I decided to do some snooping before signing the contract. Most of the rooms in the apartment were open to me--several bedrooms, well-decorated but generic, which suggested to me that they were maintained more as guest rooms than anything else. The gym, too, obviously, along with the sauna and private pool--sorry, did I not mention that there was a private pool in the hall next to the gym? I don't like swimming much, but Sven did have me do some short laps as a cool down a few times. There's an outdoor pool on the second terrace as well--did I not mention that there was a second terrace? Yes. This is really the most ridiculous apartment.
But then, there were other rooms blocked off to me. There was a suite of rooms which were always locked, which I guessed maybe to be his office and his bedroom, perhaps? I really had no idea. The rest of the apartment only showed his personality in so far as it was clean, it was well-designed, and it was tasteful. It was as if the other traces of his personality had been erased.
Well, not all of it. There was still the artwork. The Picasso, the pseudo-old masters, a few other sketches and drawings which seemed valuable to me. Some Chinese and Japanese wall-scrolls and calligraphy, a few abstract sculptures which looked like the kind of thing that might be priceless or might have been picked up at a Crate and Barrel in New Jersey for two-hundred dollars, not including tax. It was hard to say.
But in the living room, there were a handful of coffee table books which I thought just might give me some clue into whose home this was that I was staying.
And then, no such luck. As I flipped through them, I realized how naive that had been. They were the most generic kinds of books you could imagine--things about modernist architecture, modernist sculpture, parks of Europe--all very bland and very tasteful. Nothing that would upset anyone or make anyone guess anything about you.
How was I to figure out just who this Boss was without getting into those rooms he kept locked up?
I did another once over of the apartment and then, finally, I found one room I had apparently missed. It was, to my surprise, a library. I eased the door open and was met with the blazing sunlight of an East-facing window, which seemed to absorb and refract its sunlight all the more strongly, more powerfully than any of the other windows in the apartment, I was sure. It lit up and energized the tiny library, much smaller than the gym, but absolutely packed full of books in built in shelves, with a long, tasteful, austere wooden table in the middle of the room. There was even one of those tall ladders on rails that you find in old timesy libraries, with the rails going all the way around the room (with the exception of passing over the windows) so that you could slide seamlessly from one corner to the other. Awesome.
I had always liked books. I didn't read nearly enough. I knew I didn't. I had no time or taste for the trendy titles that my model colleagues seemed to always be reading--I couldn't stand Fifty Shades of Grey, to be honest, and Eat, Pray, Love made me want to Vomit, Curse, and Hate. Instead, I would set out ambitious reading lists for myself, a task which I had been doing for years privately, always failing in my reading and always promising myself that I'd actually read this one, this time! Really, I would!
But even that habit had slowly disappeared as I became ever more deeply a part of the world of modeling here in New York. After a certain point, there wasn't any reading I did besides, say, the Huffington Post and the people I followed on Twitter.
That reminded me. I had barely been online since coming here. I had a computer, a nice Macbook Pro that lived mostly in my bedroom. But there was no reason I couldn't bring it out here to the library.
So, I retraced my footsteps, found the computer, and brought it to the sunny little library. I had a ton of emails, though it was mostly spam. I've long since learned that the vast majority of your emails never have to be opened. Anyone who says otherwise is lying to you, or works a much more important job than I ever will--I suppose, say, a senator or governor probably has a lot of emails to read. But I wasn't one of those, and I'm guessing you're not other.
Most of the emails were from photographers and agencies, form letters suggesting that they might have opportunities for you. Those are practically all scams, but it's a fun game trying to parse what kind of scam they actually are. Some of them want you to pay them to try and find you work. From there, they usually set you up with a single fake shoot, and you get some pictures out of it that never go anywhere, but you're still paying this firm one-hundred dollars a month to do what, exactly? And others are just looking for naive girls to do porn. First, they ask you if you're okay modeling nude--sure, most girls say. And then, if you're okay modeling with a nude guy. And then, finally, if you're okay modeling with his cock in your mouth...
