Finally!

It's what I've always dreamed of. Christian. Asleep in my bed. With me.

And I have to go to the bathroom!

Holy crap! I've got Christian in my arms. He's cuddling up next to me like a beached whale with a golf ball stuck in its blowhole, and all I can think of is how I can sneak away to, um, well... go back and reread the sixth sentence of this chapter if you want to know so bad. The only thing more asleep than the love of my life is the arm that he's cutting off the circulation to.

My arm!

I try to shift out from under him.

Ouch!

My hair!

He's... on... my... hair.

"Get off!" I say, and try to push him away. He's nothing but dead weight. Like arms and legs who've made the mistake of accepting a drink from Bill Cosby.

Allegedly.

His face is nuzzling against my neck.

Gross!

Who knew billionaires drooled just like horny frat boys at the tail end of a kegger?

Finally, the man of my dreams begins to stir.

"Good morning," he mumbles, letting out a small burp.

At least I hope that was a burp.

"You're so... close," I hint.

"If I was any closer I'd be inside you," he says, lasciviously. "Speaking of which..."

"Um, I've got to go to the bathroom," I tell him.

"Well, if you insist," he says, disentangling himself from me. "Unless..."

"Unless what?"

"Unless you happen to be into water sports."

Water sports? WATER SPORTS? I don't even like to bathe if I can help it. If God intended us to play sports in the water, He would have given us gills like Kevin Costner in Waterworld.

"What am I thinking?" Christian says, slapping his head like he could have had a V8. "There's a meeting and I'm late, and I don't do late."

"Or me, for that matter," I mumble.

"What?"

"Would you like some breakfast before you leave?"

"I wouldn't want you to go through any trouble, Ana," he tells me.

"Oh, no trouble. I think we have some Wheaties. It's the breakfast of champions, you know."

"No, thanks. I'll grab something on my way to the meeting."

He grabs his clothes on his way out.

"I'll dress in the car," he tells me and leaves, his dingling dangling.

I get up languidly, and make my way to the kitchen. I get the box of Wheaties. Screw that! I'm in the mood for some real food. Since Christian is no longer here, I make myself some eggs, ham, sausage, and bacon. With pancakes on the side. Buttered sourdough toast with honey, and a carafe of coffee. What they hey, I have a little time. Some homemade cinnamon rolls with aged cheddar cheese melted on top would sure hit the spot, and they do. There, that should hold me over until I can make myself a real breakfast. It's not that I don't like cooking for anybody, it's just that I don't like cooking for anybody, and, when it comes to men, what they don't know won't hurt them.

I think Nietzsche said that.

Somehow, I'm still in the mood for--mmm--something, but I don't know what. I wonder if we still have that side of beef left. No, I finished that the last time I was in the mood for a snack.

What the heck, I decide to shower. While I'm in there, I wash some veggies for a nice salad I want to make later. I saw that done on Seinfeld. That Kramer, he's full of good ideas. I just wish he wouldn't have used the N-word--"Nihility"--because I don't know what that word even means.

Once I'm out of the shower, I decide to send Christian an email, because there's nothing a man likes more than being bothered by some woman with some trivial nonsense while he's in the middle of doing something important.

I type:

Dear Mr. Grey, I know you're busy, but I just have to know... what did you have for breakfast?

He writes me back immediately.

Miss Steele, I'm in the middle of an important meeting. Can we do this later?

Men. They always play so hard to get.

Was it a side of beef? Because I was in the mood for a side of beef this morning after you left.

Ana, please. I'm in the middle of a major negotiation with the Japanese, and I need to keep my wits about me. I'll speak with you later.

The Japanese? Does that mean you're having sushi? Ugh! I don't like sushi. But I eat it anyway.

Miss Steele, I have a Japanese businessman about to commit seppuku. If he does, it will cost me millions. Please, I will talk to you later.

Millions of what? Rice? I don't know how the Japanese can eat rice. A million of anything is too much for me.

Ana, I'm begging you. Please stop.

Who does Christian think he's kidding? If his meeting is that important, why does he keep answering my emails?

Oh, you're so funny, Christian. You almost have me believing I'm bothering you.

That's because you are. I'm at work, Ana. You do know what work is, don't you?

Do I know what work is? What is this, a test? If I wanted to continue taking tests, I would have stayed in college.

Work, schmerk. Here's a question for YOU, smart guy. What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?

What do you mean? An African or European swallow?

What? I don't know that!

Bo-iiing!

"Auuuuuuuugh!"

By the way, Ana, I got tired of seeing you driving that deathtrap of a Yugo of yours. I decided to get you a new car. It's downstairs waiting for you.

