Good Rich People(5)

It was Margo herself who sat me down one afternoon and told me how to get rid of it, or at least get it out of our bed.

We were sitting in the second tier of her garden, having a tea. She peered at me over her fine bone china cup, eyes echoing his. “My son has needs,” she said. “We are not like ordinary people, the kind of people you’re used to associating with.” Margo was always sure to sneak a dig into any of our conversations. “We have more money. We get more bored. If you want to keep him and keep him happy, he needs amusement. He needs amusement above all else.”

Margo and Graham need the tenant. They need someone to dominate. Other rich people have nannies, dog walkers. That’s not enough for them. They need tenants and their tenants need to be special. Exceptional. The game is more entertaining that way. If they don’t have their tenants, they will find their entertainment elsewhere. They will play their games with me.

“Margo had an idea how to make it interesting,” he says. I brace myself. “She thought you could take a turn.”

My back stiffens. “But I don’t want to take a turn. I don’t want to play.” I have accepted this little anomaly in Graham, but it’s not for me. It’s his hobby. He doesn’t insist I play golf. I don’t invite him shopping.

“It’s not really about what you want.” He spins his fork. “You need to prove yourself.” I want to argue but I have to be careful. Graham often uses Margo as a scapegoat. This might not be her idea at all. It might be his. More probably, it’s both. It’s not important who thought of it first. They share blood and sometimes a brain. “You need to show her that you deserve to be here.”

I don’t meet his eyes. My neck is hot. “I married you. I sacrificed my life for you. My family doesn’t even speak to me—” He flinches. He hates when I mention them. “I accept you. Graham. I accept you; don’t you understand? When no one else would.” He doesn’t have a monopoly on manipulation.

“That’s not enough. She wants you to embrace us.” He sucks a speck of sauce off his pinkie finger. “Does this have crack in it?”

I don’t want to play. It’s different when it’s them, when it’s something I see at a distance. Something I am aware of, but can easily ignore.

I got too close to the last one. There was something about her I liked: an innocence, a hopefulness, like she expected the fairy tale was in the castle, when it’s always in the woods that the princess learns what really matters.

“What do you want?” I shove my plate forward, finished. I don’t know why he likes it so much. It tastes like something out of a can. “What is it that you want from all this?”

He leans back in his chair, stretches his taut stomach. “I want what everyone wants: to be entertained.”

“But when is it going to be enough?”

He swallows so hard, I can see it. I think I detect a sadness behind his eyes. But maybe his eyes are just beautiful; maybe that’s the sadness. Everything is shallow with Graham: his looks, his thoughts, his actions. And there is something so attractive about that, the lack of depth. No hidden parts. No secret baggage.

But I think it hurts him sometimes, his shallowness. The way nothing matters. This pain is the thing I love most about him, because it is the thing we share: the dread, the fear, that nothing matters. Or worse, that it does for everyone else but us.

I get out of my chair and go to him. I bring his head to my stomach and he lets me. I brush his black, black hair. He’s like a predator I have caught, a monster I can hold in my hands.

I bend my knees, try to slide onto his lap.

“Don’t.” I freeze. He fixes the hair I brushed out of place. “There’s nothing more vulgar than trying to seduce your spouse.”

I wobble in place for a second, uncertain. Then I stand. Graham sets his jaw and overlooks me as I clear his plate. Then he goes to his chair at the end of the floor, the one with armrests that look like wings. He puts his socked feet on the ottoman and scrolls through the news on his phone, announcing all the bad things that are happening like they make him feel better.

“Stock market’s fucked! That fire’s at one hundred thousand acres! Another hurricane!”

And that night, we lie down in bed together, like we do every night and we will every night forever. He lets me touch him for the first twenty minutes, stroke his hair, follow the tight, muscled lines of his body with my fingers, smell the musky scent that oozes from his neck. Then he scoots away, gets down to the business of sleeping. I slide to my side of the bed to worry.

His breathing pattern slows as I gaze up at the ceiling, the tiny light fixtures like pinpricks. My stomach churns with thoughts of the game, my turn. I don’t want to play. There has to be some way out of it. Maybe I can prove myself to Graham another way. Maybe I can make him love me, finally.

He whimpers in his sleep. He always has bad dreams. Almost every night, a light squeal escapes his lips; his eyelids flicker. I used to ask him what he dreamed about. “You were crying,” I would tell him. “You were crying in your sleep.” But he always claimed not to remember. “I never dream anything,” he said. “I never have dreams.”

I brush the soft hairs on his neck to comfort him. He seizes on a sigh, then goes quiet.

Sometimes I ask myself why I stay. But I have known money long enough to realize that it always comes with strings attached. And I have known the world long enough to know that at its core, it’s a game. Either you play or you are the one being played with.