How to Bed a Millionaire

by Dieter Moitzi

  I requisition a side table, push it toward the desk, empty two shelves, and stack the books on the little table. Then I open my laptop. No particular demands have been formulated as to the type of catalog Mr. Kinner wants, so I decide to keep things easy and simple. An Excel worksheet should do the trick.

  I create a new file and start working on the column names. Author/last name, author/first name, title of book, editor, date of publication, genre, shelf. As an afterthought, I also insert a link column after the author’s first name and a second one after the title of the book. That’ll allow me to add Wikipedia and Amazon links so that any future visitor researching this data base can quickly access succinct information about the writers and the book blurbs.

  Before I start working in earnest, I receive a WhatsApp message from Dirk. “I’ll call you early in the afternoon. I’ve got loads of things to tell you!”

  After that, things go smoothly as there are few distractions. The water curtain plays a constant and soothing background music while I gather the data, book after book, and enter them into the worksheet. Of course, I get sidetracked from time to time by an intriguing author bio or a book summary on Internet. But hey, I have two months to finish the job, so there’s no need to rush.

  At half past twelve, I decide to have a break. I’ve finished the two stacks and piled two more on the side table, but at that point, I’m feeling a bit hungry.

  I save my work, then proceed to the food storage room—again, the key doesn’t leave my hand. I find a couple of minibaguettes in one of the freezers and help myself to one.

  Upstairs in the kitchen, I put the bread in the microwave to defrost. The ham wrapped in tinfoil in the fridge passes my cursory sniff test, so I prepare myself a plate of ham and eggs, which I eat outside with the minibaguette. The heat is standing over the land, solid and imperturbable, so that I’m soon forced to take off my T-shirt.

  When I rinse my plate and the pan, the beeper rings. That should be Chao’s delivery.

  I run to the intercom-and-camera system. On the screen, I see a yellow delivery car parked in front of the gate. A young dude, face hidden beneath a blue baseball cap, is standing there, looking lazily around. I buzz him in, saying, “Please follow the driveway. I’ll meet you at the house.”

  He nods and returns to his car, whistling a tune.

  I take the elevator upstairs, cross the living room, and open one of the French doors.

  The car arrives a minute later.

  The delivery man gets out and slowly walks over to where I’m waiting in the shadow. He’s no older than twenty, and when he lifts his head, I stare into a ruggedly handsome face. Nothing extraordinary, no drop-dead gorgeousness, just plain and simple good looks. Strong, clear features, a dark stubble, a ring in his left ear. The body I can make out under his unadorned black T-shirt and tracksuit pants is sinewy and very nice. He seems either not to believe in underwear or prefer boxer shorts because, well, there’s some dangling going on under the waistband.

  He grins broadly at me, his twinkling eyes looking me up and down. “Hey,” he says in French. “You’re not Mr. Kinner, right?”

  “I’m not,” I reply. “But I’m working here.”

  “Thought so. I got this for you.” He hands me a small Amazon Prime parcel while nodding at me. “Cool look, man.”

  Oh. Yeah. Only then do I remember I’m wearing nothing but shorts—again—and might have made a quirky hairdo choice this morning. Self-consciously, I touch my two fuzzy-frizzy bobbles. “Sorry to open the door like that. I should have put on a T-shirt, I guess…”

  The guy shrugs. “Why bother? If I could, I’d run around like you. It’s way too hot today. But unfortunately, in this fancy neighborhood, people wouldn’t want to see a half-naked delivery boy…”

  “Uh-huh.”

  The guy idly lifts his T-shirt and wipes his sweaty face with it, revealing a taut, hairy six-pack in the process, which, gulp! His movement seems casual and natural, but his eyes stay fixed on me as if he were trying to gauge my reaction. I can’t help but ask myself if he’s hitting on me.

  “You’re not the talkative type, are you?” Now, he winks at me, a gay expression on his face. You know, gay gay.

  “Sorry, I was… er, distracted for a moment.”

  The guy’s grin gets even broader. “I see.” He takes a step closer and…

  Runs a finger down my chest! Which, gulp!