A new car? Holy crap! What am I wasting my time talking to him on the computer for?

"Gotta go," I type and rush out of the apartment to see what my billionaire boyfriend bought me. Is it a Ferrari? Is it a Lamborghini? Is it a Ferrarighini? I hope it's not an Audi. I hate Audis. I wrote them once, and they never wrote me back. I bet it's a Mercedes. A beautiful new Mercedes convertible. I've only wanted one ALL my life.

Christian's bodyguard, Sonny Crockett, is waiting for me outside. He's dangling some keys in front of him for me to take. I snatch them out of his hand like Kwai Chang Caine at the beginning of the TV series Kung Fu.

"Oops, sorry," I tell him, and hand him back a finger.

Crockett politely pretends he's not bleeding, and tells me, "Enjoy your new car, Miss Steele."

I look up and down the street, but I don't see a Mercedes. Or even an Audi, for that matter. I hate Audi's, but I would have settled for one because I’m used to settling for less. Instead, I see a car that's made of... um... mud.

"Is... this it?" I ask Crockett.

"Yes," he tells me. "It's a Playdoh LOL. Christian saw it advertised on television late one Saturday night, and he thought it would be perfect for you."

I take a closer look. The car isn't made of mud, after all. It's made from a kind of clay.

"Playdoh," Crockett corrects me.

"Playdoh..."

"Yes, it's the safest car you can possibly drive. The Playdoh will absorb the impact of any collision you may have, and, instead of having to pay a body shop to fix the damage, all you have to do is mold the clay-like substance back into its original shape."

"Playdoh..."

"You can do that by hand. Just try to keep it out of the rain."

"Playdoh..."

Just then, Kate pulls up in her car. A Mercedes. She looks at me, looks at my new car, looks at me, looks at my new car, looks at me, and looks at my new car.

"BWAH, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA!" she laughs, pointing at the car. "What loser bought that piece of..."

"It was a gift from Christian," I say quickly, interrupting her. "He wanted me to be safe."

"Oh, you'll be safe all right," she tells me. "No one will want to come near that thing."

"Well..." I say.

"Well..." Kate says.

"Well..." Crockett says.

"Do you want to go inside?" Kate says.

"Sure," I tell her.

"I wasn't talking to you," Kate tells me, and takes Crockett by his four-fingered hand.

"Mmm..." she says, leading him inside, "...four fingers."

"Um... Kate?" I say.

"Why don't you go for a ride in your new car?" she tells me with a wink. "Make it a long one."

I look up toward the sky.

Hmm... rain.

I drive my new car to work.

"Wow!" my boss, Mr. Clayton says. "A Playdoh LOL!"

He immediately begins hitting it with a baseball bat.

"Hey! Hey!" I yell at him. "What are you doing to my new car?"

"No, it's alright," he assures me. "See? You can mold the clay body back into its original shape."

He invites all his employees to come beat on my car like a piñata.

A Playdoh piñata.

Later at the apartment--I can't believe it!--we're finally finished packing. I was in charge of the work, and Kate was in charge of criticizing the work I was doing. We make a good team, my roommate and I.

José shows up just as I finish taping up the last cardboard box. José is a master of timing. He'll always show up just as the work's done or the food's ready.

"Can I help?" he asks.

"You're too late," I tell him. "This is the last of it."

"I meant with the beer."

"Buying it?"

"No, drinking it."

"You two amateurs indulge yourselves with your hops and whey," Kate tells us. "I'm going to help myself to something a bit stronger."

"Wine?"

"Yes. And meth."

That Kate. She's done so many drugs, her driver's license has a list of organs she needs.

Finally, it's just me and my two drunk friends. We're fondly reminiscing about the last four years of college. José and Kate are competing to see who's slept with the most professors. So far, it's a toss-up, and it quickly evolves into a drinking game where everybody takes a shot of tequila when they name someone they both went to bed with.

I look at the two of them and think about my future. There's a world out there full of amazing possibilities, but that would require me pushing myself away from my favorite plate of food.

A knock at the door breaks me out of my reverie.

Kate opens it and immediately has half her face sucked off by Sonny Crockett.

José and I excuse ourselves and head out the door. We head Downtown to where José has heard they're giving away free government cheese. It turns out to be a hoax. It's not cheese they're giving away for free. It's penicillin shots. Something José needs even more than dairy products.

I can't believe how easy it is between José and I. The last time I saw him, it ended badly with him trying to force me to read his humor blog.

What is it with these guys who write humor blogs?

We get back to the apartment. José wants to come up.

"Maybe we could have sex?" he asks.

