Fifty Shades of Shade - "The Fifty Shades of Grey Parady" (2 page)

             
“I thought you might,” he says, with a sly, attractive, hot-bodied wit. He’s so hot.

             
I nervously start in. “You’re very young to have achieved so much. To what do you owe your success?”

             
“Business is all about people, Miss Stool. And I’m very good at judging people. I know how they work, what makes them excel”—blahblahblah, some other crap about incentivizing or whatever. I was just paying attention to how gorgeous he was. It’s like he could see into my g-spot. I’m not sure what a g-spot is, although I have an idea from overhearing other girls talking about it.

             
“You sound like a control freak that got lucky,” I say when he stops speaking. It wasn’t a question Melissa had written, it just came out of the hole in my face before my brain could do anything about it.

             
“I don’t believe in luck or chance, and yes, I do exercise control in all things.” I look at him as he holds my gaze steadily, impassively, steadpassively. My heartbeat quickens, and my face breaks out in hives. Why does he have this amazing effect on me? His good looks, his attractiveness, his beauty, his gorgeous face and body? Gee-willickers!

             
“Besides,” the complex hottie continues, “Immense power is acquired by assuring yourself in”—blahblahblah, he says. His voice is soft as a dryer sheet.

             
“Do you feel that you have immense power?”

             
“I rule—I mean dominate—I mean enslave—I mean employ forty thousand people. Responsibility for them is, in a sense, power. If I sell the company, they will all starve to death in the streets. Probably die of very curable diseases, too. Which would just be too bad.”

             
He was so humble. Wait, what’s the opposite of humble? Oh wait, conceited. That’s what he was, alright: the opposite of humble. “Don’t you have a board to answer to?”

             
“I own my company. I don’t have a board.”

             
Holy crapdoodles. He was arrogant. I change track.

             
“And do you have any interests outside of work?”

             
“I have varied interests, Miss
Stool
.
Extremely
varied.” He pauses for a long time. “Do my varied interests sound mysterious?”

             
“Yes,” I answer, in a rubber ducky squeak.

             
“Well, they are mysterious.
Very
mysterious.”

             
Something told me his varied interests were very mysterious. “But what do you do to chillax?”

             
“Chillax?” he smiles, revealing perfect white teeth, probably the result of Crest Whitening or Rembrandt. “Well, to chillax,
as you say, I do all the things super-rich white people do: I sail, I fly, I take part in secret coalitions aimed at population control, the usual. I’m very wealthy, you know. And I have absorbing hobbies.” He slowed down his voice a lot when he got to “absorbing.” Like all dramatic, kinda. Like he was alluding to something. Oh, well.

             
“Are you gay, Mr. Shade?” I just looked at the next
question and asked it before thinking first. Why do I lack basic motor functions? Why don’t I think before I act? Damn, Melissa, that foot-and-mouth bitch.

             
“No,
Chastity
, I’m not.”

             
It’s the first time he’s said my name.

             
“Sorry—er, it’s what was written here.”

             
His eyes gleam. My heartbeat, the one that I told you about before, accelerates. Yeah. And my cheeks, they went flush. Again, I know.

             
“Those aren’t your questions?” he asks.

             
“No.”

             
“Are you a colleague on the student newspaper?”

             
“No. Melissa’s just my roommate and the girl I steal tampons from sometimes.”

             
A knock at the door. Blonde number two enters.

             
“Mr. Shade, forgive me for interrupting, but your next meeting is in two minutes.”

             
“We’re not finished here, Andrea. Please have my next meeting murdered. His family, too.”

             
“Right away, sir.”

             
“Wait, Andrea…not murdered, what is it—
cancelled
. Cancel my next meeting was what I meant to say.”

             
“Very well,” she mutters. He frowns and turns his attention back to me.

             
“Where were we, Miss
Stool
?”

             
Miss
Stool
? Oh, that’s me, right.
Doi!
But what happened to calling me
Chastity
?

             
“I want to know about you,” he says, his eyes looking at me like they want to know about me.

             
“There’s not much to know.”

             
“What are your plans after you graduate?”

             
I assume graduate means the part when school is done. “I haven’t made any plans yet. I just need to get through my three hundred and six final exams, first.”

             
“We run an internship program.” Is he offering me a job?

             
“No, an internship.” He read my thoughts.

             
“Oh. I’ll bear that in mind,” I murmur. “Although I don’t think I’d fit in here.”

             
“Why do you say that?” He tilts his head, licks the top of his nose, and pokes himself in the eye, softly, sensuously.

             
“It’s obvious, isn’t it?” I say.

             
“Not to me.” The humor he didn’t have at all in the first place is totally gone. I need to get out of here. Now. “Would you like me to show you around?”

             
“I have to go. I have a long drive back.”

