well,’ he smiled back, ‘you’ve probably never taken Ecstasy before, have you?’
‘God, no. Is that what it is?’ I forgot even to feel fear; I just felt amazed.
‘It is indeed. It’s gonna break down society’s barriers.’ His eyes were slightly glazed. ‘We will all love each other for ever and indiscriminately.’
And I felt decadent and cool and amazing, and then James was kissing me and I felt so odd, like I actually loved him and I kind of wanted to say that to him but I didn’t, I just kept kissing him. The music had changed to banging house and I wanted to dance now. The beat was in me, I was the beat and I was dancing now, writhing and turning, and I felt like everyone was watching me.
And then Dalziel was talking, far more dishevelled than earlier, his jacket was off and his shirt was unbuttoned, flowing loose from his trousers, exposing his smooth chest, his ribs that jutted out. He stood on the small table and he was asking for quiet and people were complaining, ‘Don’t turn the music off’ but he said it was time, time to do the seventh thing.
I didn’t know what he meant and I didn’t care.
A girl was led in wearing a strapless black dress, very fitted around her voluptuous curves. She was short, elegant, olive-skinned, with almond-shaped eyes, long dark hair in a French plait, a year or two older than us, perhaps. She was beautiful in a soft, rounded way. I smiled at her, but she ignored me, and I realised after a second that she was not quite here with us. Her eyes were unfocused and she stumbled slightly. At first glance she looked quite beatific but the longer I looked at her, the more it became apparent that she was in some kind of trance.
Lena stepped forward and blindfolded the girl, who appeared to acquiesce willingly, staggering slightly in her stilettos, a red satin scarf tied around her eyes. Lena ran her hands down the girl, slowly across her breasts, a lascivious smile spreading across Lena’s face. The music was put back on and the girl was led to the divan, her hands held before her as if in supplication or prayer. I wanted to dance again and I grabbed James’s hand, but he was distracted, I could feel that he was waiting for something. He watched Dalziel, who had a spray-can in his hand. In his great looping script he wrote on the wall. I thought that was quite amazing, writing on his own wall.
‘You shall not commit adultery,’ he scrawled, and then he turned triumphantly to us. ‘This is Huriyyah. She is the lover of someone I know well,’ he proclaimed, ‘very well indeed’. He looked around at his minions, challenge in his eyes. ‘And I have –’ he paused momentarily – ‘I have, let us say, persuaded her to help my fallen angels celebrate tonight. So – who will be the lucky taker?’
I was thoroughly confused.
‘Or the first, should I say?’
‘Christ,’ James muttered beside me, and then the door was flung open and someone wearing a demonic goat-mask stood there, horns curling up to heaven like a devil.
‘Azazel, my dear friend, come in,’ Dalziel purred. ‘Join the rest of your clan.’
‘Who the fuck’s Azazel?’ a girl behind us muttered.
‘Goat-demon, seducer of men and women.’ Dalziel gestured to him. ‘Cast out by the Archangels to abide in darkness for all time.’
Whoever he was, he stepped forward. ‘I am ready,’ he said in a gruff tight voice. ‘Please.’
And he approached the young woman, who was being held down now, lying on her back, seemingly insensate, one arm thrown elegantly back, her suspenders showing. The smooth skin above her stockings glistened in the candlelight and on her inner arm were bruises and what I supposed could only be track marks from a needle.
‘Is she up for this?’ I asked James nervously, not feeling absolutely as high as I had moments ago.
‘Looks like it,’ James shrugged.
‘But –’ I licked my dry lips – ‘but why would she be here if she’s someone else’s lover?’
‘I don’t know. Who knows what goes on between people?’
The girl was being helped by two of Dalziel’s boys to peel her pink knickers off, raising her hips off the divan so a dark triangle of pubic hair was visible. Despite my misgivings I felt the excitement in the room, the murmur as the air thickened with lust, the music pulsating so I felt it in my breastbone, wreaths of smoke from cigarettes and joints and God knows what else hanging in the air around us, and the drug already in my veins surged through me again.
‘Place her in the crucifix position,’ Dalziel ordered. They did it. She was almost frighteningly floppy and acquiescent.
Azazel removed the goat-head and we saw it was a boy with a head like a bullet and hair like a brush; a boy who looked somewhat out of place amongst all the beautiful people. He was sweating and red-faced, and his eyes glinted with excitement as he undid his trousers.
‘Form a queue,’ Dalziel drawled from behind the divan where he was stroking the naked arse of a tall dark boy. Then the short boy was between the girl’s legs and pulling her dress down, sucking on a dark nipple he had freed and fumbling with his trousers, and then with a great groan he was in her and she was turning her head back and forth as if she was indeed enjoying it, or perhaps she was just delirious. Then Dalziel and the dark boy were kissing and Dalziel bent the boy forwards over the divan and was biting his neck, grinding into him. Someone turned the music up louder still and couples were pairing off. Lena and another girl writhed against the wall together, and James took me by the hand and led me out through the French window.
He pulled me into him and kissed me again, and although the night was freezing I didn’t seem to feel it and he untied my halter neck impatiently and pulled my catsuit down. He hiked me up onto a small wrought-iron table and we fucked right there in the garden. He was only the second boy I had ever had sex with but I felt so fluid right now, made of air, I might do it with anyone. At one point a light in the upstairs window of the house next door went on and I didn’t even care.
‘Someone’s watching us,’ I murmured in James’s ear and he just thrust harder.
‘Let them,’ he whispered, and I moaned with pleasure.
Afterwards we went back inside to find the girl had gone. Only the silk scarf lying on the floor showed that she had been there. Dalziel and the boy were on the divan now themselves. They looked like they were sleeping, wrapped round each other, and suddenly I felt very cold.
‘You’re OK,’ James said, ‘you’re just coming down a bit,’ and he gave me his jacket; someone else offered me a line of white powder chopped out on the table but actually I didn’t want it. Lena was so out of it she was crawling on the floor, laughing in her knickers and bra, occasionally barking like a dog, much to the hilarity of various bystanders.
‘That was full on, wasn’t it?’ a dishevelled boy said to James, his eyes like saucers, his nose streaming from the drug he’d just snorted.
James lit a cigarette. ‘Too busy having my own fun, mate.’ He kissed my shoulder and I smiled decadently. ‘What was?’
‘When the girl started to come round.’
‘What girl?’ I said.
‘The druggie. She was about to change her mind, I swear.’
My