As you may have gathered, I once fell victim to one of those scams. I was only twenty-two and it was my first year of law school in New York. I had the post-Christmas blues, and I found myself homesick and scrounging my pennies, trying to find a way to get back to Wisconsin for a spring break visit. And then, out of no where, this amazing opportunity showed up--a two hour shoot, and nearly a thousand-dollars! Sure, it said that nude modeling may be required, but I had already started posing for figure drawing classes, so how much different could this be?
A lot different. The studio was in a boring, derelict and nondescript part of Queens. I showed up with light make up, as my recruiter had specified. There was another guy there, handsome in a sort of aggressive, heavily tattooed, Italian way. He smiled sweetly at me, shook my hand, held it for a little too long.
The shoot started and soon I realized they were also filming. First, we just posed shirtless: him, cupping my breasts, his hot breath running over my bare shoulders as he held me from behind. I could feel the bulge in his pants but I tried to make myself not think about it.
From there, they offered me another two-hundred dollars to strip off my jeans and panties. What the hell was this? I thought it was a thousand dollars for two hours? No, no, no, they told me--that was the max I could make. And so far, I had only racked up two-hundred dollars. But I could get another two-hundred for going full naked. I could feel the video camera zeroing in on my humiliated face as, fighting back tears as I realized what would happen, I stripped down.
But I put on a winning smile and kept posing. Pretty soon, the guy, Rocco, was naked too. I made another hundred dollars touching his cock, and then another hundred for letting him finger me. I gasped and whimpered and acted, intuitively, like what I thought a porn star should act.
It was five-hundred dollars to get down on my knees and suck his cock. I did what they asked--I felt like I had no choice. I didn't care how much money I had made. I just wanted to get it over with. He came on my face and then, they told me they'd offer me another thousand dollars to bend over and let him fuck me.
Whatever, I remember saying, letting him bend me over a nearby table. I was barely wet, so it hurt bad when he forced it inside of me. Now, he got rough, pulling my hair, whispering nasty things in my ear. Telling me I was such a bad little eighteen-year-old whore (I let him pretend I was eighteen), telling me I was going to make such a pretty little porn star. I had tears in my eyes but I refused to cry, even with the glare of the camera focused on my face. I grunted like an animal as he fucked me and then, they told me at the last minute that I'd get an extra hundred if he came inside of me.
Fine, I said with a shrug. And Rocco exploded in my sore pussy and they took pictures of me spreading it open and smiling, as if I were only too fucking overjoyed to have had a man twice my age blow his load inside of me, unprotected.
Face burning with shame, I left the studio that day with my wad of cash. I didn't even bother to count it. I had more than enough for my ticket back to Wisconsin. I went straight to a pharmacy and bought a morning-after-pill, took it with a Mountain Dew, and cried on the subway home. I felt so stupid for being taken in like that. Never again, I promised myself.
Fortunately, I had given them a fake name. That seemed like a smart thing to do, even before I knew exactly what was goin
g on. For a while, I thought I might be able to keep whatever nude modeling I did separate from my regular career, but even that became hard after a while. Fortunately, I signed with Nora's agency and the only nude modeling I've done since then has been full page, glossy spreads for things like perfume and other fancy shit--stuff where I'm naked, but turned away artistically, only the swell of my ass visible. Buy this perfume, smell like my skinny ass.
If that video ever got out... God, I'd be sunk. Occasionally, and by occasionally, I mean a few times a week, I googled my name, just to make sure nothing comes up that my associate me with that video. A few times, I've gone to a cafe (because I'm paranoid about somehow my ISP becoming associated with the video and thus my name? I don't know--I don't super duper understand technology) and found the video online, so that I could watch it, and remind myself of my humiliation--look into my young eyes and see them brimming with tears as that fat, forty-year old cock reams me. Poor girl, I think, as I look at the cum on my face. You'll learn.
God, I hadn't thought too much about that video until now. I wondered if Boss had seen it.