             
“You’re driving back to Somewhere?” he asks, sounding concerned. He looks
outside, it’s raining.
In Seattle, of all places. “Drive carefully, out there.”

             
“Thank you for the interview, Mr. Shade,” I say, packing up my stuff in characteristically awkward fashion.

 
             
“The pleasure’s been all mine,” he says, polite as ever. He stands and holds out his hand. “Until we meet again, Miss
Stool
.” He said it like a challenge, or a threat. He then said, “Maybe it’s a challenge, or a threat.”

             
Hmm, I wonder.

             
“Mr. Shade.” I nod and leave.

             
“Wait, did you have a coat?” he asks.

             
“A jacket.”

             
One of the blonde secretaries is lowered down from the ceiling holding my jacket. Before she puts it on, Shade steps in and does it himself. The secretary is reeled back up to the ceiling. He places his hands on my shoulders for a moment. I freeze, and my you-know-what down there tingles nervously.

             
He summons an elevator to open by simply pointing at it. I get in to leave.

             
“
Chastity
,” he says, as a farewell.

             
“Whatever your first name is,” I reply.

             
Mercifully, the elevator doors close.

             
As I drive back, replaying the interview in my head, I feel foolish. And embarrassed. And hungry. Well, I’m hungry because I haven’t eaten. But the other two things are from interviewing Shade.

             
He’s attractive, confident, commanding, warmly homicidal, at ease with himself—but on the flipside he’s cold, tyrannical, autocratic, and cold. And tyrannical. He doesn’t suffer fools gladly, nor does he pamper toes sadly. He’s accomplished so much at his age. Doesn’t he deserve to be like that? Oh, I can’t stop thinking about him but I want to. Why didn’t Melissa give me a brief biography? Or at least a notebook and recorder that didn’t touch her sick hands.

             
We live in a small duplex close to the WSU campus. Melissa’s parents bought the place for her and I pay peanuts for rent. Literally. I buy Melissa a box of Planters Honey-Roasted every month.

             
“
Chastity
, you’re back!” Melissa sits in our living room, surrounded by books. Her Ebola is looking much better.

             
“How was it? What’s he like?”

             
“I’m glad it’s over and I don’t want to see him again.”

             
“So, it went well?”

             
“He’s so…intense. Intimidating. And young. Why didn’t you give me some background info? I looked like a nincompoop there.”

             
“
Chastity
, I’m sorry. I didn’t think. I was busy being crippled by a deadly fever.”

             
I huff. “Mostly he was courteous. Slightly stuffy—like he was old before he was young, or something.”

             
“Old before his time, you mean?”

             
“What?” Anyway, I move on, “You look better. Was it the soup?”

             
“No. Life-saving vaccine in my dying moments,” she said casually.

             
“Well, I gotta go. I can still make my shift at Ricklin’s.”

             
“
Chastity
, you’ll be exhausted.”

             
“I’ll be fine. It’s only a
cramped hardware
store
with heavy machinery all around.”

I’ve worked at Ricklin’s since I started at WSU. It’s the largest independent hardware store in the Portland area, which somehow includes Washington state. I’ve been here for years and I still know nothing about hardware.

             
I’m
glad I’m there because it’ll keep me from thinking about Sebastian Shade. We’re busy—it’s the start of busy season and local folks are looking for all sorts of crazy, quirky items, such as “tools” and “equipment.” We have such an eccentric customer base.

             
Mrs. Ricklin looks glad to see me.

             
“I’m glad to see you,” she says.

             
“I can do a co
uple of hours,” I assure her.

             
When I get home later, Melissa is wearing headphones and working on her laptop. The foot-and-mouth disease seemed to be gone. She has her teeth into a story (cliché #4) in an intense manner.

             
“You’ve got some interesting stuff here,” she tells me, taking off her headphones. “Why didn’t you let him show you around? He obviously
likes
you
likes you.”

             
My heart rate came back again. Don’t know where the hell it went. Shouldn’t it always be there?

             
“I think I’ll make a decent article
out of this. Shame we didn’t have any stills. Good looking son-of-a-shit, isn’t he?”

             
“I suppose so,” I say, trying to sound disinterested.

             
“Oh, come on. Even you have to get a girl boner from his good looks.”

             
Crap cheese!
I feel my cheeks heating up again. I try flattering her to get off this topic. “I’m sure he would’ve had a boy version of a girl-boner for you, if you had gone.”

             
It didn’t work. “What did you really think of him?”

“I can understand the fascination.”

             
She snorts, a tiny snot bubble popping in her nostril. “You? Fascinated by a man? Hah!”

             
“Why did you want to know if he was gay? I was mortified.”

             
She slaps her head. “Is
that
what I wrote? I meant to ask his opinion on the entrepreneurial spirit. Whoops.”