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So it’s 10:15 on a Wednesday. L has pulled me into a frigid conference room in the head office of his father’s company, where I work and he interlopes, and I am once again coming to the realization that I have married an insane person who has my absolute worst interests at heart.
Or, well. I should qualify that. L is batshit, but in a good way, a way that whets us both. L is brilliant and scintillating and incredibly hot if you’re into exotic marsupials, which clearly I am. The problem with marrying L, however, is you also marry into the entire Wammy clan, who treat each other the way grizzly bears treat those balls of meat zookeepers toss into their cages for enrichment.
L on his own is the love of my life. My heartbeat, my soul. L combined with his family is a gangrenous wound and right now he’s jabbing me back against the drywall with two knuckles, talking so fast I can barely understand him. I don’t think he realizes he’s doing it. The knuckles against my sternum, I mean, although frankly I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t know about the talking either. He is wearing a black turtleneck to indicate that he isn’t stuffy and constrained like his siblings, and also possibly because it’s about fifty degrees in here; if I exercise mindful meditation and listen below my husband’s lunatic ramblings I can hear the rush of the air conditioner merging with the click-click-click of our ergonomically diffused fluorescents.
He’s better than this. But I understand. Bone-deep, I do.
“Beyond knows exactly what he’s fucking doing,” he’s saying. “He’s whispering to Quillsh behind my back. I know he is.” Calling his father by his first name is L’s new thing. It is, I think, meant to convey a sense of disaffection. It does not. “I — we — you and I — need to get some leverage, and this would work. It’s the right move. Sakura TV is where the power is, and you know Quillsh. He’ll follow the scent of that anywhere it goes.”
My skull is pressed right up against the dove-grey drywall. It hurts if I think about it, so I don’t. He’s looking at me, technically, but not really. I could be anyone right now. His eyes are fixed on mine, black and endless, but I know they aren’t seeing anything at all. He is for some reason wearing my cologne, which is Hermés H24 — cary sage, narcissus and rosewood. I have no idea why he’s done that, but either way he’s wreathed in my scent, which is eerie now, the echo of me as chosen by him. He must have left home not too long ago because it still smells close to how it does straight from the bottle.
“L,” I tell him, trying to restore some normality to the situation, “I am not going to fuck Demegawa.”
Knuckle still pressed into my bone, he looks at me like I’ve lost it. “I never said you should fuck Demegawa.”
“You did,” I tell him. “L. You said, ‘I think Demegawa is interested in you, and it would be nice if you showed him a good time.’”
“Well, that doesn’t mean you should fuck him,” L says, although it clearly does. He does, at least, stop poking me in the ribs, although he unfolds his fingers and presses his palm flat against my chest instead so I’m still pressed against the wall, a situation I might find arousing if he weren’t trying to convince me to have sex with the morally repulsive head of the morally repulsive Sakura TV so he can fuck over his morally repulsive twin brother. “Jesus, Light.”
He’s probably right about Beyond trying to destroy him, actually. The Wammy siblings always have about six concurrent games of full-contact chess going at any given moment. This does not mean I’m going to let him whore me out to rectify the matter.
“What else could it possibly mean?” I say.
“Well, just a good time. You’re attractive. You’re tall.” We are the same height. “You’ve got nice hair. I’m not taking about sex, Light. God. I was just suggesting — you could take him out for dinner, let him look at you, maybe —“ He takes his hand away from me so he can make what is clearly a handjob motion.
“L. Jesus. I’m not going to jerk Demegawa off for you.”
He has the gall to look indignant. “I didn’t say you should!” His fingers are still wrapped around an invisible cock.
I make the same shape with my own hand. “What is this, then, L? What do you want me to do? You want me to, what, take him out to Coney Island and get him a corn dog? Buy tickets to an idol concert and shake one of those sticks around?” I jerk my hand up and down, like he’d been doing.
He stares at me, then takes a step back and throws his hands up, eyes still fixed on the space I occupy.
“God! Can’t you just — this isn’t for me, you know. It’s for both of us. It’s for you more than me, actually.” This is a ludicrous statement, but I don’t get a chance to question it because he’s already pacing, flinging his hand towards the door. “And Beyond isn’t even the worst of it, you know. Near is closing in, too — he’s got some sort of deal with that awful man Quillsh is seeing, and Mello’s been quiet for way too long. If we don’t get a handle on this, Light, I’m fucked. He’ll cut me out and then where will we be?”
We will, I think, continue to be millionaires with a penthouse in Tribeca but I do take his point.
He is nothing but his father’s wealth, his father’s empire, everything he owns inherited and unearned. Chip away at that and you cut right into his skin. Whereas I simply have a realistic understanding of money, which is to say: it opens every door in the world, and I would like as much of it as possible.
He is walking the room, not waiting for an answer. He is looking at the tasteful grey walls because he already knows what I’m going to say. This is what money does, for him and for me. It buys you nice clothes and Michelin food but more importantly it makes you untouchable. It makes you safe, forever and always. You never need to worry about what other people think because at the end of the day they’ll dance for whatever scraps you throw. I am aware of this but he is not. He is so careless with his power. He knows, I think, that he is my single weakness, the one person who can take this all away, but he knows this the way a master knows his dog must be leashed.
I don’t mind this because I adore him and I don’t intend to leave. All the same, I read the prenup and I was not favoured.
Listen: that’s true love, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. An engagement ring is all well and good but I didn’t feel like I was his until we sat down with a lawyer each to squabble about how much flesh we’d carve off each other’s ribs if the whole thing went slantwise. Love, real love, love between adults, that’s all about deciding on the conditions you can impose and the conditions you can bear.
And don’t you want to know? In your heart of hearts, you know there are rules of engagement. Isn’t it better to understand the exact parameters, the consequences for wandering too far out of line? Each morning I look at my husband, who does not care for me — I know this — who has become bored of me, who keeps me around the way adults keep stuffed animals from their childhoods to pull out when they’re unwell, this ragged familiar thing that can’t ever leave, and I ask myself if it’s worth it. I can smell the bodies of other men on him, hotel soap on his skin when he promised he was out for business, and I know that once he wakes he will ask me to preform for him a million humiliating acts then expect me to thank him for the privilege of his attention and the lips he shares with strangers. God, he was sick for me once but now he gives me so little. It’s love because that’s what the contract said but it’s a thin sort of love. I look at his hair spread out on the sheets and his eyes tremoring in his sleep and I decide whether or not I can stand what my life has become.
And yes, obviously. I can. I’m still here. I’ve weighed the options, clear-eyed, and here I am. He makes me nauseous and he makes me insane but I still love every single piece of gristle on his bones.
“Look,” I tell him. “I have a meeting.” I don’t. “I would really, really love to stay and discuss why I should give Demegawa a handjob because Beyond made you said, but I absolutely have to go. You should eat something, okay? Maybe drink some water? Pull together some chairs and take a nap?” He’s opening his mouth to argue, so I’m backing out of the room as I talk; I’m opening the door with one hand and stepping out. “I’ll call you later, alright? Or we can meet back at the apartment. I’m thinking of ordering Thai. Okay. Bye, L. Great talk. Let me know if you think of anyone else for me to suck off.”
I shut the door before he can protest, then stalk off back to my office. I will, I think, call my assistant when I’m there; I’ll need her to research the sorts of places Demegawa likes to go for dinner. I’m not going to touch him, but yeah, sure, I can let him look. I am L’s. I am L’s, always. He feeds me and he buys me beautiful things and I belong only and forever to him. So, fine, I’ll do this, why not. I’m not ashamed of my worth.