by Fanny Merkin
“Earl!” I shout.
“Calm down, Anna,” my stepfather says. “Earl Grey is fine, but you’ve been hurt. You’re in a hospital.”
“The heart monitor, the hospital gown, the hospital bed—now it all makes sense,” I say.
“Your father sent you these flowers,” my mother says, motioning to a marijuana plant on the nightstand. “The good news is, you’re going to make it. Mr. Grey has flown in the best doctors from around the world to treat you.”
Celebrity doctor Drew Pinsky enters the room. Since he’s one of those doctors too good looking to do something so ordinary as wear a white coat, he’s dressed in a tasteful baby-blue button-down shirt with a light-yellow tie. His hair is cropped short and his glasses look like they were designed specifically for his angular face. And his arms! All I can see are his forearms, since his sleeves are rolled up, but RAWR. He works out.
“I see our little Cinderella is awake,” he says to my mother and stepfather. “Mr. Grey flew me in from Los Angeles to treat you.”
“Sleeping Beauty,” I correct him.
“Excuse me?” he says.
“The fairy tale where the girl falls asleep after biting the poison apple is 'Sleeping Beauty,’ not 'Cinderella, ’” I say.
Dr. Drew nods. “Of course. I was just, uh, testing your concussion. Sounds like your brain is functioning normally. Always a good sign.” He flashes a penlight into my eyes. “Dilating normally,” he says.
Dr. Drew smiles at my mother and stepfather. “Could I have a moment alone with your daughter? I need to run over some of the more confidential information relating to her condition. If you can wait outside, I’ll let you know when I’m through.” They nod and leave us alone.
“My pupils are dilating. My memory is fine. So am I free to go? Where’s Mr. Grey?”
“I sent him home once your family got here,” Dr. Drew says. “He stood vigil beside your bed for the past seventy-two hours. And I’d like to keep you under observation at least through the night. You broke several bones in your legs, which we were able to heal using the latest medical technology, but you’ve been in a medically induced coma to treat the swelling in your brain.”
Wow. “I guess I was really messed up,” I say. And then it hits me: the baby! Our eyes lock.
He lowers his gaze. “We need to talk about something,” he says.
“The baby,” I say.
He nods. “The baby is fine. But . . .”
A wave of relief floods over me. “But what?”
“I ran some tests, and your baby is a sadist. Just like his father.”
“What? How is that possible?” I ask. Also: it’s a baby boy! But also: WTF?
“It’s very unusual this early in a pregnancy for a baby to be kicking, but I felt it, and I’m sure you have too,” he says.
I nod.
“You’re less than a week along. Can you imagine what this baby will do to your insides at nine months?”
Gulp. “What should I do?”
“First: Does Earl Grey know?”
I shake my head. “I just found out myself days before the accident at the Space Needle.”
“Talk it over with him,” Dr. Drew says. “I’m not saying there isn’t any hope, but I just want you to know the risks involved with carrying Earl Grey’s baby.”
“I don’t know if I can talk it over with him,” I mutter.
“Relationship problems?”
“Where do I begin?” I say. “As you know, he’s a sadist. A controlling, egomaniacal sociopath who treats women as objects to be sexually and psychologically abused.”
“That’s why he’s so attached to his Dungeon Master persona. Role-playing his fantasies is how he handles his sadistic desires. BDSM is a game where he is in total control of himself and the women he invites to play with him. Do you find his antics in the bedroom exciting?”
I sigh. “I do. Sometimes. I mean, I like the idea of an alpha male Dungeon Master tossing me around the bedroom on occasion. But I feel that he’s holding back a part of himself around me, like he’s too ashamed of his own dark impulses to reveal himself fully . . .”
Just then, there’s a knock at the door and Earl steps through. Even though he hasn’t slept for days, he still looks as attractive and alert as ever. He’s dressed in his gray business suit again, which he wears like a boss. I guess that makes sense, because he is a boss. “Knock, knock,” he says.
“Mr. Grey!” I scream.