"Um... I don't have a penis," I remind him.

"Oh, yeah. I keep forgetting," he says and leaves.

As I walk into the apartment for what may be the final time, I can hear Kate and Crockett getting busy. Quite noisily, I might add, but I don't.

"Kate!" I yell. "If you break that chandelier, it's going to come out of your share of the deposit."

"Isn't this chapter over yet?" she yells back.

Before I go to bed, I get on the mean machine. I call it that because of how it insults me every time I log on. Have I already told you that? Who cares?

"Hello, Ana," the computer tells me.

I wait.

The insults should be flying any second now.

"How may I help you?" it adds, when it gets no response from me.

Holy crap! The computer's actually being nice to me? I don't believe it.

"Um... do I have any emails?" I ask it.

"Yes," the computer reports. "You have 32 emails from Mr. Grey."

"Please access my emails, computer," I tell it. "And you were very helpful today."

"Thanks, slut."

"What did you just say?"

"I said, 'Thanks. A Lot.'"

Hmm...

I go over Christians emails. All 32 of them. I wonder what's wrong. It's not like him to send so few.

Are you there, Ana?

Ana, are you there?

You are there, Ana?

There, Ana, are you?

You there, Ana, are?

Ana?

Are?

You?

There?

Who knew there could be thirty-two variations on those two words? I mean, four. One, two, three, four. Yes, four.

Holy crap, am I in deep doodoo with Christian. I quickly grab my phone. There's a message from Christian. Thank goobers, it's only one.

But it's fifty-seven minutes long!

Is this guy nuts, or what? If he thinks he can intimidate me with thirty-two emails and one fifty-seven minute long voice message on my cell phone, boy, does he have another thing coming.

I call him immediately.

"Hello," he answers.

I was expecting him to be angry at me. Livid, even. But he's not. In fact, he sounds rather apologetic. Contrite.

"Where The Hell Have You Been?" he screams, repentantly.

"I was packing up with Kate. And then José came over. We went out. A homeless man asked us for a bite. So we bit him."

"I'll see you Sunday?"

"Yes, Sunday."

"Great. I'll go out and buy a new spatula immediately. Go to bed now, Anastasia."

Is this guy nuts, or what? If he thinks I'll go to bed just because he tells me to, boy, does he have another thing coming.

"Okay," I tell him

"Well, goodnight, Ana."

"Goodnight, Christian."

"Hang up."

"You hang up."

"No, you hang up."

"No, you hang up."

"No, you hang up."

"No, you hang up."

"No, you hang up."

"No, you hang up."

"No, you hang up."

"No, you hang up."

"No, you hang up."

"No, you hang up."

"No, you hang up."

"No, you hang up."

"No, you hang up."

"No, you hang up."

"No, you hang up."

"No, you hang up."

"No, you hang up."

"No, you hang up."

"No, you hang up."

"No, you hang up."

"No, you hang up."

"No, you hang up."

"No, you hang up."

"No, you hang up."

"No, you hang up."

"WILL ONE OF YOU HANG THE FRAK UP?" Kate yells from the other room, just as I hear the chandelier come crashing to the floor.

Wham! Wham! Wham! BANG!

We've just finished moving into our new apartment and Crockett is helping us hang some pictures. Since we didn't have a hammer, Crockett decided to use his gun to hammer the nails into the wall.

"That looks, um... painful," Kate tells him.

"It's just a flesh-wound," Crockett answers.

We stand there looking at him bleed.

Oh, boy, I bet that stain is coming out of our deposit for sure.

"I'd better go," Crockett tells Kate. "I'd like to get to the emergency room before I pass out."

"Try not to bleed too much," my roommate says, waving so long at him as he walks out the front door. "You need that blood for another part of your body."

We no sooner shut the door than there's a knock.

"That better not be Crockett," Kate tells me. "I'm so tired of explaining to the police why there's dead men at my doorstep."

But it's not Kate's lover. Heck, it's not even Willie Nelson. It's a delivery boy with a chilled bottle of champagne. Leave it to Christian to send me champagne that's as cold as his heart.

"Sign here," the delivery boy tells me.

"With what?"

"Um... my pen is in my front pant pocket," he tells me. "Can you reach in and grab it?"

I look at him skeptically.

"No, really," he says. "My hands are busy holding this bottle."

Reluctantly, I reach into the pocket in question. I don't feel anything initially, but then...

"Aw, there it is," I say.

"That's not it," he says.

"What is it?" I ask.

"What do you think?" he asks back.

"It feels like a penis," I tell him. "Only smaller."

Angrily, Kate grabs him by his collar.

"Call me," she chastises as she throws him out of our apartment.

