Control. Charlotte Stein
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works of contemporary literature—you know, the sort that everybody likes—and the occasional manual on toy-making. But nothing that even feathers against the boundaries of naughtiness.
No one would ever guess that there’s porn in his toilet cistern.
Even if there isn’t, in reality. And I know this, because I check once I’ve invited myself into his immaculate bathroom. The one that’s so immaculate that I bet myself he’ll change the towels after I’ve gone, before washing the entire place down while wearing a biohazard suit.
And no, I’ve not a single clue as to why such an idea thrills me so. Even as I’m laughing to myself, I’m crackling with this strange sort of energy. The compulsion to do him wrong. I mist up the bathroom and write suck my cunt on his pristine mirror, then watch the words dissolve away into a little secret message, just for him.
For when he next has a shower, with all of his clothes on.
Unfortunately for Gabe, I don’t feel like stopping at dirty words. The bathroom is en suite, with one door that leads to his living room, and another that I’m almost deathly certain lets a person through into the Fort Knox of his bedroom. The bedroom that’s almost begging me not to stop at dirty words. The bedroom with the hotel-neat bed, and the weirdly drawn curtains, and the picture of Jesus over the headboard.
OK—not that last one. But even so.
The room smells of expensive air freshener, as though he’s been doing bad things in here and needed something to cover them. However, finding what he’s needing to cover proves almost impossible. The wardrobe is imposing and masculine, but there aren’t any dead bodies inside—I know because I open it and find only rows and rows of identical shirts and trousers, with glossy shoes standing beneath.
The drawer at the base yields piles and piles of tank tops—his uniform of choice—while further bedside units are only filled with underwear, most monochrome and dull. I’m not even sure why I would expect anything else, and yet the more I search through his boring things, the sweatier my palms get. The more I anticipate his secret hiding places, his stash of the good stuff; after all, it can’t just be a vice he indulges in while working at my shop.
I stand up, hands on hips. Frustrated and sure he’s going to come in any minute, to make me feel guilty for rummaging through his stuff—though it’s not as though he doesn’t have a right to. This is a terrible invasion of his privacy and I should get guilt-stomped for it, I should feel bad, I’m an awful awful person, to do a thing like—
There’s a drawer beneath his bed. There is a drawer beneath his bed, pretending to hide. I know there is because I had one just like it, and it makes those fat lines in the otherwise smooth underside of the frame. He’s got a valance covering it, but really—he didn’t think such a thing was secret, did he? Like a safe, for his valuables!
I crouch down and drag it out—so sure of myself that when there’s nothing there, my disappointment is total. It’s just more tank tops, more endlessly gray tank tops and so much monochrome that I wonder if the movie of my life has switched from color to black and white.
But oh my lad, you didn’t think you were going to get away with it that easily, did you? Everyone knows that you have to check under the disguising items of clothing, too—like checking the layer of real notes to find the Monopoly money beneath!
And he has more than Monopoly money in his secret safe drawer of naughtiness, I tell you what. He has books, lovely books, of course he does—all the books I had under my own bed, back when I was far too innocent for this sort of stuff. Crimson Silk books, books by authors who disappeared into the wilds of “legitimate” fiction and never returned, books with bad girls on their covers.
He has my favorites: Threesome, The Loner, All Business, World without End. Spines laced with cracks, pages almost falling out. Exotically named authors like Felusia De La Ray. And all the scenes I still remember whenever I close my eyes and my body hums: the yellow scarf and the river and the tennis-playing girls.
I wonder if he remembers the tennis-playing girls. The ones who live on in infamy in my mind, apparently. Though I’m guessing it’s more about the strong female protagonists in all of these books, doing things like writing the word cunt on bathroom mirrors.
Despite the fact that none of those amazing heroines ever do anything like that—mainly because they’re strong and brave and cool. Whereas I’m just wicked and awful, and turned to water by desires I didn’t even know I had five minutes ago.
Plus I jump and my legs don’t want to help me stand, when Gabe finally discovers me and my many, many transgressions. If I was like them I’m sure I wouldn’t feel conflicted about doing this, or nervous about hurting his feelings, and this would definitely be the moment where we continued what I shouldn’t have started back at the shop.
The memory of which makes me stand up, book in hand. He looks angry at first, I think. That line appears between his thick brows; his dark eyes flash even darker. How dare you, that look says, as his hands ball into fists at his sides. Strangely, however, I feel no compulsion to apologize. I feel nothing besides the pulse between my legs, and the insistent buzz of a thousand heroines rattling their way through my mind.
“What are you doing in here?” he says, and the buzz grows louder, stronger.
“Looking through your things, dirty boy,” I reply.
His face drops, the crease-frown and the balled fists forgotten. He blurts out, rather embarrassingly:
“They’re not mine.”
I love him for trying to deny it—it just makes the whole thing so much less awful, somehow. So much more like a game. Now I get to force him to confess.
“Really? Old girlfriend’s, then?”
I can practically see him trying to work out the mathematical probability of such a thing being true. The odds do not look good.
“I’m keeping them here. For a friend.”
“Did you read the books in my store for a friend, too?”
Even in the one-lamp-lit dimness of his bedroom, I can see that blush creeping up his throat. He fidgets, glancing from the book in my hand, to the open drawer, to me, and then back to the book again.
“No…”
“Then what?”
“I haven’t read any of them.”
“Really? Not even this one: ‘Layla enjoys anonymous sex with hot young studs’? Or how about this one?”
I reach down and pick up another—a seedy-looking thing called Breathless.
“This looks fantastic. ‘Before Cathy split up with her husband, she didn’t understand the joy of a hard, healthy cock.’ As opposed to a soft, sickly one I suppose.”
I toss it back into the drawer and have to bite back a laugh when he winces. He’s wincing for his injured, insulted books! As though I really mean it—as though I’m really mocking his taste when I love and sell books like this for a living.
“And what about this one?” I start, but he stops me, this time. He lunges forward and snatches it out of my hand, clutching it to him like it’s his dying lovechild.
“Don’t,” he says. “Don’t say any more about them. There’s nothing wrong with it, all right? I just like them.”
He doesn’t sound so sure, however. About the nothing wrong part, I mean.
“Tell me what you like about them, then,” I say, and his expression confirms my assessment of what he really thinks is right and wrong.
“The psychological depth,” he tries, but he doesn’t seem convinced. I think he needs some convincing. I think he needs some help, from me.
“All right. Then why don’t you read out some psychological depth to me.”
His