“I told you,” she says. “My butler drew a bath.”
She motions for me to follow her into the bathroom and it’s an obnoxiously spartan design, a sink you could find in a walk-up in Reseda, unremarkable chipped tiles on the walls, exposed pipes and a dull shower curtain out of a porno movie, pulled aside to reveal the full tub. But it’s not full of water. It’s yellow and she giggles.
“Don’t tell my dad,” she says, breaking character. “I don’t do this all the time.”
“Is that champagne?” I ask.
“Veuve Clicquot.”
I bite my lip. Why must something always go wrong? I never should have come up here and I don’t want to get into a tub of champagne. She could have said it was fucking André and I would have been irritated because I do not need a bathtub of money. First she wants to pretend that I’m her servant and now she wants to rub her money on my cock, literally, she wants me to soak in her wealth. We are young and new to each other and this is the good time, the new time, and we don’t need a tub of money and she knows that I can’t afford to fill a tub with Veuve Clicquot and I don’t need to do that because my dick alone is good enough.
She slips out of her shorts and a proper lady would have taken off her shirt first. She is bare as I expected she would be; no jungle there. She moves one strap over her shoulder, exposing one of those Love tits I’ve wanted to see and she lifts that round Love tit and licks her tongue against that firm Love nipple and the shirt collapses onto the floor. She steps into the tub and sinks into the money water and I don’t move and my head explodes with bad Love word play:
Is this Love is all you need is Love for real?
“Come on in,” she says. “It’s so good in here.”
But I won’t come on in. Of all the fantasies she could have gone with, she had to make me into a servant. She could have opened that door and pretended that I was a CIA operative or the hotel doctor or an escaped convict. But in her fantasy, I’m servile, a have-not, and she’s a princess. This is not my fantasy and she is not the boss and I tell her to get out.
“Joe,” she says. “What’s wrong?”
“Get out of the tub.”
“This is for us.”
“Drain the tub, Love.”
“This is twenty-five thousand dollars’ worth of champagne,” she argues. “Why don’t we just get in?”
I step closer. “Drain the tub.”
She doesn’t want to drain the tub and she grinds her teeth. “Why?”
I look at her. “Because I don’t need twenty-five thousand dollars. Of anything.”
“I thought it would be fun,” she pouts. She stands, parts of her body obscured by bubbles, and she hits the drain. The money begins to disappear into the sewer system and I tell her to dry off. I slam the door. Fuck her if she thinks she can buy me.
I kick off my shoes and peel away my clothes. I hear her snag one of the many plush towels. She’s drying up—fuck you, symbolism—and she’s pissy, slamming cabinets and draining the tub, ashamed and lecturing me about waste. Yes, the girl who fills a tub with champagne is gonna teach me about conservation. This is good, she should feel ashamed, that money could have fed a lot of poor kids. And this is my room now and I am in charge and she yanks the door open and she’s wrapped in a towel.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” she asks. “Really, I want to know.”
“Take off that towel.”
She looks around, as if I’m the kind of asshole who would record something this intimate. I tell her the rules. “No talking.” She nods. I’m going to re-create what we had in the room at Soho House. “We’re gonna play Joe Says.” She opens her mouth. “Joe says no talking.” She smiles, complicit. She drops her towel.
“Joe says hand on pussy.” She slaps her right hand over her vagina.
“Joe says left hand on pussy.” She switches hands.
“Rub your clit.” She looks at me. Our eyes are locked and I step even closer.
“Kiss me the way you did in the room.” Her lips quiver. “Feel how wet you are down there. Now feel how hard I am for you.” She looks down at me. “Push me onto the bed and climb on top of me and ride me until you can’t take it anymore. Tell me what you want, exactly what you want, and make me give it to you how you like it.”
I reach for one of her taut, ripe nipples. “Let me start by licking your tits as I feel you up.” She spreads her legs and now we are so close that our eyelashes could touch. “Cum as hard as you can because you don’t need any fucking champagne when you’re fucking me. Show me that you know that. Take me.” She huffs. “Own me.” She puffs. “Joe says, ‘fuck me.’”
We are on the bed. I don’t even know how we got there, I just know about skin meeting skin—Love is all you need is Love—and this sex is a circle, it never ends. We are animals and she is loud. Joe says don’t stop, fuck me and when I’m not possessed by the pure rapture between her legs, between the sheets, I laugh. Joe has Love. I have never known this kind of wetness, the stuff of pornography, sopping. I want to eat her but I hold back—I am not a servant—and I nip at her belly and she pulls me on top of her for more, and she is silent, demanding, and she pulls me inside of her and it’s like Chateau: The Body Version. I belong in here, in Love.
I want her to taste me—Get your dick sucked—and I tell her and she turns into a different person. “Oh. I kind of don’t do that.”
If there were music it would stop. “Oh,” I say. Kind of is the most useless phrase in the English language. “Well, I could do it to you.”
She squirms. “I just like it better like this,” she says. She kisses me and her pussy envelops me, quicksand, and it’s impossible to argue about blowjobs as she rides me like a Donzi on the water, bump, bump, bump, and it would be perfect, my best performance yet were it not for that little voice in the back of my head, a warning, a caution.
Get your dick sucked.
It’s almost as if she heard Mr. Mooney and she knows I need more. She looks at me. “There’s a Coke in the fridge,” she smiles. “Will you get it?”
I bring the glass bottle of Coke to Love and she shakes it and sprays it all over my chest and yes, it’s on my dick and yes, kind of was just foreplay and she is licking the Coca-Cola off my midsection, she is nothing but a tongue, a set of eyes, hands. She is below my belly button and she is stroking my inner thighs and now she has me in her hands but somehow there is new cold Coke on my legs. She rises and her eyes meet mine. “Fuck me,” she says.
“Joe says, ‘Suck me,’” I say.
“Love says, ‘Fuck me.’” She takes over and I give it to her and I know she’s never had it like this before because she tells me she’s never had it like this before. We finish together, bliss. Natural symphonic mastery of sex. I am thirsty, spent. I swallow the last drops of Coke and we laugh about our sticky bed.
“Now I’m thirsty,” she says.
“I think there’s some Coke left,” I say—on my dick—and I grin.
“Nah,” she says, and my joke goes right over her head. “I’m good.”
She pinches my nipple. Soon, she is asleep and I am awake. The sex, the sex. I ate Amy’s superfruits but it was never worth getting her jungle stuck in my teeth. It’s just right with Love’s pure, classic Coca-Cola pussy, and I will block out the critical part of my brain hissing that the Coke was tainted by the champagne. Fuck you, brain.