He almost definitely had. A man with his connections, his ability? There was no way he hadn't seen it--I was sure of that. I hoped it wouldn't come up. I hoped, hoped to God, he wouldn't try to hold it over me...
But, fortunately, it wasn't mentioned in the contract. That seemed like the most tasteful way to play it, I suppose. There was no reason to mention it and it didn't affect our current relationship, even if it did come up.
Besides emails from scammers, to return to the library, I had a handful from Nora and other people in the industry--Nora, checking to make sure I wasn't dead, also forwarding me some funny cat videos or other dumb stuff like that, as if it were penance for bringing me into this bizarre situation, and then other videos from girls I had missed coffee or brunch with and hadn't bothered to text.
Maybe they'll all think I'm dead, I fantasized. I wondered what had become of the apartment, Mario's apartment. I wondered what was up with Mario? Was he still in the hospital? Had his father, who he had a particularly tortured and fucked up relationship, even bothered to come visit him? I almost felt bad for him, but then I remembered that he had wanted to kill me and I didn’t feel bad. Funny how that works.
I googled his name. Just a few articles about the initial shooting. Nothing much else. Manhunt for an Eastern European bodyguard or driver of Mario's underway. The police didn't seem too enthusiastic or optimistic about catching Gennady, though. I can't imagine any of them lost sleep over a mobster's son getting popped a few times by his driver, even the ones who were getting kickbacks.
But that didn't necessarily mean I was safe. I was sure that Mario would put it together, would figure out that I had something to do with his shooting. He was dumb, but he was paranoid, and sometimes, in his paranoia, he ended up hitting upon the right answer, even though he comes at it a stupid way.
With my cheating, for instance. I had been smart. He never had any idea that I had been with Gennady, of course--that's not what he had been angry about. He figured out I had been sleeping with another model, a Brazilian guy of German descent. We only communicated via Instagram direct messages. I figured that Mario, who hated Instagram and always made fun of me whenever I whipped my phone out to take a selfie or document a particularly luxurious meal (not that I was really eating more than a bite or two of the meal, obviously), would never bother to snoop around there, of all places.
Long story short, I was wrong--his paranoia, apparently, knew no bounds and when I left my phone in his car, he dug through it, found the evidence he needed, and--this was the strange part--didn't even get angry at me until after he had dropped me off, after he had gone back to his Jersey City penthouse overlooking the city and apparently done a truly righteous amount of coke in order to get up the balls to confront me.
Instagram. God, I hadn't logged in in--how many days was it? Almost two weeks now. I was afraid to see how many followers I had lost.
That could wait, I decided. I closed my computer, and turned my attention now to the book shelves.
They were full of what you might call the classics. He had what seemed to me to be full collections of the Harvard Loeb--those fancy classics books with the Latin or Greek text on one side, and then the English on the other What a pretentious prick.
He also, continuing with the theme, had a series of beautiful, turquoise colored little volumes which revealed themselves to be the same thing, but for Sanskrit, of all things!
Besides the classics, he had a collect of economics texts--heavy stuff about the fluctuations in inflation of the yuan versus the rouble? Not exactly light reading, though it might be a good cure for insomnia.
And then, I came upon the real treasure trove--after a long series of well-reviewed recent literature, the kind of stuff that gets written up the New York Times and everyone buys for a season but never reads--there was a huge collection of old pulp fiction novels. A few by names I recognized--Phillip K. Dick, H.P. Lovecraft, Robert Chandler... But the vast majority were books by authors I had never heard of. And a substantial number of them were erotica--stuff like "Criminal Lesbians of Long Island!" featured two pinups girls on the cover, locked in a passionate embrace, an overturned martini glass visible in the foreground, with an unmade, suggestively sinister looking bed in the background. Another notable title: "Becky's After School Punishment"--a nasty little number which showed a school girl bent over a nun's lap, her bare ass exposed. The nun held a ruler raised over the poor girl's tush, while the girl--presumably Becky--sucked her thumb, her too-wide eyes too scared to cry. Maybe because she was enjoying it?