  Double gulp, triple gulp!

  “Did you like what you saw?” he all but purrs in a deep, seductive voice. His finger rests on my belly.

  I can only nod.

  “I like what I see, too. You seem like a nice guy,” he mumbles. “A nice, hot guy. How about we meet up one of these days? Have some fun together?” His eyebrows wiggle suggestively.

  “Er…”

  “Name’s Karim.”

  “I’m Trevor,” I manage to croak because hello? No one has come on to me so openly, like, ever. There’s still that warm finger drawing circles around my hairy navel, too, so my brain seems to have plunged down to that region. My blood must have rushed even farther southward, if you see what I mean.

  “Why don’t you give me your cell number, cutie?” rugged Karim asks.

  “Er, sure.”

  With his other hand, he gets his cell phone out of his tracksuit pants pocket, unlocks it, and holds it out.

  I type in my first name and cell number.

  Karim nods, then writes a quick message. “There. I sent you an SMS.” He leans even closer, and I get a whiff of his peppery cologne. He brushes his lips against mine. “I’ll call you. Soon!” he murmurs.

  Then at last he reluctantly takes a step back. “Now I’d better get a move on.” He points at me. “Have a nice day, cutie.”

  No one has ever called me cutie.

  While I watch him get into his car, I feel little ants crawling around in my stomach. That was a helluva hot encounter, Jesus H. Christ!

  Karim honks his horn and waves before he drives away.

  He leaves me behind feeling shaken and stirred.

  Travels and new environments can change a person

  Travels and new environments can change a person. Not Dirk. Whether in Paris, back home in Germany, down on the Peloponnese coast, or anywhere else in the universe, he’s always his usual, effusive, and slutty self.

  As promised, he calls me back in the afternoon. I’ve just dumped the Amazon parcel on a kitchen counter, prepared myself a cup of coffee, and returned to the library, still a bit flustered. While I stare at the stack of books I’m supposed to tackle, my cell phone rings.

  I see Dirk’s name pop up and answer the call immediately. If there’s someone to distract me from daydreaming, it’s him.

  “Hey, man,” I say, cradling the cell between my ear and my left shoulder.

  “Hey, handsome,” he replies. He believes in positive reinforcement.

  “What’s up?”

  “Oh, Trevor, I’m doomed! Literally doomed! Can you believe Aunt Karin didn’t think of having internet installed in her house?” he says breathlessly.

  I place the phone on the desk and put Dirk on loudspeaker.

  “Absolutely shocking! Utterly Neanderthalian!” I reply drily, sipping my coffee.

  “It is, right? What am I to do all day long?”

  “Flirt? Seduce? Shag?”

  “I’m glad you agree with me. I have no choice, have I?”

  Ha! As if he’d do anything else, even given the choice. “So, how’s Greece?” I enquire. “You know, the landscapes, the sea, the food, the men.”

  Dirk giggles. “I can’t complain. The first day I thought I’d go bonkers—I looked at Grindr, and it was a complete desert. I guess even on Uranus there are more profiles! Unbelievable how backward these Greeks are.”

  “Unbelievable’s the word.”

&n
bsp; “But then, guess what?”

  I don’t even try.

  “You know Aunt Karin’s house is in that little seaside town. Well, I discovered it’s… a garrison town! How cool is that? Young dudes are simply thronging the streets and cafés all the time. They’re here for their military service, and most of them seem to be those cute little goat herders from the hinterland mountains. A bit rough and unpolished at the edges, all right, but they’ve never had sex before, so they’re randier than a bunch of bitches in heat. Oh boy, they simply can’t get enough! Whatever their partner’s sex or gender, they sure love to hump-hump…”

  I roll my eyes as he prattles on and on. He left Paris before me, so he’s been in Greece what? Four days? Five? But already, his list is long. Yannis, Michalis, Andonis, Vasilis, Dimitris—a soccer team of “-is”es with the odd guy ending in -os thrown in.

  “Jeez, you’ve been busy,” I say.