He rushes across the room to me and we greet each other with a long hug that turns into a deep, passionate kiss with his tongue diving down my throat like a seagull lunging for an old french fry on the pavement. That turns into Earl unbuckling his pants, and me untying my hospital gown. “I want to suck your eyeballs,” I tell him.
“So, ah, I’ll just leave you two alone then,” Dr. Drew says, showing himself out.
Earl has stripped his pants and boxers off, and mounts the bed. I am naked underneath him, ready to accept his rigid disco stick. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see that the bathroom door is cracked open slightly. A pair of beady eyes peeks through at us.
“Wait,” I say. “I can see you, Dr. Drew.”
He steps out of the bathroom. “Oh,” he says. “I was just, ah, um, washing my hands before I left. Hospital policy.”
Earl stares him down and Dr. Drew quickly retreats out of the room. “I’ll just tell your parents to wait out here until you’re done,” the doctor says, closing the door.
“Now where were we?” Earl says, pressing his body down on me. “Oh, I remember: we were nearing the city limits of Fucksville,” he says, thrusting into me as my heart monitor beeps wildly out of control.
After we finish fornicating, we dress and let my mother and stepfather back into the room. Thankfully, I don’t have to do any introductions since Earl met them earlier in the day when they first arrived in Seattle. The air is damp with our sweat and our hair is totally JBF, but my mother doesn’t say anything. My stepfather has a knowing smirk on his face, but he doesn’t say anything either. I mean, like nudists can ever take the moral high ground. It’s tough to be judgmental with your balls showing.
Earl says he has to return to work but, really, when does Earl Grey have to work? I think he’s just trying to give me time alone with my family. After he leaves, my mother says, “So he’s a cute one.”
I blush.
“A little older than you, but I wouldn’t kick him out of a Burger King bathroom, if you know what I mean,” she says.
My stepfather just laughs. “For what he’s worth, neither would I.” His sudden erection says he’s not kidding.
“Stop, you guys are embarrassing me,” I say.
“We’re just glad you’ve finally met someone,” my mother says.
“Thanks,” I mutter. What would they say if they knew I was pregnant with Earl Grey’s baby? I don’t think they would be so happy for me.
They say they contacted Kathleen and Jin and left them several voice messages. I keep waiting for another knock at the door, for Jin and Kathleen to check in on me and bring me flowers and balloons, but they’re nowhere to be found. I check my cell phone beside my bed: no messages. Even though I’m here with my family, I’ve never felt more alone. Possibly because I’m the only one wearing any clothing. Is this how my life together with Earl will be? Me in the hospital, him visiting to sex me up, and my mother and her d-bag husband keeping me company? I stare at the red roses Earl left by my bedside. Every rose has its thorn . . .
Chapter Twenty-four
WHEN I’M FINALLY DISCHARGED from the hospital at noon the next day, Earl Grey picks me up in typical Earl Grey fashion: although he’s ditched the helicopter (which was totaled in the Space Needle crash), he pulls up at the hospital entrance in a NASCAR stock car. “I’m so glad you’re okay,” Earl says, greeting me in front of the hospital. He’s wearing a racing jumpsuit covered in logos of companies he owns. “I thought I lost you.”
I shake my head. “You
won’t lose me that easily.”
He kisses me. It’s a deep, long, passionate kiss that seems to last forever, like a low-scoring, tied baseball game that’s gone on for forty-seven innings. An ambulance rolls up behind Earl’s stock car and the ambulance driver lays on the horn. Apparently, Earl is parked in the emergency room lane. I start to break away from his kiss, but Earl sucks harder at my mouth. Our passion cannot be interrupted by rude ambulance drivers and their honky horns and dying patients!
When we finally part lips, the sun is setting and there is a line of sixteen ambulances backed up behind Earl’s stock car. He gives a little wave to the pissed off ambulance drivers, and we hop into his car and speed off into the Seattle traffic.
“So what’s the story behind this car?” I ask once we’re on the road.
“I could tell you it’s a replica of the car Tom Cruise drove in Days of Thunder, but that would be a lie,” he says. “It’s the actual car.”
