Page 18 of Lau Ahi
“Because we were supposed to be building toward something. The money I’ve spent—”
“Was at your own discretion and I’ve told you plenty of times I don’t care about it. You wanted to throw it around thinking it would impress like it did for so many others before me, but I don’t operate that way. It’s not at all what matters to me but a man who is only a one-trick pony, his trick being a trick, will always see women from the same lens. Misogyny will have you thinking I can be purchased with your money while simultaneously making you loathe me for accepting the only partof you that you’ve offered. Hating women really doesn’t earn men much does it, Wilbur?”
He grabbed my arm the outward manifestation of his impotence in our situation. He couldn’t convince me without brute force and all the goodwill the stranger and his ladder had gained withered and died instantly.
“I’m not about—”
“Kindly release my arm or suffer the consequences.” I wasn’t sure who was nearby and it frankly didn’t matter. I’d learned early that taking care of myself was a responsibility I wouldn’t ever outsource again because people were quick to let you down.
Instead of doing as I requested, he gripped my arm tighter and I could see the triumphant gleam in his light brown eyes. Instead of fear staring back at him from mine, he could see the passive indifference I felt for the highhandedness of his actions.
“Are you done with your brutishness or is there more to come? I’m ready to go home.” I yawned conveying how bored with this conversation I was.
“You can come in this room and we can—”
My knife was at his throat before he could finish whatever request he was going to make of me. Someone having me in a confined space wasn’t going to happen again. That thing with the Samoan superhero I just climbed off of was a one-off. His point had been proven and mine would be when he woke up alone. I might indeed enjoy the physical pleasure of an actual phallus, but the humans they were attached to were still not something I desired a permanent attachment to. His ego would be properly recalibrated because although he physically got what he wanted, and I did too let’s be honest, he didn’t get a part of me that other people hadn’t had. I could tell that the Samoan was someone who was easily frustrated by many things and despite his gentleness I wasn’t about to see what fully triggered him. I would happily be gone and play out a narrative in mind duringone of my flights of fancy about him fighting the air waking up solo.
Already planning to dream about him are you?
“Now, let’s see where we were. Oh, yes, I was leaving. You were going on about some pish posh and I told you I didn’t care to hear it. You,Wilbur, stinky little pig, decided that I needed to heed you. Now you have a knife at your throat and no one to save you from my wrath should I decide to enforce your well-earned punishment. Now, pig, tell me what you’ve learned?”
“Is this some kind of joke?”
I almost wanted to laugh at the scent that filled my nostrils as his eyes widened.
“No joke although I think I will laugh when I get home at the idea of you pissin’ yourself in this corridor. Now, I need to be on my way because, as you observed I’ve had a strenuous night. A good sitz bath is definitely in order. You sir, will never see me again. If I’m wrong and you do, you didn’t. Because the moment you think to ever approach me even if it’s about that fifteen million dollars you’vegiftedme, I will ruin your life. And that’s not blackmail it’s a promise. No one wants to do business with a man who can’t even get fucked by a woman he’s paid an exorbitant amount of money to. You wouldn’t want any of your business friends to see your abject failures in procuring someone like me for your bedroom now would you?”
His eyes widened as I hinted at knowing who he was. I was sure that he didn’t think I’d have the resources but I wasn’t stupid enough to get involved in this game without knowing the players.
As if fifteen million dollars could buy me.
“No.”
“No, of course not. Men can be judgmental little beasts can’t they? Why ruin a promising future for something you were never going to have anyway.”
He swallowed hard his breathing kicking up as he watched the hand that held the knife. “I promise—”
“Oh, your word means nothing,Wilbur. I know more about you than you could ever imagine,Robert.” I used his real name and his eyes bucked out of his head. “Exactly. Now scurry along back to your pen so I can be on my way.”
My voice was filled with every ounce of disdain I held for men and this man in general. The audacity to think I could be colonized financially, as though he didn’t understand what the arrangement was. It just went to show that men would always find a way to disappoint you, no matter how good they seemed. My eyes flickered briefly to the closed door I’d exited and I battled my mind from thinking any more of him than I did of the others.
Wilbur’s embarrassment had him going back into another of the rooms that he’d obviously been waiting in for me to emerge from the Samoan’s. I happily pressed the button for the elevator chastising myself for letting my guard down.
“You get fucked one good time, Mira, and you let your guard down. Let’s not do that again, shall we?”
I shook my head and stepped into the elevator, leaving this experiment behind.
CASED UP
ORI
Since Pappy had given me the good news I’d been more and more involved with the family business and I was spending more time with my brothers. For the first time in decades, I felt that my life was going in a direction that I was in control of. Since I learned of the family business that I was a part of and the connections it brought I never once shied away from it. The power that this collective of families could harness despite our humble beginning was a matter of pride.
Almost two months had passed since Pappy had given me the news and the way I’d celebrated the potential change still lingered on my mind. And my tongue. The woman I’d been with that night would’ve been easy to find had I wanted to. The Franklin side of the family owned the club and it would’ve been as simple as asking one of my cousins for her information since it was one of the Franklin holdings.
I wasn’t stupid enough to do that shit, though.
Asking them for a favor meant they might want one themselves. I didn’t do favors. With the type of resources I had outside of them, I could find out who she was but it seemed pointless. Their knowing I had an interest in someone would mean they knew I had the potential for a liability. With so much upheaval about to happen in my life, I wasn’t going to take on something as labor-intensive as a woman. She wasn’t the typewho would settle for anything less than the very best that I could give her and I admired that about her. And despite how she seemed to abhor men, which again I admired about her, I couldn’t offer her anything besides dick if she caught feelings for me. Which was the inevitable conclusion of any type of long-term attachment. Despite how she left me in the middle of the night, an act that still had me shook that I’d slept through her departure, I knew like any normal person she would get attached.
