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Chapter 4
Liza tolerated his kinks but didn’t share his enthusiasm for them. He could sense her pulling away as the games grew more and more elaborate; he was rich but there were other rich men she could cling to. Like an attractive barnacle, slurping and sucking nutrients off the side of multi-million-dollar yacht.
He parked the car near the grocery store, bracing for the moment she would start complaining. It would start with some exhalation of air, then a question, then a searing complaint.
They’d been having these fights for some months now, and he was quite tired of it.
She huffed. Her long leg stretched in front of her, knees knocking against the glovebox of the sleek sports car that seemed built more for short European men than tall supermodel goddess women in thousand-dollar heels. She regarded their surroundings, mouth twisting in displeasure. “I thought you said we were doing something fun. What is this?”
Barret knew what she expected. A trip to a sun-soaked beach on a private jet, dinner on minimalist white plates with red sauce on the side of overpriced rare fish with deserts that looked plasticky in their presentation. Food made to be looked at rather than eaten. Afterwards, a brief cruise on his yacht until the sun set fully, where she’d lead him back to his room and they’d have brief sex where she purposefully made him cum as quickly as possible.
This was their trade. He treated her like a princess; a haughty, vampirically-chill princess while he got to have her on his arm, towering over him, drawing every glance, a breathtaking ornament hanging from his branch.
The sex was the tiniest effort for her, because a slight tilt of her slim hips and a hand on the back of his neck was enough to destroy him.
It wasn’t enough.
He wanted to dominate her. Break the chill facade and have that sense of control, that sense that he, Woodrow Barret, had claimed this woman by force of his cock. He could have anything with all this money, yet this woman acted as though he was nothing.
Perhaps this kink would scare her off. The other ones hadn’t; well, they may have if they’d gotten that far. If he brought one up, she’d agree quickly and so enthusiastically that by the time they actually got to the act, she’d simply describe it to him while pulling him close, the hand would go around the back of his neck, and he would be done.
Once, he even finished in his pants.
The rage over that incident caused him to purchase and level a low-income residential area.
It was a gated subdivision now.
Abe Shah reported a healthy return on investment.
Now, though, this thing was likely at its end. He had his eye on Gertrude, someone he sensed could fulfill Liza’s role with much more passion and authenticity.
“Why are we here?” Liza prodded. She was glaring at their meager surroundings with such distaste that Barret found it attractive. He’d asked her to dress cheap; she’d refused. She still wore the heels, the earrings, the off-shoulder pink blouse over black leggings that easily cost four, maybe five grand. He wondered if they’d be robbed; the thought was thrilling.
He could picture her reaction to his idea; her revulsion at the cheapness, the filth of it. It wasn’t even that bad, an off-kilter roleplay, but to have someone like Liza, who graced magazine covers and had every stray curve, hair, pimple and blemish blasted away by lasers, creams, and laxatives…
There was pleasure in breaking the facade. In getting people to tremble. Men were easy; give them money or a little power and they became fiercely loyal dogs. Abe Shah was proof of that. Women, though… with their shrewd gazes that tore him apart… sometimes money wasn’t enough. They held themselves lofty and above him, and he couldn’t stand it.
They needed to be brought down to his level.
Barret reached into his wallet and handed her a wad of cash. He was unsure how much things actually cost at the grocery store. Milk was probably twenty dollars. “We,” he said, smiling, “are going to fuck like poor people.”
“What?” She’d taken the money reflexively, palming it with the smooth ease of someone used to being handed whatever they wanted, but his words made her pause, frowning. This wasn’t a trip to Belize, a cottage in France, or a gilded penthouse in New York.
They were at a dingey grocery storein Massachusetts. The car, as sleek and shiny as itwas, couldn’t hold back the encroaching reality. A homeless man shuffled by the tinted windows, pushing a baby stroller stuffed with clothes. A car backfired, squealed, and roared by. The store was rundown, the bricks in need of a wash, the sidewalk cracked, with weeds growing out like hair. The air smelled of fried food, weed, and motor oil.
Barrett watched Liza think. She ran a calculation in her head; would it be easier and faster to go along with his plan, or would it be better to find another (less wealthy) suitor she could control?
“Fine,” she said. “What am I buying?”
***
The woman in the pink blouse and black leggings was standing in line, a cart teeming with brightly colored groceries, diapers, paper towel rolls, ice-blue sports drinks. Someone with a knowing eye could tell that it was clearly the shopping cart of either the deranged, a newfound lottery winner, or someone who’d never shopped for groceries in her life. The random assortment of goods had no harmony—no sense of pantry. It was a store where the name-brands that cost four dollars extra for no real reason lingered on the shelves until the cheaper, blander store-brand was bought out. Yet the woman had name brand detergent, name brand diapers—all the companies that could afford commercials on TV, companies synonymous with their products.
Just as one could be new-rich, one could be new-poor. She clearly had not learned the ways yet. Her cart was not separated roughly between the food and the hardgoods, because anyone in this game for a second knew the food stamp card wouldn’t swipe for the paper towel, the soap, any of the scaffold products of everyday life.
Still, it was an illusion good enough for the role play. The rich man could pretend, in the dim, yellowed lighting of the grocery store with the scuffed dirty white tile that the supermodel could be a down-on-her-luck young woman; a newly single mother or a college dropout facing the music of life for the first time.
He was a higher being, standing in line behind her. Something superior. The aura of poverty and desperation that circulated this place like gas pumped into a room couldn’t touch him. His custom suit repelled it. His shoes gleamed so brightly it warded off the encroaching darkness. He held a single bottle of water in his hand; to make it clear that he was temporarily inconvenienced and would never fully shop here.
