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With each delivery, the Minions took selfies with their bounty, more often than not coaxing a madly blushing Melanie into joining them.
Jimmy Kimmel leaped happily into the fray, devoting more than two minutes of his monologue to a plea for Mr. Happy’s safe return. “What if he has a family? Did you think about that? What if there is a Mrs. Happy?” Then he turned and winked at Camera 2. “And I’m sure you know what I’m talking about when I say she must be a very happy woman indeed!”
Then, he adopted a somber air. “What if he has kids? What if there are little nymphlets and satyrlings at home by the door, waiting for their daddy? Please, please bring Mr. Happy home.”
Queenie responded on air the next evening, thanking Jimmy for his support, and saying that he was welcome to come on her show any time his career needed a boost.
By Friday, the Minions had begun delivering not just statues but nude male paintings, sketches, and other types of artwork. By Saturday, one full week after the kidnapping, they had cut to the chase, deciding that it was penises that counted, and they did not necessarily need to have a man attached.
Melanie began receiving penises in a staggering range of iterations, including tea cozies, candles, salt and pepper shakers, potholders, and stuffed toys. The hashtag #PenisPalooza began trending.
Things finally got out of hand when a few male Minions, swept up by the spirit of things, began texting “self-portraits” to Melanie. She begged Queenie to put a stop to that particular endeavor before it became a thing. Queenie went on air and blasted the offenders, threatening to put all these explicit photos on a virtual ID parade so their wives and girlfriends could rat them out. “Immediate banishment!” she warned. “Irrevocable!”
The photos stopped coming.
And all the while, the Satyr Liberation Army gleefully continued on their rampage. Mr. Happy was posted wearing a pinstriped business suit and fedora on the train to Montpellier and standing next to Sharon Stone’s handprints on the Celebrity Walk of Fame at the Palais de Festivals in Cannes. For this particular shot, he was wearing her iconic white minidress, and seemed quite pleased with himself.
Throughout this drama,Melanie and Corbin did their best to continue their work on the cottage, and secretly, she was happy for the hullabaloo, because the whirlwind of activity and clamor surrounding the kidnapping was a welcome distraction from the turmoil that boiled within her.
She’d kissed Corbin Durant. Twice. And enjoyed it tremendously. And the funny thing was, she had the sneaky suspicion that he had felt the same.
This left her with a confusing swirl of emotions. It was so bizarre, so unexpected, to be feeling this way about a man, especially considering how badly her last relationship had ended.
To be truthful, she hadn’t had that many relationships in her life, which was almost embarrassing. Wilder had been her only real one, barring a few skirmishes with teenage boys back in high school. He had been so charming at the start, with his clear blue eyes and carelessly finger-combed blond hair.
She didn’t know it back then, but Wilder was like a predator who could smell fear and knew when his prey was wounded. He had circled her, each circle growing ever tighter, until finally she was cornered and helpless. The man was a cunning and skilled manipulator, exceedingly good at getting what he wanted. He’d known from the moment they’d met back in college just how to push her buttons, even down to figuring out the gestures, words and behaviors she responded to best.
When he knew she was ready to be taken down, he had moved in for the kill, with such precise strikes that the uncertain and self-conscious young girl she had been hadn’t stood a chance against him. He was at his most charming, his most smiling, when he was doing the most damage. Comments like, “Are you sure you really need to eat dessert?” or “Maybe jeans aren’t the best thing for your body type,” were guaranteed to hobble her, leaving her so unsure about herself that she turned to him more and more for guidance and clarity about who she was and who she was supposed to become.
When a young lacrosse player had asked her out, he hadn’t protested or claimed dibs. Instead, he’d effectively crushed any desire to go on the date with a murmured comment: “Huh. I hadn’t thought a guy like him would have been interested in a girl with your… you know, kind of looks. I mean, he’s a popular guy. He has so many other options….”
When it came to emotional manipulation, Wilder could have taught classes at college level. He was a master at it, breaking her down and feeding her doubts while convincing her that he was the only man who was prepared to overlook her physical shortcomings. Shrugging and saying things like, “I guess I’m less demanding than other guys. I can live with a little chub. I mean, your face is nice enough….”
By the time they had graduated, he’d inflicted so many tiny cuts upon her that she had exactly zero doubts that what he was saying was right: a woman like her was lucky to have a man like him willing to tolerate her many physical flaws. Surely, she could do no better.
And so, she’d married him.
“Ça va?You okay?”
She leaped, startled, spinning around to discover that Corbin had walked up behind her while she was deep in her reverie. She was so surprised that she dropped her paintbrush. It clattered to the floor, leaving a spatter on the heavy drop cloth. They were finished with the major work, the ceilings and floors, and had stripped most of the rooms of their peeling, aging wallpaper.
Corbin had his crews spread throughout the house and had just returned from his regular tour of the workspace, making sure that everything was going as he’d instructed. Despite the fact that he was supervising the workers, he always seemed to find time to spend with her, working so closely together that sometimes their heads were almost near enough to touch. And every evening after the crews called it a day, he and she would walk around, notebooks in hand, checking on this or that, and jotting down pointers for the workers the following day.
Melanie had never before felt so much as if she was being pulled in two different directions. On the one hand, something inside her eased whenever they were together. As if she was being lulled into calm by an unseen force.
But on the other hand, recognizing the growing attraction she had for him immediately sent her into panic mode, her mind buzzing with questions like, What’s happening to me? Why am I feeling this way? And what would happen if I gave into it?
Something deep inside of her let her know that Corbin was feeling the same pull towards her, as if they were both caught up in the same gentle tide that was inexorably drawing them out to sea. What would happen if they gave in, and then found themselves too far from shore to go back? What if they got in too deep for their feet to touch the sea floor, and discovered that the weather was changing? What if the waves around them began to rise?
“Melanie.” On his lips, her name was soft, musical. He picked the paintbrush up from the floor and with his other hand opened hers, palm up. Placing it in her hand, he curled her fingers around the handle, but didn’t release her.
And once again, as was happening more and more often, she got the jarring sensation that he and she were sealed in a small bubble all of their own, as if the sights and sounds of everything else around them no longer existed.
The car they’d shared that night was a bubble too, she reminded herself. As private and intimate as they had needed it to be. It was a place where they had kissed without the eyes of the world upon them.
Instinctively, her hand rose to her shoulder, where the all-seeing eye of the bodycam waited to capture another gem to deliver to a million screens - more scandal, more grist for the gossip mill.
It would be stupid to kiss him now.