  “There’s nothing else to do. My God, Trevor, if you had seen that Yiorgos guy! Handsome like Apollo, and a donkey dong!” Dirk sighs fondly. “When he finished with me, I thought I wouldn’t be able to sit on a chair for weeks…”

  What follows are further detailed descriptions of various male body parts together with the offer to send me “visuals”, which I hasten to decline. I’m not sure my cell phone could take any more close-up photos of dicks or nipples.

  “And your aunt?” I ask politely when Dirk seems to have exhausted his lecherous tales.

  “Oh, I hardly ever see her. She’s met that Russian millionaire, you see. A certain Alekseï or Aleksandr. They spend most of their time cruising up and down the coast on his yacht.”

  “I didn’t know she was looking for a new husband already,” I comment wryly. Not that I’m really surprised. Venality and slutiness run in Dirk’s family.

  “She isn’t!” Dirk sounds adamant. “She’s hardly over Bertie yet.” From his stories, I know Bertie is—was—her fourth or fifth husband. Loaded, that goes without saying. His death a month ago came as a very sudden surprise. As sudden as arsenic in your morning coffee would entail, I gather.

  “Yet there’s Alekseï. Aleksandr. Whatever,” I point out.

  “She needs a strong shoulder to lean her head on. You know how she is,” Dirk says.

  From hearsay mostly. I only met her once and can’t say I keep a fond memory of that encounter. That woman knew I’m gay, and within a minute, she was feeling me up, for Christ’s sake! I think I’ve never been more embarrassed in my whole life.

  “And you?” Dirk asks. He sounds as if he were munching olives now. “What have you been up to? How’s Saint-Laurent?”

  “Saint-Jean.”

  “Right. Everything okay down there? You having fun, man?”

  “Well… I’m here for work, in case you forgot.”

  “Oh, yes, right. That boat thing. You’re meant to count boats or something.”

  “You almost got it right. Except it’s a library, and I’m not counting but cataloguing books.”

  “Ew. Sounds dull. Narrow escape for me, right? Apart from dust and paper, anything noteworthy you want to tell me?”

  Instinctively, I lower my voice. “Well, er, there’s this housekeeper…”

  Dirk stops munching. “A housekeeper? Come on, dish the dirt, gurl!”

  I launch into a gripping description of my gorgeous Asian hunkman.

  Dirk whistles. “An Asian guy. Yummy. It’s been a long time since I had myself a nice, good, old sushi…”

  “Dirk! That’s racist!”

  “Not if one loves sushi like I do.”

  I can’t believe we’re having this conversation. “You like any dish, Dirk. As long as it’s available.”

  “What’s wrong with that, pray tell? Anyway… I see my goody-goody friend has been busy too,” Dirk says. “And? Did you do some naughty things, the way I taught you? Did you make the beast with two backs?”

  “Dirk! I just met him…”

  “What kind of stupid argument is that, Trevor? Did you at least put out feelers?”

  “What?”

  He sighs. “Did you get the hang of his dang?”

  “Dirk! No!” I blush, thinking of that screwdriver I felt yesterday in Chao’s linen trousers. His climbing out of the pool this morning is also a vision my mind has stored in detail for future use.

  “I can hear that you’re not telling me everything, Trevor!”

  Reluctantly, I tell him about our mishap in the food storage room. “It might be that at one point I could feel his… er, his emotion well up,” I add.

  “Emotion. Right. That’s what we go for, now,” Dirk says drily.

  “And I saw him in the swimming pool, early this morning,” I admit.

  “You’ve been spying on him, Trevor!” Dirk gasps.

  “Well, technically, what with the pool lying before my French window, I don’t think you can call it spying.”

  “I’m sure you were well hidden, which means you were so spying. And?”

  “And what?”

  “His dick size, you doofus!”

  “How’s that important? Mom always says you shouldn’t judge…”

  “… a dick by its size? Your mother would never say that. She likes’em big and meaty.”

  “Dirk!”

