexy scents in the clinical confines of a lab during the week and spent his spare time consuming chemicals and wanking to internet porn; and a well-regarded director of music promos, recently returned from LA where he had been shooting a video for the latest gaggle of hopeful girls plucked from the nation's shopping centres to be moulded into a hopefully million-selling girl group. It had been a good gig, one that he particularly enjoyed even if the music had not been to his taste, but he did not yet know that the singer he had a fling with in the city of angels was now carrying his child and would abort it, terrified more that the truth about her age would come out -that she was not eighteen, as she had claimed, but rather fifteen - than she was of bringing a life into the world.

The unknowing paedophile corralled the matchsticks that he had just won and wore the grin of a man rolling in clover and loving it.

'Good to meet you Jim,' he said. 'Care to join us for a hand?'

'No thanks,' Jim said, 'there's only two things I want in my hands, women and booze.'

Laura laughed from inside the fridge, a throaty roar broadened by drink and drugs.

'Good answer man,' the record producer, a Scot by the name of Duncan, said. 'Hey Jim, do you remember Tom Blakely? Used to be in, god, what was the name of the band?'

'The Eye of Veronica,' Jim said.

'Yeah, that's the one. I'm kinda vaguely linking you two for some reason.'

'Yeah,' Jim said, 'I used to design their artwork, back before they got signed up by the majors.'

'Wow, was that your work? Really liked it, all those swirly shapes and stuff. I loved that band too. Always wanted to work with Tom. Do you still see him? What's he up to these days?'

'I'm supposed to be seeing him this weekend. He runs an advertising music company now, creating music to flog toothpaste and catfood to. Got his own little studio and little elves to do the work.'

'We all have to make a living, I suppose. You pass on my regards to him. Tell him Dunc says he's a cunt.'

'I will pass that message on in full.'

Laura and Jim left the kitchen with full glasses and a bottle of white that dripped cool condensation onto the floor. She led him down a dark hallway and pulled him into her bedroom.

The lighting in the room was soft, the design minimal and stylish, as if an interiors magazine had just finished shooting a five-page special. Laura lay back on the bed and teased him, easing her dress up, inching crease after crease to reveal bare thigh and unclothed crotch.

'So, are you going to pleasure me now or stand there all night with your dick in your hand?'

'Either way, I think I'm a winner,' Jim said and moved beside her. Glasses and bottle were abandoned as they kissed, fondled and stroked, Jim inching his way down the dress to Laura's thighs and then feeling his way up with his tongue and lips until he tasted her moistness. She sighed and leaned back on the bed, pushing her mound into his mouth. Just as Jim began to circle her with his tongue, he heard the door behind him opening and got the impression that someone was standing over him, looking, watching. He turned around to see Sam standing in the doorway.

'Oh don't stop on account of me,' Sam said. 'Laura dear, the entertainment has arrived, if you're still interested. Of course, you do seem to be busy.'

'That's all right, Sam. I'll be right out. I don't want to miss tonight. I've been so looking forward to it.'

Laura pulled Jim up by the ears and kissed him, savouring herself on his lips. 'Come on, we should go out.'

'Is it usual for your friends to walk in like that? And what's out there that we have to stop what we're doing here? I was just starting to enjoy myself.'

'Yes to the first question, you'll see to the second, and I was enjoying myself too. And I'll enjoy myself a lot more if you come with me now. You'll love this. I know you will.'

She shimmied her dress down and took him back out of her room and down the corridor to where everyone else had gathered.

'Do you like porn?' Laura asked.

'Don't tell me you dragged me away from your crotch to watch a porno?'

'Oh no,' she said, 'something better.'

The room was much the same as they had left it, the same people standing in the same places, talking with the same partners and drinking the same drinks. The glass table, however, had been shifted over from the centre of the room to the side, creating a large space in the middle that no one had filled.

'Let's have a line,' Laura suggested, 'before the action starts.'

Jim wondered what she meant as he waited for her to finish at the coke. When she was done he got his nose down for a snort and the question floated away to be lost in the buzz going around the room. The lights began to fade down to a cabaret vibe, and a quiet mumbling hush washed over the room. Laura squeezed his hand and slid in front of him, pulling his groin to her buttocks, making him more excited.

