(http://elliquiy.com/elluiki/images/7/75/Matigroves125square.jpg)<br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span class="bbc_size" style="font-size: 18pt;">Mati Groves</span></span><br/>Location: The Galaxy, at the piano<br/>With: intermittently, everyone else at the party<br/><br/>Mati's fingers danced lightly over the keys.  He'd never been this kind of pianist before – the man in the background in the bow tie, playing songs people half-remembered and quarter-heard amid their conversations – but just this once he enjoyed it.  He was good at playing by ear.  He was enjoying himself with private musical jokes: playing old Smiths' songs as if they were romantic ballads, a slowed-down Iron Maiden song like a torch song.<br/><br/>Nobody seemed to notice.  He was watching out for people who noticed.  Especially the slaves.  But he hadn't spotted any of them noticing the music.<br/><br/>Of course, the slaves had to be ever-alert to the wishes of their mistresses and masters.  He liked the display of slave flesh: that still-handsome one over there who seemed to hate being humiliated by her daughter-mistress, for instance, that pretty redhead who looked so lost.  But it didn't bring out the lust in him.  For that there would need to be welts, scars.<br/><br/>No matter.  The rich were the same the world over: displaying their wealth through their possessions.  Back in Miami he'd partied on boats like this, with his beloved Trixie, but they'd only gone through the motions of this kind of exhibitionism.  Hers had been an enslavement of a different kind: his musician slave, his pain slut.  How would he ever find someone to replace her?<br/><br/>Time to allow himself his first drink.  In his head he heard the lyrics of the Jarvis Cocker song he was playing, that nice satire on people like this getting down and dirty (I want to live with common people, want to do whatever common people do), finished with a flourish, and decided to go out on deck.  He'd caress some of the slave flesh tied up out there, listen to hear if any of them were singing – slaves sometimes hid all their talents but their sexual ones – while he got some champagne into his system.