At the thought, my own sore cheeks seemed to ache all the more. God, but he could really do a number on me, couldn't he?
I had spent nearly two hours in the library before I realized that the day was disappearing. Not that I had much to do. It was freeing, knowing that so much of the day was mine to do with as I pleased. I could read what I wanted to read, immerse myself in whatever subject, whatever text I wanted. Grab any book and never worry that someone was watching me, judging me for being too “bookish.” For being a nerd. For being anything other than who I was.
I had loved being a model, but there was certain unspoken rules about how models are supposed to act. And I’m not even talking about the semi-starvation thing, though that’s obviously a big part of it. But you weren’t supposed to be too… Well… Smart. You were supposed to look pretty. Look sexy. Look skinny. Smile at the right times. But that’s where your personality ends. You should cultivate a good, sexy, smoldering look, but that’s a bit different from a personality, let alone from actually having educated opinions. Most everyone in the industry adamantly did not want to hear what you thought about most everything. And your colleagues and peers did not want to talk with you about whatever books you were reading. You might chat about whatever fashionable bleeding heart cause was dominating your Facebook feed during any given week, but that was where your life as an educated, thinking individual really ended.
I made my way back to the kitchen, a stack of kinky pulp novels stuck under my arm. If Boss was going to keep me here, then I sure as hell was going to join his lending library--not that that's necessarily what he intended it for.
To my surprise, I found him sitting at the kitchen counter, sipping a cup of coffee, looking over the contract. He wore the same mardi gras mask from the previous night, I noticed with a slight sense of disappointment. I hadn't even heard him enter!
"Oh. Hello," I said in surprise. "Sorry, I didn't realize you were home."
"Not a problem. You discovered the library, I see?"
I grinned.
"You've got one hell of a collection."
"I've got some other things you might enjoy. But I'm glad you found something you like."
He reached out his hand, indicating that I was to give him the books and show him what I was reading. It was strangely infantilizing, as if he were my teacher, signing off on m
y summer reading, or maybe the librarian, checking out the books for me and stamping them with a due date. He smiled as he saw the collection of smut I had chosen.
"'Road Rage Seduction?' That's a classic. Almost got the author--Guy Tembrow--sent to jail for obscenity. Subject of a strange little trial in Utah, actually--that probably explains it. I'll send you the article I read about it."
"When did you start collecting this stuff?"
"When I was in college. I would go to used bookstores, dig around in the back, looking for whatever weird, old things that attracted my attention. Honestly, I was looking for something that might be valuable--you know, a first edition Phillip K. Dick or something like that. Something that others would have overlooked. I made a nice little fortune in college dealing in rare books, actually. That was my first business--I used the money I made from that to start--well, to start my current business."
"And you won't tell me what that is?"
"Nope," he replied with a quick grin. "Because then..."
"I could just Google the company and find out who you were. I got you. We're keeping up this anonymity thing?"
"For the time being."
"Fine." A beat. "What's with all the kinky erotica? You've got me now--you don't need that stuff."
He laughed. A real laugh, a full-throated laugh. I liked that laugh.
"Well, that's true. But also, I didn't always have you--even if I've always desired you--or someone like you. But mostly, I like the artwork. These aren't worth anything and I don't even find them particularly arousing. Mostly, I like them for what they evoke."
"And that is?"
"A time and a place--post-war America, you know. GI's come home. Ready to fuck everything in sight. That's how you get the baby boom. But things have changed, things have gotten more liberal--even in the fifties, and obviously by the sixties. You can suddenly sell pornography--that's what Hugh Hefner discovered. And suddenly, everyone's getting into it. Creating these bizarre little stories. Full of typos, almost incomprehensible in some parts. But imagine some poor salary man, his nuts blown off in the Pacific, reading one of these with baited breath late at night so his wife doesn't know. Or a kid, a pre-hippie, finding one in his older brother's room, and... Well, it's the stuff of sexual fantasies. It's powerful stuff."
Insatiable: A Dark Billionaire Romance Page 8