Jim looked in the direction of the door, following the gaze of most everyone in the room, to see a man and a woman enter the room from the hallway. They were dressed in nothing out of the ordinary, him in a T-shirt and jeans, her in a pink T-shirt and knee-length denim skirt. Her hair was auburn and tumbled down in shoulder-length kinks, while the man's locks were blonde and cut in a business-like fashion. They moved to the middle of the floor and kissed as some mellow chill-out tunes seeped out of the stereo. The gathering gave them space and their neighbours room enough to watch what was happening.

When the pair started taking their clothes off playing with each other, it seemed to Jim that the girl was familiar and just as he was about to whisper something to Laura, he remembered. She was a porn star he had seen a number of times on the internet, in various magazines and movies. Anna was her name, at least that is Jim remembered her being called. Anna took her companion in her mouth, all the time looking around at the crowd, giving them fuck-me eyes, a look Jim had seen her make a number of times before. As Anna caught the recognition in his eyes, Laura grabbed his growing erection.

The live show continued, the porno pair naked and humping on the floor, bare arse rising and falling in a rocking rhythm, switching positions so everyone in the room would see what was going on, a carnal performance that engrossed the excited audience. Members of observant circle, one or two of them, were overcome by the heat and rid themselves of items of clothing and tinkered with each other, reflecting the action on the floor with their own public performance.

By the time the floorshow exploded into a theatrical moaning and grunting climax, two or three couples were going for it like pent-up teenagers but with far less professional panache than the spent pair, who took a bow to polite applause, wiped themselves down with towels, got back into their clothes and dived into the coke. The rest of the room smiled, giggled, smoked, drank, snorted another line, kissed a partner, friend, date, fondled a lover, or just chatted, keeping the conversation going as if nothing had happened bar a minor distraction. Now that the show was over, a dissipating heat flowed though the room and seeped through the floorboards like a memory awaiting resurrection.

'I do wish some people wouldn't ruin the performance I've paid good money for by fucking afterwards in my lounge,' Laura said as she turned around and sandwiched Jim's erection with her leg. 'But hey. Did you like that? Did that get you all excited? I think it did.'

'I'm speechless. I've never actually seen anything like that before. Plenty of porn, yeah, but not right there in front of my own eyes, my own live show.'

'Porn is boring. It's the same thing over and over. People fucking in front of you, however, is... Well, watching people who know what they're doing fucking is so great, rather than some people who think they know what makes fabulous-looking sex when what they really look like is dull people fucking. Anna was great. She never lets me down. It makes me horny, little shows like this. Did it make you horny?'

'I'm a man. Sunrise makes me horny. I'm fit to explode right now.'

'Good. I have plans for you.'

She unzipped his trousers and pulled him free.

'See, I could fuck you now, right here,' Laura whispered as she played with him. 'Or I could just stand here wanking you off until you come. Some people would notice, would look, some would watch for a while and wander off, some might want to help. I just don't know what would happen. But that's for another day. Tonight, it's you and me. I want you to make me come. I want to fuck you. I want you to fuck me.'

She stepped back from him, loosening the grip on his penis, giving it one last stroke before leaving it sticking out of his fly like a nail hammered into a lonely post. 'Bring me another bottle of wine, the one we left behind will have lost its chill. You know where to find me.'

She walked slowly, gracefully out into the hall, leaving Jim standing there in the middle of the room, slack-jawed and hard of cock. For a moment he was frozen, what was happening taking its time to sink in until he realised he was in front of strangers, pointing his penis at them. One girl caught his eye, saw his erection, caught his eye again and smiled. No one else seemed to notice as he twisted himself back into his trousers.

Down in the kitchen, the smoking and drinking triumvirate were still at the breakfast table, but the cards had been put away. Jim searched the fridge for a bottle of wine, trying to remember what it was that Laura was drinking before. After some clinking of beer, water and wine, he found an Australian white. When he closed the fridge door he saw that the three men were looking puzzled.

