Heller's Revenge (12 page)

Needless to say, Clarrie was
ecstatic over my arrival, giving my boobs an especially warm
welcoming inspection. I tried not to appear too resentful, but was
finding it very difficult to hide my feelings. When it came time
for him to leave, Heller asked if he could see me alone in the
corridor for a minute.

“I don’t think that’s
necessary,” I said to him, my voice colder than a snowman’s
snowballs. “We’ve said everything that needs to be said.”

And I turned my back on him and
stalked to the suite’s second bedroom without even saying goodbye.
I spent the next half an hour pottering around, inspecting my room.
Dampness stung my eyes as I looked at the photos of Daniel and Niq
and Will I had on my phone, hating my forced separation.

Suddenly teary, I rushed into my
luxurious ensuite to splash water on my face. It wasn’t a happy
face that stared back at me in the mirror, and I tried out a few
different facial expressions to convey false cheeriness. As a
former actor, I’d had some practice at faking emotion, no matter
how badly I’d done it. I plastered on a pretend smile and went out
to the living area.

It was early evening,
pre-dinner. Clarrie was sitting at his laptop, typing furiously. I
smiled at him when he looked up, and sat down on the lounge.

“Hope you don’t mind. I’m doing
a bit of work,” he said, apologetic. “Feel free to watch TV or
listen to music. It doesn’t bother me at all. When I work, I’m
completely absorbed.”

“Thanks Clarrie. That’s very
kind.” I determined to be nice to him. Not because Heller had
ordered me too, but because it wasn’t his fault I was unhappy, and
he was paying rather a large amount of money for my services during
the next fortnight. I switched on the TV and flicked through the
channels only to find nothing worth watching. With nothing else to
do though, I spent the next hour watching an extremely dull
documentary on fire ants. I almost drifted off to sleep before
rousing myself when the closing credits rolled across the enormous
plasma screen.

“You looked as though you were
really enjoying that documentary,” Clarrie commented, shutting his
laptop and approaching me on the vast lounge.
Just showed how
observant he was
, I thought.

“Fire ants are fascinating
creatures, no doubt about it,” I replied solemnly. “Did you know,
for example, that a fire ant nest may contain more than one queen?”
That was the one fact I remembered from the five minutes I was
actually paying attention to the show.

“I never knew that,” he
admitted. He sat down, rather a bit too close to me for my liking.
I shifted imperceptibly away from him. He stared at me intently,
and reached his arm along the back of the lounge.

“You’re very pretty, Tilly,” he
said. “You have lovely . . .” A quick look at my boobs. “. . .
eyes.”

“That’s kind of you to say so,
Clarrie,” I said, jumping up off the lounge. “Are you hungry? Would
you like to go down to the restaurant for dinner, or will I order
us some room service?”

“Room service.”

“Okay. Here’s the menu. What do
you want?” He chose a double cheeseburger with chips and I ordered
baked salmon fillet with roasted baby vegetables for myself. I
guess living with Heller was rubbing off on me. Once upon a time I
would have ordered the burger too without even thinking about it,
but Heller was a health-nut and I had become used to not having any
junk food. I went to the suite’s well-stocked maxi-bar (the hotel
being far too swank for just a mini-bar) and at Clarrie’s request,
retrieved a beer for him and a half bottle of sauvignon blanc for
me.

My phone rang. I checked the
screen. It was Heller. I let it keep ringing.

“Aren’t you going to answer
that?” Clarrie asked.

“No.”

“It might be important.”

“It’s not.”

I sat on the lounge again, but
at a safer distance. There was an awkward silence for a while.
God, it’s going to be a long, long two weeks
, I thought
desperately. I searched around for conversational topics.

“How come you don’t have any
personnel, Clarrie? It seems strange that an important businessman
like you doesn’t have an entourage.”

He shrugged. “I’m not really a
people person, Tilly. I don’t like a lot of people around me. I
have a couple of casual staff at my home in LA, to housekeep, do
the yard work, clean the pool, things like that, but I do most of
my work and business dealings online, so don’t really need a
personal assistant.”