  “Don’t you ‘Dirk’ me like that—that’s a well-supported statement for which I can produce statistical evidence. Namely her thumbs-up for the photos I sometimes share with you guys.”

  “Anyway,” I say.

  “Yeah, anyway. What’s your plan, handsome?”

  “I don’t have a plan. There’s no base whatsoever to plan anything.”

  “Oh, come on, you’re better than that.”

  “Well… he thinks…”

  “He thinks you’re a lunatic serial killer! If that doesn’t fuel his libido, I don’t know what would! Come on, show him a titty, get out the goodies, gurl.”

  “Er, I think he already had a glimpse of, well, the whole package.”

  “Ooh. You have been naughty!” He sounds sincerely delighted.

  “Nothing like that. In fact…” I tell him about my inadvertently exhibiting more than I wanted and more than Chao had bargained for when he lent me his minimalist swimsuit.

  “And then you hit the sack?” he asks when I’ve finished.

  “No, then we had dinner. And talked the whole evening.”

  “Please tell me that afterwards, you hit the sack.”

  “We did.”

  “Good gurl!”

  “Each one his own.”

  “Aw. Is that how I raised you?”

  “You didn’t raise me, Dirk.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  We’re silent for a moment.

  “So… what are your plans?” Dirk asks again.

  “I told you—I don’t have plans.”

  Dirk considers this. Then he puffs, “Oh! My! God! I get it! You have a crush on Lao!”

  “Chao!”

  “Chao. Whatever.”

  In a stern tone, I reply, “You’re absolutely wrong, Dirk. I do not have a crush on him. At all.”

  “Don’t lie to me, gurl. I hear it in your voice. I can almost see that dinner scene: you sitting there and gazing adoringly and dopey-eyed at your hunky sushi…”

  “To call him ‘sushi’ is racist.”

  “Don’t interrupt me! And listen. Listen closely. You go get him, gurl. If he’s really as gorgeous as you told me, it would be a shame not to.”

  “He’s straight, Dirk!”

  He snorts. “Straight is just another word for waiting to get laid. By the right guy.”

  I realize there’d be another story I should tell Dirk—my sizzling-hot encounter with ruggedly handsome Karim. But no sooner has Dirk finished his sentence than I hear
a faint noise behind me, as if someone were choking.

  I spin around…

  And catch Chao standing in the library door.

  “Gotta go, Dirk. I’ll call you back!” I say hurriedly.

  Unfortunately, I’ve never been able to have the last word with him.

  Dirk chirps gaily, “Blow him good, gurl—the way I taught ya!” before he hangs up.

  Life lesson #5

  Flagrante delicto is not a place you wanna be caught in.

  Chao just stands in the door and stares and stares and stares

  Chao just stands in the door and stares and stares and stares.

  My face must by then be a very deep shade of ruby-red, and I swear, if mortification could take on a physical form, it would come fuming in clouds from my two bobbles.

  “Why the fuck are you creeping up on me like that?” I gasp after what seems like ages. Sorry, this is the best I come up with, in the rush.

  Chao still goggles at me, too stunned to speak. His face does that stern “We’re not amused” thing I seem so amazingly good at prompting.

  After a while, he clears his throat. “H-rm. I’m back.” Not the most intelligent thing to say, either. I notice his accent has once again switched to posh and UK-ish. That always goes hand in hand with his forbidding facial expression.

  “I can see that. I didn’t expect you to be back before this evening,” I croak.

  “I can see that,” he snaps back.

  We stare at each other some more before I find the courage to ask, “How long have you been here? And how much have you heard?”

  “Quite a while,” he states. “And I’ve heard enough. Unless there was more before the sushi thing… which, really? I’m not even Japanese! Anyway, that seemed to be a very… riveting phone call. I would have hated to miss it.”

  Attack is often the best defense, especially when you feel as ill at ease as I do now. “Is it one of your routines to eavesdrop on other people’s conversations?” I ask sharply.

  He snorts, but there’s no humor in it. “Look who’s calling the kettle black. Do I need to remind you that you were eavesdropping on me the other day?”