'Is that what I think it is?' Jim asked as he looked at a board in front of them.

The three of them nodded slowly as one.

'It sure is,' the video director said. 'Ouija board. Picked it up in a hippie shop in LA, run by a very smart, very sexy lady. Never used one before so I'm not quite sure what it is we're supposed to do. It was explained to me but I was too busy checking out her tits when she sold it to me. Those low-cut tops are fucking hard to ignore.'

'I hear you brother,' said the fragrant chemist. 'I fuckin' hear ya. Low-cut tops, can't ignore them.'

The board was marked out in gothic script, the alphabet arcing in the centre, yes and no below, the numbers like stars shining above. In the middle of the board rested a wooden pointer, a hole through which to see the answer, with dragons, nostrils flaring out grainy smoke, carved slinking and growling down the sides.

'Aren't you supposed to put your fingers on the pointer?' Jim said.

'We tried that,' Duncan the record producer replied, 'but no go. We really should get back to the cards. At least with them I was winning.'

'One last time,' the perfumier said.

They placed their fingers on the pointer but nothing happened. The perfume chemist cleared his throat. 'All spirits around us, those who have yet to go over and those who have gone, come to us now and make your presence felt.'

The video producer laughed.

'See, nothing,' Duncan began saying and then stopped. The pointer moved under this fingers. Once, then again. 'Which one of you fuckers is pushing the thing?'

'Shhhh,' the video director said, a smirk fading from his face, 'it's not us, it's the board.'

They fell silent, so silent Jim could hear the hum of voices in the other room separate into separate strands of conversation. The pointer moved again, this time with more purpose, following a slow pattern on the board, hitting one letter, stopping, moving to another, stopping, moving on again.

'What's it saying?' the video director asked.

'Hang on,' the perfumier said, 'hang on. S M E L H I S M I S, it sure seems to like those letters. Whoa!'

The pointer stopped dead on the letter H. It moved again. E, then R.

'Her?' Jim said.

The pointer, with fingers atop, shot over to NO.

'Fuck, man,' Duncan said. 'This is fucking freaky. I'm not liking this.'

The pointer jumped again, landing on one letter and moving on to the next.

I S M I S M L I S M E L I S M E L H H I M M I S M E L H I M O N I S M E L H M O N Y O U

'I smell him?' Jim asked, puzzled.

H I M H I M H I

The pointer moved faster and faster, and the eyes of those with their fingers attached to it started bugging out. The pointer shot off the board, off the table and smashed into a champagne flute standing by the sink. The glass shattered against the tiled wall, shards of crystal spraying in an arc, leaving the stem to stand alone, glinting spent violence in the spot lighting.

'Fucking hell,' Duncan said. 'You cunts, which one of you did that?'

'Wasn't me,' the fragrance man said.

'Wasn't me,' the video director said.

'Wasn't me,' Jim said, freaked out by the flying pointer. 'I'm just here collecting wine. And I think I need a glass of it now. See you boys later.'

'Later,' they said with one voice as they looked at the sharp stem, standing like a monument to their amazement, and then stared at the board, lifeless on the table in front of them.

'Get the cards back out and put this fucking thing away.'

Down the dim hallway, Laura's door was closed, so Jim opened it, trying to put what had just happened out of his mind, and slipped into the darkness of the room.

'Laura, it's me. I've got the wine but you won't believe what I just saw.'

The lights came up, soft discreet lamps along the walls warming to reveal Laura turning a dimmer dial by her bed, her left hand stoking the blonde hair of Sam Glacer, who was busy between Laura's open legs.

'You can tell me later. Do you mind if Sam joins us? She couldn't help herself.'

'Do I mind? I thought I had seen it all tonight, but I guess I hadn't,' he said as he watched Sam pleasuring Laura, a living, breathing embodiment of countless pornographic fantasies from throughout his life.

'Not shocked?'

'Only surprised, Laura, only surprised.'

'Good,' Laura said as she curled fine strands of blonde hair round her fingers like a steed's reins, getting ready to switch from canter to gallop.