“What about when you’re
travelling, like now?”

He shook his head. “I order room
service and have my laundry done by the hotel. The hotel staff
clean my room. I catch taxis everywhere. Why would I need to bring
anyone with me?”

“You’re a very unusual man,
that’s all.”

He shrugged again. “That’s just
how I am. I never really thought about it before.”

Awkward silence again. I could
tell he wasn’t a smooth conversational charmer. Unfortunately.

He edged a little closer to me
and stared at me with his blue eyes, a not-so-nice smile creeping
onto his face. “So, are you and Heller –”

“No! He’s my boss.”

“He’s pretty striking. So
good-looking and tall and muscled. He must work out a lot.”

“He does.”

“I bet women love him.” He
sounded resentful.

“They do. Believe me.”

“Where’s he from? I can’t place
his accent.”

“I don’t know. He won’t tell me.
Somewhere in Scandinavia is my guess. He’s a real man of
mystery.”

He digested that. “He looks
tough.”

“Oh yeah. He’s a real
hard-arse.”

“Do you like working for
him?”

“Sometimes.”

My phone rang. Heller again. I
ignored it again.

“You’re not going to . . .” He
waved his fingers in the direction of my phone, and slid even a bit
closer.

I shook my head. “It’s not
important. No need to disrupt our lovely conversation. Whoever it
is can ring back later.”

Just then the room service
arrived.
Thank God!
I thought gratefully, jumping up to
answer the door. I fussed over the plates, setting them out on the
dining table, fetching a glass for Clarrie’s beer and one for my
wine. I set out the cutlery, the napkins and the condiments.

“I would have just eaten here on
the lounge off the tray,” he confessed, watching my frenzy of
activity.

“Well, you’re going to eat up at
the table tonight,” I declared firmly, sounding like his mother,
and I ushered him to his seat. He didn’t complain. The food was
delicious, even if the conversation flagged at times. I
concentrated on savouring every bite and every sip of wine, and
chatted mindlessly, trying to ignore his awful table manners. He
guzzled and slurped, speaking with his mouth full, particles of
half-chewed food flying across the table every time he spoke. I
fervently hoped that none of it had landed in my dinner. He was
obviously not used to eating in company. Finally the horror ended
and I cleaned up the mess, leaving the trays outside the door to be
collected later. I poured the rest of the wine into my glass.

“Do you mind if I do some more
work for a while?” he asked.

“Of course not!” I replied
immediately, not too enthusiastically I hoped. “I’ll make some
phone calls and check my email.”

I took the glass of wine into my
bedroom, plugged in my laptop at the desk provided and loaded up my
email. The hotel offered wireless internet access, which I was
happy to let Clarrie pay for. As usual, my family had clogged my
inbox with spam and I deleted them all without even reading them. I
forwarded on a few work emails to the general
Heller’s
email
address for Daniel to deal with, signing off with a sad smiley
face. As I was typing, an email from Heller arrived:
M, ring me
RIGHT NOW! I know you’re online. You just sent Daniel an email.
H.

I deleted his email without
responding to it and shut my computer down. I sent Niq and Daniel a
goodnight text, and received replies back almost immediately.

heller wants 2 talk 2 u
,
Daniel texted.

have good sleep & lovely
day tomorrow :-(
, I texted back.

thks! u2! heller wants 2 know
if u r ignoring him?
Daniel responded.

ignoring who?

:-) lol

I gave Will a quick phone call
to let him know that I was going to be busy for the next fortnight.
He was gratifyingly disappointed, and I reminded him that I was
contactable via phone and email, and that we could try some phone
sex one night if he was really lonely. I hung up with his laughter
in my ear and a sad smile on my face.

Chapter 8

Clarrie was still furiously
typing when I wandered back out to the living area.
I should
have brought a book to read
, I thought, because I was going to
be bored shitless during my stay. I was twitchy and paced around
restlessly. I didn’t feel like watching TV. I looked out of the
window for a while from our great height, down into a main
thoroughfare, mesmerised by the lights of the traffic still
clogging the street even hours after peak time had passed. I
watched an ambulance, its lights flashing urgently, struggling to
find a path through the congestion and hoped it reached its
destination in time. Pacing again, I walked behind Clarrie and
peered over his shoulder at his laptop.