I look at the bottle. Ooh, it's imported. All the way from California.

"What does the note say?" Kate wants to know.

"It says: 'Enjoy this fine bottle of bubbly. It's half-empty because I wanted to make sure it was up to my expensive standards. Also, I wanted to share in your celebration without actually being there. Yes, that sounds romantic. I'll go with that story instead. By the way, what happened to Crockett? He came home with a gunshot wound and bled all over my copy of S&M Monthly?'"

Kate takes the bottle from my hand, and reads the label herself.

"Ooh," she says, "it's imported."

I wake up Sunday morning feeling great. Thanks to Christian's housewarming gift, I slept like a baby. Wetting the bed only twice.

Today's the big day. I jump out of bed, hop into the shower, and scrub everything twice. On a hunch, I stick a forefinger into my belly button and give it a whiff.

Ew!

It smells like feet.

Cleanliness is next to godliness, so I scrub everything a third time.

When I exit the shower, I go over to my dresser, toweling off as I walk, and look at the picture of God my old priest, Father Pedófilo, gave me after one of his special confessions. There's Jesus on one side, and, yup, there's Cleanliness on the other.

On my drive over to Christian's, I'm feeling rather daring. I have some time, so I stop and buy myself some edible panties.

$4.99?

Yikes!

I thought this was the dollar store.

They come in a pack of six. What the heck, I'm feeling frisky, so I buy them anyway. I want Christian to know I'm not some bimbo cheapskate.

When I finally get to Christian's apartment, I'm nervous, and when I get nervous I get hungry, so, before I get out of the car, I eat five of the underwear.

Christian greets me at the door.

"Why, Miss Steele," he purrs, "you look ravishing. I could eat you up."

"Or at least my underwear."

"What?"

"Oh... nothing," I say. Oh, crap! It was supposed to be a surprise. "I'm just being silly."

"Did you happen to see this morning's newspaper?" he asks me.

"No, why?"

"Well, look who's on the front page."

I look at the paper he hands me, and on the front page I see a picture of me and Christian. Christian and I. The Have and the Have Not. In the picture, I'm holding the bird and birdcage Christian so thoughtfully gave me as a gift for my college graduation. The parrot is laying on the bottom of the cage, looking even deader than before. Above the picture is the headline:

Crazed Parrot Murderer On The Loose!

"Why do you smell like edible panties?" Christian asks me.

There's a timid knock at the door. It's Doobie, Christian's manservant. As he walks into the room there's a small cloud of smoke following him. I can't quite place the smell, but it smells faintly like Kate's room.

"Dispeliarmus!" Doobie says, and the smoke dissipates.

"Yes, Doobie?" Christian asks him.

"Sorry to bother you, Mr. Grey," Doobie says, shuffling from one oversized foot to the other--doesn't Doobie ever wear shoes?--"but Dr. Bombay has arrived."

I look at Christian.

"Dr. Bombay?" I say, raising my eyebrows quizzically.

"Yes, Ana. I did tell you that you would have to see a doctor and pass a physical, didn't I?"

"No."

"Of course I did. It was just after that thing we did with those people who met us at that place where something or other was happening." He pauses. "It's right here in the small print of our contract."

He hands me the contract that he apparently carries with him wherever he goes. I try to read the small print. The very small print. What is this, microfilm?

"If you say so," I give in and hand him back the papers.

"Now, if you'll excuse me, Miss Steele, I need to speak with Dr. Bombay. Can you believe she's charging me extra for a house call? As if I would allow myself to be seen visiting the free clinic."

"Are you going to have a physical, too?"

"I don't have to," he sniffs, condescendingly. "I'm rich."

He leaves, and I stand there awkwardly with Doobie.

"Hocus pocus iwannajointus!" he says, and a small, hand-rolled cigarette appears between his thumb and forefinger. At least I think that's a thumb.

"Would you care to spark up, Miss Steele?" he says politely, offering me the cigarette.

"No, thank you," I say, discreetly moving away from him. If there's one thing I learned from Nancy Reagan, it's to Just Say No.

"You sure?"

"Yes, quite sure."

"It's primo."

Christian walks back in.

"Feetus dontfailmenowtus!" Doobie says, and--poof!--he's gone.

"Did Doobie leave?" Christian asks me.

"I... I guess," I say, looking around for those little pointy ears. "I don't really know."

"You didn't give him any clothes, did you?"

"Of course not."

"Good."

Christian opens the door to the next room, and chivalrously waves me in.

"Don't let the door hit'cha where the good Lord split'cha," he says, gallantly.

I walk in, not knowing what to expect.