I shake my head. Earl Grey sure has a hard-on for this Tom Cruise guy. “Wow,” I say.
“It’s okay, you don’t have to act impressed,” he says. “I’d rather you be impressed by the size of my cock than by the car I drive.”
“No problem there, Mr. Grey.” I smile. He tilts his head toward me and smiles back. “But keep your eyes on the road, Sir.”
“Point taken,” he says, turning his attention back to the road.
“Where are we headed?” I ask.
“I’ve got a surprise for you,” he says, speeding into the hills.
Twenty minutes later, we pull up into the driveway of a secluded mansion overlooking Seattle. The setting sun is beautiful and romantic. “Who lives here?” I ask.
“Eddie Vedder,” he says, killing the ignition. “But it’s on the market. I thought I’d bring you here and see what you think of it.”
We step out of the car. “You want to buy this place?”
“If you like it,” he says.
Earl pulls a key out of his pocket and opens the door to the mansion. “Eddie’s on tour with Pearl Jam right now, but he lent me a key so we could give it a test drive,” he says, smirking wickedly.
We enter the house. Like everything Earl shows me, it’s amazing. The bright color scheme, the space-age furniture, the floor-to-ceiling fish tank with naked women swimming in it—just walking through the door, I already know this is where I want to spend the rest of my life. This is where I want to spend the rest of our life.
“Did you decorate this place too?” I ask.
Earl nods. “You know it, baby.”
“You’re so talented,” I say. It doesn’t seem fair that one man could be so beautiful, and so talented, and so rich, but damn: Earl Grey is the total package. My inner guidette shakes her head. That’s like the fiftieth time you’ve said that, using nearly the exact same words, she says. I’m about ready to tell her to go back to styling her poof, when I feel a kick in my abdomen. The baby! It reminds me of Earl’s sadism. Is all the money in the world worth putting up with the pain he’ll subject me to in order to satisfy his own twisted desires?
Earl takes me on a tour of the mansion. It has sixteen living rooms, a recording studio, a bowling alley with thirty-two lanes, and two and a half bathrooms. “Plus,” Earl says, “there’s even a guest bedroom for when your parents come to visit.”
“Or my friends,” I say.
Earl doesn’t look happy when I say this, but he nods. “If your friends want to stay, sure,” he says. “But Jin will have to sleep in the horse barn out back.”
My mouth drops open. “Why do you have to be such an asshole sometimes?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “I’m sorry. I care about you. Ponyboy just wants to get into your pants. I have to protect what’s mine.”
“So I’m yours,” I say curtly.
“If you want to be, yes,” he says. “I’ve already told you how I feel about you.”
And I was going to tell you, until you crashed us into the flipping Space Needle. “What happened to make you this way?” I ask, avoiding the L-word for the moment.
He ignores me. We walk into the Starbucks inside Eddie Vedder’s house. Earl orders a Pike Place Roast from the barista, and then looks at me expectantly. “What will you have? Your usual?”
I nod. “Earl Grey. Hot.”
After he pays, we take our drinks with us and sit on the patio overlooking Seattle. The sun is still setting. “Is it this beautiful every day in Seattle? I always thought it was supposed to be cloudy and rainy,” I say.
Earl laughs wickedly. “That’s all part of the city’s anti-tourism campaign,” he says. “The truth is, it never rains in Seattle.”
I sip my Earl Grey tea. It’s hot, but not as hot as Earl Grey. “You never answered my question,” I say. “What happened to you as a child?”
“You want to know why I’m so sadistic. Why I take pleasure in causing pain.”
“Yes.”
“My father was killed in a drunk diving accident when I was an infant. My mother raised me by herself,” he says. “Unfortunately, she was a gambling addict. She practically lived in casinos. In fact, I barely have any memories of her except for a few snippets of her with feathered hair. I remember feeling very lonely.
“When I was four, my mother lost me in a high-stakes poker game to Bill Gates. Mr. Gates brought me to Seattle, but had no interest in being a father to me, this helpless gambler’s son. He gave me sixteen billion dollars and set me up with a foster family.”