He was playing a game –
Synonymy
by the looks of it.

“Hey! I thought you said you
were working, and now I find you playing instead,” I teased.

“I am working, Tilly,” he
explained, eyes fixed on the screen. “I spend time every day in the
game, making sure that everything is okay. I have a couple of
incognito characters I play as. I need to experience the game just
like any other normal gamer would. It’s the best way for me to keep
in touch with what the gamers want and keep
Synonymy
fresh.”
He looked up briefly. “Gotta make sure that people keep paying me
that monthly fee to play.”

I leaned on the desk. “I used to
play a few years ago, but I was too poor to keep paying, so had to
give it up. It was fun. I enjoyed it, but it’s very addictive. I
remember playing for six hours straight one night. I could barely
move, I was so stiff afterwards.”

“Oh, that’s nice that you played
and enjoyed it,” he said to my boobs in a touched voice. “I never
get tired of hearing people tell me that. Makes me feel good.”
Still spoken to my boobs. Served me right for standing while he was
sitting, I supposed. I only hoped that he didn’t expect my boobs to
hold up the other end of the chinwag though – they weren’t known
for their conversational skills. “The game has changed a bit since
you played it, Tilly. Do you want me to show you?”

“Sure,” I said, and pulled up a
dining chair next to him. I had nothing better to do.

“There’s now a much bigger range
of character attributes you can manipulate. It lets you build a
more personalised and individual character. The graphics have also
been improved . . .” and he spoke for the next few minutes in
detailed geek-speak about exactly how they had progressed. I didn’t
understand a word he said, but nodded intelligently throughout. By
the end of his discourse, I was thoroughly geeked out.

“But best of all,” he continued,
“I introduced an adults-only section two years ago. It’s like a
little world separate to the
Synonymy
main world and people
pay extra per month to have access. It’s strictly for the
eighteen-plus age group. I call it
Synful Synonymy
.”

Whoa! That certainly hadn’t been
an option when I played. “Is there much demand for that?” I asked
doubtfully.

“Shit yeah! I’ve never made so
much money. You would be surprised how many people subscribe to
it.”

“What can you do in there that’s
different to the normal
Synonymy
world?”

“Tilly!” he looked at me in
startled disbelief, as if I was incredibly naive. “You know – adult
stuff! You can have sex with other characters, get a lap dance, get
pissed, do drugs, whatever adult thing you want to do in real life.
Do you want to see?”

“I guess.” I was fascinated and
repelled at the same time by the whole concept. He pulled up an
icon from the sidebar menu and tapped in a password. A door
appeared in the forest his character (who incidentally didn’t look
anything like him, being tall and lean with flowing dark hair and
strong chiselled features) had been standing in. His little
character opened the door and stepped into a very different world.
It was like a miniature red-light district, with bars, dark alleys
and parks and a mass of little characters walking around strutting
their stuff.

“It’s set permanently to night
time in this world. People seem to prefer it that way. It gives the
world more authenticity.”

As his character walked up the
street, a female character with big red hair, wearing a tiny bikini
top barely holding in her enormous boobs, a micro-mini with garish
fishnets and towering high heels, approached him.

Hey cutie, do you want a
blowjob?
appeared in writing at the bottom of the screen.

He tapped quickly on the
keyboard and the words:
Sure. What do you want in return?
appeared above the other writing.

Got any jewellery?

How about this gold
bracelet?
He pulled a virtual gold bracelet out of a rucksack
icon on the sidebar menu and it flashed up on the screen.

Beautiful. Let’s do it!

And Clarrie made his character
follow the woman to a nearby park where they found a private spot
underneath a broad-spread tree. He made his character pull down his
pants, and my eyes nearly popped out of my head when I saw on the
screen in graphic detail his character’s tiny penis fully erect.
The female character knelt down in front of him and took it in her
mouth, moving her head back and forth in simulation.