Pants on Fire Read Online Free Page A

Zippo lighter with an enormous flame and lit the tip. I took a hit and handed it back to him.
    â€œWho are you, Jasper?” I asked. “What do you do? And why are you so horrible about the women I work with? Have you slept with all of them?”
    â€œNo, far worse. I’ve worked with all of them. I’m a fashion photographer. But one day I’m going to be a very famous film director and Glow magazine is going to beg me for an interview, which I will of course refuse.”
    â€œCan I be on your table at the Oscars?”
    â€œYou can come up and collect it with me.”
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    After we finished the joint, Jasper insisted I try his routine of spinning round while looking at the sky.
    â€œWhirligig, whirligig, Pinkie darling,” he said, waltzing me in circles until I felt seriously dizzy. Then we went back to gazing at the view and I began to feel uncomfortably like he was looking for the right moment to kiss me. Glorious though the setting was, I really didn’t feel like another mystery tongue sandwich, especially from someone who reminded me a little bit of Rick, so I suggested we should go back down to the party. I may have told some small fib about having abandoned a friend down there. Whatever I said, Jasper suddenly seemed to snap back to consciousness.
    â€œThe party, right, the party . . .” he said, resuming his nodding dog impersonation. “Yeah, friends, party, downstairs. We’d better split, Pinkie. Well, it was good to share this with you. Perhaps I can show you some more incredible sights of Sydney before too long. This is my town, you know.”
    We caught the lift back down to the fourth floor. Outside the door to the studio, where we could hear the party pounding, Jasper stopped, gave me another of his head-on-the-side squinty smiles and ran a finger gently over my cheek.
    â€œIt was fun, Pinkie. Catch you later, baby.”
    And then he disappeared into the studio, practically shutting the door in my face. I pushed it open and squeezed back into the crowd, which now seemed even bigger and noisier. The monotonous techno beats had been replaced with 70s disco and more people were dancing. Others were piled on the sofas and armchairs lined along the walls, locked in deep conversation.
    After Jasper’s brain-spinning dance I had no idea how long we’d been upstairs, but I felt like the party had shifted a couple of gears in that time. A passing waiter offered me a tray of drinks and I took two glasses of water, downed them in quick succession and put the empty glasses back on the tray.
    Then I just stood there, realising that I didn’t really know a soul in the place. For the first time since I’d arrived at the party I felt a bit self-conscious. And Jasper’s joint was making me super-aware of snatches of nearby conversation.
    â€œYou should have seen his face when she walked into the room!” said a short red-faced man wearing a Madame de Pompadour wig to a tall thin woman wearing a bald wig.
    â€œWell, I never thought he had any talent anyway,” I overheard a middle-aged man in Playboy Bunny ears say to another who was wearing a flowery ladies’ swimming cap. “Just another of Peter’s pretty cocksuckers.”
    â€œBut I thought that was his sister? So that’s the mother? My God, the surgery! Who is her surgeon, do you know?”
    â€œI heard he skimmed ten mill off the top and gave it back to them ready for the liquidators to move in . . .”
    â€œNo, she worked the flannel shoe back with the bias-cut georgette, it was so ug, we were all puking . . .”
    â€œHe paid someone to poison all those trees because they were blocking his view of the harbour . . .”
    I stood there telling myself that none of these people were talking about me and trying to breathe deeply because I felt at any moment I could be violently ill. I tried to distract myself by looking at the whirling dancers—bad