“I had no idea how rough you had it,” I say. “Where is your mother now?”
He shakes his head and gazes into the setting sun. “I tried to look her up once, but found out that she died of a gambling overdose.”
“That’s so heartbreaking,” I say.
“Dr. Drew says that when I tie up women and spank them, I’m acting out the anger I feel towards my mother.”
“Do you believe that?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “I was lost for years. I was a marshmallow addict and chocoholic; my grades suffered at school. When I was twelve, a classmate introduced me to AD&D.”
“AD&D?”
“Advanced Dungeons and Dragons,” he says. “A role-playing game. By pretending to be someone else, I was able to escape my chaotic life. Once I became a Dungeon Master and started orchestrating our scenes, I found that I liked being the one in control. I wasn’t at the whim of foster parents or Bill Gates.
“Alas, the good times didn’t last forever. As my friends started meeting girls and having sex, they stopped role-playing. My own hormones soon started raging as well. That’s when I discovered BDSM—Bards, Dragons, Sorcery, and Magick. Erotic live-action role playing.”
“I don’t understand why you didn’t tell me all of this upfront,” I say.
“I told you I have fifty shames,” he says. “Role playing is one of them. Things like Nickelback and Olive Garden are others.”
“Why do you need to feel ashamed at all?”
“A rich guy like me isn’t supposed to enjoy these things,” he says. “I’m supposed to drink three-hundred dollar bottles of Pinot Noir and listen to classical music. My pleasures, however, are of the guilty variety. I can’t share them with the other rich people at the country club. Feeling shameful is the only way I can reconcile my desires with the pressure to fit into the box society puts its aristocratic class in.”
“Can’t you just, I don’t know, like the things other rich people like? Would that be so hard?”
Earl shakes his head. “We can’t choose the things we like any more than we can choose who we love.”
“Have you ever had a normal relationship?”
“You’re my first,” he says. “And, hopefully, my last.”
“The way you say that sounds like you’re planning to kill me,” I mutter.
He laughs. “I would never kill you,” he says. “I might pay someone else to, but I would never do it myself.”
“That’s reassuring.”
&
nbsp; “It’s true. I can’t hurt you,” he says.
“What if I want you to?”
“Hurt you? Why would you want me to do that?”
“I want you to do your worst. I want to feel the full fury of the sadistic bastard Earl Grey. If you’re asking me to move in with you, if you’re asking me to love you, I need to know how dark things can get.”
He narrows his gray eyes. “You’re sure you want to do this,” he says.
I nod. I realize my index finger is buried in my nostril up to the second knuckle, and remove it before Earl can admonish me.
He shakes his head. “I would say, 'What am I going to do with you, Anna?’ but I know exactly what I’m going to do.” He grabs me by the wrist and marches me back to his stock car, then drives like a Cullen toward downtown Seattle. I know what the next stop is: the Dorm Room of Doom. We’re finally going to role play.
Chapter Twenty-five
WE’RE BEING FOLLOWED,” Earl says, glancing in the rearview mirror. I look into the passenger-side mirror. There’s a solitary pair of headlights closing in on us.
“How do you know they’re following us?” I ask. We’re on a two-lane highway en route to Seattle, and there’s little room to pass, thanks to the frequent curves. “Could just be some asshole tailgating . . .”
Earl shakes his head. “It’s the same silver PT Cruiser I saw earlier when we were heading up to Eddie Vedder’s place. They kept driving when we pulled into the driveway, so I didn’t think twice about it.”
“You should have told me,” I say.
“And frighten you for no good reason?” he says, stepping on the gas. Now we’re taking the curves at over two hundred miles per hour.
“Slow down!” I shout. “Now I’m frightened.”
“I’m sorry, Anna, but we have to outrun him,” Earl says. “This car is made for speed.”
“Didn’t you also say it was a movie prop from thirty years ago or something?”
“Well, yes,” he concedes.
“And anyway, I’ve seen NASCAR races. I’ve seen these cars wipe out and go up in flames.”