Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 100086 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 500(@200wpm)___ 400(@250wpm)___ 334(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100086 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 500(@200wpm)___ 400(@250wpm)___ 334(@300wpm)
“God damn!” I exclaim when I take the first bite of the massive sandwich with pastrami he left me. This has to be the best thing I had in ages. The pickle, the mustard… he hit the jackpot.
If I had a phone, I would have texted him about it in an instant.
I know exactly what to do when I spot the pen and sticky notepad next to my plate. I can be forgetful, so I’ll write down my ‘paper texts’ to him, with timestamps, and everything.
The coffee is rich in flavor, and not at all burnt. The coffee machine in the corner is marked with yet another sticky note telling me to back off (though in nicer words), but I take my time browsing through all the different devices he keeps around it, as well as vacuum-sealed pouches of coffee, and several boxes of hot chocolate. When I open one labeled as black forest, I’m assaulted by the scent of rich dark cocoa and cherries. Instead of the powder I’m used to, the tin contains shavings of chocolate and bits of dried fruit, which turns out to be cherry once I placed one on my tongue.
But, as requested, I don’t touch the coffee machine. I’m looking forward to him teaching me how to use it, so in the future, once we actually share a bedroom, I can bring him coffee to bed.
Maybe I’m a bit of a sap, but I’m just that excited about him.
Once I’m done with the breakfast, I go on to explore the rooms that aren’t locked.
When I walk into the living room, I have to turn on the light despite it surely being past noon. Does he like to live like a vampire? It would explain all the dark and creepy shit in his house as well as how pale he is.
For a moment I drift off, imagining that he’s not off ‘to work’ but actually sleeps in a coffin in the basement. Would I still fuck Corvus if he was a vampire? Probably.
But for now, the house is mine, so I walk up to the curtains and pull them apart—
A wall. An honest-to-God brick wall fills the whole window, and when I dash over to the other window, I find the same behind the curtain. There are real windows on the other side of the house, all of them barred, but after a trip upstairs, I have to conclude that all the street-facing windows are fake. I cannot think of a single reason for going through all that trouble, but maybe Corvus can enlighten me at dinner.
One of the rooms overlooking the garden featuring many plants straight from a gothic novel is dedicated to music. Framed band posters accompany the small portrait of a skeleton smoking a cigarette. There’s an overabundance of merch and memorabilia related to a band called Corpselock, including a photo of a younger Corvus with a group of tattooed dudes, who clearly make up a band. Huh. Must be a favorite of his.
He looks like their manager.
But he seems to also be into classical music, as evidenced by a whole cupboard filled with sheet music, likely to be played on the violin resting on a table by the wall. It’s a shiny black color, has a lovely curve to its head, and, of course, has a yellow note stuck on it. It reads, Don’t even breathe on it.
I manage to pull my fingers away just in time. While a part of me wants to break the rule simply because it’s in place, I imagine this is important to him, so I’d hate to accidentally break something.
I write in one of my paper texts though, [You play the violin? You have to play something for me.]
I’m growing excited and intrigued that I’ve involved myself with such an enigmatic, multi-layered man. And out of all the hot guys in the world, he chose me. He let me inside his body.
Since he doesn’t own an apartment, but the whole building top to bottom, he has more than one living room. The one downstairs seems to be more official—where you’d have guests. Something that’s apparently possible when you’re a millionaire with more than one room in New York. The whole room is bigger than the apartment I rent, and it’s adjacent to the dining room where we ate (and fucked) yesterday. My dining space used to be located by the counter of my tiny kitchen, so on warm days I preferred to eat on a bench in the nearby park.
The other living room, the one upstairs, is just as dark and moody, with a floral wallpaper, but has a more relaxed atmosphere. A plush velvet sofa stands in front of a large TV framed like a painting, and it’s more lived-in than the museum downstairs. Corvus is a very tidy man, but an empty cup stands on the coffee table fashioned out of one of those wooden stump slices, along with a block of the same Post-it-notes I’ve been finding around the house, and a discarded tie. A game of chess Corvus never finished with whoever was visiting him is set up on a small table with only one armchair next to it while in the large painting above, creepy women emerge from a deep darkness, jeering while their faces twist into crooked grimaces. I don’t understand why someone would want something like this in the living room, but it’s not like I’m into art.