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“Why should I study this?”
“Because you’re the man I had in mind.”
Yes. That had gone down so well.
Those stories had made me wonder about the difference between fiction and reality. I’d imagined scenarios, with me in them. Most times the man in my imagination was anonymous but once or twice, he’d been Klaus.
Yes, that day in his office had been so wonderful. I focused back on the present. Klaus was still being stubborn and hadn’t signed – nothing new for him. We both had a streak of stubborn, I guess. It had made for some fiery arguments.
Seagulls cruised on the winds, kids ran about laughing on the beach below, but at our table the tension was making my head throb.
“If I sign this you are giving me carte blanche –” He frowned. “– to make you a captive in your home up there on the hill. No neighbors. No contact but me for four weeks.” The corner of his mouth twisted. Oh noes – I was in for one of his bursts of silliness. He leaned in and whispered conspiratorially, “I will have you washing my dishes naked in a week.”
“God.” I groaned. The fucking dishes. That had driven me crazy when we were together. “Klaus, the nakedness is a no-no. You are the one who made me put it in the contract. But no dishes either.” No sex, of course, even though I hoped otherwise. No nakedness. No physical damage. His face was to be blurred out. A copy of what we were doing was in a deposit box at the bank. Neither of us wanted Klaus arrested if something weird happened – like the cops showing up.
But needing money was one thing. Washing the dishes was another.
“No dishes, Jodie?” He shrugged. “A bad bargain. Slaves should do dishes.”
I raised my eyes to the underside of the mango-colored beach umbrella and prayed for deliverance. Of all my friends and acquaintances, Klaus was the only one I could ask to do this. The only one I trusted to do this. Still, he was being a bastard. While he waited for me to reply, with one finger he slowly turned his shiny stainless steel pen around and around on the table.
I’d never ever done dishes for him. I detested housework to the core. A dishwasher I could load, sure. Hand washing, carrying meals out to a man at a BBQ – all those womanly chores made me shudder. I liked my equality. Women weren’t slaves. My fantasies only went so far.
I pursed my lips and sipped more frappe. The bastard abandoned his pen and sat back, watching me with those green-gray eyes. This was ridiculous. After all the mucking around, after days of bargaining, it came down to dishes? He’d helped me with some of the house alterations even. Would he give in if I stood my ground?
“Klaus…”
“Mmm?”
Fuck. As my accountant, he knew I needed money, yet he’d just about sent me to a psychologist when I suggested this. He’d told me that of all my performance art, this was the most extreme. Maybe he was right. No, he was right. But his protests and the precautions he’d demanded, the contract with six million sections…before all that I’d been wary myself of going ahead. After I’d had to drag the man to the bargaining table, despite me offering him a share in any profits from the film, drag, drag, drrraaaag to the bargaining table, then, and only then, I knew I could trust him.
If filming a woman enacting a capture fantasy and exploring the psychological changes didn’t win me a world-wide media contract, I’d eat the damn beach umbrella, with a bucket of beach sand to wash it down. And if I was wrong, I’d have no money for food, and sand would look tasty.
That Klaus had agreed though – that gave me more hope than I’d had for a while. The man only ever bet on near certainties. If he thought this could make money, it would.
He hadn’t budged. While I’d run through the encyclopedia of my worries, filed them alphabetically, and then set them alight, he’d barely shifted an inch. His hands lay loosely on his trouser-clad upper thighs. From the corners of my eyes, I dwelled on one of his best aspects. The heaviness of his thighs was all muscle. Being a black belt in judo since his twenties meant Klaus had the musculature of a very fit man despite being almost forty. They’d felt good between my legs when we’d made love.
Thoughts out of the gutter. “Fine.” I closed my eyes and shook my head in mock despair. “But I’m not guaranteeing I will. If you can get me to do the dishes it’ll be a mind-fuck of Olympic proportions.
“I haf my ways, fraulein.”
I groaned. That mock German accent drove me nuts too. Almost as much as the dishes idea. Then he signed the contract, finally.
Relief swept me like a cool breeze, only it sank farther and chilled my bones just a little. Done it. But…yeah, there were limits and rules, but still this was the weirdest thing I’d ever done. And the strange little look he’d given me after I’d agreed to do the dishes had jarred me.
Jeez. The dishes?
Really, if he’d unwrapped an array of knives I should worry. Maybe it was just that he’d gotten me to say yes to something I’d hated so. But I needed a man with some dominance or this whole exercise would have wilted. This needed to have some realness.
As Klaus went to pay for our meal, I brushed aside some strands of hair from my forehead and took a deep breath of the salty air.
In a minute, I was going to climb into his car and drive home, and give him the key to my house. Yes, I must be insane. But if it made me money I didn’t care. There was also that niggling other reason. Klaus was hot, like hot in the I-still-dream-of-you-and-want-to-fuck-you way, and that was going to make this even more interesting than it would have been with any other man. Some of his rules…I prayed they’d get broken.
